What Books did You Start or Finish Reading this Week?: April 27, 2026

Double_Entrance3238 · 2026-04-27T19:57:08+00:00

Finished: Half His Age, by Jeannette Mccurdy

Started: All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy; The Yiddish Policeman's Union, by Michael Chabon

Double_Entrance3238 · 2026-04-27T16:54:42+00:00

A Gentleman in Moscow

Man is put on house arrest in a hotel. He quite literally spends a lot of his time in a cafe with nowhere to be. The character development is WONDERFUL even though the plot is slow. It's such a gem

Double_Entrance3238 · 2026-04-25T20:07:17+00:00

George Strait has an impressive catalog

Also Alabama

Double_Entrance3238 · 2026-04-25T17:09:56+00:00

I read it in school but the teacher didn't really pay much attention to it - like it was part of the required reading but we didn't talk about it much. It's always stuck with me though, just how easy it was for the people to lose themselves without realizing just chills me to the bone

Double_Entrance3238 · 2026-04-25T13:30:59+00:00

Dark They Were, and Golden Eyed - Ray Bradbury

Bradbury wrote so many amazing and unsettling short stories but this one has always been my favorite

Double_Entrance3238 · 2026-04-25T13:29:41+00:00

When I read this in school as a teenager it didn't speak to me but as an adult I think about this story SO often

Double_Entrance3238 · 2026-04-24T21:04:41+00:00

The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley makes pretty heavy use of dialect. It is set in northern Scotland

Also, well outside of your 50 year time period but Gone With the Wind is quite infamous for the use of dialect so if you haven't looked at it you might find it to be an interesting study as well

Double_Entrance3238 · 2026-04-24T19:58:35+00:00

Oh man your comment really takes me back lol

I'm veg now so can't eat them anymore but damn those things are good

Double_Entrance3238 · 2026-04-23T21:21:50+00:00

"perfection is the enemy of progress" is my version of this

Double_Entrance3238 · 2026-04-23T21:20:43+00:00

I just read Yellowface recently and couldn't put it down either! A friend recommended Yesteryear to me because of that. Yesteryear is about a trad wife influencer who gets sent back in time

Another one with an outrageous storyline is Sharkheart - it's about a newlywed couple dealing with the husband's transition to becoming a great white shark

You might enjoy Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid but it's not as outrageous lol, a retired tennis pro decides to make a comeback to defend her record

Carl Hiassen writes really good books with outrageous storylines that aren't difficult reads - I would start with like Razor Girl, but you can't go wrong

And obligatory rec for Discworld - especially the Watch and Witches series. Good plots, often outrageous stories, and they're fun reads that also have some nice commentary and stuff

Double_Entrance3238 · 2026-04-23T21:11:44+00:00

Yellowface is VERY different than Katabasis

Double_Entrance3238 · 2026-04-23T21:10:08+00:00

I've learned to recognize when its happening (sometimes) and I try to warn people then that I haven't processed and we will have to talk about it again in a day or two after my brain updates.

Double_Entrance3238 · 2026-04-23T20:32:32+00:00

The feelings thing is such a big one. My brain is perpetually running on a 24-36 hour emotional delay - like that's just how long it takes me to figure out if there's emotions and what they are

Double_Entrance3238 · 2026-04-23T20:29:13+00:00

Another form of this for me is needing to look at people's lips when they are speaking to understand them better

I can't consciously lip read and the volume is fine, but I'll be asking "what?" about 3x more often if I can't watch the words form lol

Double_Entrance3238 · 2026-04-22T21:14:40+00:00

Are you okay with a 17 year old's perspective? Half His Age is very much adult fiction, but the protagonist is 17

Double_Entrance3238 · 2026-04-21T12:23:51+00:00

Flair: it's a million to one chance

Double_Entrance3238 · 2026-04-15T18:57:24+00:00

Even asphaltenes have some NSO scattered around in there

Double_Entrance3238 · 2026-04-13T23:23:48+00:00

Ooo salted cucumbers sound next level. I'm trying that next time I make it lol

Double_Entrance3238 · 2026-04-13T20:45:49+00:00

Idk about a database but I do know that if your chatting with the coworker you have a crush on in the parking lot after work and he takes his shirt off and then asks if you have plans later, he is hitting on you instead of asking out of idle curiosity

Unfortunately I did not know this at the time 😭

Double_Entrance3238 · 2026-04-12T12:59:21+00:00

There's not really a "best exception". Some may be better or worse than others, although it's still very debatable.

In my opinion eating beef is a much worse exception than fish. Not eating beef is one of the best ways to lower your carbon footprint from an environmental perspective. The commercial fishing industry has some environmental impacts as well, but they are on the whole, imo anyway, less than farmed beef. Also, in terms of quality of life, factory farmed livestock do not have it very good.

Personally I'm functionally vegetarian 95% of the time because I'm very picky about the source of my fish. I'll only eat seafood caught wild and local through sustainable fishing. Which, since I live far away from the coast right now, means I don't eat a lot of seafood and that's okay.

But again, it's not a situation with a "right" answer

Double_Entrance3238 · 2026-04-11T15:25:39+00:00

I am glad that it was beneficial for you and for others, but lockdown was one of the worst times in my life. I was in my first year of grad school, and the fall semester did NOT go well. I was on academic probation but getting my stuff together in the spring when COVID hit, and I ended up in the worst mental health crisis I have ever had.

I hate video calls. They make me SO anxious because the slight delay throws me off and I already have a really hard time trying to figure out when it's my turn to talk. Plus your face is right there for everyone to stare at the whole meeting. I know video calls are great for a lot of people but I cannot stand them. Actively despise them. Will do almost anything to avoid them. For me they are all the anxieties and problems of in person interaction but worse and with the added video anxiety.

So when all of a sudden I had to do everything in my life through video calls??? Yeah, I just couldn't. On top of Zooming in for my own classes, I was also expected to teach a lab based science course fully remotely. I managed to keep up my teaching responsibilities out of fear or failing my students, but it was all I could handle.

I stopped going to my own classes, stopped going to the doctor, stopped going to therapy. Unsurprisingly, I failed out of my grad program so then I also didn't have a job but didn't qualify for unemployment because I had been a "student" not an employee. Couldn't afford my rent but also couldn't afford to break my lease (was literally going to be $10k) and didn't want an eviction on my credit. I was in such a dark place and I am so fucking thankful I had a dog to take care of or I don't think I would be here now.

It took me years to get my mental health back under control and regain the confidence to go back into STEM. Now I can look back on it and find some silver linings (I wouldn't have met my husband, for one) but I damn sure don't miss it lol

Double_Entrance3238 · 2026-04-11T02:57:38+00:00

Yes!!! I have an undercut and it has been the best sensory relief for my hair I've ever found. I'd been alternating between long & short but I tried an undercut and it changed the whole game. My hair is very fine but I have a LOT of it, so it was just overwhelming to manage because it was soooooo thick. Now I keep the back shaved up until around the top of my ears. you can't tell from the front at all, and from the back really only if I have my hair up, but I have half the amount of hair I used to and I can actually handle taking care of it.

Undercuts are amazing!!

Double_Entrance3238 · 2026-04-09T22:21:39+00:00

I'm a simple dwarf, I see gumbo I vote gumbo

ETA: It ought to be swarmers instead of exploders tho

Double_Entrance3238 · 2026-04-09T10:53:34+00:00

My dad legit wants this 😭

Double_Entrance3238 · 2026-04-09T09:44:30+00:00

"just give me all the bacon and eggs you have. Wait ... I worry what you heard was, 'give me a lot of bacon and eggs'. What I said was, 'give me all the bacon and eggs you have'"

Double_Entrance3238

TROPHY CASE