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reading television

Can a Book be Compelling but Bad?

My book club is currently doing a series of hate reads, and our most recent book was Colleen Hoover’s It Ends with Us. This book is incredibly popular, garnering almost 3 million ratings on Goodreads so far, and it keeps gaining 7 years later. At an average rating of 4.23, it’s also well-received. Yet, it’s […]

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board games food reading television video games

My 2022 Recommendations

From 2022, my recommendations span games, viewing, cooking, and reading. Video Game: Super Mario Galaxy I didn’t grow up with any gaming consoles, so although I played many great PC gaming franchises, I never played the likes of Final Fantasy, Zelda, or GTA. Recently, I tried out Super Mario Odyssey, and I couldn’t put it […]

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board games food parenting podcasts reading television video games

My 2021 Recommendations

Let’s start with the elephant in the room: the most time-consuming and best thing I did this year was parenting. I hope that continues to be true for many years. However, that doesn’t seem like something I should be generally recommending to everyone, so I still have the rest of this list. TV: Ted Lasso

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board games movies reading television video games

My 2020 Recommendations

Before writing my new recommendations, I reviewed my past recommendations and noticed mostly games and long-form content. I usually like those, but that’s not what I found this year. This year, it was mostly shorter, non-interactive online content. That fits with my 2020. I also have written about several of these recommendations already, so I […]

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movies reading

Experiencing Harry Potter Again (Part 2)

Due to the length of my thoughts, I split my Harry Potter re-read and re-watch into two posts. My last post covered the first four Harry Potter movies and books, and this post will cover the rest. I’m surprised that I actually had more for the latter half since I like the earlier books more.

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movies reading

Experiencing Harry Potter Again (Part 1)

Growing up, I was a Star Wars fan. I watched Friends on TV in syndication, and I played StarCraft. However, the defining pop culture phenomena of my generation was Harry Potter. I first learned of Harry Potter in 5th grade roughly when the Prisoner of Azkaban was being released. I never purchased any of the […]

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food reading television video games

My 2019 Recommendations

2019 has been a very different year of likes from 2018. In 2018, I had a pile of video and tabletop games that I had to debate amongst to fit in. This year, I’m grasping at games. In 2018, I wasn’t totally happy with my book choices. Yes I liked Crucial Conversations, but it isn’t […]

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board games food games reading tabletop games television video games

My 2018 Recommendations

Many bloggers write a “Books I Read Last Year” or “Recommended Movies” post at the end of the year. Frankly, I think most people do it because other people do it and because they’re really easy to write. It’s a total cop-out for generating content. In fact, it’s such a good cop-out that I’m going […]

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reading

Discarding Anything That Didn’t “Spark Joy”: 8 Months Later

I’m in a book club called “Big Yak Mountain,” and we don’t read anything in particular. We’re 43 books in, and have read books from Ready Player One, which is going to be a Spielberg movie soon, to Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem, which is definitely not coming to theaters near you. Some are thought-provoking. Others are mindless. Many […]

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reading

Why I’m Not Sentimental About Books

I discovered over the past month that many bloggers write an annual “Books I Read Last Year” post. Anecdotally, this might in fact be the only post that many bloggers write for the entire year. Although I will tease them for not writing more often, I can’t make fun of them for their reading habit […]