against my better instincts i clicked on a vox article promising to explain a court of thorns and roses and it said the books are set in a land called "prythian" after the chronicles of prydain.

which i doubt because uh it's not exactly original.

o boy

Lmao

but this way they could link to another vox article so i guess that explains that.

i don't mean to be a snob but sometimes i am forced to be a snob.

in non-snobbish reading news i sort of fell into a romcom hole last month and read three emily henry books and last tang standing, kind of a mix of crazy rich asians and bridget jones' diary

i'd not read any emily henry books before and they're fun, though idk if i think they've reinvented the genre, they do know their vibe and execute it.

in between i read uh, absolution by murder, which is a detective story set at the synod of whitby

the actual murder mystery was very obvious, but i liked the setting enough to maybe read the next few in the series.

oh, and mere equals: the paradox of educated women in the early american republic, which i thought was quite good.

now i am trying to finish the guest before my loan gets recalled and city of women: sex and class in new york 1789-1860

anyway here's a story about another self-help guru actually just running a pyramid scheme??

Tbf most self help gurus are, if not directly then tangentially

that is especially true of gurus who wish to sell you life coaching courses

how dare you tell me about a mystery novel set at the synod of whitby

/just sighs and adds to list! but i have to finish the tainted cup first, which is pretty good so far.

oh that one does seem fun.

i might add it to my holds along with the next fidelma book (where i'm promised they go to rome!)

I will say that the blurbs and reviews keep emphasizing "magic" but that's really not it, it's presented as science in the book. It's an empire where people have augmentations and grafts from specific plants and substances. The narrator has a perfect memory but it seems to be at the expense of his ability to read easily, since the grafts make his eyes jumpy,

and he still has to use scent memory to activate his perfect recall. So in a place where he needs to remember everything, he would sniff a vial that smells like something like ash, or mint, and then when he wanted to activate his recall of that scene, he'd sniff that scent again.

Apart from "the empire seems to have kaiju issues" there really doesn't seem to be much actual magic magic going on.

and really, kaiju issues are fairly mundane problems for an empire to face

don't know why they have so many issues, tbh. we're all used to kaiju these days. in fact, i just met one at target last week?

...:given what I know about ACOTAR's characters possibly being expys I. Doubt that's where she actually got Prythian from but ok Vox

the ones who walk away from omelas
omelas, je t'aime
why don't we just kill the kid in the omelas hole

I’m just mad about ACOTAR ruining my favorite Scottish folktale so I refuse to read it or anything else on principle

If you think turning Tam Lin into an abuser when the folk tale is about the strength and power of love to overcome all odds is a good choice, I hate you.

i thought it was just a story about fucking hot faeries and also becoming a hot faerie

LMAO well it is that’s why pretending it’s a retelling of the tam Lin folk story is wrong, even though that’s what she says the first book is

yeah i mean i know throne of glass is like "cinderella, except cinderella is an assassin" but that doesn't really make sense. i have not read the however many books it is to determine if it does make sense.

update: i didn't finish the guest in time but it should come back to me in a few weeks. i don't think it would take that long to read but trying to read it in a night didn't sound fun to me. i now have the kingdom of prep instead, which is a history of j.crew.

finished kingdom of prep and city of women, both kind of worthwhile in their own way. kingdom of prep really made me reexamine aughts aesthetics.

started reading yellowface last night and i was basically tearing through it, because i am well practiced at reading online drama.

i thought from the summary this would be a lot like disorientation and it has some of the same themes but the white person pov certainly separates it.

Andrew Huberman’s Mechanisms of Control

that all the girls he was cheating with started a group chat and became friends… powerful.

What Is the Purpose of Protest Posting?

Lauren Oyler thinks she’s better than you

many mean reviews of oyler's new book, which in my opinion, is funny.

I was in the middle of that Huberman article when you posted it. Thoughts when I finish! I will say that I have facilitated at least one group chat like that for friends who were all being romantically scammed by the same guy once and it was, indeed, pretty great.

Two of the girls became a couple and almost got married.

(Immigration issues broke them up.)