Amber Lea > Recent Status Updates

I don't know, I'm almost done with this book and things aren't feeling so okay.

"The other day there was a bottle of ketchup in our food box, and on the itemized list it was marked as a vegetable. A vegetable. First of all, tomatoes are fruit, but anyway, ketchup is a condiment with, like, zero nutritional value."

Yep, practically Guantanamo.

She spends all this time describing how this place isn't so bad, and then compares it to Guantanamo.

Girl.

Yeesh, this book feels really insensitive to very real holocaust and Japanese internment camp survivors. I'm so uncomfortable right now.

So this is a book that exists.

I am so over these "I'm going to a rich school but I'm a poor kid" stories.

Apparently her parents didn't want her to go to the other school because someone brought a KNIFE.

Seriously? I can't even imagine a world where there's a school where that's the worst thing going on.

I want to read a story where a kid goes to a shitty school.

OH SHIT, this book is on Hoopla.

I probably shouldn't have checked this out. She probably got ten cents.

Well that took a turn!

I'm not even on the first chapter yet and I'm already horrified.

He's complaining about computers. Boooooooo!

Well, I think we can all agree evolutionary psychology is trash.

So far Yancey's entire argument seems to hinge on the fact that scientists don't believe in the "invisible." Which is really all you need to know to see that Yancey is a layman who's entire argument is a strawman.

Why did he call biotin "vitamin h"? That's just annoying.

I struggle to understand why doctors act the way they do sometimes and this book has been really illuminating. There's a lot that I already know, like that doctors only get a small window of time to talk to and think about individual patients and they drown in paperwork and responsibilities, but this book really explains the emotional impact of being a doctor on a person which is really helpful.

omg, the author used a winky face. Is this a book or a weird text message?

lol, he keeps talking about how old he is (65 when this was written), but he's 14 years younger than my neurologist. I realize the author is a BRAIN SURGEON and that's different, but I'm still amused.

Brain doctors man. Their obsession with what they do is almost as fascinating as what they do.

I don't think "a tree is like a spoon" is the best way to start a book...

Well, now I have Mary Roach to thank for my newfound fear of flying.

She's been talking about how hot all these different boys are for 10 pages. It's making me feel very gay.

omg, too much school.

Ooooh man, I bought this book 14 years ago and I never read it. Or rather, I found two book marks in the first ten pages so yeah, I didn't get very far. One of them is a wawa receipt from 2011. I definitely remember thinking, "This seems like it could be boring."

Oh no! So wrong. I can now see this is going to epically bad and I'm really excited.

I love that James randomly opened up this book and landed on a page about how cider pressing works. I was like, "I swear this book isn't all about cider."

I didn't even know how cider entered into it for the first 250 pages.

Problems with revising books 40 years after they were written: Everything about this book screams "I was written in the 1930s" and then someone randomly crammed in a mention of Ray Charles and it's really disconcerting.

I had zero interest in reading this book until I learned that it was written in the 1930s. I'm super curious about old "self-improvement" books, because I feel like it's an interesting window into the time it was written.

It definitely reads like it was written in the 30s, but what's interesting is that it still does what every book of this type does, where it tells you how awesome and helpful it's about to be.

omg, the Rube is Kenny Powers.

As someone who doesn't have too many facebook friends I'm really curious about this "Why you have too many facebook friends" thing. Is this a real problem?

The real question: why is my interest piqued by stupid questions that aren't relevant to me? Am I falling for some kind of trick? *shakes book* Tell me!

I bought this book over two years ago and I have no idea why. I'm going to blame Mark Manson. I can't connect it to any other book I read around that time, so it was probably a blog post.

It's super short, so I figured I might as well read it.

Almost all the authors in this book live in an alternate reality where facts are different.

I just finished an essay where the author believes that most people don't remember the cold war, and that nuclear war is no longer a threat. And because of this, and video games, kids these days don't understand the danger of nuclear war. I...what?

"Feminist gamers and critics are routinely lumped in with right wing extremists, as if we seek destructive or censorious bans on gaming rather than cultural acceptance of the women who are already there."

I have a vagina and game all the time and literally no one cares. so. maybe gender isn't the issue.

Jesus, the arrogance in the introduction. As if video games never had a minority or message worth listening to until these people came along and fixed them. Like if you want to not sound like a colossal asshole, present it like you took something people loved and attempted to make it better or more accessible. This goes the route of, "Game were crap. If you liked them then you're wrong. Why are you mad?" No. Stop.