There was a funny moment last year when, in the introduction for March’s Book of the Month Conversations With Friends, I rallied against judging a book by its cover. Determined to get over my own prejudices, I’d chosen Sally Rooney’s debut novel while staunchly ignoring all the signs on the book cover and blurb that…
All writing is dialogue. Not dialogue as in he-said-she-said, but as in referencing and relating to other ideas. Choosing to write about vampires, for example, puts you in dialogue with works like Dracula, The Vampire Chronicles, and Twilight. Writing a historical biography of a famous leader or innovator forces you to dialogue with historical texts,…
Typically, when reading for the Book of the Month Club, I finish before my partner. I have a strict timeline for finishing. My partner, not so much. Sometimes, if he’s unsure about a genre or author, he’ll wait for me to finish first. When I finished Somebody’s Daughter, my bookmark was the only one wedged…
As I mentioned in my post Reflecting On a Year of Tea, I’ve been learning Japanese for about a year. My accent is awful, and my handwriting is atrocious, but I make the effort regardless. Still, there’s one area I can’t practice in my day-to-day life: listening. So when a friend asked if I’d like…
“Don’t sleep on the city that never sleeps, son, and don’t fucking bring your squamous eldritch bullshit here.”N.K. Jemisin I’ve lived within train distance of Chicago my whole life. None of the towns qualified as suburbs (the people who live in the suburbs would have my head if I’d claimed that). Most don’t even qualify…
One dollar. I’d like you to think of the last time you bought something for a dollar. It might be hard to do. As you wrack your brain, you might think of the last time you went to a vending machine. No dice. A bag of chips, the weight of which is half air, costs…
Today marks the first anniversary of this blog. As I prepped this piece, I went back to read my first-ever post. It’s optimistic, funny, and riddled with silly little errors that wouldn’t get past my editing process nowadays. The year-past ghost of me that wrote it saw the burgeoning potential of this blog, and it…
Hello all, and Merry Christmas to those who celebrate! If you were a little surprised to see a notification pop up today, I can understand. Christmas festivities often involve pushed-back obligations and a weekend full of festivities. Many log off, spend time with friends or family, or spend a long, quiet weekend indulging in some…
If I were to describe my writing schedule before starting this blog, I’d pick the word “sporadic”. The writing folder on my computer, sorted by year, alternates between years with forty-plus documents and years that are completely barren. An entire bottom shelf of a bookcase is dedicated to notebooks I won’t throw out due to…
I started learning Japanese this year on a whim. I’d been thinking about matcha, looking up chawans on the internet, and decided, heck, why not? I’d love to visit Japan one day. So I dove in, downloading Duolingo, signing up for WaniKani, and practicing my hiragana and katakana on Tofugu. That’s how I normally decide…
Tea Reads 