July went by so fast 😵💫 I can't believe there's only one month of summer left 😭
📚 July reads:
-The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
-Botticelli in the Fire and Sunday in Sodom by Jordan Tannahill
-Maus by Art Spiegelman
-Forget Me Not by Julie Soto
-Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann
they're all standouts in their own right, but I kinda can't wait to read The Night Circus again to get lost in the world 😍
Maus and Killers of the Flower Moon are both incredibly important works on the Holocaust and systemic murders of the Osage Indigenous Americans, respectively.
nothing to note in my receiptify, but I mostly listened to podcasts in July, so this might not be super accurate
moving on to school and focused time, I finally got a job so I no longer have to job hunt 🎉 and I finished sorting my photos so I don't have to do that again until next year!
as for school, it's bad right now :( I'm not sure if I just don't gel with my prof or if I actually don't understand the material, but I'm struggling :/ my midterm is tomorrow but I don't have high hopes for it. I just want it to be done.
I do have plans to finish summer on a high note, I just gotta keep going 🥲
I cannot believe it's already August!! July had some great books, namely May Contain Lies and Unreconciled. I can't recommend them enough!! It also had some kinda mid books, but you can read about those below :) As before, queer books are marked with a 🌈
Cuckoo was the last book I had out from the library, so now I can actually focus on the books I meant to read this summer, starting with A Day Of Fallen Night! I'm already a quarter of the way through and I just love it. I'm also reading 1984 at the same time since it's a bit hard to read an 800 page book in bed 😅
Even though I'm sad to only have one month of summer left, I'm excited to just be able to keep doing what I've been doing the whole time: reading and loving life!
Cheers to August everyone <3
🌟 5 star books:
May Contain Lies: How Stories, Statistics, and Studies Exploit Our Biases — And What We Can Do About It (Alex Edmans) - My favourite book of this month and probably this year! Critical thinking is one of the most important skills we can develop in our lives and it is slowly being worn down by the amount of information that we blindly accept on a daily basis. Edmans does a great job laying out how we fall victim to our biases and how we can counteract that. I strongly recommend this book to everyone!! Full review and longer book summary here.
Unreconciled: Family, Truth, and Indigenous Resistance (Jesse Wente) - This book is an amazing opportunity to check your white privilege and take stock of how you may be unintentionally perpetuating harmful racist stereotypes. Some of the things mentioned in the book I already knew, but not to the extent that Wente talks about. I found Unreconciled to be a great chance to learn where the gaps in my listening and knowledge are. Full review and a few book excerpts here.
⭐️ 4 star books:
The Long Walk (Stephen King) - A really solid book! Good tension and anxiety. Not quite a horror novel, but definitely thriller. I quite enjoyed it, the pacing was good and it made me think about what motivates me. Full review here.
Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age (Darrel J. McLeod) - I won't lie, this was really hard to read. McLeod doesn't hold back in describing the abuse and trauma he grew up with. I want to feel bad for him, but he states in the book he doesn't want anyone's pity. You never know what anyone has gone through and it may seem easy to tell someone to leave their abuser, but it is so so complicated. It's not a fun book to read, but McLeod does talk about how he found comfort and healing, and it's his life story, and those are always important.
🌈 Growing Up Trans In Our Own Words (11 to 18 y/o contributors) - This book is the result of a project out in BC a few years ago that allowed trans and nonbinary youth the freedom to express their life experiences through poetry, art, essays, and short stories. I really appreciated the range of facets of life that were covered. I won't critique the content itself, since this is more meant to be an art project, but the compilation and presentation of the works had quite a bit of hand-holding due to it being for younger readers. I think it would be great to have an adult counterpart to this book. I think it's really important to listen to trans and GNC kids, so just having the same content, but presented more for adults as a way to expand their horizons on the voices they listen to.
✨ 3 star books:
🌈 Cuckoo (Gretchen Felker-Martin) - Fantastic concept for a book — a horror novel set in a queer conversion camp in 1995. Just not for me I think. Lots of body horror and gruesome descriptions of violence, gore, and abuse. Everything had a very dirty and gritty feel to it. It only fell apart for me a bit because some of the descriptions are pretty repetitive and are full force intensity all the time. The narrative style also felt a bit messy as it was told from the perspective of seven different people and I feel like it impacted the pacing negatively. I absolutely loved the prologue though. It felt like a fully-formed short story that is just chef's kiss. I also really liked how the characters were presented. Their sexualities and genders weren't ever explicitly labeled. Just "here they are, go with it, it's fine" and it felt refreshing for a change. The book was about their lives and survival, not about whether they identified as X, Y, or Z. I'd definitely recommend it if you're a fan of body horror and/or queer horror.
💫 2 star books:
🌈 Flamboyants: The Queer Harlem Resistance I Wish I'd Known (George M. Johnson) - I was so excited to read this book after Johnson's memoir, but it fell so flat. This was marketed as a collection of short biographies about key historic Black queer figures but the amount of information that was actually shared about the people mentioned was disappointing. I don't feel like I actually learned a lot about them. You'd be better off doing your own research. Full review here.
POSITIVES
☉ Good creating speed
☉ Learned and tried new things
☉ Tested/created different tools for inking
☉ Mostly good feedback from recipients
☉ New connections, more exposure
☉ Proud of my custom assets
NEGATIVES
⨷ Applied unnecessary limitations
(style, theme, quality)
⨷ Not enough diversity, no creature OCs
⨷ Not enough male characters
⨷ Half of the expected number of finished works
⨷ Overthinking and outperforming
⨷ Technical issues with Clip Studio software
⨷ Poor mental health days, draining
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My plan was to try new art things with each drawing I make, learn new tricks, and apply/practice them.
By doing this I increased creating time by a lot and so it wasn't wise to continue. Not when quantity is more important than quality.
I'm very glad that I didn't push myself too much and didn't burn out from this experience.
➽ Let me know which of my July's artworks is your personal favorite.
Leave a comment, tell how you see my art, and what you value in it. I'd appreciate the feedback.
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Regarding Art Fight event management itself.
Disappointing and bad.
🅧 Frequent maintenance in the first days indicates that admins were not prepared well. Assets were provided with delay.
🅧 Some small parts of the website are still broken as many years before.
🅧 The whole freaking drama unraveled among the staff in the only month everyone needs them to do their work well!
Scam, staff shifts, owner change, negativity.
Toxic and unprofessional.
🅧 Changes made to the event DURING the event. For example, team points calculation, changes to the search filter, and more. All the changes should be made BEFORE the time.
🅧 Bad Discord server maintenance. Poor structure, boring, immature. I expect more from Discord partners, for an old event with a huge community. I don't see a reason for me to be a member of their server in this situation.
🅧 Artists delete/archive their characters during the event.
It's irritating at least. What if I'm in the process of drawing? I won't be able to submit my attack.
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When time/energy allows, I plan to create TikTok content from all the speedpaint recordings I made during July.
