The Last Ten Book Tag
I snagged this tag from Ali’s Books 
The Last Book I Bought:
I bought the kindle edition a few days ago, after seeing it in the bookspry newsletter. I’m starting to get really into shifter romance.
The Last Book I ReRead:
I reread this book twice this year. I was tentatively thinking of doing a booktube video on Conrad, but I’ve shelved that idea for now.
Last Book I Gave Up On:
I’m sure I’ll check this collection out from the library again. I do want to make it through Conrad’s entire oeuvre eventually. But I think I just got burnt out after the first three stories (two of which are novella length). There is a lot to admire about Conrad’s writing, but the writing is also very dense and self-indulgent at times.
Last Book I Said I Read But Didn’t:
I only ever did this in school. But during my M.A program, I regularly DNF’d books I didn’t like, then just made up a thesis and read the wikipedia page. Not sorry XD
I think the last time I did this was with the play The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster.
Last Book I Wrote in the Margins of:
A little over a year ago I wrote a lengthy essay comparing Bacon and Locke. I think it actually came out really good. But as per my usual, after I finished, I did nothing with it. I haven’t even tried submitting it for publication anywhere.
It’s like I think it’s really good, but am also convinced it’s total shit…if that makes sense.
Anyway, in the process of figuring out my angle, I left a fuckton of notes all over the essays of Bacon.
No, I don’t treat my books like a museum exhibit. Not unless they’re vintage or special edition.
Last Book That I Had Signed:
Speaking of vintage books, here is a signed one that I have from 1898. And yess, I keep it in plastic! The thing feels like it’s gonna fall apart every time I touch it.
It’s not signed by the author, but (what appears to be) one friend giving the book to another. It’s a romance adventure story set in the fictional land of Ruritania. It launched a subgenre called ‘Ruritanian romance.’
I love that! A signature from 1903!
This is something physical books have that ebooks could just never replicate. There’s that human connection through the ages.
I don’t know if that counts. It is A signature, not an author signature though. I’ve never been one to go out of my way for signed books. Autographs just aren’t really my thing.
I think the last book I got signed by the author is ‘The Fundamentals of Unicult.’ It came with the author’s signature when I ordered it off etsy.
This is the most boring book I’ve ever read. It’s such regurgitated self-help nonsense. For a hot minute, I thought maybe a deep dive into Unicult could be interesting, but for all their ironic retro candy rave imagery they truly are the most boring motherfuckers on the planet.
No originality. Just all the same shit we’ve seen with ‘The Secret’ and all the other iterations of that manifestation baloney we’ve seen a thousand times.
They’re even boring in their discord server. I couldn’t do a deep dive because there was genuinely nothing to say about them.
Also, I just don’t believe Unicole’s attempted suicide story. I just don’t.
I had many attempted suicide attempts in my teens and early twenties.
They were all shitty attempts. That is why I’m still here.
Anybody who takes an entire bottle of painkillers and then drives off a cliff…look, it makes a cool story, but that enby is lying zir ass off.
I’m sure zie genuinely was depressed and unsatisfied with zir life. I’m betting zie probably even had a suicide attempt or two. But I’m thinking they were far less cinematic than zie made it out to be.
Last Book I Lost:
I had a physical copy of ‘The Metamorphosis’ (in an anthology, but I don’t really care about the other stories in the anthology). When I went to do my Kafka readalong livestream I couldn’t find it. I think I may have purged it accidentally during my last book unhaul. I ended up having to buy an ebook of it [image error] I’m a little annoyed at myself that antho ended up in the unhaul pile (which, since I looked everywhere and haven’t located yet, I’m fairly certain is what happened).
Last Book I Had to Replace:
Back when I was still teaching, I lent my old tattered copy of Frankenstein to a student. Of course, I never saw that book again. It’s all good. I got a teenager to read a classic. I consider it a win.
I hadn’t yet replaced the book, but my husband went and got me a special edition of it for my birthday in August. It’s super pretty. Much nicer than the stained, ripped, used copy I bought for like 50 cents in a university bookstore.
Last Book I Argued Over
I wrote a pretty lengthy essay about male disposability and how that’s the theme this novel hinges on. I partnered up with a few other people in academia (and one other prospective academic like myself-I want to be a professor, I’m just…not yet. I was in this critique group and my critique group hated the focus on male disposability.
I was also the only woman in the group. It irritated and confused me that a bunch of men kept making that awful “but what about women??!” argument.
No matter how many times I was like, “Yes, there are issues women deal with. I’m writing about an issue men deal with. I don’t think either gender is unilaterally privileged over the other”-they just didn’t get it. They kept circling back to “But women have to deal with x, y, z!”
At this point in time, I don’t really care that much about men’s issues, but at that point in time I did. I think I lost steam on it, because I got the exact same thing from men’s rights activists. It was like anytime I mentioned something women deal with it was, “But how is that worse than what men deal with?! But what about men going through x, y, z!!”
And I’m really not into the oppression olympics.
I don’t know why both sides view it as a competition. Like if you mention men’s issues that is somehow dismissing women’s issues, and vice versa.
I think I got firmly pushed over the line into “don’t give a fuck anymore” when two MRAs argued with me that they have a god-given right to catcall and getting crass and disrespectful messages from men I don’t know is female privilege.
That really left me like, whatever guys. My team is winning the gender wars, and if y’all are gonna tell me I don’t even have a right to be bothered by boundary-crossing men, I’m sort of fine backing out of the fray and letting y’all lose.
Basically, my beliefs and opinions haven’t changed, but my passion levels have. I just don’t care anymore.
That’s it for this tag!
I tag…anybody who feels like doing it 
