Just Yapping

[heavy-sunshine]

My booklr content, start here!

Everything here is in chronological order, if you're looking for most recent then scroll further down in this post.

All the books I read in 2024 (plus some honorable mentions from previous years)

Storygraph pictograph of all the books I read in 2024

Monthly reading wrap ups

January 2025

February 2025

April 2025

May 2025

September 2025

October 2025

November 2025

My book reviews

Drew Leclair gets a clue by Katryn Bury

The loudest silence by Sydney Langford

She's not sorry by Mary Kubica

The Name Drop by Susan Lee

The Utterly Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant by Drew Hayes

The Seven Month Itch by Tanvier Peart

Good girl, bad blood by Holly Jackson

The Escape Room by Megan Goldin

[antifascistelmo-deactivated2022]

No matter how progressive or well-read you are, there are always going to be moments in your life where somebody pushes back against something that's so culturally ingrained you never even considered it before. And you'll say "Huh, it never occurred to me to challenge this but you're right" and that doesn't mean you were "morally toxic" before, it means you're a non-omniscient human capable of growth.

[heavy-sunshine]

Art is human

“Death and art are inextricably linked. You humans live for such a short amount of time and you choose to spend that time doing the most important things you can do; create. And you create because death lurks close because you must create to have something for the ones who survive you, you create to feel you're contributing, you create because you must, because death makes you feel like you're not human and art reminds you that you are.”

“And when death inspires you to make art, it's the most human thing you can do."

This was written fully by me, no AI

[lost-in-eriador]

in 2026, remember how GOOD writing feels. remember how satsfying it is to get your characters to the point you have been dying to get to, where they will experience the love, fear, relief or whatever the feeling you want to bring to life may be. let this year be the year of writing, prgress and of satisfactory endings.

[fungusamongusblg2]

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

every day I learn bot comments on ao3 are stooping lower and lower

anyway if you get a comment like this, chances are that they are bot and their goal is to do whatever it takes to get you to delete your work, most certainly (from what I’ve heard) it’s because they want to “safely” steal your work, use it to train their ai without you being able to rightfully claim ownership of your work since “there’s no proof that the work was stolen/was posted elsewhere first by you” because the original source has already been deleted.

THEY ARE ALL BOTS. at first it was “ao3 is deleting fics and your entire account will be affected unless you delete the fics yourself” then it was “this work contains contents that are illegal and they have already reported you and your fic to the police” (yes, that’s how desperate these bots are), and now it’s this.

report their comments to ao3 for spam—in this case, specifically, I think you may be able to report them for harassment too—and don’t pay attention to them, most importantly don’t delete your works, don’t feel discouraged by their comments. remember that they are bots and they mass comment something like this on people’s works at random to get people to delete their works. (or even if they’re not bot, they are still pathetic bullies who don’t deserve your time or attention.)

MORE ABOUT BOTS AND SCAMS PLAGUING AO3’S COMMENTS SECTION HERE

[lost-in-eriador]

in 2026, remember how GOOD writing feels. remember how satsfying it is to get your characters to the point you have been dying to get to, where they will experience the love, fear, relief or whatever the feeling you want to bring to life may be. let this year be the year of writing, prgress and of satisfactory endings.

[tpwrtrmnky]

"Block this ad" isn't good enough, I need a feature that directly tells the company "this was so shit that it lowered my opinion of your product"

[theunfortunate-author]

my daily affirmation as an author

[k9effect]

Tiktok's censorship of words like rape, kill, murder, abortion etc. etc. as well as censoring hard to hear topics, over the past few years has deeply contributed to the sanitisation of the internet and therefore directly resulted in the birth of "fandom purists" and the destruction of old fandom culture (the death of "don't like, don't read", "ship and let ship" mindsets as well as safe spaces for dark and "immoral"/unethical storytelling i.e "dead dove: do not eat") in a way that has fundamentally changed the mindsets of people who are new to fandom spaces and now view these such topics as wildly inappropriate for any social space as well as deeming anyone who is intrigued by them narratively or creatively as "immoral" and a bad person. In this essay I will

[heavy-sunshine]

It's happening on Tumblr now. I'm pretty sure my end of year book tag got put in content review purgatory because of the word "murder" when I mentioned the book title "A Good Girl's guide to murder."

[heavy-sunshine]

End of year book tag!

I thought it would be fun to whip up some questions and create my own tag. If you're tagged please copy these questions and answer yourself. Also please feel free to join in if you aren't tagged as well!

1. If you reread anything, what book have you reread the most this year?

2. If you didn't reread anything this year, is there a specific reason for that, would you like to reread a book in the future (doesn't even have to be from this year)?

3. What is your lowest rated book of the year (it can be multiple)?

4. What is your highest rated book of the year (it can also be multiple)?

5. What format did you most often read in (audio, physical, ereader, etc.)?

6. What was a book that you didn't expect to be a 5 star read, but then was a 5 star read?

7. What was a book you expected to be a 5 star read but wasn't a 5 star read?

8. What was your most read genre this year?

9. What's a book you read this year that wasn't in your typical genres that you read and enjoyed?

10. Did you discover any new to you authors that you love this year? If so, who?

11. Did any books that you read this year surprise you with how good they were?

12. What was a book that you got on a whim (could be borrowed from the library, bought, etc.) that you ended up enjoying?

13. What's the longest book you read this year (audiobooks do count, but check your audiobook vs page count or vice versa to get an accurate answer to this one)?

14. Do you have any reading goals in 2026?

15. Do you have any books you're looking forward to reading in 2026 (doesn't have to be new releases)?

@spirited-splashes @libritosblog @strawbrrycowgrl @rosegardendeprofundis @trinnyreads222 @book-bard @jenyifer @t0xic-r0ses @erinsstillreading

[internettythings]

[hiddencowplant]

Possible solution to "cannot load this save game. It may have been saved with expansion pack data that is no longer present on this system"

This solution applies if you know you have the necessary expansion packs installed in your game!

I might be super late to this and maybe everyone already knows, but I just found a easy fix for this particular save error (especially when installing save files!!)

Here’s what worked for me:

So I installed the world through the launcher, opened my game, and then loaded the world! It seems that if a world is freshly installed in your game (meaning you haven’t loaded it before), you need to let the game generate those files because they contain necessary data required for the save to load! I'm not sure if the same applies to EP worlds though.

After that I saved my game, went back to the main menu and the error was gone! I could load the save again without issues. 😌

[justnoodlefishthings]

"Coca-Cola made an AI ad!"

"McDonald's releases AI Christmas commercial!!"

Don't care didn't ask plus here's a beautifully animated ad for a French supermarket that was made by actual artists

[persianmom-deactivated20260602]

I do not want the ai overview. I want to read six wikipedia pages as god intended.

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

Anyone and everyone CAN write. The world’s most skilled writer didn’t start off skilled. The key is that they practice hard by writing a lot.

As long as you write, you are practicing your craft and you are getting better at writing. But you will never get anywhere if you let AI write for you.

[heavy-sunshine]

November 2025 reading wrap up

I can't sleep so I'm going to post my extremely brief November reading wrap up

Was going to read more last month but we moved into a new apartment and that move involved going to another state to get our stuff out of storage and then unloading the truck into the apartment on Thanksgiving day. On top of regular life that doesn't stop just because you're moving. Yes I'm surrounded by boxes right now, yes I hate it.

Finished

📱 Just stab me now by Jill Bearup

🎧 We'll prescribe you a cat by Syou Ishida

Currently reading

🎧 Tress of the emerald sea by Brandon Sanderson

🎧 To kill a mockingbird by Harper Lee

🎧 Stop letting everything affect you by Daniel Chidiac

📱 The particular sadness of lemon cake by Aimee Bender

📱 Betraying Korth by Mary Mecham

📱 Pride and prejudice by Jane Austen

📖 In the hand of the goddess by Tamora Pierce

No DNFs in November

I was really excited to finally read "Just stab me now"

I was concerned I wouldn't enjoy it as I've watched Jill Bearup's web series that then turned into this book several times.

It helped it wasn't a beat by beat recreation and there were lots of things added and some small details changed. I went back to the web series to make sure I wasn't misremembering and I wasn't, there were some differences.

I think being so familiar because of the web series made it such an easy read. Everytime I sat down to read it I'd read 50 pages at a time which is a lot for me to read with my eyes in one sitting.

It was enjoyable and lovely to have a heroine who was focused on things besides romance and I'm excited for Jill's next book