Spotlight on: Never Contented Things | Written by Gail

Happy pride! I hope y’all are having a nice pride month so far! Today is also the last day of my semester, so shit’s been crazy. That said, I’ve read a lot of queer books recently. Recently, as in over the past couple of months, or as in over the past year, either works. I made a post summarizing my recs for this month on tumblr, and you can view it here. In whatever posts I manage to write this month, I want to spotlight a couple of LGBTQA+ books that I love and simply aren’t getting the love they deserve. This one is a bizarre book, a contemporary-ish fantasy horror about three dysfunctional people whose main obstacle isn’t the world around them, it isn’t even the horror elements, but their own dysfunction.

Review: The Infinite Noise ARC | Written by Gail

The Infinite Noise by Lauren Shippen Series: The Bright Sessions #1 Genre: LGBT | Young Adult Length: 336 pages Published on 24th September 2019 by Tor Teen Purchase*: Amazon | Wordery _{*these are affiliate links} Lauren Shippen: Website | Twitter | Goodreads Received for free from the author in exchange for an honest review

Synopsis: From Lauren Shippen, the creator of the beloved and award-winning podcast The Bright Sessions, comes the first novel in a series that follows the struggles and discoveries of three teenagers with supernatural abilites who end up on the couch of Dr. Bright, a mysterious therapist who specializes in atypicals. “What if the X-Men, instead of becoming superheroes, decided to spend some time in therapy?”

I was lucky enough to be selected to get an ARC of The Infinite Noise by Lauren Shippen (my first ever ARC!). I had finished reading it only a day later, and I am glad to say, upfront, before we get into the nitty gritty details, that I really, truly enjoyed it.

Books That Surprised Me (For Better Or Worse) | Written by Gail

I don’t know if you could tell from the everything about me, but I read a lot. At any given moment, I’m probably reading or watching something; those are the two options. I’ve been known to do both with other people. And after 21 years, I think I have a pretty good idea of what stuff I like, and whether or not you like it, in this age of marketing, you can judge a book by its cover. That means that usually I enjoy the books I pick up, because I picked them up because the combination of the cover and the summary is usually a good indicator of whether or not this book will work for me.

What this means, in practice, is that most books I read get either three or four stars. I’m not one to give five stars unless a book is truly exceptional; and I very rarely give a book a solid try if it isn’t working for me. These are a few standouts.

Journals and Diaries | Written by Gail

I will never succeed at bullet journaling. It’s never going to happen.

This is something I realized recently, after several attempts at the concept. I’m not good at planning ahead, or spending lots of time preparing for something; and bullet journals – at least, the way I’ve seen it handled – takes a lot of time. You need to hand number the pages, and design the layouts in advance. You can’t just sit down and write. You’re keeping track of things, and that means you have to know all of your assignments and grocery lists and whatnot at the moment you’re writing them down, and keep updating it.

failed attempt at bullet journaling. this is the only page that has anything written on it

Reading what you want | Written by Gail

Passover’s right around the corner – This Friday night! – and instead of having the entire week off, I have two more days of university, so another short one this week.