powerful themes, but disappointing execution

Title: Internment

Author: Samira Ahmed

Published: March 19, 2019

Pages: 386

Genre: Young Adult, Fiction, Contemporary

Amazon / Barnes & Nobles / Book Depository / Goodreads

I have very mixed feelings about this book.

There’s no denying that the media and American politicians have capitalized on identity politics and racism falsely paraded as patriotism in order to socially isolate citizens into separate sides that need choosing. People are quick to write others off as another “liberal”, “conservative”, “immigrant”, “Trump supporter”, or whatever necessary label they can sneer at while they keep close company with a group that feeds their intransigence and confirmation bias.

More than ever, fostering honest and civil discussions between the divvied up parties should be a priority of any concerned American, no matter how frustrating or futile they seem. A glance back at just the last 100 years of history reveals that putting up fences between our ideas of “us” and “them” is ignorant, childish, and extremely dangerous.

Ahmed wrote Internment as a warning of horrific history potentially repeating itself, this time with Muslims as the scapegoats.

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You Can’t Make A Human Connection To An Ebook? // some thoughts on ye ol’ physical vs. ebooks debate

“I think you have a much more human relationship to a book that’s printed than you do to one that’s on a screen.”

I was watching a TED video entitled “Why books are here to stay” when the narrator Chip Kidd made that statement. My initial reaction when I first heard it was, “What—no 😲??”, and I started to draft a post about why I disagreed with him. But, when I started to consider Kidd’s opinion more, I realized that perhaps I was deliberately missing his point for the sake of being contrary 😅. So, here’s why I both agree and disagree with Kidd’s statement:

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If You’re Going Through A Hard Time Right Now, // talking about vomit noise feelings and opening up

Heeyyy thereeee.

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Book Review: The Wedding Party by Jasmine Guillory // a short and sweet hate-to-love contemporary

Title: The Wedding Party

Author: Jasmine Guillory

Published: July 16, 2019

Pages: 351

Genre: Romance, Fiction, Contemporary

Amazon / Barnes & Nobles / Book Depository / Goodreads

This one’s for all you hate-to-love fans.

Maddie loved her best friend Alexa, but she could not stand Alexa’s other best friend Theo. She thought he was an arrogant career man who only knew how to talk about himself, while Theo thought that Maddie was self-absorbed and materialistic. After a fluke hookup between the two rivals, they swore that it would never happen again and that, more importantly, Alexa could never know. However, when Alexa announced that she would be getting married and that her two best friends would both be in the wedding party, Maddie and Theo knew that whatever was changing between them would be hard to keep secret.

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I Won A Giveaway For the First Time! // a strange day punctuated by the diviners novlbox

Today was strange.

A very impromptu and very rambly post 👩🏻‍💻:

To start off, I received some good news today about something that I’ve been working at for quite some time now. Realistically, the news is very good. But, because my mind likes to wander and worry, I was thinking over how the good news is not completely good and maybe a little bit bad 😬.

It was a waste of time and energy, but those thoughts occupied my head-space the entire day. I felt off-beat, like a sort of fog blurred everything else that happened to me, including when I won my first giveaway!

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What Do You Think Of When You Look At Your Blog Stats? // numbers, the people behind them, and being number one

How often have you looked at your blog statistics and actually wondered how many of the viewers were impacted by your posts?

This question, or rather, something similar to it, was posed by one of my favorite (and grossly underrated) Youtubers Nathan Zed.

In a recent video, he spoke on end about how people, specifically creator-types like musicians and internet personalities, want to claim the number one spot in their respective fields. Nathan went on to cite how some of these people pine for first place so bad that they resort to moves like buying followers or making public pleads to their fans to help them achieve just that.

It’s all a bit disconcerting. As creators, they rightfully want to be acknowledged, but don’t they also want to be genuinely impactful? What will people remember of their work if they never even connected with it in the first place?

While listening to Nathan’s points, my mind predictably began applying them to the blogosphere. I questioned myself,

“How often do I actually wonder if people were impacted by my posts?”

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My 2019 Non-bookish Favorites (Part 2) // more internet links and even more tv shows!

Happy New Year!

Wow, *ᴵ ᴴᴬᵛᴱᴺ’ᵀ ᴾᴼˢᵀᴱᴰ ˢᴵᴺᶜᴱ ᵀᴴᴱ ᴸᴬˢᵀ ᴰᴱᶜᴬᴰᴱ!

—i also haven’t posted in two months, but that’s not as fun to acknowledge so whoops let’s not—

Ah, how history repeats itself. Just like last year, I am /very/ late to the cumulative, end-of-the-year wrap-ups. I recognize the blogosphere is probably over-saturated with everyone’s favorites of the past year—and now decade—but, somewhere in my ꜱᴍᴀʟʟ, ᴅᴀʀᴋ corner of the web, my Non-Bookish Favorites of 2019 (Part 1) is sitting alone and lonely. We can’t have that 🙅‍♀️. So, here’s the long, ~~not-particularly~~ ~~awaited~~ second half of my 2019 non-bookish favorites!

I have to admit that I’m a sucker for those lame New Years jokes. Like, saying you’ll see someone next year on New Year’s Eve? Classic* 👌.

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Book Review: Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel // mysterious ancient technology and world politics

Title: Sleeping Giants

Author: Sylvain Neuvel

Published: April 26, 2016

Pages: 320

Genre: Science Fiction

Amazon / Barnes & Nobles / Book Depository / Goodreads

Goodreads Description: A girl named Rose is riding her new bike near home in Deadwood, South Dakota, when she falls through the earth. She wakes up at the bottom of a square-shaped hole, its walls glowing with intricate carvings. But the firemen who come to save her peer down upon something even stranger: a little girl in the palm of a giant metal hand.
Seventeen years later, the mystery of the bizarre artifact remains unsolved – the object’s origins, architects, and purpose unknown.
But some can never stop searching for answers.
Rose Franklin is now a highly trained physicist leading a top-secret team to crack the hand’s code. And along with her colleagues, she is being interviewed by a nameless interrogator whose power and purview are as enigmatic as the relic they seek. What’s clear is that Rose and her compatriots are on the edge of unravelling history’s most perplexing discovery-and finally figuring out what it portends for humanity. But once the pieces of the puzzle are in place, will the result be an instrument of lasting peace or a weapon of mass destruction?

“I was smart enough to know it was wrong, but not brave enough to stop them.”

Sleeping Giants was the first book in Themis Files, a sci-fi series by Sylvain Neuvel. Through a chronicle of interviews and documents, the reader learned about the discovery of an ancient artifact and the tantalizing story that transpired.

I’ll leave the summary to one sentence because I believe this is one novel that is best to dive into blind.

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Finding Value In Your Blog Even If You Don’t Make Money From It // and the obsession with making money from our hobbies

Money!

Let’s be honest, it would be a dream to make money from home by blogging. Consistent bloggers know that it takes a butt-load of work to post regularly (my inconsistent blogger butt knows that too—only a fraction of it, but still 🙋) and being compensated monetarily would certainly add some value to the effort. But, I think most bloggers, especially the book type, are cognizant of the fact that there’s a slim chance that their blog will one day pay their bills.

Many of us don’t start our blogs with any ulterior motives except to talk about books.

Yet, there are still whispers in my head that all of this, this whole blogging thing, is a waste of my time. It’s silly because what would a good use of my free-time be then?

Fortunately, I know where this feeling that I should be doing something else is coming from: it’s coming from an obsession with making money from hobbies.

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Book Recommendations Based on My Favorite Neopets // the book rec list no one asked for

Neopets was my childhood.

For those of you who don’t what the heck I’m talking about:

In summary, Neopets is an online gaming site where you can adopt virtual creatures and collect points, usually by playing mini-games, to buy items to take care of them. Because it is online, users can also interact with other players across the world through various channels on the site, such as chat boards, guilds, and auctions.