Tabitha > Recent Status Updates

Ugh after starting a new job, moving house, and suffering severe reader burnout I'm excited to announce I'll be returning to reading a lot of non-fiction. Can't wait to read about people who died 1000 years ago and can't bother me anymore.

Wow, it's been a super long time since I've read any of this series. Hopefully I remember enough to enjoy it properly!

Alright, to refresh: this series has a major problem. It points out legitimate societal problems in the setting, introduces characters who have viable solutions, and then makes those characters the villains. So this is Rainbow Rowell's last chance to redeem herself thematically.

she's talked about gender inflected languages but doesn't mention that German has a neutral gender???

She's criticizing le Académie Française, which we love to see. But overall I'm disappointed that she's made no mention of trans or non-binary people and it doesn't look like she will.

I usually don't read novella collections but this was a christmas gift

this is completely unprompted but if I ever have to read of another book where the premise is that only men exist and then suddenly!!!!!!!!!111 male main character!!!!!!!!!!!! meet feeeeeeeeeeeeeemale??!?!?!?? I will actually read nothing but gay werewolf erotica for the rest of my life

What a doozy to start the year off with! This was recommended at a local bookstore for fans of Han Kang's The Vegetarian, which I am, so I'm anticipating liking this one. I hope it'll have the same surreal feeling.

Honestly just can't stand this website sometimes. I swear like 70% of the people on here have worms in their brains. I don't understand how you can enjoy reading when you can't pick up on basic characterization, plot elements, or themes.

Joan He really knows how to start en media res. No boring set up. We love to see it.

So now the best friend is bossing Ayesha around and not listening to what she wants for herself. There's genuinely only one completely likable character in this book, and that's Ayesha.

"Among us atheists, it's still the man's job to drop to his knees."-talking about proposal. Um, no. No it's not? Does the author of this book know any atheists? Also this atheist character is blatantly talking over Ayesha's perception of fundamentalist men, which is super gross.

The casual discrimination and marginalization Ayesha and Khalid face is much better written than Khalid's workplace discrimination. Evil Feminist Lady does attack Khalid's appearance and raises concerns that he might be a t*rrorist, which is true to life, but this is still portrayed as being rooted in her feminism, which really bothers me. Most feminists I've met are not Islamaphobes, myself included.

Already I'm having a problem with this book. The cartoonishly evil villain, Khalid's boss, is basically a "crazy feminist" stereotype. She is offended when Khalid refuses to shake hands with her due to her gender, then goes on a long rant about how men hate women in power in the workplace. Which is true. Then she asks her subordinate to investigate him. There's an extreme lack of nuance here.

authorities trying to cover up a deadly pandemic just hits a little too close to home right now

"What was expected of a 'civilized' power was neatly summed up by Kakuzo Okakura, author of The Book of Tea. 'The average westerner was wont to regard Japan as barbarous while she indulged in the gentle art of peace,' he wrote. 'He calls her civilized since she began to commit wholesale slaughter on the Manchurian battle-fields.'"

who knew that this book would be the one I got bogged down on, and not Ninth House

Reading a bunch of short books real quick so I can gear up to read Bardugo's monster Ninth House as my spring break project w/o falling behind on the challenge

really excited for this new eileen cook book! I really liked With Malice, and this one seems to be in a similar vein. I wonder if it's on purpose that they both feature a trip abroad...

The character's nickname is "Pity". Zero for one.

I guess James Patterson finally let one of his ghost writers out of his torture basement. Hopefully this is much better than the other projects he's undeservedly attached his name to, but I'm not optimistic: Patterson has proved to be the kiss of death to the best of ideas. (If I'm going to judge a book by it's cover, I'm going to do it well. No apologies. Suck it, James.)

It's eerie to read dialogue that sounds so close to the way me and my friends talk...

"ARE YOU KIDDING ME?" Lucilee shouted at the sign. "KING. MIDAS. CASINO." She held up her middle fingers as they sped past. "Read a book, fuckers!"
"Come to our casino!" Winona panned, "Where you will never again touch food or your loved ones without turning them to solid gold and it's considered winning!"

"Irony is a linguistic trust fall...The risks are high: misaimed irony can gravely injure the conversation. But the rewards are high, too: the sublime joy of feeling purely understood, the comfort of knowing someone's on your side. No wonder people through the ages kept trying so hard to write it."