Forewords

In a previous book report, July Readings (2024), I had mentioned that the discussion on Aldous Huxley's essay Brave New World Revisited was to come out in a standalone article. This is it. For those unaware, Brave New World is a dystopian novel that came out in 1932, and while at the time not pretending to be prophetic, its author — Aldous Huxley — wrote an essay in 1958 taking a look back on the thirty years since its publication. The gist of his essay is that the world is sliding down dystopia way faster than he had anticipated, and he was right about a lot of things. I never jot down notes or do any highlighting/bookmarking when reading a book, but some of the things said in this essay were so outlandish that I couldn't refrain myself. I knew that I would want to share my findings with the good people of the printhouse. This however is not a proper rigorous critique; I'll just go through what I wrote down, whether it be quotes, paraphrases, and comment on it, and inserting my own biases. This was also reworked after my presentation at Theory Night earlier this year, I thank all who attended for their valuable questions and remarks which have helped reshape this garbage.

Do not let this man cook

We'll first look at the statements that may have not aged well, were straight-up wrong from the get-go, or were fucking insane:

“Overpopulation is the greatest threat humanity will have to face in the coming centuries”

This doesn't come out of nowhere, but it is funny to see how off the mark it is. Especially since recently some people have started to talk about how much of an issue population decline/aging is becoming. To be fair, he wasn't the only one to think that overpopulation was gonna become a problem. The reasoning sounded almost sound at the time if you oversimplified the problem and made (wrong) assumptions; we have limited resources on the planet, and more and more people living on it could put a strain on those resources. To add to that, not only are people having more and more children, but advances in technology make it so they all just don't die after a year or so. Likewise, having the shits will not bring anyone to an early grave anymore, reducing the rate at which population declines. But the reality is that overpopulation is a myth that was debunked even before he wrote this, as the planet can easily host many more billions of us since production increase is not linear — as long as we pull the reins on our crazy overconsumption. Furthermore, many countries have experienced a dramatic fall in their birth rates, and many world population models — however accurate they may be — are predicting a significant reduction in population growth rate, with the median in projection having a plateau between 10 and 11 billion humans worldwide. This brings us to our second point:

“Countries that will become overpopulated will turn toward communism”

The direct quote from the book is “It is a pretty safe bet that, 20 years from now [so in 1978], all the world's overpopulated and underdeveloped countries will be under some form of totalitarian rule — probably by the communist party “(Chp I, p.13) Does this come out of nowhere? Kinda. Here ol'boy Huxley is still convinced that overpopulation is the main issue that we will face, and that the strain on resources will bring about great economic hardship. This will lead governments of the countries most affected to step in more and more into the economy and impede more and more on the individual freedom of its citizen (for instance with rationing). All of this, Huxley says, will also create civil unrest whether simple political unrest of full on open rebellion. The government of those countries will then have to step in to secure their authority, and thus will concentrate more and more power in the hands of a few. Basically the government of overpopulated countries will have to become centralised and authoritative. Now I heard you wondering — where does communism come into play? Well for the ol'boy, a central authoritative government is Communism! Forget all your political theories and talks about fake concepts like “class”, “labour” and “capital”; communism is just when a government is central and is authoritarian/totalitarian!

“With advances in medicine, the ill will get to reproduce, and that's bad” & “With technological advances, stupid people will get the chance to reproduce, and that's bad”

Basically, Aldous (we're on a first name basis) argues that the general population will get sicker, and more stupid as times goes on, because some people that would otherwise have died by natural causes or by the result of their own stupidity will get to reproduce. This whole chapter was very yucky to read and oozes of eugenics. He talks about children born with any hereditary genetic “defects” as being separate from humankind. He says that the way we go about breeding is “contaminating the genetic pool”. I will just quote a sentence to give you an idea of how bad this is: “And what about the congenitally deficient organisms whom our medicine and social services now preserve so that they may propagate their kind”(Chp II, p.21). At the end of the chapter, he says that for humanity to survive, we will need to find a middle ground between full-blown eugenics, and an ethical solution to this “issue”. Getting back to the issue at hand, Aldous is wrong. We can manage most hereditary disease/“defect” much better than in the olden days, so there is no danger for the human race as a whole. As for intelligence, since we have been recording populations general IQ scores, they overall have been steadily rising. In fact, every time we change the IQ test, we normalise the results to have the average at 100 and a standard deviation of 15-16 IQ points. Populations taking older IQ tests do score on average above 100. _{that is until recently but the decline is thought to be environmentally caused, i.e. not to be hereditary, so he's still wrong.}

“Saving people from malaria was bad, actually”

A combination of the two above arguments, overpopulation bad, so saving people from mass-killing disease is ultimately bad. This kinda comes out of nowhere. In his eugenics chapter, he is basically just taking an example of what looks good but is actually bad because it worsens the “issue” of overpopulation. He says that the populations affected by malaria cannot adequately clothe, educate and feed themselves, and if you read between the lines, that a quick death by malaria would have been more merciful. Needless to say that a 100 Hitlers are saying: “WE AGREE”.

“Society will tend to move towards uniformity and de-individualisation”

This is a very weird and confusing arguments that is spread over 10 pages and makes very little sense. He basically says that because government try to organise themselves, and tend to over-organise, this will lead them to seek to organise humans too, and use social engineers to this end, and in the 21st century to start using “World controller” (Just like in Brave New World). His whole rant also encompasses apples, Newton, packs of elephants, medieval guilds, religion, termites, 1984, Brave New World, Jesus, Mao, Mussolini... My man is all over the place and jumps from one topic from another without making much sense. He doesn't really define uniformity and de-individualisation, but he has this sentence of what he thinks society will slide toward: “This ideal man is the man who displays 'dynamic conformity' (delicious phrase!) and an intense loyalty to the group, an unflagging desire to subordinate himself, to belong.” (Chp 3, p.33) This is so wrong it's not even funny. In more than one way, we are still far from uniformity in society. One thing that I think has made the need to blend in and conform almost irrelevant is the internet. It is now easier than ever to find some weirdoes online that have the same interests as you. You don't have to conform to a very specific set of rules for your whole life anymore, out of fear of being ostracised by the town. Don't get me wrong, there are still institutions such as school, work... where you do have to conform to certain social norms, and there are also social norms to adhere to when interacting with others, but that was true (and maybe even truer) during Aldous' time. With this I'm trying to say there is less uniformity in the way we can be and the way we interact with others nowadays than before and we have to conform less. As far as the comment on “the group” most will recognise that there is less and less emphasis nowadays on the community and more on the individual, as large communities or group have for the most part been completely atomised. To take one example, unless you have grown up in your current neighbourhood, I would wager that you barely know your neighbours and do not willingly interact with them on a daily basis. Nor would you recognise yourself as part of the group labelled “neighbourhood” and have an “unflagging desire [...] to belong” to that group. We less and less think of ourselves as parts of groups, and more as individuals, and we value our individuality dearly. We therefore do not really care about conforming to those group/communities or desire to subordinate ourselves either. Therefore, I think Aldous' claim that we are moving towards uniformity and de-individualisation is wrong. I won't stay on this topic too long, because I would actually have to do some thinking to go below surface-level, and we also have other arguments to go through. (also I'm lazy)

“Tranquilisers are great and their benefits far outweigh their side effects”

Aldous here is eager to find a parallel between soma (the drug in Brave New World that everybody takes and is akin to a tranquilizer) and what's happening in the real world, because he is a visionary and everything that he wrote about will come true. So he makes the point that as a society we are also moving towards using tranquilizers willy-nilly. But it's fine he says, because many new compounds are without major side effects, and just like soma, we will be able to take them without complications. He gives a list of the “promising compounds”. I googled each and every one of them and the first sentence on wikipedia was usually something like “Diamosophoseraprophrol was taken off the market in 1961 because additional research showed it had no beneficial effects beyond placebo and caused AIDS on top of ass cancer and impotence (even in women)” Another L for Aldous.

“Inception is real and subliminal messages can work”

Do I even need to comment on that? Seriously, proof that they work, and certainly by 'they' I do mean inception and subliminal messages₉ is |itera11y non-existent.

Wait, actually maybe let's let him cook a little...

There aren't just some laughably bad takes in here, and my man Aldous sometime has something interesting things to say:

“Advances in technology lead to Big Business...”

The crux of the argument is this: advances in technology allow us to have more and more complex machinery to produce such and such product or service. Those advances also allow us to expand a business' operating range. Since the new complex machinery is more expensive, and we can service more people far away from us, this will lead to centralisation. It is cheaper to have one big company servicing let's say the whole province or even multiple provinces, rather than multiple companies doing it. That big company also doesn't want any competition, since mass production requires mass distribution, therefore they do anything in their power to shut down the little companies. Couple that with the fact that the technologically advanced machinery is out of reach of those littles companies, due to cost, maintenance, availability, skilled operator availability... and they cannot compete with the big guys. Therefore, Big Business. The reasoning is sound, with Aldous detailing the process that he sees happening in his time, and that will continue to happen — and maybe worsen — according to him. And even if technological advances also bring about democratisation, which Aldous did not foresee, a smaller company being eaten by the Goliath of the industry is anything but an unfamiliar story nowadays. I will count this as a W for Aldous... but I will immediately temper it because of the below: Does Aldous think this is bad? Yes, as he hates centralisation and thinks that, as usual, the solution to anything is the middle ground, this middle ground being in between absolute laissez-faire — which allows the Big Businesses to gobble up everything — and total control — which he doesn't explain entails.

“There is a problem with media ownership”

Here Aldous employs the same reasoning as with the industry and technological advances; that all the small time papers have been gobbled up by the big boys. Similarly, mass communication requires mass distribution, meaning that the few opinions of the big boy journals will be read by the masses. This power would be attracting the Power Elite. The Power Elite is, in a capitalist society, the owners of the Big Businesses. This Power Elite will strive to be the owner of the journals, and use them to their own ends “influencing the though, feelings and actions of virtually everybody”(Chp III, p.27). He says that Big Media is neither good or bad, but a tool. And he think this tool is not being used to its true purpose, which is to inform, by its owner. Most big news papers/agencies are still owned by billionaires or massive corporations (themselves often owned by billionaires), so it is sad to see that the world has not improved in this regard. Just look at the way the recent talk on the change of the Capital gain tax in Canada [can you tell I started writing this a year ago 🙃] were handled, and you will have a prime example of the news working to disinform the public and work against their interest, but to the benefit of the richest. Couple that with the fact that a sizable amount of people nowadays read the news as a mean of distraction, and entertainment, and not truly to be informed, and you basically get the argument that Aldous was trying to make. Well, not totally, I think Aldous falls short in his analysis. His thesis about the media in the West boils down to: “The Power Elite owns the media, and they don't use it to inform. They are not concerned about saying true or false things, but about distracting the people, and drowning them in a sea of irrelevance to sell the most papers as possible”. To Aldous, information is capital to the wellbeing of a democracy, and the media is not concerned about that anymore which is an issue. I agree, and that's why we're in the “maybe he was cooking section”. Where I think it falls short is that — as far as I understood it — he thinks there is no nefarious goal by the owners of the media to undermine information and democracy, they are just giving the people what they want, distractions, to get their bag. On the contrary, I believe that there is a conscious effort by the media owners — those billionaires, and gargantuan companies — to use the media as a tool of propaganda to further their own goals and protect their interests. This also includes making sure the working class is not actively looking out for what's in their best interest. Funnily enough, I would almost say the owners of the media use it the way Aldous describe dictators using it: “In their propaganda today's dictators rely for the most part on repetition, suppression and rationalization – the repetition of catchwords which they wish to be accepted as true, the suppression of facts which they wish to be ignored, the arousal and rationalization of passions which may be used in the interests of the Party or the State.“(Chp III, p.48). Could we be living in a dictatorship of the capital?

Maybe I've played too much Disco Elysium and I need to touch grass, but what I'm trying to say is: “The mass media is basically used as a propaganda tool to defend the interests of the capital owners, and to actively prevent the working class from organising themselves and working towards their own betterment.”

“The new order of things leads to decreasing mental health”

This one is mostly quotes from Dr. Fromm, a philosopher and sociologist of the time (not a nazi or zionist, I checked), and is even more relevant today than it was 70 years ago.

“Our contemporary Western society [...] is increasingly less conductive to mental health and tends to undermine the inner security happiness, reason and the capacity for love in the individuals; it tends to reduce [them] into an automaton who pays for his human failure with increasing mental sickness, and with despair hidden under a frantic drive for work and so-called pleasure.”(Chp III, p.27)

He also says that, paraphrasing: these mental symptoms are not our enemy, but the best indication we have that the way things are running right now our incompatible with mental health and our overall happiness. Aldous uses it to push for his argumentation, which is less relevant and not that interesting to me, but I wanted to share the writing from Dr. Fromm. Entering the workforce, especially as another cog in the corporate machine, I did feel my mental health declining, my happiness too, and saw myself increasingly yearning for distractions. It is only in taking a step back from work, bettering my work-life balance, and climbing out of the productivity trap that I saw an improvement. Serene and contemplative life is not easily conciliable with our current capitalist system, but it is without a doubt healthier.

“Given a fair chance, people will choose to govern themselves and will govern themselves better than they can be governed by entities independent of their will.”

Basically here Huxley's saying that people, given a fair chance, will choose to have democracy, and that democracy is better (albeit maybe not optimally more efficient) than any form of dictatorship. His reasoning? It's human nature. His quote is: “In spite of the Id and the Unconscious, in spite of endemic neurosis and the prevalence of low IQ's, most men and women are probably decent enough and sensible enough to be trusted with the direction of their own destinies.”(Chp IV, p.41) Of course, there is the caveat of the fair chance. It is not defined supremely well (or well at all) by Huxley, but basically the fair chance is achieved when there have been good historical and technological condition, when society is stable, when the average individual has decent economic conditions and access to information, and when there are good demographic condition. Aldous defines none of them, and I don't really want to know what he means by “good historical and demographic” condition, but I can imagine. In any case, I think he's directionally right, so that's why it's in this section. Call me naïve, but I think humans are generally ok, when they're not struggling and are generally secure socially and financially. I had a ~1000 word bit about this in my previous draft, but I think the above sentence summarises my views pretty well. I also think that — hot take — people self-governing using democracy or the likes (for instance with the café's much beloved sortition) is better than its opposite.

Unfortunately, for Aldous democracy == (British) Liberalism so he's only partially right. And by “good historical and demographic” conditions, I have the feeling he might be doing a racism with a zest of eugenics. He also says that the fair chance is being taken away from us little by little, first because he's still raving about overpopulation, but also because he says we're loosing access to good info (see his point about the media above). I've elected to only include his first bit of reasoning for this because I was lacking things to put in the “he's cooking a bit” category.

Conclusion

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defence of a eugenics apologist. The world is often unkind to eugenics apologists. The eugenics apologist needs friends. Last year, I experienced something new: an half-burnt meal from a singularly unexpected source (a eugenics apologist). To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions about fine cooking is wrong. Neither have they rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau's famous motto, “Anyone can cook.” But I realize, only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist; but a great artist can come from anywhere. It is easy to imagine more humble origins than those of the eugenics apologists now cooking at Huxley's, who is, in this critic's opinion, nothing more than a eugenics apologists that wrote a famous book. I will never be returning to Huxley's, hungry for more.

It's a nice exercise to really dive into a book, and dissect it rather than consuming it blindly. It's something that I will try to do more often and not just for books. Interfacing with works on a deeper level rocks. Brave New World Revisited was an excuse for Aldous to comment on the world at the time, and he piggybacked off the success of his novel to reach a wider audience. I think the parts where he equates things from Brave New World to some facets of his contemporary world are the weakest part of the essay, and also makes it more confusing. I think you have gotten the chance to get a feel for what Aldous Huxley was putting down anyways — even if you haven't read Brave New World. While he is very wrong in his assessment of scientific subjects, medicine, sociology, politics, economics... he is sometimes, although rarely, spitting a bit. But he is mostly wrong, probably at least semi-racist, a red-scared capitalist lapdog and a eugenics apologist. So L+ratio+kill yourself.

Thank you for reading my logorrhea, Eddie – Award winning author

One single book this month, but I made up for it by reading a ton of manga and — for the first time since I have been documenting my readings on the printhouse — comic! Let's start with our only book this month:

Blood – Dr. Jen Gunter

Many of you will be familiar with this book as Elisa presented it during the bookclub in Newmarket, and also wrote about it in her Reading Roundup: Grad School Flashbacks (it ended up being a 5/5). This book is a deep dive into menstruation, and everything surrounding it, like contraception and menstrual products. Needless to say this is not one of my usual readings. Not gonna lie, at first I grabbed this book from the library because ha ha reading a book solely about menstruation, feminist literature meme and so on, but in the end this was a really interesting read, I unironically think everyone should read it and I ended up buying a copy.

Menstruation, contraception, the female body and studies about it are well researched, funded and a crucial part of our school education in another universe. In ours, that's not true. Even in my school in France, which wasn't subject to the weird north-american puritan culture, we had only a very brief unit in biology learning about menstruation and contraception, but the gist of it was focused on conception. I would imagine that in regular canadian public schools the subject — if broached at all — is largely glossed over. This leads to people being woefully under-informed about the bodies of 50% of the world population. There is absolutely nobody that doesn't know anyone affected by menstruations. Even as a män, it is important to be informed about menstruation, contraception and all that gööd stuff. For instance, when I'm a father and my daughter start menstruating and has some concerns or questions about it, it would be insane for me to act disgusted by it and shoo her away to her mom because I'm uninformed. Again from a (cis) man pov, even if you're not looking to have kids, it's obviously important to know about contraception, but also menstruation and the specific hardships that can come with it. It's simply to be better able to support the menstruating people around you. And lastly, obviously, if you menstruate, it is important to knowledgeable about it to be able to make informed decisions about your own body.

One great way to learn about the menstrual process, and everything surrounding it, is with this book. It covers a wide breadth of subject, from the biology of menstruation, to hormones, causes of bleeding, abnormal symptoms with menstruation, common anomalies affecting menstruation, to menopause, to contraception, to abortion... There is truly a lot here, it is a treasure trove of info. It's also why it took me so long to read it, almost a whole month, because it is very dense with info. I really liked that at the end of the chapters there was always a tldr. I obviously learned a lot, but the most shocking would be all the misinformation surrounding menstruations and contraception, but not the common braindead ones from conservative (like how the pill or plan B is actually abortion or other things to control women's body) but the more insidious ones that are aimed at making people feel insecure about contraception or seeking healthcare related to menstruation by basically using pseudo-science or twisting existing research. I had even come across of some of those lies (which I didn't know were untrue) while casually scrolling tiktok, so I can't imagine people who the algorithms actively targets with menstrual “hacks”. Most are fearmongering disguising as feminist empowerment, and it is disgusting. The author does a great job dismantling those by pointing out either their logical error or biological impossibility. Be careful out there ladies, germs and others.

Anyways, this book is a great resource that anyone should have on hand or take a look at if they ever wondered about menstruation, contraception and much more.

As a little bonus, I decided to check out the 1 star reviews on Goodreads, because it could only be good. What a treat! Reading people whining about Dr. Gunter's “leftist agenda”, how her views about abortions are wrong, how she's bashing the patriarchy too much (and she doesn't even give a definition for it) was so amusing. The best was probably all the people dunking on Dr. Jen for talking about evidence-based medicine and disparaging non-evidence based medicine. It was so funny to read from the people who believe in alternative medicine myths and cry that the author debunking those is “dangerous” and that she's in the pocket of big pharma, and recommending real books from 'real' experts (for some reason they all turn out to be naturopaths, weird).

Also the “Acknowledgements” section at the end start with “First, I want to acknowledge me.” — absolute queen behaviours.

HxH – Yoshihiro Togashi

Chimera Ant Arc/Chapters 259-318

I should never have doubted Togashi, I see his vision now — peak. Fights were goated, drawings were cool. The nuclear bomb ending is kinda underwhelming as a resolution to the fight (plot-wise), but it was still cool as fuck. Gon's transformation was also something I was not expecting at all. Overall very satisfying tie-up to the arc.

13th Hunter Chairman Election Arc/Chapters 319-339

Interesting little arc, a nice change of pace from the gigantic ones we've had recently. It's some good lore, and it was nice to follow Killua for a bit. The fight between Chrollo and the clown was a bit hard to follow at points, but I'm interested to see where it goes. Good and straight forward, I'm sure the next arc is going to be as simple and easy to enjoy

Succession Arc/Chapters 340 – 410

What the fuck is my man cooking?

This arc is quite the departure from what we are used to in HxH. There are a TON of characters, I am not joking when I say that there are at least 45-50 characters to keep track of, and the new ones are also introduced in batches of 5 or 10 at a time. Both Gon and Killua are absent from the cast. All the characters are extremely talkative, there's often panels that are only text. The plot lines are (to my small brain) very convoluted, and their unfolding complex. Whenever I thought I had a grasp on what was talked about, Togashi decided to shift POV and start another entire plot line. Not gonna lie, most of the time I had no idea what was going on. As far as content go, it was is so funny to see that Nen (which I previously equated to Hamon from JoJo's) has now , with Nen beast, been more closely related to stands (also from JoJo's). Although being from two different mangas, the supernatural powers have followed a similar evolution. This must be the carcinization of manga powers. My main issue with this arc is that Togashi feels the need to explain everything right away. There's constant verbose explanation, and all of it is tell not show. For instance, wouldn't it have been more interesting to have the power of the Heil-ly boss secret until the card game with the soldier? When the troupe and the mafia are investigating them and trying to figure out why the Heil-Ly members are just killing random civilians, there would be more incentive to follow their investigation closely. This also ties in with my second complaint; it's that people just figure stuff out based on almost no evidence or wild shots in the dark or hunches that always turn out to be right. I think this would be more egregious and apparent if we didn't always know the answer to mysteries before our protagonist do. The setup of the arc (which spans a good chunk of what has been released yet, since there was so much to introduce) was a bit hard to get through. We finally get some good shit halfway through, despite my criticism, and the last few chapters really regained my interest. In the end, whether this entire arc was madness or pure genius entirely hinges on what Togashi is cooking.

Regardless, I am excited to get to the dark continent.

Invincible – Robert Kirkman, Cory Walker, Ryan Ottley

Issues 0 – 144 (all of it)

Like a lot people, I was introduced to Invincible with the TV show. I really enjoyed that the story is kinda of always going at 100km/h — there is no time to rest, something new is always pushing the story along. This is why after finishing season 3, I couldn't wait and read the three compendiums of Invincible, which include the entirety of the complete story. This was my very first time reading american comics, which are extremely unpopular in France. This is in part due to the Nazi occupation of France, which prohibited american material from reaching our coast, and the subsequent post-war protectionist laws. The franco-belgian comics (or Bande Dessinées) industry had become too prevalent after those laws were repealed for the american comics to really pierce the french market significantly. Couple that with the language and cultural differences between amerikkka and France (a major one being the target audience — there's really never been a stigma in France about reading BDs as an adult, and there are therefore many targeted towards them) and you get the general lack of interest for american comics in France.

Uh... what were we talking about? Ah yes we were talking about

I will keep it spoiler free because this is absolutely something you should read if you're even 10% interested.

This is just pure cinema. The story is great and truly original, and so many themes are brought about in interesting ways. A big one is definitely masculinity and just growing up as a man. Those are talked about in very compelling ways, even if I think so far the show edges out the comic in terms of maybe subtlety in handling those topics. As a whole the story is very refreshing, and gets sort of crazier and crazier as time goes on. I really liked that the author never goes back to a status quo, whatever happens, characters, their relationships and the world as a whole is always forever changed. The characters are mostly compelling here, and the writing is more than satisfactory. I think overall it is well-thought-out and planned. The conclusion to the story is also very satisfying and I will give big props to the creators for ending it instead of just continuing it for financial gains.

The drawing are really great, even for the first five-ish or so issues which people online seem to find particularly rough, but I really found them distinctive and thought they had a lot of SOVL. After those issues, it is undeniable that the rest of the drawings are gorgeous and even if I'm not that much of a visual guy, there are many scenes and characters that are etched into my brain. The character designs were GOATED and although there is a lot to like, for instance Dinosaurus, Thragg with his animal cape takes the cake and was hard as fuck. I also really loved the lettering of the 'sound effects', how they play with having other elements cut in front of it was really visually interesting. The dialogues bubbles were also very clear and the ratio of text to drawing was always balanced. The only time I got confused is when I got a bit stupid and read it the wrong way (I was still reading HxH at the same time so I mixed things up).

One other things, this comic really made me feel good. I would come out of my little reading session just serene. The story's good, the drawings great and the action is straight forward. It was also probably impactful to see the resilience of some characters, the redemption of others and the love forgiveness characters had for each other.

Although I think the TV show is very good, especially in its writing — which I think easily rivals the comic so far — it doesn't really hold up in the art department so even if you have only watched the show I think it would be worthwhile to read the comics. The order of certain events and such is also altered so it would still feel fresh.

That's all for this month. Before someone asks (again), yes, the next manga I'm reading is BAKI (only the three first parts). I'll probably try to get some more books under my belt next month, but no promise.

Thank you for reading my logorrhea Eddie – Award winning author

February

This month I read 3 ebooks and 1 physical book from the Toronto Public Library, totalling to 4 books (my worst month to date). My average star rating for the month was 2.88. My running total of books read in 2025 is 11, so I am 11% of the way to my goal of reading 100 books in 2025.

Dandelion by Jaime Chai Lun Yiew

Synopsis: When Lily was 11-years-old, growing up in the British Columbia interior in 1987, her mother Swee Hua left one day and never returned. Swee Hua was miserable living in a white-majority mining town, and longed to return to Brunei. But everyone was shocked when she never wrote, never visited, never contacted her husband or her daughters. 30 years later, pregnant with her first child, Lily cannot stop thinking about her mother. Determined to figure it out, once and for all, she visits her family in Brunei. But will she like the truth that she finds out?

My thoughts: This is probably one of the only pure-fiction books that I’ve ever read that felt like a biography. Partially because I’ve been reading a couple of biographies (girl who’s only ever read biographies thinks that everything is a biography). But mostly because of the writing style of the book. It just felt so much like the author was recounting things that happened to her in her childhood, and then alternating with her perspective in the present. Also, because the plot didn’t feel like it was structured in a traditional way; it didn’t feel like there was a rising action, a third act conflict, etc etc. Usually you’d only find this when you’re reading a true story, because readers will know that real life doesn’t often follow the classic structure of a novel. This is one of the Canada Reads picks for 2025, and it’s definitely outside of my normal reading, so I’m glad to have been pushed outside of my normal taste in books, especially with the discussion of stateless people. The main character’s father was born in Brunei of Chinese descent, and was stateless, while her mother claimed to have had Malaysian citizenship. Growing up in a jus soli/birthright citizenship country, it feels so foreign to read about people who just don’t have citizenship to any country, despite being born in one, and to read about the helplessness and insecurity that they had to deal with.

Rating: 2.5/5 community meals at your local community chinese restaurant.

Title Score: C (dandelions were symbolically present at the very beginning and end of the book, but it did seem forced)

Watch Out For Her by Samantha M. Bailey

Synopsis: Sarah Goldman is determined to make a fresh start in Toronto with her family. She doesn’t want to think about Holly Monroe. Ostensibly, Holly was hired to babysit her son Jacob over the summer, but she quickly wormed her way into the Goldman’s lives. She moved in with them, started giving Sarah advice, and even getting to know Sarah’s husband, Daniel. But Holly went too far too fast, and Sarah jumped at the chance to move to Toronto for Daniel’s new job. Now she’s stuck in a new city with no family or friends, in a creepy old house with hidden cameras and a suspicious neighbourhood watch. But Sarah has no need to worry; according to the creepy texts from the unknown number, she’s never truly alone.

My thoughts: I’m always a little surprised when a genre fiction book is chosen for Canada Reads, and I was especially surprised by this one because it just wasn’t very good. I suppose it was interesting to read from Sarah’s perspective and experience the dramatic irony of a rational person reading her completely paranoid thoughts. It also was pretty weird for Holly to have some rational explanations for her behaviour, but still also be creepy and obsessed with the Goldmans.

Rating: 2/5 necklaces from exclusive Vancouver boutiques

Title Score: B (a very generic thriller title for an extremely generic thriller)

A Two-Spirit Journey: The Autobiography of a Lesbian Ojibwa-Cree Elder by Ma-Nee Chacaby with Mary Louisa Plummer

Synopsis: This is the autobiography of Ma-Nee Chacaby, an Ojibwa-Cree Elder who eventually led Thunder Bay’s first Gay Pride Parade in 2013. She was born in Ombabika, Ontario in 1952, and the book chronicles her experiences, relationships, addictions, abuse, and spiritual journey growing up and living across Northern Ontario.

My thoughts: I thought that this was a really gripping and engaging account of Ma-Nee’s life, and it was shocking to hear about all the hardships she had gone through throughout her life. But it was so amazing to watch her get knocked down (sometimes literally) but still get back up again. I was also struck by how much she had experienced at a very young age, for example she had already been married, had kids, and divorced by the time she was in her early twenties. I also really admire her for staying true to her two-spirit identity, even when other Indigenous people hated her for it (because it made their own lives more difficult. Reading the afterward made me really appreciate all the work that Mary Louisa Plummer did to turn Ma-Nee’s oral account into a book that would be easy for the reader to understand but also true to Ma-Nee’s way of speaking. I can’t speak to the latter goal, but she definitely accomplished the former. Plummer definitely treated this as an academic project (it was published by the University of Manitoba Press) and she was determined to not repeat the mistakes of similar memoirs, where the white researchers often took ownership and did not fully respect the stories of the Indigenous women they were recording.

Rating: 4/5 Women’s Music Festivals where you met your soulmate 10 years ago

Title Score: A (this is exactly what the book was about, no notes)

This Will Be Fun by E. B. Asher

Synopsis: 10 years ago, a team of heroes saved the Queendom of Mythria from a terrible darkness. There was beautiful Beatrice, prickly Elowen, ex-bandit Clare, and heroic Galwell the Great, and together they were known as the Four. But saving the queendom did not come without sacrifice, and Galwell gave his life so that his friends could survive and succeed in their mission. 10 years later, the surviving members of the Four have gone their separate ways. Beatrice married a rich but rather dull duke, and has just been divorced by him. Clare has appeared in many advertisements and sponsorships, determined to be able to pay his own way. And Elowen has retreated to a dark forest, where she hopes that no one will brave the treacherous woods in order to bother her. But the Four have been served a summons that they cannot turn down: the marriage of the former-Princess, now-Queen of Mythria to her beloved. They owe it to the Queen to show up, but will Clare, Beatrice, Elowen (and their longtime adversary Vandra) survive the journey without ripping each other’s heads off? And even worse, will they be able to save the Queendom one more time?

My thoughts: This was a lighthearted queer (and straight) romance that was basically all fluff. The magic system didn’t make a ton of sense, and the author’s focus seemed to be on parodying real life with magic as much as possible (Wagons instead of Ubers, heart-magic consultants instead of therapists, brew taverns instead of Starbucks, etc etc etc). That being said, it was still charming, and it was nice to see that Elowen x Vandra and Beatrice x Clare each repair their own relationships with their partners but also with their questmates.

Rating: 3/5 Annual Clare look-alike contests

Title Score: D (this has nothing to do with the book and a bit trite imo)

Despite a shorter and busier month I managed to read quite a bit. I'm currently very impulsive with my reads, and will just grab whatever catches my eye. It started with:

A che ora si mangia? – Alessandro Barbero

Did you know that in the 18th and 19th century, people of the fancy western world started to delay lunch to the evening? That it was deemed high-class to only have lunch at 6 or 7pm? And that at some point they only ate two meals a day, breakfast and late lunch? Well this book goes over this bizarre trend that took over western Europe, with examples from England, France, Italy, Germany and Russia during that time.

My sister gifted me this book a little while ago, and it's been on my book backlog (a booklog?) ever since. The book is in italian, but despite my rustiness with the language, reading it was actually not bad at all. The author is a proper joker though; there are many excerpts and citations from diaries or books from the time and the english and french ones are not translated at all. This italian book, printed in Italy and made for italians has whole paragraphs in english and french that are integral for understanding it. I believe my sister is the only person I know that can also read this book. Absolutely based author actively trying to reduce his reader base.

In any case, the content was really interesting, and I learned a lot. I was confused with the dates initially, until I remembered that italian don't really use century the same way as us, and will use “ottocento” (eight hundreds/century) to signify 1800-1899 instead of saying the nineteenth century. After that, I was in the clear to delve into the folly that took over the brits, french, italians, and to a lesser degree germans and russians. The practice of delaying lunch was mostly constrained to the bourgeoisie and people trying to emulate their lifestyle. Or should I say delaying dinner; you will not believe it, but dinner was the name of the meal that was eaten midday. It's only after the 19th century was the dinner associated with the evening meal. Lunch was created to fill the gap between breakfast and dinner in England. In France, breakfast was delayed until later in the day, and another meal for before breakfast had to be invented and only came into effect around the 1930s! It was funny to see how gradually over the course of a couple of decades, this evolution took place. This prompted for the disappearance of souper (the meal after dinner) which is a word that is nowadays very seldom used in either english or french. In the end, everything came back to normal, with three meals a day but different names. Truly another win for the “nothing ever happens” crowd. The book could only have been made better if the excerpts from the german and russian books/journals had also not been translated.

This was actually as super interesting read, so big shoutout to my sister for finding this book.

Crying in H mart – Michelle Zauner

Holy hell, there were 33 copies at the library, I've never seen any book with more than 5 copies total. This memoir was warmly recommended by a book reviewer colleague here on the printhouse, Kaitlyn z.c.. And believe it or not, this book also started out as a Reylo fanfiction!

This is a memoir detailing the author's relationship with her mother, more specifically her [SPOILER] death. This review will mostly be filled with spoilers, beware.

I think the book was good and it was very raw in its presentation. A lot of emotionally charged events were very descriptive and matter of fact. It was kinda disconcerting at some point, for instance when the author's mom asked her dad to hit the author, as her mom wasn't strong enough to do any damage anymore. This culminated in her mom telling the author that she aborted a potential little sister/brother because she was such a horrible child. This was incredibly fucked up and not even just bordering on abuse. The author does not dwell a lot on those events, like the fact that she very early on discovered that her dad was cheating on her mom, which was just mentioned in passing. The memoir is also disconcertingly honest, one example that struck me is that she admitted that in the later days of her mother's illness, she was just waiting for her passing and that it happening would be a relief. Obviously she would have preferred if her mom didn't die at all, but the way she retells the last few days of her mom's battle with cancer paint a pretty pitiful picture. The overall battle between her mom and cancer hit particularly hard because it was heart-breaking and the writing was so raw. It also hit me in the feels as when I was reading this, Sirius (my cat), was ill, refusing to eat and losing a ton of weight, and we were still waiting on the vet's results. He's getting better now though — turns out this idiot managed to become allergic to cat food. To come back the the memoir, the story is very touching if a bit messy with time jump that don't feel super fleshed out, but it is overall well written and engaging.

Eiji Tsuburaya: Master of Monsters – August Ragone

Do you guys know about Godzilla and Ultraman? Eiji Tsuburaya is the man behind the visual effects for these productions and the co-creator of these icons. In general, he was on the forefront of visual effects in Japan, which very well rivalled and even surpassed the then effects in western production. This man is easily the goat of early visual effects. His work is not only limited to monster movies, and he started his carrier doing period pieces and propaganda films for the japanese military (yikes). This book goes over his life and the films he worked on.

Love the subject, love the aesthetics, love godzilla, but god damn, was that book's reading experience terrible. The paper is nice and thick, but incredibly glossy, which makes the ink invisible if there is even a single photon in the room. The images cut the sentences in their middle and not at appropriate points either. Each chapter is preceded by a gorgeous monochrome double-page image, but there's also the beginning of the chapter there in the corner that also gets cut weirdly. Then the descriptions for the images are sideways, and are very annoying to read as turning this massive book is a whole operation. The books is absolutely gorgeous and stylish, but anything involving actual words is really frustrating to read. The pacing was really strange and the content just ok. There's just not a really coherent and compelling story being told here, it's just a collection of facts about his life and movies he worked on. I am not a fan of biographies at all, but this wasn't the issue here — this was just not a great one. It's mostly very lean in interesting details or funny anecdotes, with the octopus one being the exception. The images also don't really match the text, and sometime they are about something that we read 2 pages ago. I must emphasise that it's a visual treat, and while its big size is a minus on comfort, it's a big plus on design. I was just disappointed with the content. It's my bad though, why would I read a book when it contains images — I should just have looked at them.

_{love the cover that they chose though}

Grendel – John Gardner

All is well in the land of the Danes and they have many parties. They are very loud thought, and Grendel is not happy about that. He sets out to terrorise the Halls of Hrothgar for twelve years before our hero, Beowulf, arrives and slays him. Spoiler I know, but it was released about 1250 years ago, if you still haven't read it, it's your fault. This is the plot of Beowulf. In Grendel, the author spends time with Grendel, detailing his motivations and drives, which were only barely mentioned in passing in the original poem, and extrapolates from them.

This was a very good read. Derivative in the best of way and yet still original and very contemporary. Whereas the original poem is a bit thin in substance and more of a classic straight-forward epic tale, this has many layers and brings some very interesting themes. It is very well written, if a bit too “english academic” in my hateful french eyes; every action or description needs a comparison, every noun needs to be qualified by no less than two adjectives and every verb by at least one adverb (ideally two). I do not know moncrief very well — who recommended this book — but I can feel in my bones that chapter 5 (the talk with the dragon) is without a shadow of a doubt his favourite. There is not much else to say apart from: based comrade peasant.

Children of Ruin – Adrian Tchaikovsky

I cannot spoil this for anyone, so no synopsis. Sorry not sorry.

This is book 2 of the Children of X series. It would have been so easy to fuck it up but no, it's so good. I like it even more than the first one. I wholeheartedly disagree with people that say it's just a refresh of the first one — it's completely different. The story, themes and even the writing style is different. There is a horror section in this one! I think this was better paced and I was surprised when I reached page 500 because there had not been any dip in intensity and “things happening”. Even from a structure standpoint, the chapters were super well divided and it made the legibility much better. I could easily crank out one or two chapters on the GO train, without having to rush. The meshing of past and present timelines is also done well. It might still be a bit too fresh in my memory — and the honeymoon period hasn't faded — but I cannot find a single issue with this book. Maybe the ending was a bit rushed and a tad confusing, but it's very minor. Will definitely read the third (and for now final) volume in the coming months.

The Dragon and the Foreign Devil – Harry G. Gelber

This book was part of the white elephant book exchange. As per the contract that each and everyone of us have signed (and are bound to by blood) I will make a presentation about it. Wouldn't spoil the fun by telling you about it here.

HxH – Yoshihiro Togashi

Chimera Ant Arc/Chapters 186 – 259

I'm not gonna lie, I never really understood it when montcrief said that this manga was peak. I still stand by my opinion that the beginning is very rocky, and while it gets good after that, I still didn't really think it was worthy of being the top dog manga. With this new arc, I might be seeing the light. It really opens with a bang. The premise is goated, the designs are goated, the fights are goated, the characters are goated — it's just all around good original stuff. I'm far from done the arc but the story seems to kinda drop in intensity halfway through, when the king is waiting to execute his plan. I was very underwhelmed by the king's design as he looks like a generic DBZ villain. Also please don't tell me he's falling in love with a child. I am still excited to see where it's going — I shall report back next month.

Good continuation of the year, 6 books and 70-ish manga chapters, we're doing pretty good. At my current pace, I should finish HxH by the end of April. What manga will replace it: who knows?

Thank you for reading my logorrhea Eddie

Welcome to the start of my third year of Reading Roundups! It's been such a journey to share everything that I read with you, and it's great being able to revisit some of the things I've read in the past two years with such detail.

New this year, I'm introducing another feature to my reviews: title grades! It really bothers me how some titles really do not reflect their books well at all, and I'm giving myself a platform to complain about it (or celebrate it). A, B, and C are passing grades, while D and F are failing grades, so keep an eye out for that! I'm also now on Storygraph, so if you're interested in my progress you can follow me, @elisakuhn . Hopefully I can also use some features from Storygraph to make my roundups a bit more interesting.

Cheers to three years!!!

January 2025

This month, I read 3 physical books and 4 ebooks from the Toronto Public Library, totaling to 7 books. My average star rating for the month was 3.79, dropping to 2.65 when you account for all of the DNFs. Since it's only January, my running total of books for 2025 is still just 7.

Honourable Mentions

Happy Place (reread) by Emily Henry

Synopsis: Harriet has wished for one thing all year: a week at her happy place with her best friends. Residency in San Francisco is draining and isolating, and all she really wants is a week with Sabrina and Cleo at Sabrina’s family’s cottage in Maine. But when she arrives, she received some bad news: Sabrina’s father is selling the cottage, so this will be their last summer there, ever. Even worse, her ex-boyfriend Wyn is there (except they haven’t actually told anyone that they broke up, so technically he’s still her boyfriend). Plus, there’s a tension between Sabrina and Cleo that neither wants to talk about. Is Harriet’s Happy Place gone forever?

My thoughts: I read this book in August of 2023, so I don’t think that rereading it should count as a new book for 2025. Thus, the Honourable Mention. Happy Place was actually better than I remembered. Readers will know that my top two Emily Henry books are Book Loves and Funny Story, and I had Happy Place ranked third overall but couldn’t really remember if it was that good or not. Reader, it is that good. It’s full of emotion, which is the quality that sets it apart from most of the standard romance books that I read. I highly recommend it. Now I’m wondering if People We Meet on Vacation and Beach Read are also just that good.

You would like this book if: you’re counting down the days to the next cottage weekend (and like the fake dating trope except it isn’t really fake dating).

Dishonourable Mentions

Under Lock & Skeleton Key by Gigi Pandian

Synopsis: Tempest has returned to her family home, after a humiliating accident destroyed her career as a stage magician in Las Vegas. She’s now back working for the family business, Secret Staircase Construction. But on their newest project, they discover something horrifying: Tempest’s stunt double and sworn enemy, dead. Even worse, she was discovered sealed up behind a wall that was build 50 years ago, even though Tempest saw her only weeks ago in Law Vegas. What is really going on here? Can Tempest solve the mystery and break her family’s curse?

My thoughts: I could not finish this book because I just found everything to be so silly, to the point of cringe. First of all, the main character’s birth name being Tempest is insane to me, and her stage name (Tempest of Destruction) is frankly ridiculous. She’s a magician, not a knight at a jousting tournament or something. Plus, the fact that there was a “real” curse on Tempest that she had to break somehow, especially considering that this isn’t a fantasy and all of her magic is just stage tricks.

You might like this book if: you’re sillier than I am, which I frankly find hard to believe

Ordinary Monsters by J.M. Miro

Synopsis: There is a mysterious old building in deep rural 1880s Scotland that is filled with many fantastical and horrible things, the most fascinating of which are the children. They each have their own powers: some can turn invisible, some can heal from any injury, some can manipulate dust and old skin cells, and one of them can glow. It is this last child that might be the secret to everything, but they’ll have to band together in order to keep him and themselves safe from the biggest threat they’ve ever faced: one of there own.

My thoughts: I enjoyed the first third of the book, which follows Charlie and Marlowe’s journey from America to the school in Scotland. However, I completely lost interest once it switched to Kamako’s storyline in Japan, and even once it returned back to Scotland with all four kids. I just wasn’t interested in the main conflict anymore.

You might like this book if: you enjoy being dreary and reading dreary stuff

The Stars Turned Inside Out by Nova Jacobs

Synopsis: The Large Hadron Collider at CERN has possibly the largest concentration of smart people in Europe. Unfortunately, one of their esteemed physicists has been found dead, in the bowels of the LHC itself. Dr Howard Anderby was found dead, and even worse, it seems as though he was killed by the radiation from the LHC, which wasn’t even supposed to have been operational that weekend. Private investigator Sabine Leroux has been brought in in order to figure out what exactly happened to cause such a tragedy, while fellow professor Dr Eve Marsh (who was romantically interested in Howard) launches her own investigation.

My thoughts: I thought that the combination of science and murder mystery would be a great mix, but unfortunately this book just did not hit for me. I found myself not wanting to read it, and there’s no point pushing through to read something that you don’t actually like (unless it’s for a bookclub). From the first few chapters, I got the feeling that this book was going to be primarily focused on the interpersonal relationships of all of the scientists, and none of the characters particularly endeared themselves towards me.

You might like this book if: you are an insufferable nerd

And now for...

The Real Reviews

Casket Case by Lauren Evans

Synopsis: There’s nothing left for Nora in Rabbittown, Alabama, and everyone says so. But she just can’t seem to leave after her parents death. After all, who would keep her Grandpa company, and who would run the family casket store in town? The only thing Rabbittown doesn’t have is any eligible bachelors, but who needs a boyfriend when you can watch endless tv reruns? That is, until a handsome stranger walks into her store asking for directions. His name is Garret Bishop and he works in logistics, and, amazingly, he seems interested in Nora despite all her awkwardness. He’s the perfect man, except when Nora finds out exactly what he does for a living (technically still logistics, but just for Death). How can she reconcile his job with all of the grief that she’s experienced?

My thoughts: This was a curious book in that the storyline and the concept were interesting, but the writing was incredibly boring. Everything was just too calm and plodding along, and you didn’t really get any emotion out of it until the very end. (This was kind of a reverse whiplash when compared to the really intense emotions of Happy Place). I also didn’t like how the third act developed into an Edward/Bella/Jacob style love triangle. She did choose Edward at the end, at least, but this is not something that we need in the year of our lord two thousand and twenty five.

Rating: 2.5/5 lifetime achievement awards that you have to accept on behalf of a dead person

Title Grade: C (a begrudging pass because it’s technically related to the contents of the book (Nora is a bit of a basket case, and she does run a casket store) but it’s not very good)

Blood: The Science, Medicine, and Mythology of Menstruation by Dr Jen Gunter

Synopsis: This is a very comprehensive book that covers basically everything you ever wanted to know about the menstrual cycle. It ranges from the biological mechanisms behind the menstrual cycle, birth control options and how they work, poly-cyctic ovarian syndrome and endometriosis, abortion, and much much more.

My thoughts: I think this is a great book. It’s perfect as a manual because it covers almost everything you’d want to know. It’s very comprehensive, but at the same time it’s very easy to read and understand, with the major points being helpfully summarized at the end of each chapter. The author also adds in a lot of her own personal commentary which is very relatable, and takes opportunities to refute myths going around on social media.

Rating: 5/5 mythical properties of menstrual blood that we surely would have noticed if it was real by now

Title Grade: A (Tells you exactly what the book was about, no notes)

The Examiner by Janice Hallett

Synopsis: 6 students have signed up for the new Masters of Multimedia Art at Royal Hastings University, and it’s standard procedure for an external examiner to review all of the assignments and student communications to make sure that there’s nothing hinky going on. But it turns out this master’s program is hiding a lot of secrets, and maybe even a death. Will the examiner be able to figure it all out? Or will the truth stay buried forever?

My thoughts: This book made me realize how much I miss reading epistolary novels, especially those that include other forms of media besides just letters. This book included chat messages, assignment excerpts, emails, and other things, and it was fun trying to put the pieces together. Readers will know that I am a former graduate student, and the characters hit a little bit too close to home (especially the contrast between Jem, who wanted to ace every assignment no matter the cost, and Ludya, who just wanted to finish up things with as minimal time and effort as possible). However, the characters and the plot itself was a little bit over the top. I definitely enjoyed the format more than the actual writing itself, so I’m not sure if I want to read another one of her books.

Rating: 3/5 phones that will freak out and call the police if they don’t get an accurate faceID every 5 minutes

Title Grade: B (liked how it framed the book to be about the examiner (and the reader) solving the crime, but not quite memorable enough)

Butter: A Novel of Food and Murder by Asako Yuzuki

Synopsis: Manako Kajii has captured the attention of all of Japan. She’s a notorious serial killer, or at least that’s what she’s accused of. All of her husbands have died under mysterious circumstances, leaving her to inherit thousands of dollars and attend luxury cooking classes. Every journalist, including Rika Machida, is desperate to interview Kajii before her trial starts, but she refuses to talk to anyone. That is, until Rika’s best friend suggests asking Kajii not about her alleged victims, but about the food that she cooked for them. This is the start of a cat and mouse relationship between Kajii and Rika, as Rika attempts to understand Kajii through food, and ultimately understand herself.

My thoughts: I thought this was a really well written book, although it did drag at some times. It was a lot deeper than most mystery books that I read (and it wasn’t even really a mystery), and, appropriately, I felt that it “fed” me more than others. It was very reflective, and it was interesting to watch how interacting with Kajii changed Rika’s perspectives on a lot of things (although she mainly came to her own conclusions, while Kajii became more and more obsessed with her). It’s definitely much more slow paced than any typical thriller, so don’t go into it expecting a psychological horror type vibe, but it definitely has a lot of its own merits.

Rating: 4/5 pathetic apartments that don’t even have an oven

Title Grade: A (This book is about food, but Kajii is obsessed the most with butter. She constantly tells Rika to make recipes that involve a lot of butter, and everything basically comes back to butter).

Death in the Air by Ram Murali

Synopsis: Ro Krishna has had a vexing few months. His cower (unaffectionately referred to as the Latrine) has been creating so many problems that things are impossible to ignore, and the company has instead chosen to fire him so that everything will go away. He has arranged for the Latrine to be dealt with, but in the meantime he needs something to do. His friends keep suggesting that he try Samsara, a luxurious spa for the global elite tucked away in the Indian Himalayas, and so he travels to India. He’s having an excellent time with excellent company, until one member of the group is found dead. Somehow, Ro becomes involved in the investigation, partly because everyone thinks that his background as a lawyer would be helpful, and partly because he just can’t keep himself out of trouble. As the death toll begins to climb, will Ro realize that he’s just in over his head?

My thoughts: I thought this was pretty different than most of the mysteries I’ve read lately. It was reflective, and the Samsara Spa made for a great setting (isolated, unique, and filled with characters). The writing was excellent, and it had some of the dry witty humour that readers will know I adore. There were also some cool details, like Pendy being able to guide Ro to exactly where he was meant to me, and the inclusion of two songs that played pivotal roles in the overall story, with a side-by-side of the lyrics and the action of the book. Definitely it was a breath of fresh air, and I look forward to reading anything else that Ram Murali writes.

Rating: 5/5 recurring nightmares about your car being sabotaged that are surely just nightmares and not anything to really worry about

Title Grade: B (not super related but it does evoke the Agatha Christie-esque nature of the book, which I do respect)

Girlfriend on Mars by Deborah Willis

Synopsis: Amber Kivinen is determined to be the first person on Mars. And she will, if she wins the MarsNow reality show competition. When she announces that she’s leaving, her boyfriend Kevin is completely stunned. Whatever happened to just staying in their basement apartment in Vancouver, growing cannabis plants and occasionally picking up gig work to pay the bills? What was so wrong with the life they built together? As Amber travels around the world for week after week of challenges, Kevin vows to stay in their apartment, and not leave until Amber comes back to him.

My thoughts: Readers will know that sometimes I just crave a book about spaceships, and while this didn’t really scratch that itch, I still did enjoy it. It was interesting to contrast the difference between Amber’s perspective about her challenges and pushing her own boundaries and finding new goals, and Kevin’s desire to never change anything, and to like things because they were the same as they’d always been, although I did find Kevin’s parts a bit hard to stomach. Things really came to a head at the ending, and it was surprisingly (unexpectedly) very emotional.

Rating: 3/5 staged drug busts that certainly felt real enough

Title Grade: B (it is indeed about the male main character's girlfriend on Mars, and how she gets there)

Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper

Synopsis: Etta has lived a long life in Gopherlands, Saskatchewan, with her husband Otto, and their neighbour and best friend Russell. But she’s never seen the ocean. So she simply decides that now is the time. And so she begins her 3200 kilometer walk towards the Atlantic Ocean, and there’s simply no one who can change their mind. The farther she walks, the more the lines between memory and reality begin to blur. Sometimes she’s in the prairies, the canadian shield, the maritimes. Other times, she’s back in Gopherlands 60 years ago, when she and Otto and Russell were so young and full of fears about the war. Otto waits patiently back at the farm, learning to follow Etta’s old recipes, and building beautiful sculptures out of papier mache, while Russell is determined to go after Etta (at least until he understands her). And James is happy to be a faithful companion, trailing after Etta.

My thoughts: This is the first of five Canada Reads nominees that I'll be reading this year, and as always, the first book I randomly choose tends to be one of the stronger ones. This was a really moving book. I enjoyed the past storyline (of Etta, Otto, and Russell growing up together in Gopherlands) more than the present storyline of Etta’s walk. But I found both of them to be very moving and emotional, especially with the ending. The author made a specific choice to not use any quotation marks, and it really added to the ambiance and flow of the book. I thought it was an especially good choice because it allowed James to speak without actually talking.

Rating: 4/5 packets of relish and ketchup that might be the difference between life and death

Title Grade: B (Etta and Otto and Russell and James are the four main characters, although it does make me think of a certain song (Chloe and Sam and Sophia and Marcus) that I've only ever listened to once)

I think watches are cool, and in this brief article, I'll tell you about them.

1 – the watch

Everybody knows what a watch is, but do they know how they work? Maybe, anyways:

anatomy

A watch is composed of parts, here they are:

front and back of a watch

movement

The movement is the engine of the watch. It can run on many types of fuel like batteries, solar, movement, or winding.

When it's operated by a battery or solar it's a quartz movement, when it's winding (a spring inside the movement) it's mechanical. Automatic means it's self-winding by a rotor. Some people use mechanical and automatic interchangeably.

complications

A complication in a watch is anything that is extra on top of telling time and is part of the movement. Different markings on the bezel don't count. The most common complications are a chronograph, a date and/or day window. Less common are moon phases, month window, power reserve indicator, world timer and alarms. Those are self-explanatory.

Others like small seconds needs explaining. Basically, the seconds hand has its own tiny sub-dial and rotates in it. You also have more fun complications like GMT — it's an extra hand that tells you the hour of another time zone. Coupled with a rotating bezel, watches with a GMT complication can keep track of 3 time zones at the same time. It's pretty cool. It's my favourite complication right now. There are others, but those are the main ones. There are also different types of each, you can have various flavours of chronographs for example.

design – types of watches

There are many designs for watches, but a lot of them fit the same broad vibe. There is overlap of course. Anyways, here are the main ones, I think:

Diver watches – it's for divers. They're usually bulky, water-resistant for 100s of meters, durable, highly legible and glow in the dark. I like them a lot:

Dress watches – it's for special occasions. Despite the name it also works with suits. They're usually slimmer, simpler, the dials can be more colourful and intricate but overall the watch is going for an understated vibe:

Racing watches – it's for timecels. They usually have a chronograph, small seconds and a tachymètre. The tachymètre is a marking on the bezel allowing you to tell how fast things are going when used with the chronograph:

Pilot watches – you guessed it. They're either highly legible or completely schizo, no in-between:

Field watches – They're for the “field”. More nebulous, basically they're very simple, highly legible and durable. They usually have 24h markings and sometimes a compass bezel:

Novelty – anything goes:

design – uh, other stuff

It's design again. Watches have different shapes, but round is obviously the most common. They also have different sizes, with men's watches being in general bigger than women's. The apparent size of a watch is mostly dictated by the case diameter, and the lug to lug distance (how tall the watch is). But also, thickness can be important.

For the main body of the watch, many materials can be used. For the case, plastic, stainless steel, gold and titanium are common. There are different grades for each material. Other materials are used too, more rarely.

If the bracelet/strap is metal, the material usually follows the case material. Otherwise you can have metal, rubber, textile, leather... bracelets/straps. Honestly, there is a lot of personalisation available with them. There's different clasp mechanisms for each, but they're not exclusive to any material. There are different styles for each as well, like metal has oyster and jubilee bracelets:

Recently, I've been rocking with the nato strap (and I hope it's been rocking with me too.)

For the “crystal”, obviously we don't want to use glass, because it would shatter instantly. Acrylic glass (plexiglass), mineral glass and sapphire glass are most often used. Out of those three, acrylic is the least scratch-resistant, and sapphire the most. But then sapphire is the least shock absorbent out of the three. There's trade-offs for each. This leads us to general care tips.

general care tips

Here are some general care tips:

• modern watches are not super fragile, you don't need to baby them. Obviously don't bang'em hard or drop them from heights. Just don't be careless

• if you're changing the time, date, or winding your watch, take it off your wrist first

• don't change the time/press pushers while you're in the pool or the ocean. the sea is also a no-no

• don't over-wind your watch, if you can't turn the thing anymore, it means you should stop. duh

• there's precise moving metal pieces in watches, they don't like strong magnets

• try not to change the day/date around midnight, it could be strenuous(big word) for the movement. If you have to, do it before 10pm and after 2am.

2 – watch world

There's a whole world around watches, they don't appear out of thin air.

the brands

Just like with everything a couple of brands own everything, but you also have a couple independents that are holding strong:

Don't get too wrapped up in brands, if the watch is good quality and the price is right, it doesn't matter what's written on the dial. Actually, I guess slave labour is not cool so maybe look into the brand a bit.

the people

Since watches can be expensive, it can attract the worst crowd. There are lots of snobs and influencers, therefore the gatekeeping and manufactured hype/hate are there too. There's also a ton of rich people that think that because they can afford expensive watches it makes them connoisseurs. They're wrong.

3 – watches and me

watches and me I guess

When I was a kid I had no money, but I had a dinosaur watch, which is infinitely cooler. In middle/high school I got my parents to buy me a cheap steel watch. In university, I had negative money, but I watched some watch content. My dad who was also a watch enthusiast gifted me watches for some birthdays. (he's still alive but he got a rolex now). Youtube recommended me some watch videos recently and I got back into it. Now I have money, but I also have bills. However I started a second job. I was gonna put all that new money into watches, but my cat got constipated and the vet's expensive.

constipated cat

changing batteries

Most of the watches I own I've had for 5+years. Some even for 10. Almost all are quartz (i.e. they need batteries). Watch batteries die in about 4-5 years depending on the watch. I went to a clock place in late 2021 and I had them all changed, but I guess they gave me shit batteries cause they all died in 2023. At one point I had no functioning watch in my collection.

When I got back into watches this year, I decided I should probably have functioning ones. I wanted to change the batteries myself, cause it's way cheaper.

Opening them up was annoying, but usually once opened it was fine. There is multiple possible mechanism to open/close a watch case. You can have screws, have a screw-in back, or just pressed-on. They can all be kinda tricky. Anyways, now I have working watches.

i had to put something here, I guess

why I think watches are cool

There are so many reasons why watches are cool. What's even cooler, is that the answer to why watches are cool depends on who you ask. There are so many flavours of coolness. Watches are such tiny things and yet have such depth that you have people nerding-out about different aspects. Some are movement nerds, some are design nerds, others are manufacturing nerd, watch history nerd, brand history nerds...

But this is my exposé so I guess you are stuck with what I think makes watches cool.

The fact that watches are made to last not only years, but even decades, in a world where everything's life cycle is getting shorter and shorter, is really cool. Just to think that the watch I'm wearing today could be passed down to my great-grand kids is so cool.

The tech is also really cool, how we use all those teeny-tiny gears and parts, and a simple spring, to make a functioning mini-clock that can even rewind itself is incredible. Some complications like perpetual calendar — where the day, date, month are displayed and never need adjusting (yes, even for leap years) — are also so impressive and cool.

Then they look good. There are so many designs, some classic, some more out there, but a lot of them look cool. You can style it with your clothes, you can have the watch standing out from your outfit — even looking at them on their own is great. From dial, case, bracelet... there is a lot to appreciate visually, and it's cool.

Jacques Cousteau and his trusty black-dialed Doxa

Finally, it's cool to think about watches in the past, as indispensable tools. Before everyone had a tiny computer in their pockets, you could only tell time with a watch, a clock or counting the bells from the church. It is hard to carry a clock around (and even harder to carry a church) so if you were out and about, a watch was your only way of telling time. But at the same time, for some professions, being able to tell time was a life or death thing. You have a secret operation that depends on coordination with your team; better synchronise your watches. You're a pilot an only have fuel for another 40min; you better know when that is. You're a diver and have to decompress for 10min before you're allowed to surface; you need to be able to tell the time if you don't wanna get the bends. Thinking about watches as tools in the olden days is really fascinating. (and cool)

conclusion – random advice

Here are my parting words of wisdom:

• at the end of the day you have to embrace the dings and scratches
• maybe don't buy a ton of cheaper watches instead of a few cool more expensive ones that you will always wear
• remember that watches are meant to last you a lifetime; buy them responsibly. do you see yourself liking that watch in 5, 10, 20 or 50 years?
• ebay is your worst enemy. yes vintage watches are cool and sometime affordable, but do you really need 20?
• be careful with what you like, and what suits you. it doesn't always match up
• getting into watches is a personal journey, don't listen to people. including me. and all of the above

_{“cool” counter:21 most illustrations were shamelessly stolen from the web}

New year same me; we're gonna be looking at a couple of books and some manga as well.

1984 – George Orwell

On our ride back from New York City, the boys and I listened to the 1984 audiobook. It is not good. I had read 1984 previously and really liked it. There is no issue with the book, and since everybody probably knows about it, I will here complain about the audiobook. This was an Audible exclusive, and a “big budget” audiobook, as much as you can make one. This means it was over-produced to the point of being distracting from the story. Almost all descriptions, whether it is of actions or of dialogues, are removed in favour of sound effects or acting. This makes it quite confusing, as you kinda have to guess what actually happens in the book from sound clues. The whole audiobook sounds like it wants to be a movie, but without visual (no, I do not picture anything while reading either) it is just a noisy mess. The addition of music to build suspense doesn't ameliorate the situation. Going back to the acting, the main character is played by Andrew Garfield. I am a certified Andrew Garfield hater. Nothing against the guy (lie), but he cannot voice-act to save his life. Please, I'm begging you, I need one sentence that is pronounced clearly. He physically cannot do that. He cannot utter a sentence that is not whispered, part of an exaggerated exhalation, without performative stammering or god forbid, all at the same time. The fact that the whole cast is acted by different people, and the descriptions bring removed, make it a bit hard to figure out who's speaking when it's tertiary characters. The voice acted sex scenes were also excruciatingly uncomfortable; some people of the printhouse would be able to enjoy them I'm sure, but not us four boys in a car, not even 1 feet apart — let alone 5.

Children of Time – Adrian Tchaikovsky

Also started listening to this book on the 9h-ish ride from New York City to Toronto, and unlike 1984, the audiobook was quite good. We didn't have a chance to go past Act 3, so I bought the book when I got home, as there were 29 holds on it at the library. This is how it goes:

The year is like 7000 and humans have conquered space. We have colonies on multiple planets and satellites of the solar system, we have also started terraforming. One of those terraforming project light years away is done and the next phase of the experiment is starting; trying to replicate evolution. Dr. Kern is sending down to this fresh planet some apes contaminated with a nanovirus supposed to accelerate their evolution — to a certain point. After this certain point is reached, humans will start colonising the planet, which will have been prepped for them by their new ape servants. Everything of course goes according to plan and nothing goes awry.

This was such a treat to read. The story is divided into three parts, and while some are more interesting than others initially, they soon converge and you get invested in all of them. I really liked how even if the story takes place over thousands of years and many generations you never get confused as the author has a great trick up his sleeve to keep things clear: he just reuses names and archetypes for generations. For instance, whether it's 200 years after the initial time of the book or 2000, across generations, the character named “Portia” is an adventurous soldier. This is some good-ass sci-fi, and really accessible too. No “he put the skalhad into the kjbfljba — held tightly against the gahdu with the use of some gahsywko from lkkoasl — so that the aljhbjhbsa condenser would allow him to go at JKH75N-pc/h, a speed never consocarded by any ahsdgaj of the himijahal — even those that had ahhsjdyw their hakd wieojf. The inhabitants of himijahal had ljbated the ljhbsjda after all, so there wasn't any chance the asdhuwj of the hadajkk would allow that”. Just some real sentences, with real words. Apart from the accessible writing, the premise is original and the story never gets predictable. The build-up is great and the pay-off is also well done; can't wait to read the second one (the two people before me on the library waiting list better hurry up before I track them down). The themes introduced and questions that the book raises are also compelling. It is neither a fantasy nor a war epic. There is a spaceship and science.

The Boy Who Cried Bear – Kelly Armstrong

For the synopsis, please refer to Elisa's Reading Roundup: Finding my Book Twin

I'm not sure if I'm getting extremely tired of the series, or if there is something wrong with the book, but I really disliked this one. It is my second least favourite one in the series. The “mystery” is really half-assed and hinges on too many people being oblivious or things just happening — my suspension of disbelief was completely broken many times. It was not engaging at all. To me, it seems that the author has lost all of her steam and is just going through the motions, as a lot of paragraphs felt like fillers and everything is extremely repetitive. The paragraphs where Casey is doing some deducting — which sum up to “the guy said that, but maybe he lied. But also maybe he didn't lie. But also he could have lied. But then he could have not lied. But there are also reason for him to lie...” over and over, were really frustrating to read. There was a ton of overexplaining for things that really did not need to be explained, us readers aren't *that* dense (I am but others aren't) The initial confusion of the wild man for a grizzly bear also makes no sense: people saw in broad daylight a figure wearing a bear fur rush past them on two feet and thought it was for sure a bear. But the figure was close enough for a kid to see the man's eyes and even see their colour. Then Dalton (who's an expert forest tracker), finds prints 'that matched a bear', but when it turns out the 'bear' was a human they're like: “actually those prints make sense if it was a big man”. Casey, Dalton and Anders not figuring out that Joe is the attacker, Joe, who says he was just attacked by the bear-skin man, who has a stab wound on the leg, who was the only one in the forest with them and next to Max — even after Max said that a guy without a bear skin, who was stabbed in the leg just attacked him 2min ago — is wild. I have no words. The dialog still felt really unnatural and the Anders and Yolanda board game interaction was also incredibly cringe.

Brave New World Revisited – Aldous Huxley

I swear, this is the last time I count this book in my readings, but I did read it again ok. The article for it has been resurrected, amended, edited, corrected, [insert word]ed, it's gonna be ready this month. Maybe I'll turn it into a presentation.

Selling Hitler – Robert Harris

In April 1983, a distinguished British historian, Hugh Redwald Trevor-Rover – First Baron Dacre of Glanton, gets an incredible call: Hitler's journals were found and the rights to them were to be sold at an auction. Although there were three reports — each from a different handwriting expert — as well as multiple historian assessments certifying that those were genuine, The Times would like him to investigate the diaries. He goes to Switzerland to see the journals in person, as well as the german journal selling them. All 58 volumes are there, with their provenance authenticated as well; the story investigated and verified. Trevor-Rover is not any old academic; in 1945, the British Security Services had asked him to find out what had happened to Hitler in his final hours; the myth that he was still alive — was living as a free man or had been captured, and anything in between — kept circulating. He successfully investigated Hitler's death, wrote The Last Days of Hitler, and afterwards became one of the foremost experts on Hitler and his entourage's writings — many times calling out fake ones. Well, after reading through a couple of volumes Hugh Redwald Trevor-Rover – First Baron Dacre of Glanton and former Regius Professor of History at Oxford is convinced that those are real. The news travels the world, and everyone wants a piece of the cake. Journals backstab each other, historians start feuding, it is chaos. An auction is quickly called in April of that year for the world rights to the books to be bought for 3.75 million dollars ($11.8M or CAD16.9M today). A truly incredible find, all this first-hand information, almost 40 years after the fact; a lot of events from the Second World War would have to be revised and recontextualised.

A couple of weeks after, the diaries were proven to be a grotesque forgery as the content made no sense, and the paper, glue and thread were all produced post-war. This book is about how this blatant swindle managed to go this far.

Readers might know that I usually dislike historical novels; I do not care for dates and places, and have a terrible memory of names and titles. I also don't know a ton about history, so events' significance often fly right over me. But this was so fun to read. While not as eccentric, I would say the book has strong William of Rubruck vibes. Someone is getting dunked on at all times, and you can feel the mischief in the air. The book spends about 300 pages building the stack of cards before it starts to fall down. And my god, is it entertaining. Just when you think that it's the end, something happens or someone says something and we're back. I loved how the forger never really did anything proactive, or actually never really did anything, and yet somehow everything just ended up working in the best possible way for him, even after he got caught. Apart from the fun part of the book, it was interesting to read about the reality of west germany after the war; journalists could just hit up some former big-shot SS general for an interview, and it was relatively easy to go to a party only to realise everyone there is a 'former' nazi. I had thought all those generals had been put behind bars, and that the 'former' nazis had at least the decency to deny they abhorrent beliefs in public.

HunterxHunter – Yoshihiro Togashi

Greed Island: Chapters 143 – 186

B-b-biscuit, is that you?

The Greed Island Arc is over, and I didn't mind it at all. I don't think the highs are as high as the highs of the Yorknew arc, but it is overall more consistent and good. I also like how for once you see Gon and Killua actually training, and not the joke we saw in the tower of doom arc where they just had to try for 5 min and they got it. I also particularly liked the end of the arc and the dodgeball “fight”. The fight with the Bomber was also interesting. It does feel like the manga is taking a completely different route from the premise, and hunters or doing typical hunter things don't matter at all anymore. I don't dislike it at all, but it is a big disconcerting, especially with my criticism of the earlier chapters — I don't feel like my complaints have been addressed but rather retconned. I am really looking forward to the next arc as if I remember correctly it is H's favourite one and Tetyana told me it was very weird, and weird is good.

Nen does do everything though I'm afraid.

Good start to the year, a good historical book, some great Sci-fi — probably already a contender for my favourite book of the year —, finished reading all the available books of the Rockton/Haven's Rock saga, re-re-reread a book, and I got back into HxH. Selling Hitler was also actually a book from my backlog: my dad had lent it to me all the way back in 2021. I will now finally be able to give it back, only 4 years late. That is of course, unless someone from the café wants to borrow it (it is very funny).

Thank you for reading my logorrhea Eddie

I wrote this guide for a friend looking to transition to UX design. It made me happy to write, so I'll leave it here for those interested. I did not proofread it and I don't care.

User experience (UX) design, put simply, is the act of forming tangible experiences that cause or assist a user to complete a certain action or feel a certain way.

The keyword here is “tangible experiences”: others can design experiences as well, sure, but it is our sole ability and responsibility to translate them to something tangible; to materialize them in front of a player. We do this by holding the player at the center of our work's universe, considering them and their needs as we form systems and interfaces to guide them to their 'physical' – or emotional – destination.

To create a good user experience is a learned skill, inevitably brimming of trial and error. After all, the nature of this kind of work is to begin by making mistakes. These mistakes are tested, these tests produce results, and these results allow us to distill our creations to the point where they execute our intention as perfectly as possible (because in a space like this, perfection is never achievable).

How do you begin thinking like an experience designer? What is design thinking? Unfortunately, it might be impossible to simply transform you into a designer in the short span of a few paragraphs. Still, I can try to help you take the first step.

This Is Probably How You Will Need to Design

Design Thinking / The Experience Goal

Consider something near you. I will consider the eight ounces of to-go drip coffee next to me that I've half finished in the span of thirty minutes. This cup of coffee is not one, but two cups stacked on top of each other, with a plastic lid on top. The coffee is warm.

Why did the barista give me two cups? You might think the answers to be obvious: one cup would be too thin and could potentially burn me; two cups helps insulate the coffee so that it stays warm longer. And yes, these are the only answers; I have no reason to obscure any more from you. But to think of something and break down why it was made the way it is... that is the first step of design thinking. Then we simply reverse it.

In the design process, we start with an objective, an experience goal. We want a cafe patron to be able to comfortably consume their coffee. Simple enough. From there, we consider our user's demographic and their needs.

Consider the User

The average human is simple. They often fail to think before acting; thus, they have the potential to burn themselves on the coffee. But, they don't want to burn themselves!

The average human is also easily irritated. If something they paid for doesn't work out the way they want, there's a high chance they will get upset. Hot coffee cooling down quickly might make them punch a hole in our thin little plaster walls.

Okay, so we've thought about our customer and assumed some things about them. These are not the only traits of a coffee drinker, of course; we don't know everything! We never know everything. If we are unsure of what we might have missed, we can research to discover more factors in our decision-making. We can place a little survey next to the register of the shop, asking our customers how we can improve their experience. We can make user researchers analyze that data and provide us with design directions to follow, because data analysis is not the meat of our job, and we can then make more improvements that soothe those new qualms of our users.

Subsequently, after research, we make some informed design decisions. What if we lined our hot drinks with an additional cup at minimal cost, to ensure customers don't get hurt and sue the shit out of our dinky little third-wave coffee shop? And hey, that second cup would work well to keep our coffee warm for longer! And why not wrap the cups with a little cardboard sleeve, because Janine-53-years-old-who-buys-a-latte-every-two-days said that cup was too damn hot?

Everything I've said above is hopefully not groundbreaking to you at all. I've used all this dramatic and serious language, and you're probably sitting there thinking, “this girl is full of shit, because all the stuff she's pointing out is blatantly obvious”. And that's right! I'm full of shit. However, what might not be as obvious to you is that most people never consciously consider the reasons why something is the way it is, because good design is invisible design. Good design shouldn't make anyone stop and think (undesirable unless intended), because if so, we've slowed down the user or marred their experience (undesirable unless intended), and that makes both user and designer sad. So, if you're sitting there thinking “this is obvious and I already knew it all”, then that probably means we've achieved our purpose. Probably.

User Flow

So we've decided that two cups would help Janine out, and an additional cardboard sleeve would really help Janine out. How do we get these items into Janine's hands, so that she doesn't complain about the temperature of her coffee?

To begin, we try developing a user flow. This is where you, the designer, detail the chain of actions, choices, and expectations you envision the user to execute – via our design – in order to meet our desired experience goal. Creating a user flow takes time and detail-oriented thinking, because the designer must consider every possible state in the process. Where do we start? What can we assume? What are the causes and effects of decisions? What are our expected failure points and how do we resolve them back into our desired course of action?

An example flow for the solutions to our hot coffee dilemma would look something like this:

When a designer puts a user flow together, the chain of events should not be confusing to any random passerby viewing the flow. The final iteration of a user flow, after any review and feedback, should not generate new, relevant what-ifs, because we should be confident that we are accounting for, to the best of our abilities, every relevant possible state, cause, decision, action, and effect.

The Tangible Translation: Wireframes and Mockups

Time for the fun part: transforming plans into real existence! The coffee allegory becomes kinda irrelevant here: in that situation, the plan would simply be something along the lines of:

• increase the regular order of cups
• train baristas to follow expected user flow
• profit

But in the world of digital user experience, we mainly work with screen interfaces. To start, we look at our design decisions and user flow, and we identify:

• main screens
• subcomponents (widgets, panels, etc.)
• states of said screens and subcomponents.

Once these aspects are laid out (you can write a list of them if that helps!), we get to work, translating and aggregating them into wireframes. Wireframes are low-fidelity visual series of mockups of what users could expect to see and interact with in our games or software. They look something like this:

Panels. Buttons. Text. Tabs. But just that. Wireframes present no consideration of visual style. The size of things in a wireframe is not even final. It is tempting to add some kind of visual treatment, especially if you come from an artistic background, but doing so can impede upon the distinction between wireframe and visual mockup. The designer's sole focus here is to present all information to the viewer and user in a way that is simple and sensible. Make their experience of using the software easy.

Note that though there is no visual style applied, certain items have darker and lighter shades or outlines. It is important for our fellow developers to be able to at least slightly understand the difference between a button, a panel, something interactive, and something not. Of course, you can supplement this visual discernment with captions or notes for those who need to reference your work.

In the wireframing process, you should continue to consider end users, but do not forget another crucial set of users: your development compatriots. Who are you showing this to? An engineer who will implement your work? A designer who isn't familiar with how you might lay things out? Try to build your wireframes in ways that align with how they might use or interpret your work.

I've been mentioning users nonstop here. To put it harshly, we user experience designers are simply... vessels of design. While working, we exist and interact with the world solely for the sake of the user experience. Everyone else's thoughts are our priority – though that does not mean you should not consider your own instincts! You are usually also a demographic of the user base. Still, a good designer will be able to separate their biases from the real needs of their users.

Anyways. States. I have given you three frames here, which are all states of the same parent screen. The frames' relationship here is represented by consistent elements among all the frames and the changes in between them. This is important for understanding how the user flow applies between screens and components. For the viewer's convenience, I usually like to provide a key of those components that might change in between screens, and I tend to label major screen states in large text.

This is about as far as I can take you when it comes to wireframe construction guidelines. The intricacies of visual software are things best explained by the countless YouTube tutorials at your fingertips; I highly recommend turning to those for knowledge on auto-layout and prototyping. Good luck!

Presentation and Feedback

Your wireframes are done and ready to be presented? Time for the feedback gauntlet.

Presenting your work to designers and other stakeholders (be it producers, engineers, or anyone, really) is daunting. In a review meeting, the average designer will link their Figma file, screenshare, and walk through every screen/state/design functionality for the audience to comment on and tear apart. Knowledge of your work and the ability to concisely explain it becomes crucial. Some things to keep in mind:

• Always understand the greater narrative of what you are trying to explain. You can easily and accidentally drift into granular detail, but your stakeholders are trying to understand how the feature works.

• More than often, if not every time: your audience will pose questions or mention things that you didn't expect, or maybe forgot to cover in your designs. If that's the case, try not to view this as a failure on your part; instead, think of it more as a new thing to solve collectively.

  • Remember, everything is WIP until it's approved. (Sometimes you can delegate questions to others based on the context! Sometimes you can also pose an idea on the spot and work it through, then mention you'll add that later.)

• Engineers don't hate you. (this is hard to remember in the moment)

• Butting heads with someone? Their feedback is valid, even if you don't think it is at first glance. As a UX designer, your duty is to listen and try to understand where they're coming from before making further statements. Ask them to explain themselves and focus on their reasoning in response to anything they say that seems outlandish. Maybe they actually see something you don't.

• Leave every feedback meeting with an explicit understanding of what to do next. Make changes? Send links to people? Keep track of it all.

That Was Quick

I have only some confidence that I've covered even the majority of what you might need to know as a designer. I don't know if I can handle writing more. The truth is, you – the new designer – will learn a lot of this the hard way, through trial and error, and by getting burned by your mistakes. That's okay! Making mistakes is normal, as we know by now; it's how you respond to them and change your behavior going forward that counts.

Being a designer is wonderfully rewarding. The moment you see people using and enjoying the thing you made, you remember why you did it all; why you almost cried that one night at your computer, why you shook from sheer caffeine intake the other day as you hastily labeled your work for the review in one hour. This thing was once a scant few thoughts in your head, and now it is everyone else's to admire and hate and laugh at and break and use.

We designers are but simple creatures who only want to make useful, beautiful, delightful things for others to use. We dream to make people's lives easier, to help them have fun, to make them feel. It is easy to forget in the forest of everyday labor why we committed to creative work in the first place... but without this, what else do we have? What could be greater than the joy of creation? Are we anything without that which we love the most?

No. We are not. Now go forth and become a workaholic.

December

This month I read 5 ebooks and 1 eaudiobook and 6 physical books from the Toronto Public Library, totaling to 10 books.

We Solve Murders by Richard Osman

Synopsis: Steve Wheeler’s world is small, but he likes it that way. He has a good routine going; he goes to the pub quiz, he sits on his favourite bench, he does a bit of low-stakes investigative work, and he chats with his daughter-in-law Amy. Amy Wheeler prefers life with a bit more adrenaline. She works for a private security firm, and she’s currently stationed on a private island, protecting the famous author Rosie D’Antonio (she’s not a day over 70). Rosie makes for excellent company, which is good because this job isn’t particularly interesting. That is, until the other security agent assigned to the detail attempts to kill Amy. Suddenly, she’s forced on the run (with Rosie and all of Rosie’s luggage), and it turns out that there’s a trail of bodies that all appear to lead to Amy. And when her boss at the private security firm goes dark, Amy’s forced to turn to the only person she can trust to solve this mystery: her father-in-law Steve.

My thoughts: When I heard that Richard Osman was pivoting away from his Thusday Murder Club series in order to start a new project, I was a little worried. But it turns out I had nothing to worry about. This has the same dry writing style that I adore from The Thursday Murder Club series, and although the characters aren’t quite as charming as a group of seniors, I still loved every minute of it. Readers will know that I’m not a fan of private investigators in crime fiction, but Steve and Amy together were both so competent that it was never an issue for me. It also had a really poignant message about grief, which is part of what makes these novels so much deeper and more enjoyable than your average crime novel. I can’t wait for whatever Osman releases next.

Rating: 5/5 marriage bets that you are waiting to cash in on (for love)

Bad Men by Julie Mae Cohen

Synopsis: Saffy Huntley-Oliver is a socialite with a secret. No, it’s not that she’s having an affair, or that she’s addicted to drugs. It’s that for years, she’s been hunting and killing so-called “bad men;” rapists, abusers, corrupt politicians, and even her own step father (a child molester). And it’s made her pretty cynical about men in general; they all have secrets that make them bad men. Perhaps the only exception to that is Jonathan Desrosiers. He’s a beloved true crime podcaster that covers the cold cases, and his research actually helped solve a murder. Saffy can’t help it; she’s in love. Jonathan’s life is crumbling around him; his wife left him because he only ever focused on the podcast, and the next day a body is left on his doorstep, making him the prime suspect. He’s utterly miserable, but for Saffy, it’s the perfect opportunity. She engineers a couple of meet cutes with him, and suggests that the best way for Jonathan to clear his name is to solve the crime. Reluctantly, he agrees. Will Jonathan finally be able to prove his innocence? And, more importantly, will Saffy finally find the man of her dreams?

My Thoughts: I think this book would have been a disaster if it took itself very seriously. It billed itself as a feminist thriller, but I felt that the feminism was extremely surface level: an upper class white woman killing men that were abusing or harming other women. It wasn’t intersectional, and seemed a bit like a caricature of feminism. However, Saffy’s storyline was very fun and didn’t really take itself seriously, which made it work. It was especially funny to contrast Jonathan (completely stressed out because someone is stalking and poisoning his ex-wife, and he’s the main suspect) and Saffy (suspicious because she thinks that Jonathan is still in love with his ex-wife), but while still giving Saffy a lot of agency and importance even though her stakes were much lower.

Rating: 3/5 latex catsuits that are actually excellent forensic countermeasures

The Outlier by Elisabeth Eaves

Synopsis: Cate Winter is probably the most successful neuroscience ever. She and her team have developed a revolutionary treatment for Alzheimer's Disease, and her biotech company is about to be acquired for millions of dollars. You’d never suspect her darkest secret: that she’s a diagnosed psychopath. After a mysterious fire that killed her family, Cate was sent to the Cleckley Institute, an institution dedicated to the study and rehabilitation of child psychopaths. For Cate, it was a good childhood. She considered Dr M, the institute’s founder, as a surrogate father figure, and as an adult she’s become wildly successful. But Cate was an outlier among her classmates; by age 30, they had all been jailed, killed, or barely managing to earn a living. All except for Cate, and one other student. Armed with the knowledge that she’s not the only outlier, Cate becomes obsessed with finding him. But what happens if she’s finally met her match?

My thoughts: I think this book had an interesting premise, but overall was not very interesting. The other outlier (Hunter) eventually was revealed to be almost cartoonishly villainous. He literally had a tropical lair straight out of a James Bond novel, and his big invention had a water intake pump that doubled as a fish killing machine, which is how he eventually got caught. Hunter didn’t even have any issues with the fish, he just couldn’t be bothered to put in a grate or redesign the intake, or literally anything else.

Rating: 2/5 politicians that are promising to light up the night if they are elected

Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett (Emily Wilde #2)

Synopsis: After the success of her Encyclopaedia of Faeries, Emily Wilde is comfortable at Cambridge University. She’s currently working on her new project, a map-book of the faerie realms, and enjoying life with her co-author (and possible fiance) Wendell Bambleby. However, things might just collapse when her colleague Farris Rose accuses Wendell of violating academic integrity principles during the creation of her encyclopaedia. While it’s true that Wendell is actually a faerie and had indeed committed such violations for other scholarly works, there were absolutely zero violations in the creation of Emily’s encyclopaedia. Rose threatens to reveal his suspicions to Cambridge itself, which would be a disaster for Emily’s career. At the same time, Wendell is under threat. His faerie step-mother has sent assassins after him (and did manage to poison him), and he’s clearly no longer safe at Cambridge. The only solution is for the three of them (plus Emily’s niece Ariadne) to immediately travel to the Austrian alps. That way, Wendell can outrun his assassins, Emily can research her map-book and hopefully find a door to Wendell’s realm to find a cure for this poison, and Rose can supervise everything to make sure there’s no impropriety. But the Austrian Alps are inhospitable at the best of times, and especially during winter, surrounded by malicious folk. Will Emily and her crew survive the winter? And will they manage to rescue an esteemed researcher?

My Thoughts: My controversial opinion is that I don’t really like this series, even though everyone seems to rave about it. I listened to it as an audiobook and I did not like the narrator, but beyond that it just didn’t feel like a great book. It wasn’t necessarily bad, but it was definitely lacking something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, and I didn’t find it particularly interesting. I’m also not a huge Emily x Wendell stan, so I wasn’t really impressed by the progression of their relationship in this book. I only read this sequel out of obligation to the first book, but I won’t be reading anything more in this series. I’m also annoyed that the book isn’t called “Emily Wilde’s Atlas of the Otherlands” because she’s working on a book of maps (aka an atlas), and not just a single map. The one thing that I did like was the Danielle de Grey storyline that continued from the previous book. However, the main charm of that storyline was when Emily detailed de Grey’s insane adventures in the footnotes of her diary, and that charm was lost when de Grey became a full character.

Rating: 3/5 tents that blend in perfectly into the surrounding grassy hillsides

The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis

Synopsis: After her parents were killed in a car crash, eight-year-old Beth Harmon was sent to an orphanage. After weeks of observing the janitor play chess, he begrudgingly allowed her to play. It soon became obvious that Beth had more than just a knack for chess; she was one of the best players in Kentucky, if not the whole country. After her adoption, Beth started entering chess tournaments around the country and internationally, eventually supporting her adoptive mother. Throughout the novel, Beth struggles with her addiction to tranquilizers (which was caused by the orphanage staff intentionally drugging all of their charges), and her inability to connect with anyone or anything that is not chess.

My thoughts: I’ll be honest, this was not the kind of book that I like. I only read it because I was looking for a book to satisfy the last category for the 2024 TPL Reading Challenge (A book about games), and because I was getting served a lot of short-form video content about The Queen’s Gambit Netflix show (I’ve never seen it, but I figured if the show was so popular, it couldn’t be that bad). My advice to readers: don’t ever do that! As soon as I started reading it I knew it wasn’t for me, but it was too late to back out. I don’t think that I can declare it to be a bad book, but it was just not enjoyable to read. The whole tone of the book is incredibly dour and grey, and all of the characters’ interactions are mechanical (instead of emotional).

Rating: 2/5 Heists of the century (breaking into the orphanage head office and stealing 200 tranquilizer pills)

Full Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth Revis (Chaotic Orbits #1)

Synopsis: Ada Lamarr is out of options. Her spaceship has a massive hole in the side, and her oxygen tank is rapidly running dry. Unfortunately, her only hope of rescue is a government-run salvage ship, who are very reluctant to have her on board. They’re here on a classified mission to recover some high-value objects, and they certainly don’t want a loose cannon and illegal salvager like Ada to interfere with things. And Ada is fine with that. She’s more than happy to enjoy the abundant rations and luxurious (in comparison) accommodations on board, and to flirt shamelessly with Rian White, the government-representative in charge of the mission. But Ada and Rian each have secrets to hide, and it remains to be seen who is really manipulating whom.

My Thoughts: This was a short but fun sci fi novella. Readers will know that I’ve been hankering for a science fiction book that’s about science and spaceships (and not a fantasy or a war epic), and this really scratched the itch for me. I thought there was enough meat to the story that the author could have extended it into a full novel, so I’m glad that a sequel novella has been released. My most major complaint was that the name of the main character felt too obvious of a reference to two famous women in computer science (Ada Lovelace and Hedy Lamarr). They both definitely deserve to be memorialized, but it just felt like I was being smacked in the face (especially because it stuck out compared to all of the other character names).

Rating: 4/5 notoriously reliable jetpack booster engines that just happened to fritz out when you were at the bottom of a tall, tall cliff

The Power by Naomi Alderman

Synopsis: This work of narrative nonfiction attempts to chronicle the initial discovery and effects of the ritual power: the ability for women (first teenage girls, and then spreading to older women) to generate electrical shocks from their bodies. It follows four major figures; Roxy, the daughter of a gangster who takes over her father’s empire; Allie, who runs away from her abusive foster parents and accidentally starts a cult; and Margo, mayor of an American city who slowly rises through the ranks. The fourth character is the only man: Tunde, a Nigerian journalist who allegedly recorded accounts of women’s rises to power around the world (it is common knowledge that Tunde’s body of work was actually written and published by his friend and coworker Nina). It is an engaging but ultimately implausible version of events.

My thoughts: I tried to write my synopsis in the style of the prologue and epilogue of the book, which consists of Neil proposing his book concept to Naomi. After reading, Naomi comments that the book is “cute but unrealistic” for depicting a patriarchal society, and suggests that Neil publish under a woman’s name so that he is taken more seriously. In reality, I think this is a great book that is worth the hype, and it explores the concept of rape culture and the overall patriarchy by flipping the script and giving women the power to painfully shock anyone. I loved the alternate history aspect of it, and it reminds me how much I like epistolary-style books, where you have to figure out what’s going on from the letters, reports, and other messages exchanged between characters. I thought that Alderman pulled off the concept really well. In the moment, I was irrationally disappointed that the female characters were complex and often immoral, but I definitely think the book is better for it. A small detail that I really appreciated was that the tissues that generate the electricity in women are called Skeins (which is the name for a bundle of yarn or string, and fibre arts are often portrayed as women’s work).

4/5 packs of glitter smuggled through Eastern Europe on order to support the troops

Chosen Ones by Veronica Roth

Synopsis: Sloane, Matt, Ines, Albie, and Esther were the chosen ones. As teenagers, they used a collection of folklore artifacts and uncontrollable powers to save North America from the catastrophic disasters wrought by the Dark One. But that was 10 years ago. Now, they all cope in different ways, but none of them are really doing well. At the 10th Anniversary ceremony commemorating the defeat of the Dark One, Sloane, Matt and Esther are captured. They wake up in an alternate dimension of Earth. In this universe, magic is everywhere, but so are threats. The Dark One is still active, and the leadership of this alternate Earth have a proposal: if Matt, Sloane, and Esther defeat the Dark One for good, then they can go back to their Earth. Esther and Matt agree, but Sloane is unable to master the magic. More than that, she’s tired of being used.

My thoughts: I thought that this was a cool concept for a book, and the first two thirds were done very well. However, Roth really lost the plot for the last third of the book. I thought it was absolutely insane that the main villain’s justification for constantly destroying the world was because he was immortal and wanted to die. Besides being insane, she didn’t really flesh out the main villain enough, but rather dropped everything in at the end. I’m also bothered that she completely sidelined Ines’s character. Why bother writing in 5 teenagers who saved the world if you’re only ever going to discuss four of them?

Rating: 4/5 origami paper cranes from a deceased loved one that weren’t necessarily acquired legally

A Holly Jolly Diwali by Sonia Lalli

Synopsis: Niki Randhawa has always made the practical choice, especially because her sister Jasmine was always the wild card who was breaking their parent’s heart. But being practical isn’t easy; in order to build her career in data analytics she’s been worked to the bone, with no time to make friends or visit relatives in India. But when she suddenly gets laid off from her job, it forces her to make other plans. So, she flies to India to attend her best friend Diya’s wedding. While there, she meets a very interesting guy, Sam, and starts getting in touch with her Indian roots. But Niki and Sam live oceans apart. Could they ever make it work?

My thoughts: This was a pretty standard romance novel, and I wouldn’t say that any part of it stood out to me. I was specifically hoping that this book would be an alternative to the huge influx of Christmas novels, since it was a book about Diwali, but Diwali was barely in the book at all (despite the title). I understand that it made sense for Niki not to know a lot about the history of Diwali and thus have to ask around about its significance (especially for Sikhs), but it felt like way too much telling and not enough showing.

Rating: 3/5 group honeymoons to the most gorgeous beaches you’ve ever seen

The Matzah Ball by Jean Meltzer

Synopsis: Rachel Rubenstein-Goldblatt has two big secrets. Firstly, she has myalgic encephalomyelitis, aka chronic fatigue syndrome. And secondly, she (a good Jewish daughter) has made a career of writing Christmas Romance novels. What can you do? The girl just loves Christmas. But when she meets with her publishers, she’s handed a major problem: they don’t want any more Christmas novels. What they do want is a Hanukkah novel, but Rachel hates Hanukkah. Well, she doesn’t hate it, but it just doesn’t have the same magic and charm of Christmas. So the only way that she’ll ever get inspired to write her next novel (and keep her job) is if she can get tickets to the hottest Hanukkah event in New York: the Matzah Ball. She even has an in with the event planner (Jacob Greenberg), because they went to Jewish summer camp together (we’ll skip over the part where he broke her heart). But the only tickets left are for volunteers, meaning that Rachel will have to work for 7 days in order to earn her place at the ball. Will she be able to balance her chronic illness with her assignment? And how can she deal with her unrequited feelings for Jacob after all these years?

My thoughts: I’ve previously read another Jewish romance by this author (Kissing Kosher), and I have to say that I didn’t like The Matzah Ball as much. I wish that Rachel’s CFS had been more of a focal point for the book. In Kissing Kosher, the main character didn’t cure her chronic illness, but she learned how to cope a lot better, and that’s what I was hoping to see again. This time, the chronic illness was not nearly as prominent, and I think the book was a bit less interesting for it. Also, I hated how much Rachel was obsessed with Christmas. The scene where she spent $60 (that she can’t afford) to visit a mall Santa Claus for a makeshift therapy session (that the mall Santa despises), made me almost stop reading the book.

Rating: 3/5 giant menorahs that were delivered with much assembly required

Thyme Travellers: An Anthology of Palestinian Speculative Fiction, edited by Sonia Sulaiman

Synopsis: This is a collection of 14 short stories written by authors from across the Palestinian diaspora. It includes stories about two women digging a tunnel from Australia to Palestine, a father and son in Ottawa who struggle to communicate with each other without the help of AI scripts, an outcast grandson struggles what to do with his grandmother’s memory chips, and more.

My thoughts: I thought this was a great collection, with a really wide variety of stories, both in style and in content. Some were extremely metaphorical, while others were much more concrete; some were set in the present or near present, others were in the very far future or even alternate realities, etc, and I appreciated the variety. It’s also interesting to note that the head editor started this project several years before the war in Gaza began, and the conclusion of the book includes a few calls to action for the readers to take (they primarily involve sharing and uplifting Palestinian voices). Rating: 3/5 alternate realities, where you either stayed with the love of your life, or you married your husband

Lavash at First Sight by Taleen Voskuni

Synopsis: Nazeli “Ellie” Gregorian is so busy with her tech sector marketing job that she barely has time for her lackluster boyfriend, let alone her family's business, Hagop’s Fine Armenian Foods. So when he dumps her, it doesn’t hurt too much. The real issue is that her parents have asked Nazeli to come with them to PakCon, a national food packaging conference in Chicago at the same time as her job is demanding her to be available 24/7 to work on an incredibly important project. The truth is that Hagop’s Fine Armenian Foods is struggling, and this conference could be their last shot at rescuing the business. But there’s a once in a lifetime opportunity: PakCon is hosting a game-show style competition, and the winning business will get an ad spot at the Super Bowl. Nazeli is determined to win, even when she meets the gorgeous Vanya, who just so happens to be at PakCon with her own Armenian food family business, and therefore becomes her biggest competitor. Will Nazeli be able to juggle the expectations of her job, her parents, and the cute girl at the next booth? Or will it all come crashing down?

My thoughts: I thought this was a pretty decent romance book. I read Sorry, Bro (see my July 2023 roundup) by the same author, and this was definitely done in a similar vein, just with the added layer of a cooking competition. I was a little bit annoyed that I saw the third act conflict coming from a mile away (what else could possibly happen when there are cameras everywhere and Nazeli has eaten Vanya’s family’s food before and disliked it, while simultaneous pretending to Vanya that she’s never tried it before??). However, I liked the added layers of Nazeli trying to please her parents (who weren’t caricatures), and the complicated dynamic between her family and Vanya’s family.

Rating: 3/5 hot-ones style competitions with hot sauce so spicy it might kill your father (or your crush’s father).

I listened to a good chunk of music this year. Heres a quick little blurb about the albums, what I rated them, and what genre they are, alongside a couple of songs I liked from each one. This is limited to albums released this year, but in my life I did a lot of listening to older albums too, which made me take breaks in listening to new albums here and there.

My rating scale more or less looks like this:

0 – really bad: Approximately no redeeming qualities. 1 – not good: Overall an album I did not like. 2 – neutral: Completely fine, more or less inoffensive for the entire listen. Background music tier. 3 – has some songs I like: Most of the album is bad to inoffensive, but there are some great songs in there too. 4 – has a good chunk of songs I like: A solid amount of this music is stuff I like, there might be a couple of bad songs and more inoffensive songs, but at this point I would start saying the album was good. 5 – I like most of it: Broadly speaking this is where we get into albums that are full of great songs. It has its flaws for me, but there's a lot of good here. 6 – I like just about all of it: Just about every single song on here is great, though maybe there's some thematic inconsistencies, parts that are outdone by other parts, or something like that. This can also often mean this is as good as an album can be for what it is. A generic sounding trap album without much in terms of deeper themes can land here if every song is just great, despite the album lacking that something more to elevate it. 7 – I really like all of it: just a fantastic album from start to back. 8 – Everything here is compelling: Creative, exciting, interesting, complex, compelling. The best of the best, the type of shit I'd put on a satellite to send our best to the aliens.

SOTY: Song of the year, but really just a marker for some of the absolute best songs I listened to this year

Naturally it's my opinion, and my mood at the time of listening almost certainly has some impact. If something scores higher I'm more likely to know more about the album as I've likely listened to it more. Not only because I enjoy it more, thus making me more likely to listen to it, but also, I care to rate it more accurately when it's an album I respect. An album I don't respect isn't getting much listening time, and an album think has mostly bad songs I can just chuck in one of the two bad categories based on just how terrible it seemed in the moment. This didn't happen much last year, and no albums got a 0.

Note: One thing that absolutely kills me is when guys hate on female rappers by default, and its everywhere. The amount of guys I know that just happen to have every least favourite song on every album be one where a woman has a feature and hates on the woman in question without actually listening to any albums drives me insane. I have included a tag for Women in hip hop, which is the type of thing I usually wouldn't do, letting my reviews stand for themselves, but knowing the sheer amount of misogyny in rap and rap fans, I figure it's good to throw something out there. That being said, it has been a very interesting time for women in hip hop, because it seems like women make up the vast majority of new rap stars these days. The 2010s era has left a ton of men as the biggest selling acts, but since then, very few men have been able to come up in the same way. In their place, there are many women getting a ton of play. It's something I've been keeping an eye on as I broadly see the zeitgeist moving from rap to country. Also, more discourse these days seems to shut down men who don't like the female rappers pretty quickly. Maybe it's the world changing, or maybe it's just young fans of hip hop growing up. I sure as hell don't know, but I'm glad to finally see it.

Also note: I didn't proofread this at all.

My Story Got Stories – Bruiser Wolf: 4 (with love)

Old School hip hop / Rap

I first heard of Bruiser Wold through YBP from Danny Brown's album Quaranta. Bruiser completely captured my attention with his very specific modern yet somehow very old school hip hop flow, with one of my favourite lines “It's hard to fit in to the murder mitten like OJ's glove”. I heard his album was releasing soon, and put it in my calendar to check out as soon as possible. This album was a ton of fun, and even had me laughing out loud more than a couple times. Bruiser Wolf raps with so much energy, his delivery is constantly exciting, and the amount of quips and jokes through this album made it an absolute blast to listen to. I went to see a performance live, and it elevated the experience with how good a performer he is. He falls into my favourite category of rap these days which is old rappers who decided to have fun or do something interesting with their experience instead of falling off and getting angry.

Dope Boy

2 Bad

Silence is Loud – NIA Archives: 5

Jungle / Drum & Bass

This is another one I was really excited for. I found NIA Archive after looking for new jungle music visiting the hospital one day, and holy there's a lot of good music in here despite her being such a young artist. The music is fun, interesting, fast paced yet smooth, and really puts me in a good place. I also went to see this concert live and it was my first experience with dancing in maybe 10 years, which was fun. I loved this album and listened to it a ton, and it's still a go-to if I get the aux and want to play music no-one will recognize.

Cards On The Table SOTY

Forbidden Feelingz SOTY

American Dream – 21 Savage: 3

Trap / Rap

21 Savage is back with another album after Her Loss which was a collab album with drake. 21 has fallen into what I generally have as the peak of hip hop sales, blowing up in the mid 2010s and having major commercial success. It seems that the rappers around this time, including Drake, Future, Kendrick, Cole, Young Thug, Gunna, and Carti are the main hip hop artists who seem to be able to drive sales no matter what they do. Unfortunately for many of these artists, that has led to just doing the same thing with the same sound, just rehashing some slang and switching things up just enough to be different. 21 was interesting because despite being probably one of the most boring rappers, he kept evolving and switching up the scope and sound of his production just enough to keep him actually as one of the most interesting prospects. Unfortunately, I consider this album to be one of his 2 mis-steps into just doing something extremely basic for an album. It isn't bad, but most of it is just fairly background spare a few real highlights.

Redrum

Blue Lips – ScHoolboy Q: 5

Grimy / Rap

Schoolboy Q was a major name when Kendrick was blowing up alongside everyone in their label, Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE). He had some absolutely incredible, creative, and grimy music that I would comfortably say belongs in a list of all time classics. He decided to make a change and do some more personal music, but unfortunately ended up making an album in 2019 called Crash Talk that was very bland, and despite a few highlights, I thought fell completely flat, after which he disappeared for a long time. This album is an incredible return to form, where while it may not reach the all time music highs of Blank Face or Oxymoron, blends more creative music sounds, more grimy beats and flows, yet still retains more of the personal reality that I think he was trying to go for in Crash Talk.

Blueslides

Back n Love

Everybody Can't Go – Benny The Butcher: 3

Griselda / Rap

Benny The Butcher of Griselda was generally seen as the best and most hype more mainstream sounding of the group. It seems that with this album, there was a bigger rollout, different features from usual, and a big push to make it a more commercial breakout record. It was a solid enough album, but the lead single pushed the most was also one of my least enjoyed from the album and constantly shoved into my recommendations, which didn't help. That being said, it still had some solid highlights and Benny, while releasing something not as great as previous collab albums like, he still put out something solid enough.

Jermanie's Graduation

Big Dog

No Quarter – Vino La Mano: 4

Griselda / Rap

This is a guy signed to Benny The Butcher's label who Benny has helped platform. While the album doesn't vary too much in sound or fully distinguish itself sonically, it is just really good and consistently so.

238 on Cal

All My Heart

We Don't Trust You – Future, Metro Boomin: 3

Trap / Rap

This album is a collab album between Future and Metro Boomin, which broadly means that it will sound good in the club, but generally not be for those searching for depth. The most notable part of this album for me was kicking off the Kendrick v Drake been with 'Like That', even if I think Kendrick doesn't even sound that great on it. The album doesn't really do that much to stand out, though Future and Metro being club hits guys were bound to make big club hits. Special shoutout to them both looking uncomfortable as hell posing on the album cover.

Type Shit

Like That

We Still Don't Trust You – Future, Metro Boomon: 3

Trap / Rap

Back to back huh, I have to listen to another pile of mainstream trap rap. Same things apply, it's all fine, but rarely stands out enough to really engage me. I did like this one more on release, but on re-listens it ended up coming around to about the same. Music I can put on in the background and the bass will sound good enough.

SFK – Conway The Machine: 2

Griselda / Rap

Oh Conway. This guy has easily the best and most intense raps of anyone on Griselda, but this one just didn't land at all for me. It seems that without doing collab albums with proficient producers, he really tends to underdo his beats. It is probably intended to give his lyrics more space, but I think he's better when he just has something that sounds better. It seems as he shifted away from straight rapping towards trying to make a label, his artists haven't thrived and neither has he. I'm hoping his next albums he can capture more of that lyrical charm he has had up to this point, because I felt like while this wasnt really bad, hearing one of the best rappers drop an album of bars that didn't land with beats that didn't stand out is tough.

Ninja Man

Please Don’t Cry – Rapsody: 5

Women in hip hop / Rap

Rapsody seems to carve herself out of this space, being a respected rapper's rapper, but at the same time, it does seem to carve her out of the mainstream. Laylas Wisdom had some immaculate highs, Eve was a good followup focused on female inspirations. This one turns to a more personal attempt, with the overarching story line of a therapy session, which seems to be becoming a common trend, but Rapsody is able to really navigate it with incredible rapping and personal storytelling. I know some people were not very into some of the more commercial angled hits, but I think they're fine, and it makes sense given her position in the industry.

Marlanna

Faith

RICHAXXHATIAN – Mach-Hommy: 8

AOTY / Rap

Well holy shit is this ever a step up. I have never heard beats like this before. I have never hear rapping like this before, and I've listened to like 6 Mach-Hommy albums. He was already an artist I loved, and I would chuck this into one of the greatest albums of all time territory. The lyrical chops in this are insane, and you have to pay attention because there are no published lyrics anywhere. I still find new things in this album and I've been listening to it since it came out. The production is also so different from just about anything out there, really taking on its own creative space blending styles of a few of my favourite producers to create something that is more than the sum of its parts. It is a hard listen because spare one song, it really isn't commercially viable at all, but god is it so worth it to get into. Watching some people talk about this has even changed much of my life philosophy, learning about Edouard Glissant and the right to opacity, saying that other cultures don't need to be understood or measured by colonial nations who will measure them in colonial ways and harm them (here I am giving it a rating), and similarly, you may wish for certain things not to be perceived, or only be perceived on your terms. Mach obscured his lyrics and identity, and I find it to be something that I respect and absolutely love about him. This album still gets frequent front to back listens from me, and I still love every single song.

#RICHAXXHATIAN SOTY

SUR LE PONT d'AVIGNON SOTY

Note: Almost every song on here I could probably put somewhere around SOTY

Marciology – Roc Marciano: 7

Coke Rap

Roc Marciano is an artist I truly respect for having his own style of rapping and his own style of production, and rapping over his own production. The benefit of this is it creates an incredibly distinct sound and style, but the downside is that it can get kind of same-y sometimes. When that happens, it really is just up to the straight quality to shine. This is probably the best work he has put out, and the quality really does shine. When I listened to this I really felt like I might be seeing an artist I already love hit their peak, and I hope he can maintain this or evolve in the future. I even bought a ticket off of Nana to go see it, but after some confusion and me accidentally seeming like I was trying to scam him, we decided to do something else instead.

Gold Crossbow

Killin Spree

Samurai – Lupe Fiasco: 6

Lyrical Rap

Lupe these days has been in the game for quite a while, and while not and old old head through his keeping it fresh, he's hit a definite older rap unc status. He has taken probably the best path from being a superstar to creating some insane creative highs, and now a lot of his rap is a lyrical exercise, all stages interesting. He is really aging gracefully and thriving in a lane that he defines for himself. This album is inspired by Amy Winehouse, and much of the lyrics draw symmetries between his life and career and Amy's, or Amy becoming a battle rapper. It really is creative, fun, and done delicately so to not be insensitive to the legacy of Amy Winehouse as many others could have easily done if attempting to do the same. It is a pretty easy listen, can be very engaging if you focus on the lyrics, and all around pleasure to listen to.

Samurai

Cake

Why Lawd? – Nx Worries: 5

RNB / Hip Hop

This is a collab between PAAK and Knxwledge, PAAK being huge and Knxwledge being a respected yet not massive producer who has an undeniable finesse to the samples and sound he uses. My expectations for this was a very nicely sampled sexy album, and that is what I got. Despite the amazing samples and undeniable synergy between the duo, I can't help but feel like it either needed to be just a bit shorter or a bit more sonically varied to keep it more interesting over the entire run time in the album. The songs are great, but there were times where I barely noticed that songs had changed, not in a creative transition way, but in a too many songs sounding too close kind of way.

MoveOn

Battlefield

King Of The Mischievous South Vol. 2 – Denzel Curry: 6

Southern Rap / Memphis Rap

Denzel Curry has really made a name for himself in being hard hitting, creative, and incredibly consistent. I remember after our house flooded, finally getting the sound system set back up, seeing this release, and getting instantly hit with banger after banger for all the work I'd completed. It was a great reward. Despite being an album of hard hitting bangers in a very mixtape-y way, there was definitely a charm and creativity that went into every one, with enough variation in samples and musicality to really distinguish the songs. Another great album in the long list of great albums from Denzel, and I'm excited to see where he goes next.

ULTRA SHXT

HOT ONE

Songs For Saints and Sinners – Killer Mike: 4

Southern Rap

Killer Mike returns after my last billion word music themed article where I did a whole background on my listening to music bringing me up to him dropping landlord bars. This seems like it's just a re-up, adding more to some of the songs on his last album, and having some new tracks. I've warmed up again to Mike after the landlord bars because the music was great and I'm a life enjoyer, but I'm still suspicious. Not bad, but it doesn't really have great legs as a standalone project. The highs are, still, insanely high in terms of flow, lyrics, and production.

Nobody Knows

SLUMMER 4 JUNKIES

Johann Sebastian Bachlava The Doctor – Action Bronson: 5

Goofy Ah White Boy / Rap

Action Bronson is always a funny character, and he seems to return to an old form for this album, with tracks that sound much closer to a fan favourite Mr Wonderful than his recent string of animal themed projects, one of which I loved, but one of which I thought just had some very high highlights. This is much more consistent with some incredible highs. Though he does seem to reuse some lyrics across songs, he is still incredibly charismatic, funny, and the production is just fantastic.

SALVAJE

DOCTOR SOTY

Across The Tracks – Boldy James, Conductor Williams: 6

Coke Rap

Boldy James is absolutely one of my favourites, dropping album after album I love for years at a rate unlike anyone else I know. Sure, the topics are always almost exactly the same. Sure, Boldy manages to never manage to hit more than a single note with his extremely detached sounding voice. Somehow, he still manages to come through with such creative stories and wordplay, doing collab albums with some of the best producers in the game to deliver a project that is way ahead of most, in my opinion. He still puts his son on for a mediocre verse though.

Terms and Conditions

St Juliana SOTY

The Death of Slim Shady – Eminem: 1

Rap, Old Coot, Fell off, edgy 50 year old

Eminem needs to figure his life out or just shut up already. In one interview he said all he does is sit and watch the news. We can tell. Go outside. I love old rappers who have something to say and appreciate the world around them and spit their wisdom and experience, yet this fucker who used to be so good is easily one of the worst rappers in the game right now. The beats are a bit better but fuck man it's not enough. Just listen to the JID verse that opens this song and turn it off when JID is done. Opening a song with “Fuck blind people” was kind of funny though.

FUEL

Antichrist Worst song of the year contender, and I will drop the lyrics of the first verse in a code block just to drive it home

Oh, shit, fuck  
Fuckin' PC police  
Fuck

Gen Z, here they come now (now), 'bout to unload rounds (brrt)  
Pronouns (shit), got me like, "Whoa now" (whoa)  
Homie, let's slow down (chill), no need to get so wound (man)  
Ready to throw down (yo), if I mispronounce (thee, them)  
Whoops (sorry), oh wow  
Got heterosexuals crammin' 'em down our throats now (he, she, they, them)  
Like I'm gettin' snow-plowed, my humor's too low-brow (yup)  
Yeah, so there's no doubt (nope), you 'bout to get grossed out (ugh)

But fuck it though, somebody needs to come and hit the reset button  
Back to 2003 'cause how did we get stuck in  
This woke BS? I'm tryna make it regress, fuck 'em

Just RE'd Up 3 – YG: 2

West Coast / 2000s

YG returns to his roots after a string of albums not getting the critical acclaim he once had. It sounds fairly well like his earlier mixtapes, but that style is kind of dated, and it is clear that his lyrical content sits somewhere between not evolving to devolving from his 2014-2016 My Krazy Life and Still Brazy highs.

Right Now

Summertime Butch – Benny The Butcher & Black Soprano Family: 5

Griselda / Rap

Benny The Butcher again, this time with in my opinion a little less aim for commercial success, which seems to help him with his creative choices on hooks and production. His rapping is solid, his coke bars land a little bit more again, and all around, I had a much better experience.

Summer '24

The Blue Building

brat – Charli xcx: 7

Hyperpop / EDM

I don't know as much pop as I do hip hop, so I can't talk so much about Charli's story on the way here. I wrote a review about this album with a lower score, but this list is mine and thus fairly dynamic as I go, and the quality of this album is not only unreal, but I found more in some of the tracks I wasn't as big a fan of, including going through like a third SOPHIE phase from listening to 'So I'. I still don't care for 'talk talk' or 'club classics' much, but I think it's pretty undeniable after listening to this album daily for months that it is just that good. Hard hitting, personal, fun, and just an adventure and experience to listen to.

B2b SOTY

365

Note: There are many songs here that I could have as SOTY contenders

No Hands – Joey Valence and Brae: 4 (with love)

Goody Ah White Boy / Alt Hip Hop

This one caught me off guard. I wasn't listening to too much music at the time and wanted to listen to something different, clicked on a Fantano great music, saw this, and ended up finding a rather refreshing listening experience. Packed with high energy bangers from guys that seem to just like having fun, what can I say, I had a lot of fun. It comes in, is fun, then goes. Funny punch lines, fun beats, and just enough creativity to stand out. I think it could have been slightly shorter, maybe leaving a few songs for a short re-up to keep the runtime a bit more concise and fresh, but who's to really complain about something fun. Super excited to see where these fellas go next.

BUSSIT

NO HANDS

Short n' Sweet – Sabrina Carpenter: 4

Pop

Sabrina Carpenter was really everywhere, she had a big year. I listened to the album and enjoyed it, every song was broadly really good, but I still ahve trouble telling you what half of them were. I feel like it was a little too same-y, but if this is what you want, it's probably really fucking good. For me, I felt I could just pick out my favourite 2 or 3 and readily ignore most of the rest without worrying about missing too much. Still, and enjoyable listen with some great catchy songs.

Taste

Espresso

GLORIOUS – GloRilla: 5

Memphis Rap / Women in hip hop

It was pretty undeniably Glorilla's year, she was on like a 2Chains 2012 type run where she has been everywhere putting out really high quality music and features left and right. This album is packed with bangers, attitude, songs for the girlies, and overall just great music from the south. I think I've written before that the south usually symbolizes a bunch of things not that I hate, but that I would generally find less appealing than other styles through lyrical and production choices, but the south has really been on top. GLO has been doing this exact thing, but it's been super exciting the whole time. I have found so much great music through following her features, and she's good enough that she might be able to evolve and put out more projects with some creative evolution, though only time will tell. Can't wait to hear more from her.

WATCHU KNO ABOUT ME SOTY

I LUV HER

Chromakopia – Tyler, The Creator: 5

Artsy Hip Hop

Tyler has had a very interesting career evolution and this is a new spin. His last album, Call Me If You Get Lost, was a return to rapping inspired by Westside Gunn after the one before, a very artsy Igor, which could hardly be called a rap album at all. I don't know how I can really box Tyler into genres, and I broadly like that about him. He's on his creative journey, and he's clearly very talented and creative. This new album seems to blend much of the artistic styling from Igor and blend it with the harder rapping, while bringing a new sound forward. I think it's a good album, and I think it has some really touching stories, and yes, that includes 'Judge Judy'. What I do find with the album is that it sometimes strikes me as being sonically in-between. At certain moments, hard hitting stuff seems to hold back to maintain the artsiness, and the artsiness seems to hold back a bit to accommodate the harder stuff. An example of this is that the emotional peaks are often immediately followed by a bar flexing. This might be a deliberate creative choice, deliberately putting up a wall at those intimate moments, but it still does do exactly that. Additionally, when Igor dropped I really felt like Tyler was the best music possible for someone going through a high school break-up, which I personally just didn't care for thematically. This album does deal with similar themes but does also deal with more hard hitting angles of it, like exes / flings dying. Maybe this slowly does indicate him moving towards a new phase. I think this album is good enough to put Tyler in a spot of being one of the most consistent and interesting musicians we have right now.

Rah Tah Tah

Tomorrow

Megan Act 2 – Megan Thee Stallion: 5

Note: This stands as a total review for both acts, I don't care to put the effort in to separate them

Southern Rap / Women in hip hop

I have really enjoyed Megan's music for quite a long time, first discovering her when she dropped 'Realer' in the lead-up to Fever, and that song stayed on repeat for a long time. She has continued to be a great rapper, and now seems to be in an era where shes starting to just go and do what she wants, with more releases coming as collabs with RM from South Korea, Spiritbox for a rap metal song, and using samples like 'Like a G6' for 'Like a Freak' and 'Goodies' by Ciara for 'Roc Steady'. It makes for an interesting and varied selection still based on her usual hard hitting raps that I know and love her for. I had a lot of fun with this album, and for being the length it is (because it is just 2 albums), I stayed way more entertained for the runtime than I expected.

Roc Steady

TYG

Alligator Bites Never Heal: Doechii: 4

Women in hip hop / Alt Rap

Doechii is interesting because all I know is that she apparently was a kind of tik tok / social media rapper, but I'm not plugged into that scene enough to know anything about it. All I know is that this is her breakout album and it's really impressive. I can see some of the roots in that I do find some of the songs to be a little sound-bitey and quirky, but still, her rapping is on point, it is fun, creative, and has the energy and confidence of someone that knows what they're doing. My only complaint is that through some of the quirkiness I find when I listen to one song I love it, but the album as a whole feels like it comes out as being a bit less than the sum of all its parts. She's still early in her career, though, and has a lot of time and clearly more than enough talent and creativity to evolve in whatever way she decides.

STANKA POOH

NISSAN ALTIMA

You Only Live 1nce – Freddie Gibbs: 4

Coke Rap

Freddie has had an interesting journey to get where he is, having multiple absolutely incredibly collab albums through Pinata, Alfredo, and Bandana. From here, he signed a label deal to expand on his image and started working with groups of producers, but it seems that when he gets to pick his own production, similar to Benny The Butcher, the result comes out as far less interesting. Soul Sold Separately still had some incredible peaks through songs like 'Dark Hearted' that just cut through to the soul as good as any coke rap song can, so I was interested in seeing what he would do with another album in the same vein, which came as a surprise drop. This one came out, named as a followup to his 2017 album You Only Live 2wice and was thematically overall very similar to Soul Sold Separately , but seemed to just miss out on the amount of highs. Freddie is still an incredible rapper and explores a lot of personal discovery and his interactions with fame, but he could have surely used some more interesting production to make the project as a while shine more.

Origami

On The Set

Soul Burger – Ab-Soul: 2

Hip Hop / Rap

I can't lie to you, I have listened to this album 3 times, and I always like it until I realize I can't remember a thing about it. Being anti-memetic surely isn't a good sign for an album, especially with its producer and feature list, but I at least know it has one song that has the same sample as 'How Much a Dollar Cost' by Kendrick Lamar (They are both from Top Dawg Entertainment) that is a really good listen.

Righteous Man

Still Praying – Westside Gunn: 6

Griselda / Coke Rap

Westside Gunn back at it again, one of the main 3 Griselda members and probably the one with the best connections and ear for beats, which he uses to his advantage by making albums that sound bright and luxurious, and he generally packs them with features to make up for some of his inconsistent rapping. This album does put him more center, but it is him doing what he does at his best. The beats are interesting, he raps well, and puts together a project that maintains being interesting the entire time. DJ Drama can shut up on all these album but I've gotten better at tuning it out.

Runway Pieces at the Last Supper

Still Praying <– Griselda Posse Cut

300 Worms – JAEGER: 4

IDK the genre mang

This was a fun one because despite having a solid handful of friends release music, this might be the most complete feeling album release. It's incredibly angsty and muddy, but hits a really nice spot and keeps its quality throughout the entire album. This was a really refreshing switchup and got me out of a rut where I was getting sick of listening to new albums for a bit, which was also a nice feeling. Seeing it live twice, it really changes the effect of listening to it, it gives the atmosphere much more air and lets you physically feel the music. For digital listening, I tend to like the songs that have more higher pitched melody.

300 Worms

Gut

GNX – Kendrick Lamar: 5

West Coast Hip Hop / Rap

Kendrick Lamar is back after the Drake Beef with a new surprise drop. Hearing the snippet at the start of the 'Not Like Us' music video had me really excited for a really west coast banger Kendrick album, because god that hook was stuck in my head. A song leaked (likely released to generate hype because samples couldn't clear or something) called 'Let The Party Die' and it was also incredible. The album came out and naturally took the world by storm. The album for me is a near perfect split down the middle between tracks that are absolutely incredible and tracks that left me wanting more for one reason or another, but we got some real west coast bangers from Kendrick which is an absolute blast. To me, the album feels much like a mixtape of Kendrick exploring west coast music, with 'Reincarnated' being a 2Pac song in flow and production and Hey Now being a clear Drakeo The Ruler type song. I think a lot of my opinion on this album will be dictated by how long it takes for him to drop another. This is an insane mixtape to tide fans over for another release, but if it is a full album that will take years to follow up on, I think I can say it was an inconsistent album.

Heart Part 6 SOTY

Reincarnated SOTY

The Bricktionary – Boldy James, Harry Fraud: 4

Coke Rap

Boldy back at it again, this time with an album that I didn't exactly feel at first. Part of the magic of Boldy is that he has these bright and elegant beats that contrast with his extremely low-key delivery, yet match his storytelling. This is an album that plays things slower, which can really make things seem like they slow to a crawl. Match that with how Harry Fraud is more trap inspired and can be inconsistent, and I was worried going in. Eventually hit it with a more out loud sound system and really got into it. Despite the slower pace, the beats are luxurious though a bit darker than usual, and spare a couple songs where Boldy seems like he's half asleep, it's another great joint.

Pressin' My Bunk

Fish Grease

Access All Areas – FLO: 6

Pop

I don't dive into pop much, but discovered this one because it had a Glorilla feature and decided to give it a spin. I got really into this one through the whole listen. These songs are slick, sexy, catchy and punchy in a way that got almost all of these songs stuck in my head at one point or another. I think some of the more hip hop inspired verses could use a little more work, and I'd say there are a couple songs where I would have made them bonus tracks or something to keep the specific feel of the album consistent through the entire record.

Walk Like This

Caught Up SOTY

Trustworthy Interlude I generally don't include 3 but I wanted to include this as not a full song. Being a fella who's parents are divorced and has been cheated on this song really hits in an incredibly personal way. SOTY

Personification – Maxo Kream: 5

Southern Rap / The Guy Loves Being A Crip

Maxo has had a pretty interesting career to say the least with the cases and the like, but always emerges as a particularly interesting rapper with a big personality that always drops some quality music. He gets personal at times, then will say some of the most in your face hilarious criminal shit in the next song, but he always comes in with energy. He seems to just have a knack for it.

Cracc Era

Walk By Faith

Take Care – BigXThaPlug: 4

Texas Rap

I knew of BigX because he had a very distinct voice and some snippets that popped up in memes, and I rather enjoyed it. Voices that stand out in a good way are always good and refreshing. The production is upbeat and fun, as well as pretty distinct in a way that works well. I think that BigX is a solid rapper, but his lyrical content is pretty same-y, which doesn't help when the production, albeit fun, is the same. Song to song I really do feel like you can pick your favourite few and then not have to worry much about the rest. Only time will tell if he's able to evolve past this, because he does have a big wave right now and for his voice and attitude alone I know he can do more.

Law & Order

The Largest

---

Top Albums:

1. RICHAXXHATIAN – Mach-Hommy
2. brat – Charli xcx
3. Marciology – Roc Marciano
4. Across The Tracks – Boldy James, Conductor Williams
5. Access All Areas – FLO

Changes for next year

• Make a minimally more data entry focused outline
  • Allow sorting by date, score
  • I plan on using a Dataview plugin for this
• Keep track of best songs
  • I want to keep a list of all my favourite songs of the year
• Listen to more genres
  • Listening to new genres kept it exciting
  • I want to listen to more music that friends recommend too

I just smoked a bowl. On the TV, Doechii's Tiny Desk Concert plays. 2024 has been an incredible year for women in and around hip-hop. AmaaRae got featured in GQ, Elle, and Vulture magazines; Doechii is finally getting the attention she deserved after years of pushing it; Sexxy Red is reminding everyone about the thorough-line that connects the 5 tenets of hip-hop; and GloRilla dropped so much good music, her home city of Memphis, TN forgot all about her DUI arrest and awarded her the keys to the city. Matter of fact, I could probably write a whole paragraph on how 2024 was the year of GloRilla. She had a whole song go viral with a TikTok snippet. My dear reader, DJs downloaded a 45 second snippet off of TikTok and had crowds yelling out the lyrics at live shows, ALL BEFORE THE SONG OFFICIALLY DROPPED.

I have followed the rise of all these artists but I've been most impressed by the rise of Amaarae. Artists from Ghana barely make it to where she is but even less manage to stay in the limelight for as long as she has. Combined with truly incredible lyrics and production, I don't know if there are more than 5 artists from Ghana I like more than Amaarae. I can confidently say I've been listening to her music from the very beginning and she is undoubtedly a big influence in my music.

I started making music in the early 2010s (first with my best friend Henry Richardson, then in a band in high school and now solo). These years were a golden age for hip-hop in Ghana. The popularity of Twitter and widespread access to the internet gave rise to a burgeoning underground hip-hop scene made up of older teenagers and young adults. These artists took most of their inspiration from western acts as opposed to African musicians and as such the subject matter of the music shifted from light-hearted, folksy to something darker and metaphoric. There was definitely a downside to this, as most artists chose to abandon African ways storytelling tendencies entirely in favour of something that would appeal more to the big boys in Newark.

The scene was intricately tied to Twitter. The social media site blew up relatively early in Ghana (I created my account in August 2011) and the first few hundred users garnered thousands of followers quickly by doing regular Twitter shit: dunking on people. Maybe this is a symptom of my jealousy in how popular these accounts were, but some of these guys would talk such a big game on Twitter and I'd see them in church youth service acting all bashful and shit. No energy in the house of the Lord I guess.

My favourite artists from this era were a duo who went by Cruk'dStr8. They would collaborate with a range of artists in Ghana and the States and it was some of the best music I'd heard in a long long time. First making a name for themselves by dropping singles on Friday sampling popular songs (hip-hop fans might see the influence from Kanye West's GOOD Friday drops) and putting Ghanaian rappers on them. These drops were huge, and got 1000s of listens per post (if you don't get how big a deal this is, you just weren't there) and the group would the social media site to drop hints of an upcoming album.

My best friend, Henry, and I would listen to these drops religiously and I (admittedly) would bite from them here and there for our own little rap group in primary school: Royal Rappers. A lot of people are embarrassed by their rap stories in middle school, but not I. That shit was awesome. We started with just banging on desks with 5 or 6 people around and we ended with a performance in front of the whole school. Our first song, We Need A Beat, was so popular that it spawned another rap group in our class and they hit back with a diss, Beat Without A Bass. We were lucky the rapping was trash because their chorus was way better and title of the song alone almost cleared us... but this is a story for another time.

On February 2nd, 2013, Cruk'dStr8 dropped the album, Heliotrope. God. What a project. I didn't realize as an artist, you were allowed to do what they did on that album. Themes of travelling through Dante's inferno to find a missing piece of yourself, combined with production that was years ahead of what anyone else was attempting to do, and the bars. THE BARS. I am tempted to put some of my favourite lines here but I don't think it matters now. If you're curious here is a Genius link to all the album. I downloaded a copy of Heliotrope from DatPiff and I've had it on every hard drive I owned until last year, when I accidentally deleted my personal copy. Very few moments in my life have affected me on a personal level. Even to this day I get very sad thinking about it.

My dear reader, you might wonder why I don't just go to Spotify or Apple Music. Unfortunately Heliotrope, by Cruk'dStr8 is now lost media. The album has been scrubbed off the internet and now the only way to even know it existed at some point is Cruk'dStr8's Twitter page. I found a Hulkshare link (from a reply on that twitter page) but only 1 of the songs on there is actually playable (Dead Fantasy | Kizzy Kane). So the copy I deleted might have been the last copy. Like me, you might be wondering why the group would do this despite their success.

Well after Heliotrope, the group would go dark. Nothing to be heard from the core duo, but affiliated acts like Shabazz, Quesi B, and BrainyBeatz would keep going. By 2016 however, Cruk'dStr8 and affiliated acts would all stop making music. But in November 2017 I saw something strange. A new act from Ghana had dropped an incredible album and it was turning heads. I listened to it a few times and while the music was incredible I couldn't shake the feeling that I've heard this before. Now I have taken care to withhold the names of the core duo of Cruk'dStr8 , because maybe someone smarter than me would make the connection immediately. Their names were ERA and RAE.

Passionfruit Summers is the debut album from Ghanaian-American singer, songwriter Amaarae. If you knew about Cruk'dStr8 and Heliotrope, the sound is all there. Sonically it's extremely polished and the production quality was incredible. I couldn't believe it. One of my favourite Ghanaian musicians dropped a commercial tape, and its highly acclaimed! This album came with a new sounds and techniques that were slowly bubbling in the underground hip-hop and hip-life scene in Nigeria, a genre now known as alté. This was similar to what Cruk'dStr8 were doing a few years back but with a clear distinction and better execution. You see while Cruk'dStr8's sound was African inspired but clearly built on top off American hip-hop tendencies, alté music is built on top of hip-life tendencies with American style sprinkled here and there.

At this point I still had my copy of Heliotrope but I did a quick search online and that's when I realized it was all gone. As a matter of fact, Cruk'dStr8 is not mentioned anywhere by Amaarae as where she got her start. It's almost as if she doesn't want to be associated with that anymore. Few years ago, Moliy Music (co-writer and performer of Sad Girlz Luv Money) took to Twitter to accuse Amaarae of not sharing proceeds with her. This didn't seem to go anywhere and was forgotten about quickly, but I couldn't help but think of Cruk'dStr8 and ERA.

I've been keeping up with Amaarae partially because I want to see her rise to fame in first person but also I really want her to say something about Cruk'dStr8. Why delete the old music? What happened to ERA? What happened to Cruk'dStr8? I'm still not done looking for this tape. My plan is to reach out to former Cruk'dStr8 affiliates and hope they can send me a copy and/or explain what happened between 2014 and 2017.

Anyway here is a version of FunkyFlavaDopeShit posted on Quesi B's SoundCloud page: https://soundcloud.com/otis_7/crukdstr8-funkyflavadopeshit

Another late reading report, I'm starting to make it an habit. In my defence, I had no access to the internet for my laptop, so I couldn't have possibly released it sooner. The backlog is done, and I've released all the articles I wanted for the year. While I'm catching up on other things that had taken the backseat due to the backlog, it's also the holiday season, so I have more reading time overall. Unfortunately, I had to spend it reading the monstrosity below:

Manic Pixie e-girl – Nate Lemcke

I have so much to say about that book, but as it is part of the bookclub white elephant, I will refrain to speak until we get the presentation.

Drawing the Female Figure: A Guide for Manga, Hentai and Comic Book Artists – Hikaru Hayashi

Not that much to say about that book, as it's mostly pictures, and it's also part of the bookclub white elephant. So again, I will refrain to comment on it until we get the presentation. I can't wait to see Oncle's drawings.

La juste part (The fair share) – Patrick Turmel

Neat little book. The main thesis of the book is rebuking that the disparity of capital ownership is moral. It often uses a philosophical angle, and debunks some common arguments meant to oppose redistribution. It also shows that the redistribution is not only morally just, but also beneficial to a society as a whole.

I found the book interesting in its arguments, but thought it was a bit shy in its criticism of capitalism. It also chose to debunk/support arguments that were a bit too obvious and easy. Yeah, obviously redistribution would be beneficial to a society, rather than having a select few hoarding everything. Yeah, obviously having people who own everything is harmful to democracy. Don't get me wrong, the book is decent, but maybe my expectations were for it to go further than: it's bad to have a society where the overwhelming majority of people own nothing, and a couple of people own everything.

Wind and Truth – Brandon Sanderson

The GOAT is back with a new entry in the Stormlight Archives, and this is the last book of the first arc. I will not provide a synopsis here, because the other four books before this are all 1100+ pages, and it would actually make no sense to anyone that hasn't read those.

This is the longest book I have ever read, clocking at 1344 pages, and honestly it was almost great the whole way through. It slowed down a bit between pages 900-1000, but then we're back. I really liked the direction that my boy Brandon took a lot of the characters in story-wise, and I was hooked to most story lines. One issue that I had is that a lot of characters have had plot lines resolved in the previous books, so they only have one remaining internal conflict left here, and it really makes most of them a bit too one-dimensional and one-note. The themes are also very ham-fisted, which I didn't really like at all. The one things that really took me out of the book for a little bit was the whole mental illness language used in the book by the characters; the societies in the books have no concept of mental illness, and suddenly now everyone talks with IRL mental illness sensitivities, using therapy appropriate language. It's a bit jarring for some characters.

As usual, the book is divided in parts, and between those are sandwiched some interludes. For once, those were a pleasure to read (I had some trouble with them in the previous volumes). The story is great and the world build as usual first class. We finally get some answers on the big mystery of the universe, but at the same time still get more questions. It's just good, but my man Brandon really need more editors, this book could have been much better written, and easily 200, maybe 300, pages shorter. It's good, but could easily have been great with more effort from the author.

Murder at Haven's Rock – Kelley Armstrong

Back to the Rockton Series, after having last read it in September. For the synopsis, please refer to Elisa's Reading Roundup: Finding my Book Twin

We're back with Casey and Eric, in a new setting. Gotta be honest, I was kinda of a hater on this one. The formula is starting to show, and I don't like it. Casey and Dalton split up all the time, for Dalton to run into the forest cause his keen eye has caught something. He never catches anything (just like in the previous books), and by now they should have learned that something bad always happens when they split up. Another classic is Cassey (a god-damn great detective — or so I'm told by everyone in the book) never figures out who the bad guy/girl is until they are literally shooting at her or other people of the town at the end of the book. People behaving like robots, and unnatural dialogues are other classics that we can find here. Apart from that, the writing is still engaging, and fast-paced, not wasting our time. I do miss the town and its inhabitant, as they at least brought some interesting interludes between the investigations bouts. It's not bad by any means, it's entertaining as usual, but it's a bit too formulaic despite the change of setting. I hope for some more originality in the next book.

No manga this month, took a little break. But I still read a lot. A year of reading and I've got about 39 books and 667 manga chapters under my belt. Not too shabby. Apart from a couple of dishonourable mentions, especially the first book of this review, it has mostly been a blast. I feel like I am at a good reading equilibrium, between staying in my comfort zone, and being more adventurous with my readings. My backlog of books is as long as my arm, but I think I'll make a decent dent into it next year. I am in no rush. Happy New Year.

Thank you for reading my logorrhea Eddie

The Q3 version of this roundup was sitting in the archives and never got uploaded. As a (not-so) special treat, here is my round up for the entire second half of 2024. Please enjoy the read for the hater behaviour, but sadly I don't have any new winners to suggest this time around

Stats breakdown from July – December 2024

• Total books read: ~5
• Reading mediums: 4 audiobooks & 1 combination of physical & audiobook
• Time spent reading: ~24.5 hours

Books Read + Reviews

Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman Medium: audiobook

I usually write these once I finish the book but I need to note my thoughts right now as I finished the first third on the Via Rail to Montréal.

I – – Listen, I've seen the movie which gave me secondhand embarrassment then but uhh… The book is something else. Elio is horrendously HORRENDOUSLY down bad for Oliver. I'm listening to this on the train like 😶😳🫣 I may be able to make better sense of my thoughts later but

1. I'm astonished by everything Elio projects onto Oliver, like he is this master of social interactions and understanding others better than themselves. I guess this is maybe meant to be part of the perspective he would have as a 17-year old idolizing an older man but I think he's giving him entirely too much credit. He's literally just some guy.
2. Knowing that they get together later, the 17 vs 24 year old thing is extra EXTRA weird now that I myself am 24 (at time of writing). Oliver, he is literally a child. What the hell do you want with him? Leave him alone!!
3. Elio is actually unhinged and like past the point of usual yearning, agony & shame I would think.

Okay we're at the peach scene and it's so much more uncomfortable to listen to the book version 😖

My hold lapsed so I’m revisiting this again a month later to finish it. And I’m regretting it lol. More uncomfortable scenes and it's just getting a bit too pretentious for me.

Okay I powered through and finished it. I cannot in good conscience recommend this. Others may like it but I think I could have lived with just having seen the movie adaptation (which at least you get to see the beautiful Italian views and the great soundtrack). But I think Elio's inner monologue was just a bit too unhinged and pretentious to me.

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro Medium: Audiobook

Hmm… I'm not really sure what to say about this one. I think it was meant to be a heartfelt story about AI but it felt kind of meandering at times and too vague about the setting and circumstances. I enjoyed the childlike, egoless perspective of the narrator but it did make the novel overall feel like it was written by an elementary school student. Am I saying it's bad? No. It literally won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Did I feel any type of way about it? Also no.

I think the points and takeaways of this book are not so profound, especially for it having been published in 2021. There was one point where I thought things were going to take an interesting turn but it didn't amount to much. Personally, I would skip this one.

I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jeanette McCurdy Medium: Audiobook

This memoir wasn't quite what I expected, which is neither good nor bad. Despite the initial press buzz on the cheeky book name, and the literal review on the book cover that this was “Impressively funny”, I did not find much humour in this book (not even the dark kind). More than anything, I felt sad and sorry for Jeanette McCurdy and the various things she went through (additional to the Nickelodeon/Dan Schneider stuff). If you are curious about reading this, I would consult the content warnings first. While I didn't find the content triggering, it definitely could be for some.

Obviously, it's a memoir about a very public life but I feel like the few press interviews I saw when it come out covered/spoiled the big events and themes of the book. For that reason, I'm not sure it's worth the read? Idk I feel conflicted. If you're curious to know the details, you could probably read an article instead. On the bright side, it was nice to hear that she and Miranda Cosgrove had an actual friendship for many years, even after iCarly ended.

The Assassination of Fred Hampton by Jeffrey Haas Medium: Audiobook

I was still kind of in a book slump when I was reading this but thankfully it was a welcome change. I appreciated being able to learn more about Fred Hampton, the Black Panthers and their ideology, the FBIs involvement in the assassination + their other attempts to dismantle or thwart the civil rights movement. I watched Judas and the Black Messiah (2021) in the midst of reading this and it helped me do a better job of organizing the different people involved. It got a bit overwhelming at times to manage all the names + legal events when listening via audiobook.

Additionally, I would have preferred if Jeff Haas centred himself less in the telling of these events. It was kinda whiplash-inducing when he would drop in some details about who he was dating at that time and just get back to talking about the court case.

Happy Place by Emily Henry Medium: Physical (Kaitlyn’s copy) + Audiobook

Although I finished this book at the end of the year, I started reading the copy Kaitlyn lent me back in April. Because I read it sporadically across the months, I don't have the clearest memory of everything. This was also the only true romance book I read in 2024.

I really loved the cozy vibes of the costal town setting and the friendship in this book. Emily Henry always excels in setting the vibe that way. In truth, I think I liked the friendships in this book quite a bit more than the romantic relationship between the main characters. The miscommunication trope was kind of annoying too and the reconciliation didn't come together in the best way in my opinion. But the friendships and the way certain characters talked about their upbringings resonated with me most. I also quite liked the passage where she describes the meditative process of pottery wheel throwing. All in all, a nice little read to close out the year.

And now... the Round Up to the Round Up!

My Top 3 Reads of the Year: Dune, Cultish, Everything I Know About Love

Dishonourable Mentions: Call Me By Your Name, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead, Klara and The Sun + a handful of books I DNF'd

And as always, thanks for reading if you got this far!

This month I read 4 ebooks, 1 eaudiobook, and 1 physical book from the Toronto Public Library, totaling to 6 books.

Dishonourable Mentions

Blood Rubies by Mailan Doquang

Synopsis: Rune thought that this would be her biggest score yet: a bag of Charles Lemaire’s prized rubies. If she fenced it, the money would change her and Kit’s (her boyfriend) lives. But Kit’s younger sister Madee has gone missing, last seen in the slums of Bangkok. And Charles Lemaire is holding Kit hostage until Rune returns his rubies, which she lost while looking for Madee. Will Rune be able to rescue her friends, and herself? Or will she be forced to make an impossible decision?

My thoughts: Readers will know that I love a heist novel, but this one didn’t grab me at all. I didn’t find it engaging, nor were the characters that compelling, and the events of the book were starting to stress me out. So I didn’t feel the need to keep reading it.

You may like this book if: you, like Rune, are mixed race (she’s half American, half Thai)

And now for the Real Reviews:

Ruthless Vows by Rebecca Ross

Synopsis: It’s been two weeks since Roman and Iris were married at the front lines (the happiest day in Iris’ life). But it’s also been two weeks since the town was attacked, Iris was captured by her brother Forrest (MIA from Dacre’s army), and Roman’s presumed death. Iris has been forced to retreat back to Oath, and has continued writing articles for the Inkridden Tribune. The paper has asked for her and Attie to return to the front lines to continue their reporting. Meanwhile, Roman has been killed, captured, and brought back to life by Dacre and his forces. He doesn’t remember much of his past life, but he knows that he doesn’t trust Dacre. Will Iris and Roman ever survive this war and reunite?

My thoughts: I might have been influenced by reading some bad reviews of this book but I didn’t really like it that much. The first book in the series was driven primarily by Iris’ and Roman’s relationship, which kind of created rose-coloured glasses for the rest of the story. For this book didn’t have the same driving force, and was much more lackluster. I also listened to this book as an audiobook, and I definitely did not like either of the narrators. Usually this isn’t a problem for me, but their voices irritated me and their accents felt pretentious. To me, it definitely detracted from the story. But the main issue with this book isn’t really the presence of something bad, but more the absence of anything that was really good or interesting.

Rating: 2/5 enchanted coffee shops, where your drink never gets cold

The Art Forger by B. A. Shapiro

Synopsis: After a scandal that rocked the Boston art world, no one is willing to give Claire Roth a chance. Despite her talent, the only work that she can get is painting reproductions of classic paintings. But suddenly, it seems as though her luck may have changed. Renowned gallerist Aiden Markel waltzes into her studio with a proposition: he’ll stage a show of Claire’s paintings at his gallery. All she has to do is paint a reproduction for him. It’s too tempting to refuse, so Claire agrees. But when she sees the painting that she’s supposed to reproduce, she’s shocked. It’s Edgar Degas’ After the Bath, which was famously stolen from the Isabella Steward Gardiner museum during a robbery in 1990. Claire should report this to the police, but Aiden assures her that the authorities will eventually be notified, once the reproduction is finished. However, Claire isn’t sure. As she falls in love with Aiden, she grows more and more paranoid that this After the Bath is also a reproduction, and that the original one must be somewhere else. And when Aiden is arrested on charges of art fraud, Claire panics, and starts desperately searching for the real version of After the Bath in order to exonerate Aiden. Will she like what she finds? Or is this an art mystery that is best left unsolved?

My thoughts: Overall I thought this book was pretty interesting. Probably its biggest feature was the window into Claire’s mind, where she constantly expresses her love for art and paintings. She’s absolutely transfixed by Degas’ works, and it’s really interesting to see all of the emotion that she feels. However, I was pretty shocked to see Aiden’s (and other’s) perspectives that collecting art was addicting, and that having the only copy of a certain work of art is so intoxicating that it would compel you to commit crimes. It’s the kind of language that I would more associate with addictions like drugs or gambling. As a final note, I was somewhat disappointed that After the Bath was not a real painting. Obviously, if the author is going to speculate about the personal relationships of the artist and his contemporaries, then it makes sense to invent a work of art to be discussed. But I can’t help feeling a bit disappointed that there weren’t more connections to existing works of art.

Rating: 3/5 secret rooms in the Gardner Museum that might just contain the answer we’ve been looking for

Ghost Story by Jim Butcher (Dresden Files #13)

Synopsis: Harry Dresden is dead. Or is he? After being shot in the chest, and falling into the icy waters of Lake Michigan, Harry wakes up in a strange place with a familiar face. It’s Ron Carmichael, a former CPD cop who was killed by a loup-garou in Fool Moon (see my June 2023 roundup). He leads Harry through the Between to a special office building, where Harry meets Jack Murphy (Karrin Murphy’s deceased father). Apparently, there was an irregularity with his death, Jack asks him to investigate his own murder, hinting that his loved ones may be killed if he doesn’t. Harry agrees, and finds himself thrust into a very different Chicago. In the real world, 6 months have passed since his death, and the city has fallen to pieces since it’s no longer under the protection of the White Council’s most notorious wizard. And to make matters worse, Harry is a ghost. He can’t interact with the mortal world, and he can’t perform magic. Will he really be able to solve his own murder and rescue his friends? Or is this really the end of Harry Dresden?

My thoughts: This book was really good, except for one major flaw (which I will discuss momentarily). I liked that Harry had to reflect on his actions that took place in the previous book, especially how he had harmed so many people in his quest to be chivalrous and “do the right thing.” I look forward to seeing how the ramifications of his actions play out in the future. I also liked how this book was drastically different from every other Dresden Files novel. Harry being a ghost severely limited his normal powers, and also showed Chicago from a really unique perspective. However, I thought that the Uriel/Kincaid plotline was really weak, which is a huge problem because it’s the whole reason that Harry became a ghost at all. It just feels like Jim Butcher had a cool concept for a book and had to shoehorn in a reason for it to have occurred. It’s not just that Harry was manipulated, but that the internal logic of the story didn’t really make a lot of sense. The resolution of that whole plotline was a big disappointment for me.

Rating: 4/5 empty graves that have been beautifully maintained for you for this whole time

March Roars by Maureen Jennings (Paradise Cafe Series #4)

Synopsis: Private Detective Charlotte Frayne has recently received a peculiar letter. After the well publicized arrest of two young Black boys for robbery, a woman at Toronto’s House of Industry (the poor house) claims that they are innocent. She says that she witnessed the true thieves (two White men) acting suspicious shortly after the robbery took place, and that she now fears for her own safety by reporting them. Charlotte is forced to interview this woman and try to piece together what exactly is going on.

My thoughts: This book was decent, although it felt somewhat superficial. Charlotte suddenly becomes aware of the struggles of Black Torontonians in the 1930s (some of whom she has been friends with for many years), but doesn’t really use her station to make a difference (besides freeing the two boys from prison). I also feel like this series lacks a “B” plot, where the relationships between the main cast of characters would usually develop. It’s supposed to revolve around the Paradise Cafe, but Charlotte rarely, if ever, appears there. We didn’t develop deeper relationships with anyone else at the cafe, nor really see what was happening there, and that’s a major reason why I felt that this book lacked substance.

Rating: 3/5 single, engraved cufflinks that were pawned by a mysterious woman with a secret identity

The Vortex: A True Story of History's Deadliest Storm, an Unspeakable War, and Liberation by Scott Carney and Jason Miklian

Synopsis: This book describes the lead up and the after effects of the Great Bhola Cyclone, which killed an estimated 500 000 people in the Bay of Bengal in November 1970. The cyclone can be considered the catalyst for the revolutionary movement (and brutal crackdown) that took place in East Pakistan, eventually leading to the formation of Bangladesh.

My thoughts: I thought this book was super interesting and really well written. Readers will know that I am a fan of narrative nonfiction, and I thought it was a great choice by the authors to bring parts of the true story to life. I know that not everything happened irl the way that it’s depicted in the books, but it was much more digestible for me (especially because I didn’t know anything about East Pakistan and the formation of Bangladesh before reading this book). I liked how the authors focused on several different perspectives in order to create a full picture of what was purportedly going on, and it was super impressive to see all the research that they had done.

Rating: 4/5 planned capital cities that were built ahead of schedule and under budget (but were unfortunately the only good thing that you ever accomplished).

Barcelona Red Metallic by Christine Cosack

Synopsis: The hit-and-run death of a small child in Oyster Hill, British Columbia shocks residents of the sleepy small town. The RCMP sends a team to investigate the accident site, and the only tangible clue they find is a fragment of Barcelona Red Metallic paint. Even after the initial investigation, the case stays with Luci Miller. But more than the family of the victim, the family of Jo Nelson (plus her son Oliver and grandson Nico) stays with Luci. Will she ever find out what happened on that fateful morning?

My thoughts: I found this book to be pretty different than other crime novels. The tone was very gentle but not cozy, which is a fine line to walk in mystery fiction. I also appreciated how the majority of the book was about Jo, and how she raised her chronically ill son (Oliver has cystic fibrosis). I also thought the ending was very unexpected (which isn’t generally great), but in a way that made sense with Jo’s character and the information that we already knew about her.

Rating: 4/5 paintings of lung-shaped lichens

Introduction

In his book on the subject, Cal Newport defines Digital Minimalism as “a philosophy of technology use in which you focus your online time on a small number of carefully selected and optimized activities that strongly support things you value, and then happily miss out on everything else” (Newport, 2019). The key principles of this approach are:

1. Value Alignment - appraising each technology you keep in your life based on its utility and alignment with your values. Ideally, only engaging with digital tools that meaningfully enhance your life.
2. Optimization - determining how you will use a particular technology (i.e. boundaries, limitations, etc).
3. Intentionality - prioritizing active and purposeful use of technology over passive content consumption.

To set yourself on the metaphorical road to recovery, Newport prescribes what he calls a Digital Declutter. It involves taking a 30-day break from all optional technologies to reset habits and gain clarity on how technology affects your life. This is not simply a “digital detox”, but a structured exercise to evaluate and rebuild your digital habits intentionally. The objective is not to reject technology outright but to reclaim autonomy and align digital usage with personal priorities.

1. Step Back: Identify and temporarily remove all optional technologies for 30 days. This might include social media, entertainment apps, and even certain communication tools, depending on your personal needs and goals.
2. Rewire: During the 30 days (and beyond), you also need to engage in some key practices & behaviours to bolster this exercise and enable it to be sustainable long-term.
   • Embrace Solitude - when you are spending time alone with your own mind, you are free from the input of others. As a result, you are then using this time for self-reflection or thinking through things. This boredom often leads to creativity.

   • Meaningful Connection/Conversation - prioritizing talking/calling and face-to-face connections with others as opposed to likes or comments on a social media platform.
     • Newport suggests creating or identifying “office hours” where you regularly open up time to connect with others. For example, taking advantage of the downtime in your daily commute and encouraging family & friends to call you during that time. Alternatively, having a routine where you’re always at a certain coffee shop at a certain time on a certain day of the week and friends can find you there (sound familiar? 😉).
   • High-Quality Leisure
     • Honing Your Craft - identifying a “craft” you want to get good at. You convert the time and energy spent on passive consumption to high-quality leisure that is ultimately more energizing and validating (ex. making something tangible with your hands). This doesn’t have to be an art-focused craft.

     • Super-Charged Socializing - participating in activities that require real-world, structured, social interactions where the structure takes the pressure off how you will socialize. My personal example would be my dance classes each week.
3. Reintroduce Selectively: After the declutter, carefully reintroduce only those technologies that add substantial value to your life and define clear boundaries for their use.

Methods

In July, I somewhat covertly underwent a digital declutter experiment of my own. I elected not to talk about exactly what I was doing in order to focus on the journey myself with no outside input. Additionally, I wanted to set up a sort of control and not have others act differently to accommodate my choice.

For context, I work a predominantly remote job in tech where I stare at a screen for roughly 8hrs a day. As a result, I am seldom compelled to then spend time on my personal laptop or watch TV after work. The little screen in my hand is another story, however. Naturally, my goals for this digital declutter were focused on my phone use. Truthfully, I should have done a better job noting down what I gave up as I cannot recall everything now months later. Regardless, my reflections will be on the key players and not the forgettable apps I removed.

Notable apps I had that I got rid of: YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok

The boundaries I set around their use: When I occasionally needed to use the first three, I could access them through a web browser/on my laptop. The others were to remain off of my phone for the 30 days.

Results

During the duration of this experiment, some interesting results were observed. For starters, there were no logins to Pinterest the entire month, not even on my laptop! Facebook, however, was redownloaded a few times for dance-related communications that I would have otherwise missed as I do not have an Instagram account. In the spirit of full transparency, I did fall into scrolling a few times when I had it reinstalled for brief periods.

Regrettably, I wasn’t able to capture great stats on the results of this experiment. iPhone’s Screen Time tracker unfortunately has many blindspots when it comes to usage data that I did not realize until late in the game. Most notably, if you uninstall an application, the usage data related to it from previous weeks also gets wiped and provides an inaccurate record of how much time was spent on the app. Additionally, iPhone only stores the past month’s screen time. Thankfully I took some screenshots as I went. However, I was unable to compare my results to a broader time range to assess how much things had changed from my average behaviour in the past.

Putting the data tracking issues aside, I did observe a significant drop in daily screen time of about 34% in the first week. Additionally, the number of times I picked up my phone kept decreasing week over week. There was no discernable difference in sleep quality, duration, or schedule according to my Fitbit data. However, I did not set a boundary on before-bed phone usage during this experiment. While I wasn’t scrolling or watching content before bed, I had a lot of things to sort through or plan in July. I often needed to spend some time before bed looking things up (Chrome, Google Calendar, etc) to quell the swirling thoughts in my head so I could sleep.

Post 30-Day Declutter

I am pleased to share that most things have remained the same pertaining to my technology use, but there have definitely been pitfalls. I have not reinstalled YouTube, Pinterest, or Snapchat since. I have also taken additional measures on the phone browser version of YouTube (that I check at most once a month) to make it even less appealing and addicting. I have logged onto Pinterest via my laptop only a handful of times since then. Recently, I even deleted my Snapchat account entirely after months of not having been active on it.

I have, however, fallen victim to Facebook and TikTok scrolling syndrome several times since August when the digital declutter ended. I am in a cycle of reinstall and uninstall with these two apps, but I am at least curbing the habit by not having them on my phone the majority of the time. I’m planning to be better about it and set better boundaries and systems.

Discussion

Coming out of this experiment, there were a handful of personal positives and takeaways that stood out to me. Firstly, and most obviously, not being served up sludge content on an infinite scroll allowed me not to fall into a massive timesink. The few times I did get presented with it, I did not feel the same addictive pull and was able to resurface much quicker than I usually would. It was interesting to me how the urge to scroll was the strongest when I was looking for a coping mechanism. Some café users may recall that I suffered a serious burn on my leg in July. After the incident, I just wanted to scroll so that I could self-soothe and take my mind off the pain. It made me stop and reflect on how passive media consumption has become a normalized response to tune out unpleasant feelings or experiences, as well as the escapism of it all.

Secondly, this experiment affirmed that I don’t have to search or validate everything I am doing. Typically, I would have flocked to Pinterest to seek inspiration for my outfit when I was going to my first-ever Renaissance Faire; or to TikTok/YouTube to get some ideas on what to do for my travel plans that month. I got the chance to be more creative about how I approached situations like this, more confident in my own decisions without external input, and just more comfortable with the overall not-knowing as the Type A person I am. Also, it was just really humbling have to Google these things and then go watch a YouTube video at a maximum of 480p on my Chrome browser app. It made me question if it was even worth searching up.

The third, and also obvious but now affirmed takeaway, was that being unaware of all the new trends dulled the consumerist pull. It’s no surprise just how much product peddling happens on social platforms, especially Tiktok, but it’s easy to become desensitized to it with just how ubiquitous it is. When you distance yourself from it a bit, it’s also hard to fathom just how many content creators exist out there to post the same type of consumerist content in the name of selling an aesthetic or a lifestyle. Like surely we don’t need this many, and it’s all so pointless anyway...

Criticisms

While this has been an eye-opening experience and one I recommend to everyone, I have a few criticisms based on what I observed. Firstly, I did not feel as much creative or action-inspiring boredom from this declutter as when I have my Unplugged Days. Once a week for Unplugged Days, I put my phone in a drawer and work off a paper to-do list of things I want to get done that do not involve a phone or computer. Personally, I find that more effective because I am not aimlessly bored and I have structure through the menu of things I can do. In some measure, this does link back to what Newport says about having a game plan for the time that will be freed up.

Secondly, I observed that in my personal life, it’s easy to become disconnected to current events. I’m not really on social media and I am seldom tuning into TV or radio news. Not being constantly bombarded with news stories is better for your mental state overall, but it overlaps with the privilege to opt out of injustice happening in the world. As a result, you have to be more intentional to seek out (ideally quality) sources of information and ways of staying informed. This is an area that I’m still trying to sort out for myself.

Lastly, there is potential for isolating behaviours or narrowing of your social sphere. Newport shares in his book that most people cite a fear of being disconnected when removing optional social media from their lives. It’s a valid concern based on how our society has previously put these applications on a pedestal and made it seem like they are the pinnacle of connectivity. When you pull back the curtains, you see how shallow and superficial most of these friendships are. Speaking from the experience of not having most social media accounts for the last few years, it has created a funnel where only the most meaningful and quality friendships have remained active in my life. However, not being plugged into the digital realm where social interactions happen and plans are sometimes made can keep your social circle small and stagnant. To overcome this, there has to be more involved effort to seek out events or make new friends. This ultimately is a good behaviour to reinforce but it requires more will, planning, and intentionality to combat the various obstacles and deterrents.

Conclusion

In summation, I would recommend Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism and the 30-day Digital Declutter to any and all that are the slightest bit curious. I see it being more impactful and sustainable to do this declutter and boundary-setting around technology use, rather than going for more acute measures. I, myself, had considered getting a dumb phone and at this point, I don’t feel the need to do that so long as I work through what my technology use rules are and slowly work towards bringing my screen time down more. In preparation for 2025, I have been looking into how I can optimize my phone to help support these goals. I have linked a video on that, and some other resources that inspired this article in the section below.

References & Resources

• Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport
• Video summary of some of the book: https://youtu.be/sJdZ7kmA2QQ?feature=shared
• Perks of Living w/o Social Media by Newport: https://youtu.be/m6AF_aFuD8w?feature=shared
• YT Video on how to make your smartphone into a dumbphone: https://youtu.be/7jVb1lLniEw?si=U02m8KRwUL-gVglS