Jyvur Entropy's Blog, page 58

Incel: Chapter Two; Most Females

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The end of his shift, finally. Time to go home and spend a few hours playing Red Dead Redemption, maybe chill on reddit, eat a frozen pizza, and catch some sleep. He didn’t have to wait for Chuck tonight either. He’d thought it would be neat having his younger brother work at the store with him, but Chuck was still working on getting his license, so it had really just been a pain in the ass. Chuck worked in the seafood department, which closed an hour earlier than the deli, so you’d think it’d be chill. Nope, freaking Chuck took forever to finish his cleaning checklist, leaving Adam to sit and wait in the break room for thirty or forty-five minutes every night. Chuck liked to complain that Adam had help and that’s why he always finished closing first. Yeah, Adam had covered seafood before. They never scheduled more than one person because they didn’t need to. Closing seafood was a breeze. Chuck was just a slow, whiny asshat.

Emily walked back to the time-clock with him, but she was on her phone the whole time, so he didn’t try to talk to her. Emily was cool. She was kind of shy, but cool overall. Adam thought about asking her out sometimes. He wasn’t sure about it, only ‘cuz they worked together. They were the only two who liked closing, so they worked alone together four nights of the week on average. That’d just be weird if it didn’t go over good.

After they’d both punched the time-clock, Adam gave Emily a wave and ducked into the coat room to grab his windbreaker.

“Hey, Adam?” Emily called.

He stepped back into the hallway, shoving his arms into the sleeves of his coat.

“What’s up?”

“Do you think you could give me a ride? My friend was supposed to pick me up, but now she’s saying she can’t.”

“Um, yeah, sure. Where do you live?”

Emily gave a sheepish smile.

“Pepperell.”

“Where’s that? I never heard of it.”

“Only like an hour.”

“An hour? Why do you live an hour away from the store?”

Emily shrugged and pushed a strand of dark blonde hair out of her face. She always took her hair down the second they were out from behind the deli counter. She always said that after wearing a hair-net all day, she couldn’t stand to have her hair in a bun any longer.

“I moved a few weeks ago,” she said. “After me and my boyfriend broke up.”

Adam’s eyes widened. He hadn’t even realized Emily had a boyfriend. She’d never mentioned him. Adam would know. He’d been paying attention. An hour was inconvenient. It was definitely shaving off some of his relaxation time. Still, spending some time with Emily outside of work could give him a better idea of whether or not she was feeling him like he was feeling her.

“Yeah,” Emily continued, darting into the coat closet to snatch her purse and sweatshirt. “I’m living with some friends of mine. Pepperell is just over the Massachusetts border. I’d owe you big time if you could give me a ride. Seriously, next time you need a shift covered, I’m all over it.”

She pulled her sweatshirt, one of those ones that said “Pink” all over it, even though the color of the clothing was black.

“I guess it’s not a huge deal,” Adam relented. “I’m not driving Chuck home tonight, so why not?”

Emily thrust her purse onto her shoulder and gave him a stunning smile.

“Great! You’re the best, Adam.”

“Yeah, so I hear,” he muttered sarcastically.

Emily giggled.

He led her out to his car, parked on the receiving end of the building next to the dumpster.

“Wow, this is your car?”

He didn’t miss the note of disgust in her voice. She wrinkled her nose, looking over his battered 2009 Volkswagen Jetta. She took a step back, eyeballing the stickers plastered over the bumper and around the edge of the back window.

“Oh no,” she laughed. “You’re an anime guy?” She pointed at the One Piece and Death Note stickers on the right side of the bumper.

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Adam fumbled in his pocket for his eyes and unlocked his door. He decided not to answer the question. Whatever. Let this girl judge him for being a weeb. What did he care? Not like he had any chance with her anyway. Stupid. He was always aiming for girls out of his league. His first and only girlfriend had set him up for failure. Monica hadn’t known how hot she was. If she did, she wouldn’t have gone out with an awkward, ginger kid like him. They’d only dated for three months during their Sophomore year of high school. And now Adam kept catching feelings for chicks who didn’t even exist in the same reality as him, that’s how hot they were. He really needed to knock it off and find himself a weeb girl already…

He reached over the passenger seat and unlocked the door. He hurried to clear the crumbled fast food wrappers and empty Newbury Comics bags littering the seat.

Emily kind of half-laughed, half-scoffed, watching him do this. He was tempted to ask her if she wanted the ride or not. It wasn’t like she’d given him any notice that he’d be giving her a ride home. She sat down, stepping over the empty soda bottles and trash on the floor and turning up her mouth in distaste.

Adam had always liked Emily. It was amazing what five minutes outside of the work environment could do.

He turned the car on and lowered the volume of the music. He kept the volume turned up loud when it was just him in the car. He always had Ozzy, Alice in Chains, Disturbed, or Slipknot in the CD player.

“You can direct me?”

“Yeah. Head down to route three and I’ll direct you from there.”

“Cool.”

He drove out of the parking lot, heading down Amherst Street, the same way that he’d normally take home. He had to head toward Nashua to pick up route three. He lived in Merrimack, the next town over. Emily was quiet for the first ten minutes of the drive. Adam drove and Emily scrolled through her phone. It looked like she was browsing Instagram.

As Adam pulled to a stop at a red light, Emily looked up from her phone and stared at the CD player.

“What are we listening to?”

“Ozzy.”

“Who?”

Adam sighed. “What kind of music do you like?”

“I’m a total Swiftie and a Directioner.”

Why had he liked this girl again? Shitty pop music. It was occurring to him now that he’d never talked about anything except work with Emily. All they ever did was make fun of customers and their stuck-up bosses. Maybe turning the conversation back to work could save this hour-long ride from cringe-inducing awkwardness.

“Did you see that mess with Steve today?”

Emily burst out laughing. “Oh no!” she howled. “You saw that too?”

“I was helping move a pallet in frozen food. I think I caught the tail-end of it.”

“What an idiot. He always tells us not to chew gum. He blew a freaking bubble while talking to a customer. Who does that?”

“Apparently Steve does.”

“She tore him up. That old lady was mad.”

“Good. That guy’s a prick.”

“I heard he used to be really fat. Like obese.”

“Seriously?” Adam shook his head. “He’s always making fun of fat guys. This makes so much sense now.”

“He’s unprofessional as anything. Wish they’d fire him.”

“If they’re gonna fire anybody, it should be Mike.”

“He reeks like booze every time he comes back from lunch. It’s like he bathes in it.”

They spent the rest of the ride this way, sticking to work-related topics. What else was he gonna talk to her about? Weeb shit and metal music? Or he could let her lead the conversation and he’d be talking about Taylor Swift and the latest Marvel movie. She just struck him as the sort of girl who watched whatever everybody else was watching and Marvel was having a real moment right now.

He was sick of her by the time he dropped her off in front of her house.

“Thanks for the ride, Adam.”

“No problem.”

“See you tomorrow.”

“See ya.”

Ah, she was okay. She couldn’t help it. Most females were boring as shit.

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Incel: Chapter One; Karma

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There was a lot to hate about working at Wal-Mart, but without a doubt what he hated the most was dealing with Karens. Females over fifty with that ‘can I speak to your manager’ haircut gave him a headache on sight. Even working the closing shift, where three hours of the night was packing up the machinery and mopping the floors, he had to deal with, on average, half a dozen Karens a shift. Today was a special case though. He was currently staring down Karen number eleven, and yes, he had counted. The only thing that made a shift bearable was saving up stories of rude customers for that sweet reddit karma.

“Did you hear what I said?” the old hag snapped. “I said I need Boar’s Head brand Havarti. Are you stupid?”

Adam sighed and repeated himself for the fifth time.

“Like I already said, ma’am,” he said with forced politeness. “We don’t have that brand. Can I offer you an alternative?”

She rolled her eyes and gaped at him through her ostentatious aviator-style glasses. This one was a hip Karen, or one trying to be anyway. She pursed her heavily-lined lips. Adam would never understand why women over thirty even bothered putting on make-up. They looked old no matter what they did.

“Again, you are not listening. I need Boar’s Head.”

She said this slowly, like he was some kind of idiot.

“We don’t have that brand.”

“Well, that’s the brand I need.”

“Okay, what are you asking me to do?”

She clicked her tongue. “Get me half a pound of Boar’s Head Havarti!”

“We don’t carry that brand.”

“Well, what can you do for me?”

“Do you want something else?”

She gasped and threw her hands in the air. “No! I want Boar’s Head Havarti!”

Adam grit his teeth together. “Do you want to speak to a manager?”

Her eyes bulged.

“How-How dare you?” she shrieked. “What is that supposed to mean?”

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“It seems like I can’t help you. We’re going around in circles. I don’t know what else to do for you.”

“Fine! Yes!” she spluttered. “Get me your manager. I want to tell him what an awful job you’re doing. No wonder you work here.”

Adam turned on his heel and walked away from her.

“Where are you going?”

He didn’t even bother to tell her that he was going to call a manager. If she had any brains in her head, she’d figure it out. He pushed through the swinging door next to the fryers and entered the kitchen.

Emily turned from her position at the sink to glance over at him. She smiled.

“Customer trouble?” she laughed.

Adam forced a smile onto his face, trying not to let his anger and embarrassment show. He hated confrontations. He hated when customers came in looking for a fight. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to provide good customer service. Some of them made it impossible though. They didn’t want a solution. They only wanted to be mad.

“It’s all good,” Adam sighed. He gave a shrug, as he picked up the phone to page management. “What can you do? Some people go through life looking to get mad. All they need is someone to direct all that angry energy at.”

Emily smiled again, before turning back to the sink.

“What do you always say? At least you get karma out of it?”

Adam chuckled, mostly because he wasn’t sure if Emily knew what reddit karma was. She could very well be talking about actual karma.

“Sure, I get karma. What goes around comes around.”

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To be continued…

All feedback welcome. Didn’t like it? Lay it on me in the comments!

'Incel' is Now a Banned Book

My book ‘Incel’ was removed from wattpad. I got one warning to tone down the “offensive content” and then several days later, my book was gone without any further messages from wattpad.

I never received any critical comments from readers. Because that’s the regressive left for you. Instead of telling me what the problem was with my book, they reported it and had it removed. SJW types do not believe in free speech, free expression.

Wattpad is nothing but SJW types, so the fact that my main character was an Incel who didn’t feel super positively about women, that’s all it took to get my book removed.

I write a book about a lonely guy who becomes bitter: removed!

And yet, look at wattpad’s erotica and romance sections. There are so many despicable stories of women being kidnapped and raped by hot dudes. “The gangleader is my sexy rapist who beats me” is basically the monomyth of wattpad. But I guess all of the romanticized abuse and violence against women is fine when it caters to female fantasy. The feminism buck stops real short when it comes time to soak some panties.

And my book wasn’t about or for women specifically. It was about the male experience. It was about the crisis young males are in right now. It was about the dread and loneliness of the modern male experience.

I’d absolutely argue all the disgusting romanticized abuse is far more problematic.

I’m not arguing those stories should be banned instead. I’m very anti-censorship. I just think it’s quite telling which books make the wattpad ban list.

Anyhow, I’m moving my book “Incel” here to wordpress.

I shall post it one chapter at a time. It will have it’s own category to make it easy to read in order.

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January DNFs

I’m getting a LOT more reading done lately, because I’m now working part-time for Instacart about 20 hours a week and it’s a job that comes with a ton of downtime. Seriously, if you want to be paid to sit and read for 5 hours you should apply to become an in-store shopper. Maybe my area of the country is just slow, but I’m over here reading and my coworkers are knitting and watching Netflix on the clock. Anyhow, more reading means more DNFing; here are my DNFs for January.

1 Red Queen



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I’ve heard a lot of negative stuff about this book, but all the negative reviews just made me want to read it more! A love rectangle, you say? Well, I adore a love triangle, so that oughta work for me. Lazy worldbuiding? I hate intricate worldbuilding. Slap a premise on it and call it a done deal. She spends half the book trying on pretty dresses? I’m not fronting. I like pretty dresses.

I was reasonably sure that I’d end up being one of the only people on booktube who actually likes this book. Alas, that was not the case.

What went wrong? Well, nothing major. It was really just a lot of little things. I only made it 50 pages in before I called it quits.

The main character wasn’t somebody I could connect to. I don’t know why, but I just didn’t care about her.

Then there was the tone and general feel of the book. It just felt VERY cliche-YA and I’m not really a YA reader, so it wasn’t my jam. I’ll read a YA every once in awhile if the premise is neat, but if the book isn’t unique or different, then it doesn’t make that cut. The writing style reminded me of The Hunger Games, but I hated The Hunger Games. Reading it annoyed me and I didn’t feel like anything new or interesting was coming. It felt like something I’d read many times before.

And wow, when people say the worldbuilding is lazy that’s an understatement. In one scene we’re hearing about ornate silk dresses and in the next we’re being told the family is out of batteries. What time period is this supposed to be? The clothing style sounds older, but the technology is 20th century. It’s not that this mishmash of time periods couldn’t be pulled off; it’s just that Aveyard didn’t pull it off. Instead of being interesting, it was just confusing. I didn’t feel grounded in the world at all. If a writer is going to create a brand new world, they have to make me believe it. Then it HAS to be detailed and intricate. Otherwise just create a stock medieval-European Tolkien/D&D-esque fantasy world. That style of worldbuilding gets a lot of hate, but I like it. I know what to expect.

Sometimes intricate and unique worldbuilding can be neat. Gideon the Ninth has such cool worldbuilding with necromancy and skeletons in space. Now this….it isn’t Gideon the Ninth, and Aveyard should have used a stock dystopian or stock fantasy world, but the world she created left me grappling, trying to figure out what the heck the world even WAS. Is it modern? Medieval? Is it dystopian? It had elements of a fallen modern civilization, but then how does the magic fit into that?

I did not understand what I was reading at all. So I gave up.

So disappointing. That cover is so damn gorgeous.

2 A Wind in the Door



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One of my goals for 2020 was to read the entire Time Quintet by Madeleine L’Engle. After reading ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ for the first time (somehow never got into it as a kid) and loving it, I was excited to dig into the remainder of this beloved series.

Yeah…no. I’m over that goal. I’m swapping this series out for the seven Anne of Green Gables books.

Book 2 of the Time Quintet was freaking painful. I listened to it on audiobook while driving and on my lunchbreak at work. While ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ was fun to listen to every day at lunch and on my commute home, I found myself starting to groan at the thought of slogging through another scene of ‘A Wind in the Door.’ That’s when I decided not to finish. I only had three chapters left, but I really didn’t care what happened to any of them.

Not after scene after scene AFTER SCENE of “Progo, I can’t!” “Yes, you can Meg. You need to do [such and such] and [insert ham-fisted message].”

My goodness it was boring. There was almost no action. It was all dialogue between Progo and Meg and him telling her to kithe to different characters. Kithe to Calvin and kithe to Mr.Jenkins.

This book was such a chore. I don’t know how the author didn’t bore herself to death writing it.

3 To Serve and Submit



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This is a poorly-written wannabe novel masquerading as erotica. Let’s not be slick. Look at that cover. Y’all know why I picked the book up. Then I start reading and this book advertising itself as smut is….an actual story.

Maybe I could forgive that if it was a good story. But it is not. All the fun sexy BDSM stuff is glossed over with almost no detail. The rape scene, however, that was super graphic.

I didn’t pick this up to read emotional and traumatic rape scenes.

What was the author thinking?

What was the cover artist and marketing team thinking? Why present this as smut when it isn’t?

Even the premise screams smut. The plot: Marja goes off to be trained as a pleasure slave. That sounds pretty smutty to me.

But don’t be fooled. This is just a weird novel that doesn’t know what the hell it wants to be.

4 I Never Called it Rape



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I finally made the decision to stop identifying as a feminist a couple of months ago, but I’m still reading feminist literature at about the same rate as ever. I don’t want to go too far in the opposite direction and become too conservative and red-pilled.

But once I realized the data used to measure the wage-gap is dubious, I started questioning a lot of the feminist narrative and it turns out that whole ‘1 in 5’ number thrown around is false too. That data was collected ONLY from college students and they really stretched the definition of rape, counting everything from unwanted kissing to dick pics as rape.

That very study is referenced on nearly every page of this book but with nary a word of the data collection methods. They just spout ‘1 in 5’ without ever telling the readers where they get that number from.

I only read the first few chapters and then I brought it back to the library. I exchanged it for another feminist nonfiction, ‘The Vagina Bible.’ So far, I’m liking it far more than my first choice.

5 Next Level Basic



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I’m not a self-help person. I mean, I did used to ghostwrite them. I did that Freelance for a few years. But I don’t read them.

This one just had such a good hook, and when you’ve ghostwritten as many as I have, you know that the hook is everything. By definition, self-help books don’t really have any substantial content. There may be a few gems of good advice here and there. There’s rarely enough to make a whole book. So most of it is usually fluff and filler. Words that mean nothing and have been said thousands of times before: Be positive! Be grateful! Find joy! Barf….But no hate to any past clients. Finding new ways to package the same old advice is (for whatever reason) a cash cow. Keep hustling.

Anyhow, that ‘basic bitch’ thing is one of the best self-help hooks I’ve ever seen. If only it had been executed well.

Stassi just repeated herself. A LOT. And while there usually isn’t a lot of tangible advice in self-help books, there’s usually some. The only advice in here was: ‘Like what you like! Be true to yourself!’ over and over….and over again.

But I was at least enjoying the anecdotes. Stassi seemed like a weird and interesting person. She kept mentioning some reality show I’d never heard of, that she starred on, and since she made the choice to make her reality stardom such a central part of the book, naturally I decided to check it out.

And I freaking hated her. Stassi is a horrible bully. She actually brags about bullying female coworkers until they quit. And she’s psychopathic in her relationship. She fringes on abusive.

Hey, maybe none of that is real, but it’s marketed as reality, and she decided to keep mentioning Vanderpump Rules in the book. Her character in the reality show was what ultimately made me decide to put the book down. She wrote a book under the brand of that same character and basically encouraged readers to go check out the show. I did. I hated it. I hated her. I returned the book to the library.

6 Astrophysics for People in a Hurry



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I loved Cosmos. My husband and I used to watch it every single night before bed. Maybe that’s why Tyson’s voice kept putting me to sleep. I tried out the audiobook one afternoon after work. I was actually nodding off in my chair.

The topic is interesting to me, but I think Tyson’s voice is just too damn soothing. I might try this book again in the future, but with a physical copy. Or I might just stick with Cosmos.

The parts of this book I did listen to were a lot more in-depth than I really wanted to get. I’m not so much into particle physics. I just want to hear about black holes and pulsars and other neat, flashy stuff like that.

7 The Christmas Sisters



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Why do I keep trying to like cozy books? It never works out for me. I never enjoy cozy books, and yet I keep trying to like them.

There was nothing wrong with this book. It just didn’t have enough going on in the plot to keep me interested. I have a feeling I would have liked it more if it was only in one of the sisters’ POVs. All of their POVs mixed together just made the book very slow-paced.

That’s it! I DNF’d 7 books in January. What about you? How many did you give up on in January? Tell me in the comments below!

2020 Series To Finish Challenge

I learned about the Series to Finish Challenge right here on WordPress. Basically, you challenge yourself to finish some book series over the course of 2020. It doesn’t matter how many books you have left in the series. It could be 1 or (as in my case) 13. You can pick any series, so long as the series is completed.

Most people I’m following seem to have chosen between 3 and 5 series to finish. I’m going with 3, because the first one on my list is a doozy.

Here are the series I aim to finish in 2020! Wish me luck!

Series 1: Wheel of Time By Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

I’ve only read the first one and part of the second one. There are 14 books in the series, not including the prequel, which I will also be including in this challenge. Fantasy booktuber Daniel Greene advises reading the prequel after book five.

So, I have to finish Books 2-4: ‘The Great Hunt’ ‘The Dragon Reborn’ and ‘The Shadow Rising.’

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Book 5, ‘The Fires of Heaven’

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The prequel, ‘New Spring’

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Books 6-14: ‘Lord of Chaos’ ‘A Crown of Swords’ ‘The Path of Daggers’ ‘Winter’s Heart’ ‘Crossroads of Twilight’ ‘Knife of Dreams’ ‘The Gathering Storm’ ‘Towers of Midnight’ and ‘Memory of Light’

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My cat Leo wants to show off the gorgeous hardcover ‘Crossroads of Twilight’ that we got for only a buck at a library sale. I freaking love library sales.

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If I ever manage to make it through the 4 million plus words (not kidding. Neither Jordan nor Sanderson are known for their brevity), then I’ll move on to the other series I’d like to finish this year.

Series 2: Unwind by Neil Shusterman

I loved book one and I’m about halfway through book two right now. I need to knock out books 2, 3, 4, and also spin-off books 1.5 and 4.5.

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I absolutely adore the first book and the second one is great so far. It’s by far the most interesting dystopian world I’ve ever seen and I’m not usually a dystopia reader. Or a YA reader. But these books are so damn good, it doesn’t matter. I’ll defect from the adult genre for a great concept.

Speaking of YA, the final series on my list is a YA classic.

Series 3: The Time Quintet by Madeleine L’Engle

As with the other two series, I’ve only read the first. I really loved it. I didn’t read it when I was a kid though. Somehow I never crossed paths with this book as a kid. Maybe I was too distracted by Harry Potter. But since it’s a classic of Christian fantasy/YA Fantasy, I decided I should read it.

I rented the audiobook through my library’s Overdrive app and spent the past couple of weeks listening to it on my lunch break. I just rented the second book through the same app.

I only recently discovered the joys of audiobooks and I’m loving how easy it is to cram more books into my life. I can play books while driving, eating, cooking, dying my hair. It’s awesome. Even when I’m doing something where my hands or eyes are busy, I can still ‘read’ books. I think I’ll knock this series out pretty quick with my library’s audiobooks.

I have to read books 2-5: ‘A Wind in the Door’ ‘A Swiftly Tilting Planet’ ‘Many Waters’ and ‘An Acceptable Time.’

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So, that’s it! My series goals for this challenge are to read a total of 14 books from the Wheel of Time Series, a total of 5 books from the Unwind Series, and 4 books from the Time Quintet.

I noticed a few similarities among these series. They are all speculative. Two are fantasy and one is Sci-Fi. Two are YA, which is unusual for me. I usually prefer adult fiction, but I’m not averse to books for younger readers. And finally, two are classics of the fantasy genre. I’m trying to read a lot more beloved fantasy classics, so that I can grow in my own fantasy writing.

What about you? Are you thinking of completing the 2020 Series Challenge? Which series will you finish? And do you see any similarities among the series you picked?

Have you read any of the series that I picked? No spoilers! But what did you think of them?

My husband is reading Wheel of Time with me, and I have one internet friend who loves the Unwind series. Other than that, I haven’t had much opportunity to discuss these books with anybody, so feel free to share your thoughts in the comments! I look forward to hearing from you

December DNFs

I’m trying to do a lot less DNFing, but sometimes, I’m just not feeling a book. Here are the books I couldn’t push through in December 2019.

The Winter Witch by Paula Brackston



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I didn’t know anything about this book before downloading the audio book via my library’s Overdrive collection. Honestly, the only reason I picked this book was because it was one of the VERY few fantasy books available. I feel like every time I go into Overdrive for an audio book, I end up getting something I didn’t actually want to read. I only play audiobooks while I’m cleaning, dying my hair, or eating my lunch at my desk at work. So, I guess maybe that’s the reason why I don’t plan ahead and ever put anything on hold. But I digress, this was the audiobook I ended up with.

The narrator was awful. Her accent was irritating. The voice of the male love interest sounded like my grandfather. She made him sound so old and crotchety.

Then there was the content itself. It was a mixture of boring and confusing. I didn’t care for the switching between first and third person. That’s some avant-garde fantsy-pants shit that I’m just not about.

The main character was obnoxious and unlikeable. I do enjoy a flawed character, maybe even a character I disagree with, but a character that is straight-up obnoxious doesn’t really fit that bill. She was very r/notliketheothergirls. Nothing she did made sense.

Her being mute is treated like a personality trait. It isn’t. Brackston used this as a cop-out to not write an actual character. And the guy likes Morgana because she is mute…..Ew…There are some very icky implications there.

I DNF’d 50% of the way through.

I also want to mention that the book has a very low average rating on goodreads, so it doesn’t look like I’m the only one who feels this way.

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2) The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson



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This book is a DNF for now. I’ll go back to it one day. But for now, I just can’t get through it. I’m not a fan of complex worldbuilding. I prefer easy to understand worlds and soft magic systems. Of course, the obvious question is must be; then why in the fuck did you pick up a Brandon Sanderson novel? Your preferences are the exact opposite of what he’s known for.

I know, I know. This is a me problem. I guess I want to get more into Epic Fantasy, but everything in my preferences as a fantasy reader is rebelling against it. This is a series that is super hyped. Some of my favorite booktubers wax poetic on it, and my husband is reading it, so I thought we could enjoy it together like we’re currently doing with the Wheel of Time series. My husband is actually enjoying this book a lot. Me, I’m struggling, but one day I’ll buckle down and push through it.

The characters are cool and the storms that break the world are neat. Maybe that will be enough to salvage the read for me.

I DNFed at 15% of the way through this 1,000 page monster.

3) Promises From the Past by Victoria Bruce



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I picked this up in a used bookstore, because the cover is gorgeous and it’s a time travel romance! I love time travel romance. Hands down, my favorite romance sub-genre. Second favorite sub-genre is historical (which overlaps with the time travel subgenre;)

I got a little over sixty pages in before I gave up. Not sure if I’ll ever attempt to read it again. The tone was weird and not at all what I was expecting in a romance. It read as a lot more of a mystery with Southern gothic vibes. The imagery and tone are very dark.

In the very first chapter, there’s this dilapidated farm with this creepy old woman who wants to serve the MC and her husband (yes, husband, I’m hella confused) a starving goat.

The heat is sweltering and adds to the general tone of Southern creepiness. There’s a scene where the MC enters a potions/voodoo-esque shop and sees a jar full of leeches, before fainting.

Really, I’m just at a loss as to what the fuck this book IS. That cover screams romance, but I’ve had nothing but mystery so far and I didn’t sign up for a mystery. I knew from the back blurb that mystery would be part of it, but so far it’s been all of it.

This one was DNF’d at around 15%.

4) Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson



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There was a lot I liked about this book and I don’t have any major criticisms of it. I will go back and finish it eventually. The thing is, I knew this book wouldn’t be completely my speed. I don’t like humor in fiction. I don’t like books that try to be funny. That’s just not what I go for in books, so I knew this might not be to my taste.

I actually ended up enjoying it far more than I thought I would, but at the end of the day, this isn’t a book that super appeals to me, and there are other books I’d rather be reading.

I have nothing negative to say about the book. It’s not my taste. I do want to read it because it’s such a popular book in the fantasy genre, but I highly doubt this will become one of my favorites. At best, the rest of the book will go like the first part I read; I’ll enjoy it a little more than I thought I would, with no major complaints, but not loving it either.

I DNF’d at 30%.

What about you? What books did you DNF in December? What are you reading now?

Happy New Year!

The Vitriolic, Woman-Bashing, and Male-Genocide-Promoting Hatred of PinkPill Feminism

The Incels’ main gathering space on reddit, r/braincels, was banned in September of this year, along with r/geekcels and several other smaller incel subs. Several documentaries have been made about how entitled and hateful incels are. r/inceltears is a huge subreddit dedicated to taking screenshots and mocking incels.

Despite the mocking and mass-banning of the incels, and despite the fact that none of the femcel gathering spaces have been banned or even quarantined, femcel “pink-pilled” feminists believe that their disgusting misandry, their delusional misogyny that they don’t even seem to be aware of; they believe these horrific views are justified because (supposedly) men are sexist all the time and nobody gives a crap when men do it.

Basically….WAHHHHHH, it isn’t fair! I wanna be a sexist piece of shit TOO!

Yeah. Then deal with the backlash, you fucking crybabies. If people didn’t give a shit about male misogyny, then r/inceltears wouldn’t exist. Then r/incels wouldn’t have been banned several years back. Then r/braincels wouldn’t have been banned this fall. Then the BBC wouldn’t be making documentaries about incels.

Nobody even knows what the fuck femcels are (and who can blame them, that gigabitch moderator has a boyfriend…allegedly….WTF even ARE you guys?). If people really react so disproportionately to women “no longer being nice and polite” then where is the femcel documentary? Where is the large mainstream reddit sub devoted to mocking you guys? Where is the mass hysteria that a movie will send you all into a murdering rampage? The femcel claim that everybody ignores incels but freaks the fuck out over femcels BECAUSE MISOGYNY is patently false and a flimsy fucking excuse to act like dickheads.

Femcels. Y’all are a bunch of dickheads.

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They’re so freaking sensitive and they make no sense. Reacting to another human’s speech is not policing people’s thoughts. WTF??

I can not stand the lack of logic here. Sure, you can have your opinions. And others can have THEIR opinions of YOUR opinions. You’re an idiot if you think anyone reacting negatively to your opinions is “the thought police.” You’re too damn sensitive and you should go take a nap before you hurt yourself. Go lie down. Rest your pretty head. The mental exertion is obviously too much for you.

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You heard it here folks. The femcels feel like they have the right to be sexist against men. I suppose they do. But then they ugly cry all over reddit if anybody calls them misandrist.

Femcels: I am sexist against men and feel like I have the right to be!

Everyone else: That’s….a little fucked up and misandrist.

Femcels:

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All men rape and kill babies…..K

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You really complaining about the word ‘bitch’? You advocate aborting all male babies. You say all men are pedophiles and rapists.

Fuck you, BITCH.

Go cry.

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But they don’t need to clarify NOT AL MEN. They obviously don’t mean ALL MEN. Not when they’re saying stuff like this. Holy hell, these B-I-T-C-H-E-S make my head hurt. Yeah, bitch is just a word. I’m not gonna stop saying it. Or the word dickhead. Or the word asshole.

Again, go cry about it.

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No u

It’s the only argument they have.

Hypocrites. And they don’t even care that they’re hypocrites. They don’t have an ounce of integrity.

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Here’s the misogyny. They refute the existence of female agency. No woman could ever willingly engage in kink. Men always have all the power in every male/female interaction.

Ughh…and that’s feminism….ta-da! XD

Reddit, I know you’re run by a bunch of radical feminists, but for real, you gotta ban these guys. If you’re gonna ban the incels, you have to ban the femcels.

Anyone who identifies as a feminist should be even madder than me.

Go flag their posts if you’re mad.

r/pinkpillfeminism and r/askpinkpillers

Those are their feminist subreddits. They also have other subs dedicated to other femcel issues. These include: r/trufemcels r/trunormies r/theglowup r/femaledatingstrategy (possibly-there is some contention as to whether the majority of FDS is femcels or larping incels-I shall include it because gigabitch and other prominent moderators of femcel subs highly endorse this sub). r/vindicta r/FDSSuperfans and r/Christmas_Cake

Some other non-femcel radical feminist subreddits that also endorse violence against men include r/thefairersex and r/gendercritical

4 Star Review: The Family Upstairs

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I decided to read this book because I saw it was one of Colleen Hoover’s current reads. While I wasn’t a fan of “November 9,” when I gave Hoover a second chance and read “It Ends With Us,” she freaking blew me away. So now I follow her on goodreads and, apparently, take recommendations from her.

Also, “The Family Upstairs” is just a really good title and I’m always a sucker for a good domestic suspense. (I mean, I did write one that has 51k reads on wattpad, not that I look for reasons to awkwardly pitch my own work or anything…hehe….who would do that?)

Well, Colleen Hoover didn’t steer me wrong. I really enjoyed this book. I gave it four stars on goodreads. There was enough to keep me guessing throughout the story. At first I felt like skipping between past tense first-person and present tense third-person was annoying, but it weirdly grew on me over the course of the book, and in the end, I found myself feeling like it worked.

Henry was by far the best character. He wasn’t fully evil or fully good. He was twisted, but still remained oddly sympathetic. Even though it starts in the present and then darts back into the past, and we know the basics of the ending from the very start, enough was left out to keep things interesting. I enjoyed how things were revealed to us one nugget of information at a time.

The descriptions were beautiful and grotesque. Henry’s descriptions of Birdie were especially vivid. You could really tell how Henry felt about each of the other characters by the way he described them.

Now I will reveal a few spoilers. Go away now if you don’t want them———————————————————————————————-

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The biggest shock at the ending was that Henry was behind Phin’s illness the whole time. And the fact that Phin only pushed Henry in the Thames because Henry tried to kiss him, I couldn’t believe what an unreliable narrator Henry was, and I LOVED it!

My only criticisms of the book are that, while the mystery aspect was fun, this book didn’t have an edge-of-my-seat gripping quality. I think what could have made the book a real page-turner was if it had spent more time in Henry’s POV and showed the decline of the household more slowly. I also think that giving away less of the details right at the beginning.I really found myself wishing that there wasn’t such a heavy reliance on time-lapses and glossing. I wanted to see the slow decline of these people and their lives. And Libby’s story wasn’t really all that interesting. Lucy’s was more interesting, but I still found every Libby and Lucy chapter to be a bit of an annoyance. The only really great elements of those chapters were the new bits of information we learn about the house and the lives of Henry and his siblings.

Also, I figured out Lucy was Henry’s sister right away. How could you not? She’s the only character without a name when we’re in his POV in the past. Every other character has a name, but with her it’s just “my sister.” If it has to say “my sister” thirty times on a page, so be it. It wasn’t clever. Just annoying. A better way to not give away Lucy’s connection to Libby would be to give her another name. I mean, she has new documents with a fake name on it anyway and she’s totally distanced herself from her whole life. Giving her a different name would have been a much less obvious way to go about this “twist.” It’s not really a twist if I can see what’s happening by the fifteenth use of “my sister.”

And I found the title slightly misleading. There isn’t really a “family upstairs.” They become intertwined with Henry’s family so quickly (at least in terms of Henry’s POV page count-there’s a LOT of time lapses and glossing), that the title barely makes sense. It’s ominous and all, and it would be a good title if it fit, but it doesn’t.

Overall, this was a good book. It was entertaining and kept me guessing. The ending genuinely surprised me. Henry was a wonderfully three-dimensional character and the best way to improve this book would have been to sacrifice a TON of Lucy and Libby’s chapters and give that page count to Henry. Really, I cared so little for Lucy’s life of playing the fiddle on the streets of France and Libby’s life selling kitchens and trying to date. It was all just so boring compared to miscarriages and imprisoning children and strange polyamorous family dynamics that include a man impregnating (or at least it looked that way) both a mother AND her underage daughter. That house was fucking wild. THAT is the content I wanted.

When in doubt, writers, keep it simple, just write the exciting stuff. You don’t need to slow it all down with POV characters that are boring as hell compared to the “good” POV, and with how interesting Henry was, there’s no way Jewell didn’t look forward to his chapters more than either of the other main characters.

I will say Jewell must have put a lot of work into crafting such a complex plot, going back and forth in time, among several POVs. Each little clue unfolded and revealed its secrets eventually. There wasn’t one gun in this story that didn’t go off. The level of detail and thought put into this story is truly breathtaking.

I recommend this book for anyone who enjoyed Paul Tremblay’s “Head Full of Ghosts” or Jeffrey Euginides’ “Middlesex.” There was a dash of horror and a whole lot of domestic suspense, coupled with the kind of intergenerational intrigue that Euginides crafts.

I’ll be making it a point to check out Jewell’s other books shortly. She’s a talented writer that I need a LOT more of in my life.

Home: A Recap

Earlier this week, Michael Bierut, Sonia Williams, and I spent an hour on the phone together. Michael is an influential graphic designer based in New York, Sonia is a high school student in Paintsville, Kentucky, and I’m a designer at Automattic, living outside of Boston.

Sonia came prepared with a great set of questions. She prompted Michael to tell us about his career, and to take us through some of his favorite projects. We talked about designing this website. Michael described how he came to use a photo of the earth to represent home: he’d aimed to show the most universal representation of a home. We all live drastically different lives, in drastically different houses, but this gigantic, fragile planet is our shared home.

At the end of the call, Sonia went to her next class. I got to work on WordPress.com and Longreads, and Michael turned his attention to his work at Pentagram.

Michael, Sonia, and I are all different ages, at different stages of our careers, and in different parts of the country, but we took time out of our days to share stories and work together. Our conversations felt natural, and we learned a lot from each other. I was struck by just how powerful — yet seemingly normal — an experience this project was.

When I was Sonia’s age, I attended a fantastic high school: The Buffalo Academy of Visual and Performing Arts. I was an art major there, which meant that I had two periods of art every day, in addition to my normal coursework. I took extensive classes in painting, sculpture, pottery,  photography, art history, and more. I loved art, and I knew I wanted to involve it in my future somehow, but I didn’t know any specifics beyond that.

At some point during my senior year, one of our teachers arranged to have a graphic designer visit her classroom. He showed us an ad campaign for a local art museum that he’d worked on. It involved billboards, printed material, and a website. I remember being really interested in his presentation, and speaking to him for a few minutes afterwards. Until that point, I don’t think I had a great idea of what exactly graphic design was. I knew a bit about designing individual things — an ad in a magazine, a single website, etc. — but that was my first real exposure to the idea of (and challenges around) designing an identity that spans across many single applications.

A few months later, I took my art portfolio to a college portfolio review day in Syracuse, New York. I applied to a number of colleges, and ended up in Brooklyn, studying graphic design at Pratt Institute. In my design history class, we learned about Michael Bierut.

I’ve been working in the field for over a decade now. I’ve worked on branding, ad campaigns, websites, t-shirts, and more. I currently do all this while working from home. High school me didn’t know this sort of job existed until I met that graphic designer.

When John Maeda invited me to take part in this project, I thought back to the time I met that designer in high school, and recognized the impact it had on my future. Sharing what we do with the next generation is a key responsibility of all of us. Just as I’ve learned from Michael Bierut’s work throughout my career, it’s my hope that Sonia and her classmates come away from this experience with a better understanding of art and design themselves.

Thanks to John Maeda for organizing, thanks to Michael Bierut for your artwork, insight, and perspective, and thank you to Sonia for all the preparation and effort you put into this project.