#reading resources

[vergess]

Quick question, genuine question:

Why on earth does "more than half of US adults under 30 cannot read above an elementary school level" not strike horror into the heart of everyone who hears it?

Are the implications of it unclear????

I'm serious, people keep reacting with a sort of vague dismissal when I point this out, and I want to know why!

If adults in the US cannot read, then the only information they have access to is TV and video, the spaces with the most egregious and horrific misinformation!

If they cannot read, they cannot escape that misinformation.

This obscene lack of literacy should strike fear into every heart! US TV is notoriously horrific propaganda!

Is that???? Not??? Obvious???????

I know this sounds sarcastic, I know it does, but I'm completely serious here. I do not understand where the disconnect is.

ETA: This post continues here, with citations

ETA 2: There's a tag on my blog now; it's simply #literacy. You can click it at the bottom of this post to view on mobile, or click here for desktop.

ETA 3: Stop saying children are being manipulated on purpose. That's how you get conspiracy theories. This entire situation is just a serious of bad decisions, not a nefarious plot. Focus on the real problem if we want real solutions.

ETA 4: PUBLIC SCHOOLS ARE THE SOLUTION NOT THE PROBLEM, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE? I mean you can't read, obviously. I just said that. But holy SHIT.

ETA 5: I have begun compiling a list of resources, including at least some practice books at each difficulty level. Check the tag "reading resources" on my blog by clicking it below.

[glitter-stained]

A compilation of resources

Hi guys, sorry for spam-posting this morning: I have over 2000 drafts and needed to get these posts out so I could put them in order, in order to make this post.

FOOD

Stay on track of recalls to avoid getting food poisoning + more food recall info

5 ingredients/45 minutes recipes

Apple chai caramel cider

How to make cookies in a mug

Edible plants catalogue:

Sad bastard Expectations

You need to eat vegetables

Transcendent pumpkin pie

Hungarian mushroom soup

The spite cookbook!!

Crustless quiche of eternal dinner

Accessible cookbook for people with sensory issues!!!

HOME KEEPING

Homemaking, gardening and self-sufficiency resources that will not radicalize you

House maintenance

Washing machine tips!

Home repair! How do I cover up holes in my wall

Gardening map

RESOURCES FOR PHYSICAL AND MENTAL HEALTH AND SUPPORT

Disability survival guide

Resources for sign languages

Toothbrushes you can use while in bed!

Hey, person who's feeling overwhelmed by life!

How to do hard things

Reality statements for interpersonal effectiveness

In case anyone else is having a bad night

Stretching advice

Learn the Beck Columns with Cassandra Cain!

Activities that are not doom-scrolling

How to actually help someone who attempted suicide via pills

Lavender tip

Resume help for people with disabilities!!!

READING RESOURCES

Public domain websites

Bookshop is in the place!

Reading sites

Ao3 cheatsheet

Support your local library

Study time!

J-stor has it for you!

Magical bookstores (now with a map!)

WRITING RESOURCES

Useful websites aplenty

Writing tips that don't tell you what to write

Disability writing guide

On villains with tragic backstories

On carrying children

Some writing resources

Ref recs for whump writers

Writing dialogue

Writing characters with Schizophrenia

Writing advice ("crime")

Taking emotional intelligence in account!

Non tragic backstories

Useful geographical descriptors for writers:

How to say "it hurts"

You don't need an agent

Write your story backwards

Quick english grammar dialogue guide

Worldbuilding guide website

Writing about wounds

Gems (more useful than you'd think)

Wikipedia monster compilation

GRAPHIC ARTS RESOURCES

Anatomy help

Hot artists don't gatekeep

Sketch warm-ups

Muscle references!

SURVIVING THE DIGITAL HELLSCAPE

Resources for staying safe online

Escape the discord generative AI

Stop NCII

Back-up your tumblr blog

Fuck ads

Fuck your paywall

Fuck your paywall, science edition

Learn the basics of digital archiving/preservation

Fuck your overpriced Netflix subscription , really, fuck it

Hidden search systems

Wafern = fediverse tumblr (none of these words are in the bible)

Fuck that spotify subscription

Woops! Gmail scam

Wolfram Amadeus Mozart or something idk i don't play the violin

FUCK YOU AI TOP RESULTS

Discord switch?

Lock your fics!

Piracy yay

Decentralize and clean up your life!!

EDUCATION CORNER

Free classes!

AP US History help for high school students

Kink sex ed

Correct your misconceptions with Wikipedia

MISCELLANEOUS

Dealing with the worst case scenario

Supporting native artwork

Small ways in which you can support science!

Frozen water survival guide

Care packages

DIY clothing repare

Manners/etiquette

Yeah no I'm not doing that for free

Derek guy helping transmascs and trans men dress!

Summer advice

Some help for finding help! Resources exist, but may be difficult to find

Making stuff and doing things

There we go! Hopefully some of those help make your life easier.

[jannwrites]

Alternative readings for The Body Keeps the Score

hi, i'm a practicing mental health therapist and a writer here on tumblr dot com. the body keeps the score by dr. bessel van der kolk has a couple issues with it, primarily in the author's very much cishet male eurocentric approach to trauma and the graphic nature of the book. here's a list of some books about trauma that i've found preferable to the body keeps the score in addressing trauma and how the body holds onto trauma. i've included pdf links for ones i could find:

HEALING TRAUMA by peter a. levine. this one is a far less denser read than the body keeps the score while still providing solid education on trauma symptomatology. it even comes with mp3 access to exercises to address somatic symptoms.

MY GRANDMOTHER'S HANDS by resmaa menakem. this one discusses how racism in america is ingrained in our society and how intergenerational racial trauma is ingrained in our bodies.

INFLAMED by rupa marya & raj patel. this was written in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the structural injustices in medicine that caused so many racial disparities in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and how trauma caused by our political systems affect the different systems of the body.

THE POLITICS OF TRAUMA: SOMATICS, HEALING, & SOCIAL JUSTICE by staci haines. a great read on how trauma is not just an individual problem but a societal problem, and how to integrate trauma work into society at large.

TRAUMA & RECOVERY by judith l. herman. this is a classic in the therapy field and really set the tone for our modern approaches to trauma treatment. the pdf linked is the first edition of the book but it has since been updated as we learn more about complex trauma.

THE BODY NEVER LIES: THE LINGERING EFFECTS OF CRUEL PARENTING by alice miller. what it says on the tin: this book covers the effects of trauma inflicted by parents on the body and the brain.

cheers, and happy reading!

[cleo-2345]

Discover the most loved 21st-century books from each country on this world book map — all written by local authors and rated by readers on G

If you are looking to read more widely, I have recently discovered a website called the world book map. How it works as you click on a country and it comes up with a list of the most popular best loved books from that country.

[rigelmejo]

I'm a broken record about this, but I really recommend reading Heavenly Path's Comrpehensive Reading Guide, and then checking out their webnovel recommendations for Newcomers.

Even if you only take some tips away from that guide, something in it will be of some use to you. Their guide mentions Pleco, Readibu, a ton of free Graded Reader resources, when to start trying to read stories. Just tons of useful stuff.

For people who are already reading, and struggling to find easier, or slightly more challening, reading material, their general recommendations pages are extremely useful.

[radioactive-earthshine]

Best comics to read for Barry Allen? :0

For just a basic read through for this character I would recommend these comics. No, this is not exhaustive, I tried to keep it concise to give someone a good well rounded understanding of this character while not being hundreds of comics.

The Flash (1959)

#110 Wally becomes Kid Flash #323-#327 The Trial Issues #350 the final issue of his series

Crisis on Infinite Earths

Sad, Barry dies helping to save everyone.

Flash and Green Lantern: The Brave and the Bold

An amazingly canon-compliant little love letter to Barry Allen and Hal Jordan's friendship. These are a compilation of stories that take place before COIE.

Final Crisis

Barry comes back to life permanently after showing up intermittently and haunting the narrative throughout the last 20 years of comics.

The Flash: Rebirth

This is a great series that shows Barry's perspective from suddenly being brought back to life in a world he isn't sure he wants to be in.

Blackest Night

You will read the main Blackest Night title, Green Lantern (2005) #44 and Blackest Night: The Flash. It has a lot of emotional scenes as Barry again comes to terms with being alive.

For what it's worth, the whole event is worth reading even if there are moments that make me want to punch a tree. It's huge though, so your mileage will vary.

The Flash (2010)

Only 12 issues long, 13 with the secret files issue. This is the closing main Flash title of the pre-Flashpoint continuity and is an important lead into Flashpoint.

Flashpoint

Look, there's a lot of misconception for what this event was, what actually happened, and who was "at fault" so it's just a good idea to read it so you are well informed.

The Flash (2016) by Joshua Williamson

Where he is now in comics with Barry written by someone who took a lot of love and care to weave together Barry's history to try and make a new continuity that makes sense. He pulls in references from the silver age of comics and paints a haunting landscape where Barry remembers his pre-Flashpoint life, but there are holes that he fills in as more memories come to him.

Naturally, there are dozens of other single issues I could recommend but to start this is a good list. The biggest chunk of reading in all of this is Williamson's run.

[heavenlyyshecomes]

Home - Palestinian Feminist Reading List

We curated this feminist reading list as a resource for anyone seeking new feminist reading by Palestinian authors. Many Palestine-focused reading lists have been created, but we did not find one centering on feminism. In consultation with Palestinian authors and publishing professionals, we created a list of recently published books for adult readers in various genres. We were focused on including resources published within the past five years, although a few older essential reads are also included. This is not a comprehensive list by any means. We define feminist broadly, but as feminists who create syllabi and reading lists, we work in the context of many feminists overlooking Palestinian work entirely. We create this resource as an intervention of sorts, given the rising censorship and suppression of Palestinian authors and writers. Our intention is to create a resource for anyone seeking new reading, hosting feminist book clubs, or adding new options to their feminist course syllabi. We recommend you purchase the books from the Books for Palestine Bookshop.

[onigiriforears]

After approx. 2-3 months of studying Japanese I started to read free graded readers online and then graduated to a collection of short stories that I purchased off of Amazon. I thought that the reason I was starting to have trouble understanding sentences was because I didn't know enough vocabulary but it was because I neglected grammar completely. It was sorta drilled into my head off of Youtube creators to just study kanji, vocab and simple sentences as much as possible before even touching grammar. I feel absolutely lost, dude. I am at the 5 month mark now. I can "breeze through" kanji for the most part. (as in, I can actually retain it in a decent amount of time) I decided to study grammar about a week ago. It is SO FREAKING HARD. I don't know if there's something wrong with me or what. I don't know if it's supposed to feel like what I thought I knew is being ripped apart at the seams, stapled together, and then torn apart again....but it does.

Do you have any tips for learning grammar? Is this feeling normal? Can you tell me when the pressure in my skull will subside? I am using Bunpro's free trial but I'm unsure if this tool will actually help me. I write tons of notes to flip through but I still fail to give them the nuanced answer they're looking for. I really enjoy the setup of Bunpro and I want to like it since it's similar to WK but I'm not sure if I'm going too fast or there's a better way to learn. I stopped learning 5 new grammar points a day and started doing only 2. (I also have Genki I and watch GameGengo. He explains things in a way that's easy for my brain to understand.) Sorry for the long post but any insight would be appreciated. I'm a bit nervous asking people in the language learning community for help or insight because a lot of them treat it as a way to show how fast they learned/1-up others. Tumblr's langlearn community is a lot different with what I've seen (or maybe I'm just following the right ppl lol)

Hi! Thank you so much for waiting for this response--I'm sorry it took so long. Your message was one of the ones that popped up when they locked my ask box (they actually still haven't answered me on why it was locked so 🤷‍♀️). To make up for that, I'm gonna be longwinded because I think that this is a super valid and important question that others may also want to know the answer to!!

Pls pls PLEASE DM me if none of this is helpful or if you'd like to talk more about what you think you need help with!!

I think that sometimes when we're learning a new language that we know is so overwhelmingly different from our own language, we focus on the things that we think will be the main hinderance and sometimes we forget the key points. You might be thinking "how did I forget grammar?" but I would say don't beat yourself up about it! Many of us focus on the things that we think are our problems(--the last time I studied for the JLPT, I focused on my weak point too much and then was frustrated with myself during the exam bc I neglected the other areas.)

I don't want to lie to you and say that learning grammar is going to get easier because that's not the case for everyone. Think of learning grammar vs everything else as learning different types of math or science--have you ever had a friend that was absolutely phenomenal at algebra or calculus but couldn't do geometry? Or a friend that was wonderful lab partner in chemistry but struggled in biology? They're struggling in biology because it requires a ton of rote memorization in comparison to practical application and math that's present in chemistry and rote memorization may not necessarily be their strong point. Personally, I think that's also why a lot of us struggle with certain grammar points. There are some that just click with us immediately and then there are others that we have to see over and over and over and over and over--you get the point--just for us to find a single sentence with it that we understand. If you're math oriented, we need to figure out a way to no longer make grammar points rote memorization for you, but to turn it into a formula of some sort. I actually write my notes out in ways that are like that--I use plus signs (+) in my notes not because the textbooks use them but because my brain genuinely reads it as "noun + particle + grammar point = a sentence that makes sense" because, for me, formulas don't fail. Your weak point doesn't have to be your weakness--you can turn the weakness into a strength that works just for you.

I've been going at this for years and every single professor or Japanese friend (or even people from the discord server) I have can tell you that I've struggled with pretty much any grammar point that included ~ように--and it wasn't because I wasn't trying, but because I couldn't find myself using any sentences that with those grammar points because I found the alternatives/similar ones to make more sense. Surprisingly, it wasn't until I was reading 夜カフェ for our book club that I was actually able to start grasping the meaning (ngl, I still haven't used it myself--I'm notorious for using alternatives); I was finally witnessing it being used in a way that made sense in my brain.

The frustration you're feeling when you encounter a new grammar point or overload yourself with too many things in one go is completely normal and I promise that a ton of us in the Japanese langblr community have definitely experienced it too! It probably feels like everything you know is being ripped apart because your native language may have a SVO (subject-verb-object) format while Japanese has a SOV (subject-object-verb) format--your 1-to-1 translations for your notes may not be helpful in the beginning because you're still trying to wrap your brain around the fact that your words still need to go in another order than you're used to. And then you add the new grammar points and concepts on top of that (like particles and other things) and it can become overwhelming and frustrating. Sometimes, you're going to find some grammar points just downright annoying--especially when you find that there's no equivalency to it in your own language. But don't give up!

I know this is a super cliché thing to say, but practicing them will help. If you can, I would make note of the grammar points that you're struggling with, try to make sentences with them, and ask somebody to check them and explain exactly why (or why not) they're working and then ask them for examples because they may have an even better way of explaining it to you than what you've come up with for yourself!

I can look back at old notes and see when I wrote a sentence as an example just because a textbook/professor used it but I didn't actually understand why it worked at the time and then I can also find notes where the sentences written as examples were added once I finally found something that clicked for me.

You've already done yourself a favor by learning a lot of vocab, kana, and kanji because now you'll be able to try out an array of ways to pick up grammar instead of just a textbook. (I will make a note that if you're looking to take the JLPT, I would recommend having a list of grammar points that you would need to know for the level that you're planning on sitting for because there's no guarantee of what will or won't pop up on the test.)

Another important thing while you're practicing: be comfortable with making mistakes. We all make them, but when you're learning a new language it's important to be ready to make mistakes and to welcome them with open arms because it gives you a chance to experience and learn in real time.

ALSO: for you specifically--because you're interested in reading, you might enjoy learning grammar through tracking the different grammar points through what you're reading and using the sentences as your examples because they're all going to be cohesive. And if reading books or other things totally turn you off right now, maybe games? Animal Crossing and Pokemon are very nice games to play in Japanese for people that are just starting out! You may also enjoy using Lingo Legend--it's an JRPG language learning app that I beta tested and I think that it's a nice way to review (it has some fun incentives). I'm not a big gamer, so I struggle with learning through games, but I've been picking up a lot of grammar through reading because I focus on finding things that I'm interested in, rather than things that are "at my level." When I start a manga, I will scour a ton of websites and forums and bug a ton of people when I come across a grammar point that I can't wrap my brain around because I want to be able to understand what's going on.

We have book clubs and gamers in my discord server, as well as places for people to post what they're practicing or to ask for help. We have people of all varying levels and different skillsets that love to share their wisdom with others.

I haven't used Bunpro, but I know that @sammilearns has, so she may be able to weigh in on that! And @tokidokitokyo @nihongoseito @chouhatsumimi @kanpeki-bekki @burgeoning-ambition probably also have even more tips that me--I'm trying to tag people that I know we all learn in different ways, so their tips and tricks might be just what you need!

Please weigh in, fellow langblr members! How have you been learning grammar? Are you game-ifying it? Have you turned it into math equations? Have you managed to tie it in with your special interest? I can't wait to see what people add to this post!