Volkditty

Not my favorite series but it did have it's good bits. Cheeky Lil' Banana Boy was the highlight for me.

I keep having dreams of things I need to do

And waking up but not following through

But it feels like I haven't slept at all

When I wake to a silence and she's facing the wall

Posters of Dylan and of Hemingway

An antique compass for a sailor's escape

She says, "You just can't live this way"

And I close my eyes and I never say

I'm still having dreams

That is an important one and I'll expand on it slightly...I spend probably 80% of my time either sleeping, sitting in front of the computer, or out walking around. Consequentially, the most comfortable and expensive things I own are my mattress, my office chair, and my shoes. Spend your money where it matters.

That is an excellent book, and I agree with you about how hard the third act hits. If you're interested, she has a couple other novels in the same setting (time-traveling historians): To Say Nothing of the Dog, a much more light-hearted Victorian-era farce that overlaps with events from the real-life novel Three Men in a Boat which is itself a good and funny read, and the two-parter Blackout and All Clear, neither of which I have read but are on my list to get around to someday.

Yeah, I would recommend it. My biggest takeaways from it so far have been understanding how many of my habits and personality quirks are actually coping strategies that I just didn't realize. Like, I always thought I just happened to like chewing gum all the time because I enjoyed the minty flavor. Turns out the repetitive chewing motion can actually stimulate the dopamine I crave. I thought everyone has a collection of rhyming phrases or little songs that they only say in private and we all collectively pretend like we don't because it's embarrassing. Turns out that's verbal or auditory stimming. It's been great in that regard, helping me understand why I am the way I am.

Can't really speak to how effective any of the ADHD management techniques in the book are since I'm still working through it and trying to take things onboard, but the author also has a very popular and successful Youtube channel where you can probably find all the same information and more if you're interested.

• The Mercy of Gods: The first book in a new trilogy from the guys behind The Expanse.
• How to ADHD: Because I wasn't diagnosed until 40 and now I have to rethink everything about me.
• My War Gone By, I Miss It So: The memoir of a British war zone journalist who covered the Bosnian War and other Balkans conflicts. I originally read it decades ago but was reminded of it after watching Civil War earlier this year. I heard lots of criticism about the main characters in that movie not being relatable or very likable so I picked this back up to confirm that yes, that's accurate, and I think part of the point of the movie...

I'll take "Books that made me sob like a baby" for $500, Alex.

See, this is why I hedged my bets. That wasn't the comma that threw me off. I didn't even see that one on first read-through. I was focused on the "the substance that, injected intravenously, turns women into cats!"

I'm pretty sure that having only one comma in that sentence is grammatically incorrect, but I don't feel confident enough to be pedantic about it.

Strange to call it a "all-new espionage thriller" when it's a remake.

Buy the book, too.

Yeah, I did not mean to disparage or downplay their decision to leave. Better late than never, it's just that the time for trying to "change the system from within" seemed well past to me.