Finished Book #27

Property of Stormberry

 Today I finished reading Carrie, by Stephen King. This would be the second Stephen King book I've read in my life, the first being "Thinner". I have not been a fan of Stephen King, nor have I ever claimed to be, in case you wonder. Also, it worths to notice that I haven't been drawn to the horror or terror genre, mostly because I don't really get scared by books. I do get scared by movies - I guess that's due to the surprise effect in the visuals of the movie, or the way things can be hinted or partially hidden in the film, that can't be equally hidden in the text.

The first book was a gift from an old friend of mine, and I read that book back in the last millenium. (Yes, I'm that old). The text was interesting, but even back then I felt that the story was somewhat lacking. In those days I didn't journal as profusely as I do now, and I never thought about journaling about what I read. Internet was also quite incipient and I wasn't in a place where access to internet - how ever primitive - was even possible. The large majority of people didn't have mobile phones or cellphones, and computers were used - if one had access to it - to compose a text on "Word Star" or "Word Perfect", or play Solitaire. So yes, I don't have any records on reading Thinner and my impressions of it, other than what I remember. I didn't dislike the story, I found it interesting, but not really scary.

After that, I never really felt interested in picking up a Stephen King book or watching any movie inspired in his books, even though I have, though I did so often without knowing they were inspired in his books. And I did watch Carrie, with Sissy Spacek.

As time went by, I've got the book "The Shinning" given to me twice, once in Spanish and once in English. I ended up gifting one of them (the one in Spanish), and yet, I didn't feel like reading any of the books. Then, in a Book Fair I bough 11/22/63 book, not knowing that it was by him. Yes, the author was on the cover of the book, BUT when I am at a Book Fair I buy books in a trance, so I didn't know. I guess if I have noticed the author I would have put down the book.

I have some friends who love Stephen King to madness, and so the idea of reading him was percolating in my head. Even though I had two books (I have lost my copy of Thinner, but I won't replace it), I thought of buying some "entry level" books or something that might be closer to my liking. So I  bought Carrie because I have seen the movie and I have liked it, and I bought Salem's Lot because somewhere it there it talks about witches, and if a book has anything to do with witches, I'll read it. It's not guaranteed that I'll like it, but I will read it.

This year I've been burning through books up to the point where I reached my goal (24 books) early, and so I kept on reading (because, yeah, I like reading), and as I finished book #26 two days ago and this is Stephen King's birthday month, I thought I'll read one of his books, and so I picked Carrie. I read the book in two and a half days, or more like two days. I could have read it in one day, but... there were things that I didn't enjoy all that much to keep me glued to the book. The narrative didn't have such a good flow, as all the article and deposition inserts tended to break the rhythm, but the story was kept at a shallow enoigh level - a gossip level, or with a gossip feeling - that succeeds in keeping you hooked. It reads like an interesting mix, like a sort of scrapbook-like story, full of notes and papers interspersed with the story itself, as if it were a journal detailing the case, and peppered with all these clips and folded papers, yet still, the flow of the story was often broken.

I didn't enjoy many of the depictions of sex or abuse as they seemed to me to be told from a point of view that looked on things with either disrespect or disgust. It's not like Mr King was disrespectful, but the point of view from which it was told was one of someone with a mind full of disdain towards the characters, if that makes sense. That made it hard for me to read, and that halted me from burning faster through the pages. I actually had to put the book down several times to come up for air.

Another thing I missed was depth. There were no deep thoughts or glimpses of deeper thinking and philosophy from the writer. I did highlight things and did write on the margins here and there, but not nearly as much as on any other book. There was not much that I would have found memorable, and part of it - when I found it memorable - was under the influence of the book I have previously read.

I finished the book, closed it, put it on the shelf and picked a new one, almost hardly looking at it.

My next reading is "The Women's Room", by Marily French, and this one has me underlining and highlighting from the forewords on.

Litha, Books and Stuff

Blessed Litha to all of you who celebrate it, and for those who don't, I hope you are having a lovely Wednesday. It's night already and I haven't celebrated my patron gods yet, nor have I done any ritual for Litha, but I plan to. As usual, it will be a simple thing, lighting candles and some incense, and meditating a bit. Just today in the morning, I thought how curious it was that, when I didn't have my own place, I used to set these makeshift altars, with loads of candles, on the floor, and do my rituals. The spread was quite large, took time to set and time to pick it up, and it had happened that a ritual took me up to four hours of just me talking to my gods. Now I have my own place, I don't have to take down my altar and now my spread is much smaller, much simpler, it's permanent and doesn't change much throughout the year, and my rituals are done in less than 15 minutes. I find that curious.

I've been lagging in my spiritual practice lately, and maybe that's due to the fact that one of my morning routines is to do a localized cleaning in my home, and somehow it feels that I can't possibly add any more things to my morning. Not like moving my daily ritual to the night wouldn't work, BUT my energy tends to be different at that moment. We shall see about that.

Property of Stormberry.

For this year, I've already bought my birthday books, and I've very pleased with them. Maybe "The Paris Apartment" may not be as good, but it still caught my attention. And I just realized all the books I've got have been written by women, and except by The Paris Apartment (maybe), all the books I selected revolve around women, with Olimpia, Fedra and The Lions of Fifth Avenue (Los Secretos de la Biblioteca de la Quinta Avenida) being of a more feminist cut. Also, all books save for The Paris Apartment are in Spanish. Normally I prefer to buy books in their original language, when I can read the original language, but oh well, in the end the important thing is the story, and not the language or the edition.

Currently I'm reading a novel by Jaume Cabré in Hungarian. I believe it was originally written in Catalan, but many things I find them in Spanish or similar to Spanish, and that does tend to irk me a tad. It's like when I was reading a Scandinavian noir novel in French and though I don't speak Icelandic, the interspersed Icelandic names and words with the French felt odd. I wonder if other people is sensible to the language the same way I am.

On book topics, recently I've come to a decision I've been pondering for a while: I'll stop supporting a friend's Patreon account. I have this booktuber friend who got a Patreon account where they offer bookclubs and different activities, exclusive content and so on, and I've been supporting them for years now. They are really creative and give so much that I often thought they were overcompensating, giving far more than what they charge. From the start I've got into the higher tier of the account. Also, though we knew each other from before, in passing and as part of the Costa Rican booktube community, I believe we didn't became really friends until after I joined the Patreon group.

From the start I wasn't participating in all the joint readings and bookclubs they held, but went to the meetings, watched all the videos and so on. It was nice and it was worth it. 

However, for a while now I have really been disconnected from the booktube world, I'm not watching their videos, not joining their reading session and haven't read a book with them in over a year. I hardly even go to the meetings, and when I do, it feels kind of pointless because I haven't read the book, nor am I interested in reading the book. Yes, the people in the meetings are friendly, and some of them tend to talk incesantly about other topics, which make the meting more inclusive, but that's not the point of these meetings. I kept paying my membership because I felt sort of like I "had" to support my friend, that I could affort to help them out, even though I wasn't profiting from it at all. I even ignore their chat, and just get into the chat to get the notification bubble disappearing. I don't read the messages nor am I interested in them.

I was in this point, not really thinking about what to do, just ignoring the whole thing, and sometimes checking something... at 1.75x speed. Then recently they posted a video that was quite... strange. It sounded defensive and bigoted, covertly attacking people who have different reading habits than theirs. Funny thing? Pretty much all the things they mentioned as "reading mistakes" are how I read. And this was what finally did it for me. This was the message, the signal I wanted, the one that said: this has stopped being for you.

The video shocked me, not only because it does felt personal, but because I'm not the only person who reads like that, and so it may get a bad reaction from their audience. It was surely a big flop, even though they clearly stated that "this was just their subjective opinion". (Except that, by the way it was worded it sounded like "it is my opinion, but people who do this are totally wrong". It wasn't an opinion, it was a series of judgemental statements, even though that wasn't probably the intent behind it.) After I decided to unsubscribe from the account, I started thinking about how to let her know, because I don't want to just disappear. I do believe that we are friends (maybe). And so I've been thinking about that. I just don't want to waste money on soemthing I'm not using, and there is not point in hanging in there when the Universe is showing me that our literary interests have grown apart. So, why bother?

I hate conflict, so I'm preparing, and I gave myself until Friday to broach the subject with them, and end my membership next month.

Property of Stormberry

Today, I have also been crafty. It wasn't planned, though I do have thought for a while about making a box of sorts to house my recipe cards. I always take recipe cards from my favorite market, because these often give me interesting ideas for cooking, baking or for fixing an interesting drink. I haven't tried them all, but I never fail to collect them. I rather have duplicates than miss a recipe. As result I have a bunch of them. I used to have them between the covers of one of my cooking books, but the book was already falling apart, so I took them out.

This year, as I was thinking about how to house the cards, I decided to classify them depending on the type of recipe, and then ordered them in a "lattice like" way to keep the cathegories separated, and held the whole bunch with elastic bands. Well, that wasn't very comfortable, but since I don't check them often, it was ok.

Today I thought about baking bread - Brötchen or Semmeln actually - and I was going to get my recipe when I looked at my cards and decided to fashion up a simple cardboard box out of a leftover cardboard piece from a calendar. You know, the type of cardboard used to stiffen the packaged calendars. And so with a piece of cardboard, glue, a ruler, scissors and a cutter, I made it. I also fashioned dividers for each section with colored flashcards, post-it notes, scotch tape and a fountain pen. The box turned out to be a little more snug than I expected, fitting the cards exactly, and not with the 2 mm marging I had planned on giving it. I would actually like to make the box in wood, and carve it with a pyrograph, but that's a project for the future.

Coffee table Thoughts

Property of Stormberry

 I'm elated today, as I managed to finish the context chapter of my MSc thesis. Such a small thing it seems for many, but such a huge one for me, as I was stuck, lost in options and completely paralyzed by the numbness of trying to write about something that never seemed to materialize before my eyes.  I had put to myself - finally -  a date for the chapter to be completely finished, also as a way to have some leverage when contacting my thesis director about retaking the work and pushing this project forward.

I have been working on this chapter for over a year, writing and rewriting, often feeling at loss, as the idea of what I want seemed to float before my eyes but bubbling so huge, there was no way to look at it and make it "doable". For bringing it into the world, I had the invaluable aid of my tutor, though I do believe he also had grand dreams about my research. He pulls more towards knowledge and education, while I pull harder towards the workforce and the labor market. It has been a complex mix, but we've been swimming around it.

As it happened, last year - for December - he asked to a "readable" context chapter, with whatever I had, and I was able to provide one 75% done. It entailed lots of cutting back, rewriting and reframing, and only the "education" segment was entirely missing. Then he was silent. But we were on vacations, so maybe there was that. On January I had to contact him again because we had to send an update of the advance, and he mentioned that he was out of the country "for a few months", and haven't checked what I sent him, "but he will soon, and send me his comments". I kinda freaked out, BUT up to that point I had not worked much on the last 25% of the chapter, contented with just checking data, websites, and collecting data here and there.

And time passed and I had no news from him, so I started to worry. I do like him very much, and I'm afraid nobody else would be able to understand my topic has he does, plus he has changed so much of my original proposal, that I now really need him to bring my vision through. So I wasn't looking forward to write to the University and inquire about him - I don't want to get him in trouble - but I need to contact him and get a reply. And so I devised this cunning idea: I'll finish the chapter, send it to him and ask him at once for a meeting to go over the chapter, the required corrections and the next step.

Living in a Catholic country, infused with the Spanish culture (or what's left of it), we had a Holy Week, which means a long holiday (completed with mandatory vacations), so I decided to take this Holy Week to dedicate to my thesis, to this chapter, and so I have. I organized the data, searched on the sites I had pegged for information, organized what I had, decided on a format that won't swell my chapter form 35 pages to 80 (originally my incomplete chapter WAS 80 pages with just the 50% of it), and so I worked really hard at it.

I finished the chapter today at noon, and printed it... kinda. I ran out of ink. Tomorrow - which is a National Holiday - I'll review it calmly, note stuff to fix, and then program an e-mail to be delievered to my director thesis on Tuesday (first workday) around 16.00 hrs (about when academic work starts), with the chapter and the meeting request.

Now I prepare my dinner, drink a beer and read Lady Chatterley's Lover, by D.H. Lawrence. I take small glimpses at the next week, thinking of a work meeting I don't want to have, because I know it's going to irk me (stupidity irks me), happy thinking that I would deal with the thesis procedures a day earlier, so I don't bother my tutor with untimely e-mails, while I won't add to my annoyance due to the meeting with my academic tasks pending. So, by careful planning and hard work, I'll be able to prepare for the annoying meeting, and have plety of cool-off time and cool-off chances.

Recently I also worked on a tentative terror short story, though I feel I'd like to work on a longer piece, a novel. I have loads of unfinished ideas, which I call "fragments", but also unfinished novels stashed around. Maybe I could work on that.

There is a delicious comfort around me, a warm softness and liberating solitude, full of books and journals and videos and spaces to express myself that make my life such a wonderful thing. Like walking in a soft soiled forest where even for the hardships and annoyances I can prepare myself so much better than those who live in concrete poured jungles.

Thoughts About The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

Property of Stormberry

Maybe it was the hype created around this book, but I didn't really love it. I didn't got it right after it was released - I hardly ever do - but ever since it showed up in my recommended reads, I wanted to get my pawns on it and consume its words. It was only after the next instalment by the talented Ms Jenkins Reid hit the virtual shelves of Amazon.com, that I finally decided to get myself a copy - and I wanted it in physical format, not in Kindle - and went through quite an ordeal to own a much coveted copy.

When the book was finally in my hands, I was... not impressed. Thankfully it had decently cut pages - I hate decked edges - but the covers of the book one to two milimeters shorter than the pages. On both front and cover. Was it on purpose? Because I was not pleased. But oh well, what matters is the content, the words, not the look of the book... though I paid shipping and handling for this, so if I would have known, I would have gone with Kindle, mind you.

It took me a couple of months to get to sit down and read the book, even though I really wanted to read it. I really did. It was on my nightstand (along with a pile of other ten books), which made them my "this is what I really want to read next" pile. I somehow end up reading other things, but I don't lose hope. I'll get there... eventually, Anyway, the thing is that I lifted a book from the pile - finally! - and read it. And that book was The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.

WHAT FOLLOWS INCLUDES SPOILERS, SO STOP HERE OR BE WARNED.

I started head over heels with it, adoring both Monique and Frankie, and expecting to meet Evelyn and love her too. However, little after I did, I disliked her. Reading, I frowned because it never bodes well when you start by hating the main character. From the begining, the way Frankie's and Monique's style was portrayed in a way that made you want to look like that. They showed no-nonsense type of female characters, one bold and strong, the other gathered but self secure.

Things started crumbling down for me the moment Evelyn makes a request from Monique in a forceful way, that demands the later to give up her integrity. And Monique gives under pressure. From then on, Evelyn tells Monique a story of human canibalism, where the only way to get ahead is by abusing others, by going around the law, compromising, selling out, calculating and using others.

There are ways to set this into a narrative, explain it away as "this is the way show biz works", and "yes, this was how it went before the #metoo movement and it worked", but it doesn't make it right, which is why I found it disturbing. Maybe you are a smart, aware reader and you notice that the book portrays a world with no respect, where kindness is to be exploited and being "smart" equals having no qualms to use and abuse of others. Other readers might find it difficult to distinguish - among so many real life examples of success based on cheating, manipulating, fraud and scandals - which only gets worse when Monique claims to find the strenght and courage to improve her life and her chances by being aggressive. She says she's inspired by Evelyn Hugo and her canibal approach to life, and her attitude of "if you want something, you have to take it". The scenes where she conjures the Evelun Hugo in herself might seem inspiring and full of female power for some readers, but for me, those were excuses to check human decency at the door.

Let's be clear here: one thing is to stand your ground, and another is to start running over people. Respect and courtesy are not a sign of weakness. Rudeness is.

The part that I found more troubling was the relationship with Celia. I was never sold on the idea of their love story. Throughout the whole book Celia seemed to me petty and manipulating, just as selfish as Evelyn was, with the one difference that Evelyn was self centered but did not expect Celia to bend to her expectations, while Celia was upset and made huge dramas and fights because Evelyn wasn't doing and acting and behaving and thinking and living exactly as she wanted her to.

Their so-called love sells the idea that love is blind and exclusive devotion, that every part of a person's life - including their hopes and dreams, their goals and ambitions - must be nullified and put all in exclusive service of pleasing the person one loves. The loved person is the number one priority, even above oneself. Anything less that that is a fraud and can't be called love.

This is toxic. This is poison. This is a lie and is anything but love. Love is not devotion, love is having strong, positive feelings about the other person. Love is not exclusivity, love is being happy for the other person, but also being happy for oneself. Love is not exclusive. Love is not all consuming. Those are the sings of an obssession or an unhealthy attitude. Love is not sacrifice. Relationships aren't either about sacrifice, they are about compromise, which isn't even remotely close to sacrifice. And Love and Relationship aren't related either, in case you wonder.

However, from the moment Celia enters the scene, it's all down the gutter. Evelyn insists until she is blue in the face, that Celia is the Big It, The Big Kahuna, the Mother of the Wen and the One and Only. Yet there are constant bits and pieces that show us that Celia isn't that much different from Don Adler. Beating with words isn't much better than beating with fists, just because it doesn't leave visible bruises. The only thing to say that theirs is a big, true love, is Evelyn insisting on it, but you get no real chance to see it. Pushing someone into a guilty trip isn't a sign of love. And no, I don't buy that bullshit of "oh, she hurts me because she's so hurt because she loves me".

Love is not an excuse to stand and take abuse, no matter then shape, form or intensity it takes.

Through the book I saw no glamour or old Hollywood lifestyle, only people with money manipulating their entourage. I really wanted to see that, read that, but to be honest, I liked better the snipets about Monique's life than the episodes into Evelyn's life.

The end of the book was quite infuriating, with the letter and all. As you remember how Evelyn acted in the begining, with her pushing of Monique to put at risk her good name and livelihood, you can't possibly believe anything she says. Oh, and the end? It was transparent as glass. The letter was a twist, but the end of it was being suggested in one way or the other over and over.

The writing style is good, the pictures it draws of Monique and Frankie so precious, that it managed to save three starts from the bin I would have chucked the whole book into.

That Thing About IT

So, I'm in a sort of bookclub organized by a local booktube celebrity... Ok, let me explain this properly. There is this absolutely, drop dead gorgeous girl who loves to read, and has a booktube channel called GoWithKar (it's only in Spanish). She's very charismatic and talented, and her channel rose quite fast.

Source: Twitter, @gowithkar

Dedicated as she is to her content, she decided to create a Patreon account to support her channel, and there, among the different tiers, one includes a book club with monthly meetings. It took me a while to decide to support her, because I didn't quite saw the benefits of the service she basically provides through this platform until another friend of mine told me about it. Then I signed and and so I've got into the bookclub. Truthfully, I'm rather pleased.

When I've got in, they were already reading "It", by Stephen King. Kar, the girl, is a huge King-fan, so the reading of that book was expected. I'm really convinced by his production, so I was more than happy to be spared from the reading. Not like I wouldn't say no if asked, but you know, it was better this way.

The rest of the members of this tier had read the book and liked it very much, so they had decided to do a marathon of "It" movies, staring with the first one, watched at home of one of them, and then doing a group movie trip to go watch "It: Chapter 2". Somehow I was roped into it. No, don't ask me, I was roped in, and so I went.

Though the book and the writer don't really catch my attention, I also wanted to try out the story, see if it had the bones to maybe seduce me enough for me to give the 1500+ page story a try.

Long story short, it didn't.

After giving the movies a time to settle in my head - I was irrationally annoyed by the tendency of the characters of leaving their bikes thrown haphazard on the road - I came to realize that I don't hate the story. The story in itself isn't bad, I just doesn't do anything for me. It doesn't click with me, but I can see that it isn't bad. Now, "not bad" in this case doesn't automatically means that it's good. It simply means that it isn't a waste of time and paper and celluloide.

As I kept thinking and thinking about it, what I realized is that I actually don't like the stories where the plot doesn't solve itself within the original world it creates, or the expectation it creates. An example, for instance, is "The Murders in Rue Morgue" by Edgar Allan Poe. [SPOILER ALERT!!] In this story, a series of gruesome murders are commited by an animal, though for the duration of the story you are made believe it's the work of a serial killer. [SPOILER ALERT END] Though it is a story and a way to twist the reader out of the expected outcome I dislike this sort of plot solutions, because it seems to me like the writer was unable to fit the solution into the frame of the world they had created.

Part of the excitement of a suspense novel is precisely being able to guess what is happening and who is behind it, and once you find out, your mind goes back to the story to backtrack the clues. However, when the resolution of the story opens a new line and wrecks the hypothesis you've been creating, gives you  - or at least gives me - a sort of disappointment because the expectation of an explanation that could have been hidden in the prior lines evaporates.

This might be just a pet peeve of mine - and probably is - but then again, this sort of story also poses a social issue.

Though novels are novels and fiction is just fiction, truth is that everything people read permeates their minds and often find a way to their system of values and believes. This doesn't mean that people who read crime novels become criminals, but books do help normalize certain ideas. Romance novels can help normalize and promote the idea that women's greatest goal is to get married and have kids. Some of these can also normalize the idea that codependent, abusive, toxic relationships are the desirable type of relationship people should seek. Just think about how often people idealize and use fictional relationships as ideals for their own.

Pulling from this, suspense novels that end up giving the villain a background or origin outside the world of the heroes (comes from another world, another time, another dimension, another species...), starts putting in people's head the idea of the bad coming from "outside" the group. This idea could be pulled philosophically to safe harbors, but it also plans the seed for division of "us vs them" scenarios, where the us group is blameless, while the them group carries the whole weight of evil.

In It, though there are bullies, the movies at least do leave you with the sense, that this bully is under the control or is being influenced by the outsider, so the root of evil goes back to the "other", and away from the "us". There are no glimpse of other others that might be good, that might help, but all we see from this other is evil and desire to destroy the us.

What does this say to the world? What sort of message drops on a world so deeply divided, scarred by the nationalism and ravenous desire to blame others for the consequences of our own mindlessness and selfishness?

The book was written in another time, when maybe these ideas were harmless, but the idea still remain.

I guess a lot of people read this book and enjoy the miriad of stories crammed into a small town story. I am discouraged for the kick outside of the original frame.

A Week in and a Week Out

I was supposed to blog last week, and I did have stuff to write about, but I didn't. Not like you haven't noticed that, mind you, but I just noticed. And now a key on my keyboard isn't working, and that's driving me up the wall.

So, I have a few things I should be taking care of, even though I'm not doing it fully. What's on my To Do List is:

1. Work on my Marketing thesis, specifically on chapters 4 and 5.
2. Do my German homework for tomorrow
3. Check the rest of the chapter for tomorrow's German lesson
4. Read the next three chapters of Die Welle for the German Book Club
5. Secure an interview for the thesis with a group of people at work.
6. Check on the things I need to know about the new Tax Reform.
7. Update the accountings I'm doing
8. Advance some in reading Clash of Kings.

Property of Stormberry

Ok, that last one is for fun, but still...

Today I took vacations from the office to be able to submit my application for a Political Economics Academic Masters Degree at my old university. It's not exactly with the University, but a research center that works tightly with it, and which I believe has been formed within the university.

I knew that the new coordinator is a guy that used to be a classmate of mine back in the day, but today as I saw him my heart exploded out of my chest. I was so very happy and so full of love! I don't know if I can explain this feeling fully, but I was so very happy to see him, and so happy at the prospect of have him in my life again. Like reuniting with a long lost dear friend or a relative.

For this Masters program there were a bunch of requirements that took me a while to complete, and I think I was missing one of them, though probably was one of those you don't really need, since when I submitted my pack it was all checked and the lady that got my papers was elated that I was from the UNA. She kept gushing about how she was so happy I was enrolling because it was always good to have students that understood the system and the requirements. I felt so at home, and I almost told her: "I know! I also was missing putting my brain to good use". Not a nice thing to say, but not for it less true.

I was also so taken off my back with my former classmate, who was looking so, so well, so groomed, so sleek, so rested and happy... He showed me his office and it is the most spacious, beautiful office you could dream of. My face was splitting from so much smiling and awing and I did tell him he was probably one of the few of us who actually made it in life. He was so totally dear and sweet as to duck his face and blush. What a lovely, dear thing! I think I could hug him all day. I'm so, so happy for him, and it makes me happy too. And if all goes well, and next year I'll enroll in the Masters program and see him, I'll not only fill my head with fabulous, brand new knowledge, but I'll also fill my soul with the sight of him and his good fortune in life.

Isn't wonderful to see your dear ones succeed? I'm sure as hell are just... so blessed.

Work and homework and studies can wait. I need to bask in the beauty of this.

Now, last week we had the Reading Rush, an international bookish competition for book-content-creators, such as booktubers, bookstagrammers, book-podcasters and so on. The kids that signed in were supposed to read seven books in seven days, and several of my friends made it. I didn't even try it, because I know myself: if I set myself to such a hard competition, I'm going to get grumpy and balk. Or I'll do something stupid like when I get on a fitbit competition, and I would have taken the whole week out on vacations and would have read 14 books in the  gods know what time. Actually, in the whole week I read only one book - Red, White & Royal Blue -  and I didn't like it.

And talking about books I didn't like, can you believe I didn't like Call Me By Your Name? I don't get it, I loved the movie, I love the idea and I love the academic parlance. How is it possible I didn't like this book? But lo and behold, I didn't. I can't say I hated it because that's not true. It just... didn't perform to the standard I had held it up to. Red, White & Royal Blue was my leveling book, and.. it was good in the first quarter and then it just went down the sewer.

Why authors do that? Why can't they be consistent with quality and the expectation I have of them?

I've been also writig my novel, and... that's progressing. I though this part would be easier because I have so much material for this in my journals, but I just don't feel it. I'm just not feeling the love or the despair. One ofthe girls has read a bit of it, and she found it funny. I'm glad about that. I must take the good mood for as long as it lasts, because I don't know how will she react with the death fantasy I included.

Starting a New Book

Source: Property of Stormberry

Two years ago - or shall I say, "two International Book Fairs ago" - I've got myself the (then) complete collection of available "Game of Thrones" books, or the five first books from the saga "A Song of Ice and Fire". I did intended to read it, but as always, I never really put a date for it. I remember back then I was still friends with this girl Margie, and she either had read it or was about ti, and I've got the fever of it too. 

Two Book Fairs have come and gone since then, Margie and I are no longer friends (I think. We haven't spoken since I called her out about her dramatics, so there is a certain degree of certainty that our friendship is over), and now the saga comes forth thanks to the Joint Reading I signed up on, thanks to the initiative of a local booktuber. I had actually planned on reading "The Seven Husbands if Evelyn Hugo", or maybe embark on "Song of Achilles" to follow then with "Circe", but this idea came forth, and I thought to myself "why not?".

Truth to be told, I'm a bit nervous about this book, because I have not made my mind about the story and the characters, after having seen the series. HBO's Game of Thrones failed to really engage me, and - based on the acting - I was more invested in the Lanisters than anybody else.

As it is, I've found myself in the position I don't like as a reader: reasing several books at the same time. I'm still trying to finish Im Krebsgang by Günter Grass, really invested in Der Vorleser by Bernhard Schlink, and now I add this to my pile. We shall see how this goes on forward.

Quick Notes of Books and Language

Blogging has been getting kind of hard for me lately. My head is really dispersed right now (and generally, but now more than usual) as I have (again) million plans in my head and everything seems to be floating up in the air like... space scraps. The most accurate way to write about this would be in the free format a paper journal can give you, with fragments of lines here and there, with no order, and maybe some collaged half pages in between. Alas, I can't afford that on blogger, so let me give you a first idea, a dump of those loose ideas in my head.

Why is it that someone 

who is good at his job has to go 

and someone who is a 

complete, lazy idiot can stay?

     Why is nobody here making the needed 

     connections between what has happened in 

     France Telecom/Orange and our current 

     Public Employment Scenario?

        There is people out there, 

        whose lives are so meaningless, 

        their days so grey, they seek for 

        adventure through manifacturing troubles.

There is people out there 

who rather escape their real problems 

by creating a series of inflatable fake ones.

          People minding other people's 

          businesses are unwilling to 

          face their own.

I'm so uninterested in my Marketing degree.

What settles my mind right now is German. Yes, odd as it sounds, learning and reading German - with all its difficulties, settles my mind. Today I have classes, and I would rather not go. I just... don't feel it. But I'll power through it and I will go, because otherwise I know I won't fare well enough at the next test. I do want to learn, but the classes are taking a toll on my mood.

Source: Wikipedia

Curiously, though, I find the Lesenklub very satisfactory and I look forward to each day we meet. My tongue loosens then and I speak freely - mistakes and all. I enjoy the reading (we are currently reading Der Vorleser, by Bernhard Schlink), and I'm always full of ideas. I am thinking really about giving up the lessons and just concentrate on the reading club.

This is a thought I've been playing around with. It does upset me that though I am in an advanced language class, I just don't feel like I know enough. I imagine that it must be a struggle for the teacher to keep us interested in the class, but half way through it my mind is uncooperating and rather amuses itself by thinking up things in French. I just no longer enjoy the classes. Yes, I want to learn, I want to know, I want to gobble up the knowledge, but I am terribly uninspired.

However, this does not happen with the Lesenklub, where I spy the clock wishing the minutes to walk as slow as possible. It's half as long as the class, and it's not nearly enough. I haven't taken a break from German since I've started, and I'm pushing through it for as long as I can, as long as it lasts, but now, it's like shoveling money to something that' not giving me much (or anything) since... a year or so? Things come and go through my mind, but nothing stays.

This is the main issue occupying my thoughts. (That I can talk about here.)

Please Stop This "Heteronormative" Crap

Source: Property of Stormberry

By the end of last month my mind was blown, and blown BIG. I had read the book Playing With Fire by Lawrence O'Donnell and... wow, just... wow. Honestly, after having read Fear by Bob Woodward, I thought it would have take me time to find another great book, but then came Mr. O'Donnell, and blew every other book I have read this year out of the water.

After such an impressive book, I clearly needed a mind-eraser, otherwise I could not be fair to my next reading. Every other book ever written was bound to pale in comparison with this one, or so I felt at the moment. So, I did what I usually do, and picked up myself some free gay romance. You know, something light and funny to bring my brain back from the wonderful depths of the previous book.

--- Oh yes, Playing with Fire is a book about American politics and what went on during the election campaing where Richard Nixon became president. Just in case you were wondering.

Anyway, the point is that I picked up a gay romance book to lighten up my head. I didn't want to pay for it, so I picked something from my sampled in Kindle that I knew I could borrow for free. I had been spending handsomely, so yes, I needed a free eraser. I picked some book that seemed to be good on it's cover. I actually read the sample I had and it was... well, it was bad, but didn't look that bad. Well, it was that bad.

That was three days ago, and I'm still on 20% of it, and I rather pick up a reading in German or do homework than read that crap.

Aside from all the fakery, and those annoying cliches and tropes of "oblivious of attraction", and "erections are actually alarms of the proximity of true love", and the detailed physical description, because love only happens to hot people, AND "hot people are oblivious of their good looks", one thing that got me murderous was this need to force the reader to believe that "true love" looks like toxic relationships and last century's heterosexual, gender role defined marriages.

Things like suggesting that lack of jealousy is a sign of lack of love because (literally), a person's lover is a possession and people should be viciously possessive of their lovers, or else they don't really care. Or, the idea that a true, lasting, real relationship needs a partner that's leading and protective and another that's homely, loves to cook, clean and has a nurturing personality. A lot of gay romance novels fall into this trope of one character taking the traditional role of a homemaker, cookie-cut from a Good Housewife magazine from the 50's, that go far and beyond even what an average person with a homemaking inclination might be doing.

Novels often do point out that the character has this inclination, has always wanted to be a homemaker, BUT the overabundance of it is what becomes troublesome. This gives the idea that love can only exist in this frame, like two people who like to be together, but also like to have independent lives, or neither likes to do any house chores, or maybe both like to travel all the time, are not fit to become a long term, serious, established couple.

And also, love only exist in pairs. There only one One, and you are lucky if you find it, and forever unhappy if you don't. All relationships are and should be aimed to form a family. Relationships are only successful when there is exclusivity, they live together and have or plan to have children. And are jealous! That's important. If there is no jealousy, no seeing your significant other as a thing to be own, and which can be stolen, then there is no love. Forget anything else: no jealousy, no love.

Now, this (take or leave the jealousy) is often refered to (as far as I know), as heteronormative, as if the normal of heterosexual relationships is to live in an asphyxiating, toxic relationship, aimed to oppress one half and exploit the other. Oh yes, you read that right. IF the couple agrees to be monogam, and they both choose, by their own free will, because they like it, to lead a relationship where one stays at home and takes upon a homemaking role, while the other brings home the daily bread, so be it, BUT not everybody is cut for that, and so, by declaring it a "norm" you expect every other heterosexual person to squeeze themselves into either being forced to support all by themselves a family (this role is socially assigned to men, so the couple isn't supposed to choose who takes care of this), while the other is to give up any hope and dream of personal or artistic realisation (or of any other nature, unless it is church related), and devote to having kids and taking care of the house - role by default assigned to women.

Gay romance writers (often women) who buy into this idea, force their stories to choose a man and a woman in a pair of men, and though they are both men, one becomes "more man", but becoming aggressive, protective and often possessive in a violent manner, while the other is the "designated" woman, and by that necessarily, more dramatic, MOTHERLY protective, and a homemaker. And his jealousy (remember, jealousy = love), is expressed in the form of scene making and drama and crying in pajamas over a pint of ice cream and a glass of wine, with the besties.

However, and outside all "heteronormative" (I hate that word), there is the idea that mistreatment is actually the victim's fault because instead of getting away of the person harming them, they should "understand" them, and help them heal. Really?

Now, let's take a look at this. To me, this talks about veiled homophobia, because actually there is no acceptance of the concept of love outside the narrow box allowed and prescribed to heterosexual couples. That, just to start, because with the toppling of all that toxicity, including the apology of toxic masculinity and the glorifying of "toxic love" (which is no love), abusive relationships are justified and normalized as that's what love is. People who don't "enjoy" it and rejoice in it, are the problem.

Now, please let's stop this trend. Love has many faces and many flavors and many wazs to be expressed, but none of them include disrespect, mistreatment, miscommunication, harrassment, bullying, violence, threats of violence, manipulation, demand of sacrifice - even when it is demanded indrectly, as something you should be doing by yourself, out of love, or anything that makes any partner uncomfortable.

Love is respectful and gentle. Love happens between people of any gender, any race, any creed and age (as long as they are LEGAL!). Love involves consent. Full, disclaimed, unmistakable consent. Love isn't just monogamous either. Love can happen to a person by themselves, but also to more than two. Love doesn't equal living together and raising a family. Love can be casual. Love can also be temporary. Love is not a life insurance, a fixed income, a source of validation, a stamp of proven maturity.

The day all romance authors actually discover that, the world will be a better place, because people will stop feeding toxicity, and placing disproportionate expectations on the shoulders of others.

Deckle Edges

Before you ask, this year I have not bought as many books as last year. Compared to this point of the year. Well, I think. I wasn't in Hungary this year, so yeah, my book-purchase so far is still low. Of course, that doesn't mean that I will stop buying (or reading) books. I think it's more likely that I get off buying food than buying books.

When it comes to books, I don't discriminate between books on paper and e-books. Yes, some I like to have in physical format, specially if the topic is one I would like not only to highlight but also to make annotations on, and possibly reference in the future. History, philosophy, politics, economics, religion are usually among the subjects I prefer to have on physical format. Others I like more on e-book format, such as books on a language I'm learning (German) as Kindle allows me to have the meaning or translation of a word just by tapping it. In the case of LGTBQ+ romance books, having them on e-book format is more convenient, truth to be told. As for the rest, whatever format it comes in and is more convenient for me (cheaper, available) is what I pick.

Source: Google Image Search

Regarding the physical books, I usually tend to prefer paperback books because they tend to be cheaper and are less heavy than hardcovers. And for someone who destroys books the way I do (by jamming them into my bag), paperback is always better. In general, the format of the book and the binding of the book are not very important for me. Sure, I also judge a book by the cover, but I only buy it if the blurb convinces me, or if I already know the author and I know I can blindly trust them (a.k.a. Arnaldur Indriðason). However, a couple of years back I discovered a thing I can't stand when it comes to physical books: deckle edges.

I'm not sure, but I think the first time I came across a book with deckle edges was during my trip to Salem, Massachusetts. I was checking books at a bookstore (what else would I be doing?), and I found a book I found interesting. It was a hardcover, with nice, sturdy cover (the kind that's usually bound in linen, not paper), dust jacket, and as I turned it, the endges of the pages were uneven. I found it odd and ugly, because clearly a lot of throught and process had gone into making the covers and the dust jacket, and then the edges of the longer side of the page were rough. It was an instant pet peeve.

Source: Google Image Search

First I thought the book was defective, but then I saw that all other copies were just like that. It didn't make sense for me, because if they wanted to cut costs, the publisher would have not gone with the hardcover or the dust jacket. Then, why go with cut edges on the shorter sides and leave the longer one with the rough, deckle edges? Well, it turns out that deckle edges are a trend, and there's people that like them. Yes, take a moment to let that sink in.

Deckle edges have been a thing that has deterred me from buying some books. Currently, I think I only have one book with deckle edges, and that would be The Beguiled. I've been going round and round with this book. I didn't want it as much as to go and pick it up from the Kindle Store, but everytime I saw it in the bookstore I wanted it. I would pick it up, hiss at the edges, then read the blurb. Damned, I really wanted it! I think I may have been courting the ugly-edged book for over half a year. It even got missing from the shelves, so when I saw it again, I thought "what the fuck", and bought it. Deckle edges and all.

Source: Google Image Search

The thing that drives me mad about these edges is the feel of it. Not only are they rough, but they feel cutting against the pads of my fingers. The unevenness of them gives a catch that's uncomfortable when you are turning the pages. For instance, normally when reading, I tend to pass the page from upper or lower side of the page, but when I open the book, I use the longer edge. Also, when a book is a page turner, usually I stick my finger between the right side page and the next, so part of the longer edge will be resting on my index finger's second minute. The roughness of these ripped pages irk me.

Sorry, I don't get the appeal. I will still buy books, but this... this just drives me up the wall. Publishers, please get over your shabby chic phase. You want my money, don't you? Then stop upsetting me with his silly edges.

The Readings You Consume

Source: Google Images
www.twelvebooks.com

This week is dragging a little long, or so it seems. I finally finished reading "Russian Roulette" by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, and had immediately jumped into "Collusion", by Luke Harding. This would be my fourth book on the topic and my fourth book of the year. It's also curious, but after reading Russian Roulette, I feel more prepared emotionally to face the series of harrowing revelations included in this other book.

It's hard to explain what was I exactly expecting from my readings - maybe something more political and abstract - but facing texts writing about the crude manner in which Russia has apparently attacked another country's political and democratic construction has been horrifying, to say the least. Yes, of course, it is an "eye opener" and "this is how the world works" and so on, BUT I still find it deeply objectionable that anyone would think it's justifyable to toy and manipulate people into making them believe a false narrative in order to make them behave in a way that's contrary to their own objectives and best interest. Because say all you want, but what's happening to the United States, Great Britain and Europe is not, in the least, in the best interest of the population. Is it in the best interest of Russia? Honestly, I wouldn't say so. It is in the best interest of a handful of people, but not of any country or any larger, significant population on the planet.

Source Google Images
Penguin Random House

The book by Luke Harding reads so far more like a novel with romantic tones to it. I don't mean that it reads like a romance book, but more like a dreamy, rose-tinted story of a guy who finds himself in the middle of a huge, awful conspiracy, led by a deranged leader aparently trapped in the web of nearly steampunkish pipe dreams. It gives less a sense of helplessness, and more a novel-like recount of a story that's dirtier and more horrifying than what it lets the reader perceive.

So far, as I read it, it certainly feels like this book is the perfect grounding text I needed after my soul was filled with dread from Isikoff's brutal revelations.

Through the readings, though, I've also learned about RT and Sputnik, two Russian news media outlets used to pump Russian propaganda and the Russian agenda into the world. This suddenly got me thinking because I had at that point RT and Sputnik in my timeline. Except that I had clicked on them as a source for German news in German. Yes, I found the name "Sputnik" strange (I made my search with "Der Spiegel"), but the articles it brought were short and easy to read - which is a big plus for me (in spite of being about to enter the C1 level, so I should have a better German than what I currently command). After Isikoff's book, I decided I didn't want anything to do with either of those news outlets, so I clicked them off. The articles I clicked on seemed mostly harmless (again, my management of the language doesn't allow me to read extensively and in depth about politics and economics), but I started getting suspicious about what could be being fed to me, or even what could be getting planted in my computer. It might say they are "cookies" but you never know about those.

Then, in a local digital newspaper I saw the journalist refering to something about this country that had been mentioned in RT International. Well, that got me totally paranoid. How come a Russian State sponsored/controled news outlet writes about what happens in little-ole Costa Rica? Why are they even here? Are they targeting us too? What for?

My dad has discovered Facebook some months ago, and has gotten hooked on it. I've noticed that he has begun consuming large amounts of fake or adulterated news and actually believe them. He's taking sides upon reading, without practicing a minimum of cross-checking with other sources. I know, that's hard to do, but it's worth it. It might take a bit of time, but I urge you all to take everything you read with a grain of salt. Cross check, make sure other, more reliable news sources also cover the same events and pay attention to what they say. Look at the evidence by yourself and draw your own conclusions.

I'm still reading books on collusion and the Russian interference with the United States. I know no hackers, but there are things that do get me thinking, like the surge of so many anti-virus programs made in Russia, and how they are so good... but don't seem to fix things (I know, I have one). The politics now reigning in Russian, among them the medieval view about the LGTBI community. The large amount of poisonings of Russian disidents, the non-answers one hears from top government executives in the news, the Crimea thing. Things add up and not look good.

This are hard time, and we all yearn for stability and trustworthiness, but lets not let our desires be the tool with which the wool is pulled over our eyes.

Perception

Property of Snowberry

A friend of mine had recommended me a book by his father some months ago. His father is a historian and has published several books in Costa Rica, mainly through university publishers like the EUNA and EUNED. His emphasis is primarily on Latin American history, oftentimes with a slight leftish taste to his topics. I came to this recommendation as I was once talking to my friend and the name of Rosa Luxemburg came up. He mentioned his father had written about her and I've got ecstatic about the possibility of laying my hands on it. As it is, his book on Rosa Luxemburg is not available here, but for some reason available only in Chile.

Anyway, we've kept talking and he recommended me this book titled "El poema perdido de Aurora Cáceres" (The lost poem of Aurora Cáceres), saying he was sure I would love it. Trusting as I am, I've searched this book low and high and found it at the International Literature Festival held here in the end of July (or was it August?). It wasn't until recently that I've got to read it - following a month of October packed with other death-centric readings - and... Well, here is where our actual post start.

In my personal experience, Latin American authors that try to cultivate the "true Latin American literature", like to fall back to their own experience and their own lives as sources of inspiration. I find it funny because often these author have ample international experience, and many of them had studying experiences abroad is "posh" places such as wherever in the United States and wherever in Europe. Yet, as they come back, they seek to detach their work from what may have amazed them over there, by sticking strickly to their Latin American prism. I can't precise it where, but I do have a hazy memory of someone saying that true literature could only come from the personal experience of the author. Now, clearly I disagree with that. Mystery writers don't write from experience (at least I hope), and sci-fi and fantasy are clear examples of the heights imagination can reach, completely detached from experience. However the experience-centered literature was a thing and is a thing in some circles.

Aside from the "write from what you know" idea, the language and the wordsmithship of many Latin American authors favor a certain crudity in their expression. Sensations and facts and happenings are literally vomited over the pages in raw, unprepared, brutal ways.

As I started reading this book, I was quickly confronted with this vein of the literature, then it was rather quickly sinking deeper and deeper into a pit of dispair and misogyny. Page after page the story revealed a self absorbed man, desperate to escape, though there is never a clear thing or person or idea from which he tries to distance himself. Responsability, maybe? As the character delved into a dizzying world of sexual chaos, his thoughts about his family and his children were sprayed carelessly around like a second thought, or the remnants of puke dripping from the soiled cuff of the shirt. Though the crude sexual language and the demeaning phrases and pictures conjured by the author, the fleeting mentions of the family - dismissing the wife and the kids and centering only of the lost son, the dead one, and mainly on his death, not even his life - were disturbing.

I consider myself a regular reader, with not many qualms about what I can stomach when reading, and certainly I'm resistant in reading material of sexual nature, but this book became hard to swallow for me. It was not only the crudity of the language, but I was now seeing my friend through the eyes of his father, my friend's family through the eyes of a man who couldn't care less about about them, for whom they were a fixture or an excuse in the best of cases to justify his unsatiable need to run away from everything and purposefully seek out and choose the worse possible options in life. I held the book and my eyes trembled thinking of my friend reading those words. I was holding in my hands a sticky door to private, sickening family drama. How could he read that? Had he really read it or did he just recommend it based on the blurb?

The blurb does say it is a book about books and what people does for book, but the books in this story are nothing other than a poor excuse to shamelessly display a story written with a penis.

In some parts the author displays a heavy influence by Henry Miller - quite a taste of hos Tropic of Cancer - where the treatment of women is demeaning and visceral. As Miller, this author also vilifies the women in the story, making them all into dick-hungry, devious, stupid whores that try to hold up some sort of moral of intellectual standard that crumbles down in the end by their interaction with men.

As the story flows and the spirit of the author skinwalks from character to character, letting go of the family to simply concentrate on the women that play with them, sparsed with stories of lost poems, rare books and whatnots, and some careless homophobic slur passed as "male Latin American culture", it becomes easier to detach from the second hand pain my friend could have experienced, and see the author to the eyes as someone that has nothing to do with me. Through his skinwalking, as he sheds his visible social accesories, things start to emerge. For once, he does subscribe to the Latin American troubadour movement, but wraps it up in fashionable dispair. His once leftish inclination mutates into a bourgeois lifestyle, where flippant and fashionably acid comments cover up for the fact that he has, indeed, abandoned the red ranks. He sheds family and ideology, and instead rises the dregs of a disorderly life where everything is seen with hatred and crudity.

A picture emerges of a disorderly life where luxury and an accumulation of trips and trinkets out of the hands of the middle class of the seventies are coveted to be displayed in a purposefully disdainful manner in order to cover and justify for a dirty, disrespectful sexual pursuit of women (better if you can snatch a couple of sexual encounters from under her man, and give her back well used). Destinations stop being flashy, and listings of all the books and authors and... yeah, the eye jumps to the end of the comma string (which sadly you can't do when talking to someone), you are faced with a man who sees life as an unhappy, unsatisfying cesspool where his whole existence, his whole richness and all he possesses swirls around the stench and waste. A man who swells his lungs with putrid air and relishes in the fetid broth he has created around himself.

I asked my friend if he had read the book. He had. But had he really-really read it? Yes, he had.

"Why? Didn't you like it?"

"I... rather not tell you..."

"You didn't like it?"

"It's... disturbing."

"You didn't like it then."

"I can't forget this is your dad, and you read this. I find it disturbing from that perspective. I find it hurtful."

He dropped the topic.

Days for Reading (Aimless Rambling)

In the recent months I've been pretty much on a movie-spree, watching quite a lot of movies in rapid sucession. That's cool, because I like going to movies and I like movies. But then I have stopped, or more to the point, I have BEEN stopped. Do you want to know why? Because the movie theatres around me have decided to cater on hypes and limited seriously the number of movies they put out for people to watch. For instance, in my home town there is a mall with a movie theatre that has five halls. Do you know how many movies are they projecting? Three: Avengers (already seen it), a national movie (already seen it) and one about apostole Paul (there is no power on the heavens, earth or hell that can make me see it). Prior to that it was the first two movies AND a kiddie movie. Prior to that it was only the first TWO movies.

Other movie theatres around have more movies: Avengers, the national movie, and an assortment of kiddie and/or religious movies. So I keep branching out, I look for other movie theatres and I find war-action movies, comedy-action movies, comedies... Really? I know it's not October, so there wouldn't be an overabundance of horror movies, but is it April-May the sucky-movie-month?

So yes, that upsets me, but thankfully I've solutions at hand: my friends the loyal Books. ^_^ The thing with movies is that either you have at home a large DVD, Blueray collection, or millions of movie files on your computer (or Netflix and such) or you will depend of whaever the movie theatres in your location are willing to show. On the other hand, with books you can accumulate many, or even just get into your local library (if you read in there, you won't even have to pay, often times), and have a wonderful story at your fingertips that can keep you entertained for more than 90 minutes (usually).

And so yes, as movies dry up, I turn to my books and I fill my head with their words and their stories. :-) Currently, the book I'm reading is Bastian Obermayer and Frederik Obermaier's "Panama Papers", the book these journalists wrote about how they've got all those documents from Mossack Fonseca, the company that facilitated worldwide to many enterprises and individuals to create offshore companies that helped them funnel funds for different reasons. This book is AMAZING!

Now, I must tell you this: book shopping sprees can be, and often are life savers. Few of you might know (though I suspect none of you know), that I am part of the booktube community. I've a really tiny channel (in Spanish), and I like it like that. I like the feeling that I'm an unknown little booktuber that only a few people have discovered, and are maybe seen in secret. :-P Anyway, for a while now I've been consuming copious amounts of booktube videos, because

1. They are entertaining

2. They give me good ideas about what other books are out there that I may want to read

Most booktubers are young and avid YA (young adult) readers, which I am not, so also, a reason for me to do the chanel was to put of more content of other types of books. Yes, most of the booktubers read other books that are not YA, though those tend to be new books or hyped books or - you know - the books you usually find at big bookstores. And there is nothing wrong with that, but that often leaves other obscure books out there to be discovered. Lets put it this way (though it's not accurate), most booktubers are glossy bookstore booktubers, and I've been feeling the need of used-bookstore booktubers. At least this is my perspective.

So, yes, the thing is - I'm taking such a long, circumventing road here - that I have been binging on booktube for a while, and I've notice the murmurs of all sorts of topics and dramas, one of those was "Book Consumism". The hype at one point was whether booktube promotes consumism. Honestly, I've been tempted to put out a video explaining the different natures of goods in economy, and how books are like music, and it is possible not to have a "point of satisfaction" with it, thus people can consume infinite amounts of it... but that's not the point.

So, I was wondering if there was really such a thing as too many books or excessive book purchase, or mindless book purchase. Now, each to their own, but this is what I think: 

1. There is people who like to collect. Some people like a particular book very much and buy it in different editions because they like to look at it. They don't buy it for the story - though they may like the story - but for its collection-value, which may or may not be represented in terms of money. It is not "silly consumism", because in this case the book takes on a different function, the same way people collect stamps, sports cards, or any other thing that can be collected.

2. Books are a mean for entertainment, and while some books can be read several times and keep the same entertaining value, or some people can read the same book several times and still be entertained, that is not always the case. In these later cases, people who wish to entertain themselves reading, need to keep consuming more and more books, different each time. Putting a stop to it would be as silly as saying to someone "You have watched 10 movies so far in your lifetime. You don't need to watch any more movies".

In the cases where people desire to keep reading different books, they can choose to buy the books or borrow them, for instance, from a library. When people choose to buy them, often times people get into a bookstore and find several books they like. If they have the means to buy them, why shouldn't they? I have more books unread that I have read, and I always make sure to keep them that way, for as long as my resources and the bookstores around me allow me to. Why? Not only because I like to have a variety of choices to choose from when I have finished a book (I never really know, after finishing a book, what kind of story would I need or want to read), but also because it has happened to me quite often that I walk into a bookstore seeking new books (meaning: with the intention of spending money on books) and have come out empty handed. Just as I noted before, what would be the point of suffering from the same harrowing emotion that one goes through with movies (at least here) but with books? Why not use the times when there are plenty of good, interesting books (according to your own taste, after all, you are the one reading them) and gather many to be able to survive good-book-drout? 

Depending on how often you enter a bookstore, and the kind of bookstore you have around, but usually big chain bookstores operate based on market logic, meaning that they will fill their limited book-space with those books that are more likely to be sold. As result, when a certain book has a hype, bookstores tend to stuff their shelves with that type of book and as many similar books as possible, so that the readers brought in by the hype my find the book they wanted or leave with a similar one, and for those who already had a hyped book, to keep offering similar ones. This means that if you are not interested in that type of book or topic, you may have less to choose from.

The good thing about books is that they don't have a caducity date. They won't rot, they won't make you sick if you read them after certain date, so you can stock up on them and read them when you have the time or the desire.

My personal library is one filled with book that are now hard to get, obscure tomes that I would have forgotten, have I not found them when I did, and which yet are amazing. When I finish a book I don't need to go to a bookstore, but simply browse through my bookshelves for one of my many hidden treasures. And it makes me happy. My library keeps me entertained and assures me many, many years of entertainment ahead, saving me from the risk of running out of good stories be it for the lack of printing of good books or from a possible time when I can afford buying more books.

Perhaps book-consumism could be if you bought books just because they were hype, even though you had no intention to read them, nor were you interested in collecting books, but purchase them only for the desire to spend money. But if you buy books - be in few or many - because you want to collect them or read them (and you are interested in the book, or believe that you could be interested in it ), then that's not consumism, that's acquiring a good to satisfy a present or future need, and that is what regular consumer behavior is about. Trust me, I learned about this. I even have a degree on the science that studies this. :-D