As Cool As Mint Ice Cream

June 2019: How This Month of Reading and Connecting Reinvigorated My Mind

Posted on July 2, 2019 by Ryn PB

What I Read:

Dreadnought by April Daniels
The Witch Boy by Molly Knox Ostertag
Real Queer America by Samantha Allen
We Set the Dark on Fire by Tehlor Kay Mejia
The Love Songs of Sappho translated by Paul Roche
Let’s Talk About Love by Claire Kann
Naturally Tan by Tan France
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee
The Wide Window (re-read) by Lemony Snicket

What I Got:

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Let’s Talk About Love
The Song of Achilles
Darius the Great is Not Okay by Adib Khorram
A Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson
The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
Money in the Bank by P.G. Wodehouse

Sadly, it is the end of Pride Month, but June was a much needed month of hustle and bustle for me. I started out the month severely depressed and ended it being grateful for life and the experiences I have ahead of me.

This month was all about reading queer literature, mostly #ownvoices, but not all. I had planned to take part in the Queer Lit Readathon from June 2-8, but I’m not that fast of a reader, so I extended the readathon to the entire month so I could check off all of the challenges over a longer period of time. Dreadnought, The Witch Boy, Real Queer America, We Set the Dark on Fire, The Love Songs of Sappho, Let’s Talk About Love, The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang (which I actually read in May), and Anger Is a Gift by Mark Oshiro were my original list for the readathon. The only two I didn’t read during June were The Prince and the Dressmaker (because I just couldn’t wait to read it) and Anger Is a Gift (because it is now the July book for my queer lit club). I think I did pretty well for my first readathon.

I also started a bookstagram account and have actually had so much fun keeping up with it and interacting with other people in the community. So many nice people were waiting with open arms to welcome me to bookstagram, and I can’t wait to see where it will take me in the coming months.

Okay, now onto the books!

Dreadnought by April Daniels is an ownvoices superhero story about Danny, a trans girl, who witnesses the death of famous superhero Dreadnought and gets his powers passed onto her. This gives her the body she’s always wanted but outs her to her transphobic parents. This book dealt with a lot of deep themes all while being a very fun superhero origin story. Because I am a transmasculine person, I do not know much about the transfeminine experience, so this was definitely educational, but not in a boring way. It kind of reminded me of a very queer version of Sky High (the best superhero movie ever… That’s right, Marvel. Come at me!).

The Witch Boy had a similar tone to The Prince and the Dressmaker, so of course, I loved it. I think middle grade graphic novels are a new favorite genre for me and I can’t wait to read more! Molly Ostertag has such a colorful and whimsical art style that really adds depth to Aster’s journey as a boy who wants to be a witch, even though witchcraft is a “girl thing.” This book challenges stereotypes and is amazingly diverse and heartwarming. IMG_9873.HEIC

Going from this heartwarming, middle grade graphic novel to a book like Real Queer America was a bit of a kick in the pants. Samantha Allen is a trans woman from Utah, and this book details a road trip across the red states of America during which Samantha and a friend find the tight-knit LGBT+ communities that form in more conservative areas. I read this book at just the right time in my life. I am graduating in a semester and trying to figure out where I want to end up living. I love the Midwest, and have always loved the Midwest, but I never saw a place for me here as a nonbinary, asexual person. The labels I identify with are not widely accepted, and I thought my time here in the Midwest was coming to an end. Maybe it still is, but this book made me see that there is a place for people like me even in the most red states in the U.S.

The phrase I kept coming back to when trying to describe this book was “realistically hopeful.” Allen doesn’t sugarcoat anything, but she finds the pockets of acceptance and love that we all look for as queer people. It was inclusive and queer and heartwarming without losing any of the realism of being queer in the U.S. in our current political climate. I would recommend this book to anybody, but especially queer people like me who aren’t into the big city life, but thought that was the only option for safety and acceptance. I can be queer and love the Midwest; they don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

The other nonfiction book I read this month, Naturally Tan by Tan France of Queer Eye, had a completely different tone but dealt with a lot of things I was unaware of, such as the hatred toward Pakistani people that France experienced while growing up. I have a lot of respect for Tan France after learning about all of the businesses he has started and the depression he went through because of overworking himself. He’s a cool guy, and to top it off, he lives in Utah with his husband. These two nonfiction books, though different in tone and topic, both have common themes that meshed well together.

The most surprising read of this month was We Set the Dark on Fire by Tehlor Kay Mejia. I went into this book without knowing much about it except that it was queer in some way and had Latine roots. But I ended up loving this book. Even though it was a little predictable, I was completely lost in the story by about halfway through. The premise of the story is that, in this society, rich men get two wives that have different roles. Dani Vargas becomes the Primera, or the levelheaded housekeeper, for an important politico’s son—who is also a complete garbage human being. The Segunda of the household is one of her rivals from school. The best part about this book is not the spy aspect or the rebellion or the discussion of serious political issues, but the fact that IMG_9917.HEIC Dani and her Segunda fall in love instead of loving their husband. Their love blossoms slowly and unexpectedly in the face of this oppressive, sexist society. These women are brave in many different ways, and I can’t wait to see what happens in the sequel. The end left me hanging, and I want more!

The Love Songs of Sappho were actually quite fun and easy to read (in their translated versions, of course). If I learned anything, it’s that Sappho really loves nightingales, sex, women, and her daughter. Her words are beautiful and profound, even in snippets, and I thought Pride Month was the perfect time to delve into her poetry for the first time.

I moved on to Let’s Talk About Love by Claire Kann in order to boost my mood. Like I mentioned above, my depression was really daunting during the first half of this month. I needed something more lighthearted, and that’s definitely what I got. In this novel, asexual and biromantic Alice falls in love with her library coworker Takumi, even after swearing off relationships when her girlfriend dumped her for being ace. This book doesn’t shy away from the racial differences between the two, Alice being black and Takumi being Asian. Though this is a light, rom-com-esque novel, Kann does not ignore the difficulties of coming out as ace, especially when starting a new relationship. Nonetheless, it gave me all the fuzzy feelings I needed to get on with my month. Cute, adorable, dorky, and queer—this was the combination I desperately needed to get me out of my funk.

The high that came from Let’s Talk About Love and Naturally Tan came abruptly to an end when I started Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller for queer lit book club. This book is SAD. I read the first little chunk of it while at Denver Pride with my aunt, but it took me what felt like forever to read. I wasn’t the biggest fan of this book even though I’ve heard it praised a lot. It is a retelling of The Iliad, so, of course, there was a lot of death and kings and politics and war. There was also a lot of sex and a problematic, codependent relationship. This book is told through the perspective of Patroclus, Achilles’s lover/companion/friend, and though their love seems very deep and real, Achilles is kind of a conceited asshole. There were parts I liked and parts I really didn’t like, but the ending was super amazing. I won’t spoil anything (though, it’s The Iliad, so…), but the ending is what really tugged on my heartstrings and made me care. The entire length of the book before it did not make me care for these characters as much as the heart-wrenching end did.

Though I didn’t read much of this book during my trip to Colorado, I did take a trip to The Tattered Cover bookstore. It was a half-mile out of our way, but so worth it. This is where I purchased Darius the Great is Not Okay and The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue, because I wanted to buy queer books while I was in Denver for Pride. This place is one of my favorite bookstores ever because it just feels homey to me. I feel like I could spend hours there just browsing and lounging and reading.

Unfortunately, The Gentleman’s Guide was another book that just left me with a “meh” feeling. It’s a funny, quirky, and slightly anachronistic novel about Monty and Percy’s “tour” of Europe, with Monty’s sister Felicity in tow. There wasn’t anything very new in this book. Monty has an abusive father and deals with the trauma by drinking, having lots of sex, and cracking jokes. Even though Monty was the main character, Percy and Felicity were the ones I was most interested in. Percy has the biggest heart and deals with his epilepsy alone for a long time just to make other people’s lives easier. He puts up with Monty’s bullshit and is still able to find a big place in his heart for Monty. Felicity is a badass, learned woman who is teaching herself about the medical field all on her own. You can see why I would love these two. This is actually why I will probably read the sequel, because it focuses on Felicity. There were a lot of good aspects to this book—alchemy, European politics, Venice, a sinking island, reasonable pirates/privateers, redemption arcs, discussions of race, and dark humor—but they didn’t mix into an amazing book. I had fun reading it, for sure, but it was a too cliché and I disliked Monty a bit too much for me to call this an amazing book.

The last book I finished this month was the next book in A Series of Unfortunate Events, which I’m trying to get all the way through by the end of this year. It was fun and quirky. I don’t have too much to discuss here except that I love the way Lemony Snicket inserts big words into the novel and explains what they mean without being condescending. This must be why I like using big words… damn you, Lemony! You made my vocabulary expand! Now people make fun of me for using the word dowager!

Now, I did start reading a sci-fi book while visiting my sister in Indianapolis this past weekend, and I’m really enjoying getting back into a genre that I used to read a lot, but what I want to discuss from my visit to my sister is our trip to yet another bookstore and why this past weekend has been so, so good for me.

If you know me well, you know I don’t like to cry in public. But I definitely cried on the plane home from visiting my sister. Part of it was the book I was reading being super cute and heartwarming, but most of it was the fact that I hadn’t realized how much I missed my sister. Our music and book tastes are generally different, but they overlap in small ways. We both love Walk the Moon and Twenty One Pilots. We both love John Green novels and local stores and coffee shops and dogs.

One local store we patronized was a bookstore. Indy Reads Books donates all of their proceeds to a literacy charity, which is so awesome! Drinking bubble tea and browsing a bookstore with my sister was one of the best parts of my weekend. There were books signed by John Green and a whole display of Kurt Vonnegut books—Indy really loves to lean into the fact that these two are from here. But I think the best part of this bookstore, besides the fact that they support literacy, is that I didn’t feel pressured to buy anything. I bought something (a random P.G. Wodehouse book) because I genuinely wanted to support the store and their cause.

Spending time with my sister browsing local stores, watching movies (any Howl’s Moving Castle fans out there?), and going to a Twenty One Pilots concert was a much-needed mood booster. I am happy to be alive and I am happy to have a sister as wonderful as Alisha. She is both my biological and chosen family, and she will always be my favorite person in the world. She and Twenty One Pilots reminded me why it is important to keep on fighting—fighting my mental illnesses, fighting my loneliness, fighting my fear, fighting my negative thoughts. Life is worth living, even if only for the good books I have yet to read and future visits with my favorite person.

I’ve read a lot of good, queer books this month. I celebrated Pride with my aunt. I got a job at a bookstore café. But, most importantly, I reconnected with my sister and my drive to enjoy life. I can’t wait to have more moments like this, both while reading and while taking the time to participate fully in my life.

VTSG

Posted in LGBT+, polysyllabic spree | Tagged asexual, denver pride, family, howls moving castle, latine, lemony snicket, LGBT+, literacy, live music, mental health, music, nonfiction, pride, pride month, queer eye, queer literature, red states, sapphic poetry, sappho, sci-fi, series of unfortunate events, siblings, sister, song of achilles, tan france, tattered cover, trans experience, twenty one pilots, usa | Leave a comment

Mom Hugs and Puppy Snuggles: How I Let Depression Get the Best of Me Before I Explored Why Life is Worth Living

Posted on June 19, 2019 by Ryn PB

As you already know, this summer has been rough for me. I have been lonely, dealing with an emotional new roommate, and starting a job at Walmart that was slowly sucking my soul out like a Dementor. I won’t go into lots of details, but I was in a dark place. I was unmotivated and found it hard to be excited about anything. Even the trips I had (and still have) coming up to visit family didn’t excite me. Basically, the Hydra monster grew a new giant head called depression—one I thought I had cut off in high school.

So I used the tried and true method of driving the hour to my parents’ house to snuggle with Reggie and go to the doctor to get some things checked out. (I experienced vertigo for the first time and, let me tell ya, it was WILD. I felt like I could fall over at any moment for a solid week and a half.)

Even though both of my parents were sick, we still had a good time watching Bohemian Rhapsody and going to a thrift store to shop for books and making a Starbucks run. But the best news that happened while I was home was that a local bookstore called to offer me a job. Originally, they had said no (hence the job at Walmart), but a position opened up so I got the okay! I am so excited, even if I do have to start as a barista before getting to the bookseller stage. This bookstore is so welcoming and so close to my apartment that it was a no-brainer to switch to this job. I can finally feel excited to go to work rather than dreading it. Plus, now I know how to make a good shot of espresso!

It was this instance of random goodness that made me reflect on my mood this past month. I hadn’t seen anything to look forward to this summer, and now, after this one small thing, my entire view of the next few months was flipped upside down. I thought I shouldn’t have let myself get so low, I should have been optimistic about the future. But it’s hard to do that when everything seems to suck.

I’m trying not to be too upset at myself for the way my mental illness took over the first half of this month, because I want to enjoy the rest of the summer if I can. I want to make a conscious effort to see the good in my life, to really take stock of what I’m grateful for, instead of spiraling into a deep, dark hole where my only companion is the Hydra monster. In this vein, I’ve started a bullet journal to try to gain back some of my artsy roots, I’ve been keeping in better contact with my friends, and I’m forcing myself to write more of my novel after such a long slump. (Forcing means actually getting myself to sit down and not judge every single word I write. Because once I’m doing it, writing is actually pretty great.) I keep telling myself to get back into better self-care practices, but this really deep slump has actually been a much needed kick in the pants. My life doesn’t suck and there’s always something worth living for.

One of the things worth living for happens to be the very reason this blog post is going up a little late—I drove up to Colorado to spend time with my aunt and attend Denver Pride!

My first moment of “pride” on this trip was making the seven-hour drive to Denver by myself. Driving isn’t my favorite thing to do, and since my car was being fixed, I had to drive my dad’s car, who I loving dubbed Harrison Ford Fusion. I was nervous about being behind the wheel for that long. But it ended up being fine, if a little boring. I made it up there with only one stop, and the same goes for the drive back. And the drive ended up being so worth it.

After a relaxing first afternoon/evening with my aunt and uncle, Saturday came roaring out of the gate. My aunt and I drove the hour to Denver and our first order of business, of course, was to go to a bookstore. I’ll discuss that more in my wrap-up of the books I read/got this month. Basically, that was the one thing aside from the actual Pride festival that I wanted to do. The Tattered Cover is amazing, and my aunt was so nice to walk a half mile out of our way to go buy books and then she carried them around in a backpack. Real ally, right there.

Pride itself was hella overwhelming. There were so many people and colors and booths and dogs and noises and free stuff. It was a lot. But it was a lot of great people and a lot of love and a lot of acceptance. So even though it was a lot, I was able to have fun soaking it all in.

One of the best things at Pride were the groups of moms and dads offering free mom and dad hugs. Although I am lucky to have a mom that loves me, I still enjoyed seeing such enthusiasm and acceptance in a generation that uses their age as an excuse to discriminate. There were also so many churches out there defying the norm of hatred in Christianity, which, as a person who grew up Catholic, was heartwarming to see. At one of the churches, I was able to write down a prayer request for my friend with a terminal illness while feeling like these people would actually respect who she is as a bisexual woman.

Though Aunt Karen and I stayed on our feet most of the day, we did sit down a few times. We found our way to the main stage for a few performances, the highlight of which was

My aunt and I!

the Kingz Rule showcase. Though I can’t remember his name, the king who performed to “Let the Bodies Hit the Floor” was AMAZING. My aunt and I couldn’t get the song out of our head all weekend, and that king had so much energy that we were ready to stand up and walk around again after the show.

The next day was the actual parade. It lasted so long that we were able to stop somewhere for lunch in the middle and come back an hour later to watch more, and it still wasn’t over by the time we left Denver.

Though I enjoyed the Dykes on Bikes and the dancing condoms in the parade itself, I remember the people around us the most. We found a spot near a gigantic Great Dane named Olaf who was wearing a rainbow tutu. He was so friendly and lovable and just wanted all of the attention. Dogs automatically make me feel calmer and more grounded, which was helpful in such a huge and loud crowd. I also remember chatting with a guy named Gil who sat next to Aunt Karen. He came from a horrible home and a father who called him hateful names, but he had so much life and hope and sparkle (literal and figurative).

Olaf!

When looking back on overwhelming weekends like this one, it’s important to pick out the moments that felt real, that felt like a calm in the middle of the storm. Those moments involved the dogs I pet like Olaf, the hugs from nice people, the meals and chill sessions with my aunt, the trip to the bookstore, being able to watch drag kings and queens while seated and resting, and getting to know other people’s stories and passions. Back at my aunt’s house, we snuggled with Bella (the queen of all Boston terriers) and went for a walk in the rain and had tea while watching cheesy gameshows. These small, quiet moments are often my favorites. It’s been hard to remember that this summer, because most of my moments have been small and quiet but alone. This time, I was able to experience them with people who love me—my parents, my aunt and uncle, and dogs. Focusing on these small moments is one self-care practice that always seems to go by the wayside when my anxiety or depression get overwhelming, but I just need to remind myself that these are the things that make life worth living. Sure, Denver Pride was fun, but this past week has been all about reconnecting with the little things I love about being alive and human and fully, unapologetically me. I needed that, and I hope whoever is reading this finds some moments like this that remind them why life can actually be pretty neat.

Posted in LGBT+, mental health, new era, stories | Tagged anxiety, bohemian rhapsody, books, bookstore, boston terrier, bullet journal, colorado, denver, depression, dogs, goldendoodle, pride, roadtrip | Leave a comment

May 2019: How I Read Too Much Because of Boredom, Anxiety, and Unemployment

Posted on May 31, 2019 by Ryn PB

What I Read:

The rest of Do What You Want edited by Ruby Tandoh
Crown of Feathers by Nicki Pau Preto
Anya’s Ghost by Vera Brosgol
The Bad Beginning (re-read) by Lemony Snicket
The Reptile Room (re-read) by Lemony Snicket
Parts of Let Fury Have the Hour by Antonino D’Ambrosio
American Radiance by Luisa Muradyan
Radio Silence by Alice Oseman
To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han
Part of Good Omens (DNF) by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
I Wish You All the Best by Mason Deaver
The Umbrella Academy, Vol. 1: The Apocalypse Suite by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá
Kings, Queens, and In-Betweens by Tanya Boteju
Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappia
Mick Jagger: The Unauthorised Biography by Alan Clayson
P.S. I Still Love You by Jenny Han
The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang

What I Got:

Anya’s Ghost
The Bad Beginning
The Reptile Room
Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, 1991
The Umbrella Academy, Vol. 1
I Wish You All the Best
Kings, Queens, and In-Betweens
The Wide Window by Lemony Snicket
The Miserable Mill by Lemony Snicket
E = mc² by David Bodanis

If you can’t already tell by those daunting lists up there, I was suuuuuper bored in May. The semester ended, I wasn’t having much luck finding a job, and all of my friends had moved back home for the summer while I stayed in Nebraska. The bad part about this boredom was that my anxiety and loneliness skyrocketed. The good part: I had lots and lots and lots of reading time.

So grab a snack, snuggle up under a blanket, and get ready for this marathon of a blog post.

I don’t have much new to say about I Do What I Want than I did before. It was helpful and offered a platform for diverse voices and helped me learn about myself and others.

I got Crown of Feathers when I ordered the February OwlCrate box as a birthday present to myself. The premise of this book is so interesting—sisters who hate each other, sweeping matriarchal world, people riding phoenixes—so I’m not sure why it took me so long to pick up. It wasn’t the best book ever, but it’s not a book I regret finishing. In fact, I’m mad at the book, because even though it was mediocre, I want to know what happens in the next installment. Will my curiosity be enough for me to pick up another book in the series? I’m not sure. We will have to wait and see. Maybe someone will post an amazing summary online so I can keep up with the characters without the mediocre writing. The author had a tendency to info-dump, then have some scenes, then info-dump, then have some scenes. This made it harder for me to remember things about the history and geography of the world, so I needed to refer to the Index quite often, which disrupted the reading process.

While I was reading the Phoenix Riders book, I took some breaks in between to read quick stories. One of these was Anya’s Ghost by Vera Brosgol. Enthused by my successful foray into graphic novels last month, I found this one at my favorite used bookstore for pretty cheap and picked it up. This was another mediocre read. It was cute, but it was predictable. I also found it hard to tell what age group this book was meant for. The art style was childish and cute, but the storyline involved double homicide and an evil ghost. Maybe I would’ve enjoyed this book better if I’d read it at a younger age.

The other quick books I read while in the throes of Crown of Feathers were the first two books of A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. Ever since the Netflix series adaptation came out, I’ve wanted to re-read these books. I read about half of them when I was younger, and I was always mad at myself for never finishing them. Well, it’s not too late to read middle grade, so I picked them up and thoroughly enjoyed them. They were easy to read in one sitting, and the tone of the books was definitely not lost in the TV show. One of the book tropes I loved when I was at the middle-grade reading level was the “author has their own story that intertwines with the story they are telling and offers asides about their own involvement” trope. (Another example that comes to mind is The Name of This Book is Secret by Pseudonymous Bosch. I learned a lot about chocolate and homunculi while reading the Secret Series, and if that doesn’t intrigue you, I don’t know what will!) It was a delight and a nice brain break to get back into these books. Hopefully this time I will make it to the end of the series, to see if it is unfortunate to the very end.

I’m still trucking along with Let Fury Have the Hour, which consists of a bunch of articles about Joe Strummer of the Clash. It’s nice to have a book to just pick up and read every once in a while without needing to sustain a narrative, so I’m enjoying taking my time with this.

The other book I didn’t finish, Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and terry Pratchett, I’m not sure I’ll pick up again. It sounded absolutely hilarious. A demon and angel mess up the Apocalypse and someone misplaces the Antichrist. Hilarious, right? Right. It actually was funny. I just wasn’t in the mood for this type of book. My mind was too preoccupied to keep up with all of the characters and storylines, so if I do pick this up again, it’ll have to be at a time when I can devote my full mind to enjoying the intricacies of the story. It was well-written and made me laugh, but it was too slow of a read at a time when I needed something fast-paced. Who knows? Maybe I’ll want to read a book about the Apocalypse next time a presidential election rolls around…

Just so you don’t think I forgot it, I do remember that American Radiance is on this list. It is a collection of poems that I got for free from my university’s press.. The poems weren’t memorable enough to have anything to say, and I’ve already given the book away, so I can’t even flip back through it.

Okay, for the sake of time, I’m going to lump Radio Silence and Eliza and Her Monsters together. Both are about anonymous creators of Internet phenomena becoming friends (or something more!) with someone who doesn’t know their identity, or doesn’t know that the other person knows their identity.

There is a booktuber that I watch named Kat (paperbackdreams) who absolutely loves Radio Silence and always recommends it. I figured it was about time I listened to her. And, oh boy, am I glad I did. This book absolutely captured the importance and beauty of friendship and platonic love. Aaaannnnddd…. there is a demisexual character with pink hair—amazing, right? I cried several times while reading this book, even at parts that weren’t sad, because I connected so deeply with these characters. The main character, Frances, draws fan art for her favorite podcast, which she figures out her new friend Aled creates. But Frances feels guilty about her art. At school, she is the Smart Kid, the girl who always studies and gets good grades. A huge theme of this book is about being proud of and enjoying your passions outside of schoolwork. It discusses different options for life after high school and made me wish I had been nicer to myself in high school. Frances is hard on herself to a fault, like I was, and this would have been a pivotal book for me to read as a teenager.

The reason I lumped these two books together is because they share similar themes. Eliza and Her Monsters is also about exploring and being proud of the passions you have outside of schoolwork, as well as taking a different path after high school. Eliza only feels like herself when she is drawing her webcomic, but when she makes friends with fans of the comic, she decides not to tell them she is the creator. This, of course, causes problems later, as, just like Aled in Radio Silence, she is outed as the creator. Even with these similarities, both books hold up so well on their own, with unique characters and perspectives on high school. They felt so real. And even though I liked Radio Silence slightly more, both of these books are must-reads for anyone in high school who feels like schoolwork may not be their true passion. Eliza and Her Monsters even lets the reader experience Eliza’s artwork and creative storytelling—something I usually get annoyed with—which added so much depth to the story. Before this turns into a Radio Silence and Eliza and Her Monsters rant, I’ll just stop now and say: READ THESE BOOKS!

I Wish You All the Best by Mason Deaver, while not the most revolutionary in plot, was revolutionary in a different way. This is a mainstream novel with a nonbinary main character written by a nonbinary author that I have been anticipating for months. I’m usually super oblivious when it comes to new books, but I was so pumped to see a nonbinary author in a mainstream store that I drove out to Barnes & Noble on the day it came out. The cover is beautiful, the story is heartwarming, and I think that Ben (the main character) really does deserve the best. Ben comes out as enby to his parents and gets kicked out, so he lives with his estranged sister and goes to a new school, where he meets Nathan, a new friend and love interest. My heart was so happy while reading this book. I loved the reality of the story, even if it was extremely sad and triggering at times. Ben deals with abusive/manipulative parents and panic attacks, which can be difficult to read about, but it was such an important story that offered a hopeful, but not too perfect, ending.

Kings, Queens, and In-Betweens is, as the title suggests, a book about the drag scene. Unfortunately, this book was only okay. The romantic relationship wasn’t my favorite because the main character makes stupid, insensitive decisions, and the book took too long getting to the point when Nima finally does drag on her own. I also didn’t like the backstory about Nima’s mother ditching them (too predictable and obvious). But there were fun parts and cute moments throughout. I loved Nima’s relationship with a motherly drag queen and the complicated story of Gordon, who is questioning his gender. It was refreshing to see a potentially trans character who isn’t all sunshine and roses—he has anger issues because of his home life, which became a mask to hide questions about his identity. Gordon deserved more time in the spotlight. I also thought it was great that Nima was mixed race and queer, because a many queer books end up being whitewashed. The book was enjoyable, but not a masterpiece.

I’m going to hold off on giving too many thoughts on To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and P.S. I Still Love You until I read the third book in the series. All I can say for now is that I enjoyed the first book a lot—probably because I had already fallen in love with the characters by watching the Netflix movie—and that, though the characters were better in the movie, the plot was better in the books. The second book I didn’t enjoy as much, but I’m still curious enough to eventually follow through with the third one even if romance usually isn’t my genre.

The Umbrella Academy, Vol. 1 was another book I read because of a Netflix adaptation, which seems to be a mini theme for this month. I really loved the quirkiness of the TV show, plus Robert Sheehan (a beautiful man) acts in the show, and Gerard Way of MCR created this comic series in the first place, so my emo soul needed to read it. Quite frankly, I liked the show better. I still enjoyed the comic and will read the others, but the plot was harder to follow and the characters weren’t as diverse. Vanya’s story was a bit one-dimensional as were the relationships between the Hargreeves siblings. Perhaps they get fleshed out in the following volumes, but if I hadn’t watched the TV show, I’m not sure I would have liked it as much.

The Prince and the Dressmaker, however, is an amazing graphic novel. It is a middle grade graphic novel about a prince who hires a budding seamstress/designer to sew his dresses as he moonlights as “Lady Crystallia” in Paris. This is such a heartwarming and precious story—another queer story with a hopeful ending. Not to mention the art style: colorful and soft, just like the characters.

Lastly, at the end of this marathon, let’s talk about Mick Jagger. Now, I’m not a big fan of 1960s music nor the Rolling Stones, but the ’60s and ’70s still fascinate me. Also, Mick Jagger is a weird dude, so I figured his biography would be entertaining. Unfortunately, this biography mostly just stated facts one after the other rather than really telling a story. I would have rather read a book that focused closely on Jagger’s life rather than the wider scope of the Stones and the ’60s music scene. I almost gave up on this book, but I ended up finishing in case I learned anything super interesting. There were some fun facts and interesting phrases, but overall, it wasn’t a reading experience I particularly enjoyed. (I did rediscover the David Bowie and Mick Jagger duet of “Dancing in the Street,” though, which is a complete gem.)

On my last trip to the library a few days ago, I checked out six books to supplement the two I already had. Maybe June will be a slower reading month with a busier schedule, but clearly, I have a library problem. As I told my friends when they saw the gigantic stack I carried up to my apartment, I ball too hard when I go to the library. But, hey, it’s free. Why not?

Posted in new era, polysyllabic spree | Tagged books, booktube, drag, eliza and her monsters, ghost, graphic novels, i wish you all the best, lara jean, lemony snicket, LGBT+, mason deaver, mental health, mick jagger, neil gaiman, nonbinary, owlcrate, paperbackdreams, prince, queer lit, radio silence, romance books, series of unfortunate events, the rolling stones, to all the boys i've loved before, umbrella academy | Leave a comment

Mixed Media and Turning the Page: How I’m Learning to Deal with (and Embrace) Uncomfortable Situations

Posted on May 15, 2019 by Ryn PB

A photo I ended up not using for my photo class

The spring semester has been over for what feels like ages, but I can’t stop thinking about my photography class. I spent the entire semester complaining about how I wasn’t good at photography, how I had to try really hard, put myself in uncomfortable situations, and just follow my creativity even though I was constantly uncertain about my photos. My teacher seemed unorganized, the schedule was constantly changing, and I didn’t know anyone in my class super well. Basically, this class was a nightmare for me and a dream for the Hydra monster. My anxiety was so high surrounding this class, but you know what I’ve realized, after ending the class? I actually enjoyed it.

Now, my parents (who got the brunt of my complaining and panic about this class) are probably rolling their eyes. Ryn, why are you pretending you enjoyed that class? Well, besides the fact that hindsight is 20/20, there are lots of reasons.

After the last class of the semester, I felt weird walking out of class knowing I probably wouldn’t interact with this people so often ever again. I’d made some good friends—people like me, people different than me, people who were better at photography, people

Yes, I know someone who looks like this man

who grew on me, and one guy who looked like Matty Healy from The 1975.

My teacher, even though he was pretty disorganized, became one of my favorite teachers. Not because he was amazing at being an instructor, but because he actually cared about his students’ progression as photographers at their own speed and was honest with me. So many times, during our one-on-one meetings, I would say, “I don’t really know what I’m doing. I’m just floundering through this project,” and he would respond, “Well, we all are.” And that was a big eye opener. As a creative person with lots of insecurities, I always assumed other people knew exactly what they were doing while they created things, while I just kind of go with my whims. It turns out I’m not alone. The discomfort and uncertainty I felt all semester is just a part of the creative process; and now I can embrace that uncertainty while writing or pursuing other creative tasks, which will make the process so much more enjoyable.

Nearing the end of the class, I became confident enough to think outside of the box for my final project. This is something I rarely do, even in writing classes. I am a rule follower, through and through, even if no one really cares if I follow the rules. But when I introduced the idea of taking black and white photos, and then painting on them, my teacher encouraged me to try it out. He seemed to be excited about the prospect of having someone do mixed media, which encouraged me even though I had no idea what I was doing. I hadn’t painted anything in years, and I’d never tried to paint in a way that complimented a photo.

And you know what? Painting on photos is actually super fun. I might do it again. It was cathartic in a way that editing on a screen isn’t. It feels more human, more flawed, more open to error. I loved that about it. I know, right? Who are they? Ryn Baginski, enjoying the flaws of their art? That’s not the biggest shocker, though.

I was most surprised by the fact that I wasn’t too nervous about presenting this project. I was confident in what I created. I was proud of my final project, what it meant to me, and how people discussed it. And critiques are usually my least favorite (albeit the most helpful) part of artsy classes.

Now that I’ve cut down another head of the Hydra monster—and it has stayed dead, for now—I can look forward to a lot of things that would have previously made me too anxious to be excited about. Anxiety and excitement don’t have to be mutually exclusive. In fact, they often come as a package deal.

I’m nervous about getting a new job this summer, but excited to have something to do and meeting new people. I’m nervous about completely rewriting a lot of the middle part of my novel, but excited to create a manuscript I’m more eager to write. I’m nervous about spending the summer without my closest friends, but excited to get to know my summer roommates and a couple of friends that I want to hang out with more.

In the effort to see the positives of these situations, I started a gratitude journal. I’m not super good at it, and I forget to write stuff most days, but on the days that I pause and remember the good, I feel so much calmer. It shows me that I can face uncertainty and anxiety without negating any of the good times.

I still don’t like being uncomfortable, and I still don’t like uncertainty, but I can see now that they are necessary and sometimes good experiences.

If I knew everything that was going to happen in a novel I was reading, I probably wouldn’t be as excited to read it. If there weren’t any emotional or uncomfortable moments in said novel, I probably would think it fell flat. The same goes for life. I don’t want my life to fall flat. I want to keep turning the pages, excited for what comes next, even if my chest feels tight and my brain won’t shut up.

Posted in mental health, new era | Tagged anxiety, books, college, creativity, hydra monster, mental health, mixed media, photography, school, uncertainty, uncomfortable, writing | Leave a comment

April 2019: How I Read and Loved My First Graphic Novel

Posted on April 30, 2019 by Ryn PB

What I Read:

The ABC’s of LGBT+ by Ash Hardell
Black Flag and punk rock zines
Under the Feet of Jesus by Helena María Viramontes
An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England by Brock Clarke
The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danticat
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling
Life Magazine: Queen: The Music. The Life. The Rhapsody
Punk Rock Jesus: Deluxe Edition by Sean Murphy
Part of Do What You Want: A Zine About Mental Wellbeing edited by Ruby Tandoh and Leah Pritchard

What I Got:

Punk rock zines
The ABC’s of LGBT+
Anger is a Gift by Mark Oshiro
Do What You Want (gift)
Punk Rock Jesus
The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi
Queen magazine (heh heh, it rhymes)

Oh, boy. April was a doozy. I know I say this about every month, but there were many ups and downs in my life this month. The reading experience, on the other hand, was kind of middling.

As a disclaimer, I am changing the “What I Bought” list with “What I Got” because I do get books/zines as gifts sometimes, and I feel like it is false advertising to say I bought them all if I didn’t. I also want to start using my public library more this summer, which

Indigo Bridge Books

means that I will be reading books I won’t be purchasing.

Can you believe I started this month by telling myself I was on a book-buying ban? Yeah, neither can I. I broke that trend on the third day of the month, so… oops.

I’ve been wanting to buy Ash Hardell’s book The ABC’s of LGBT+ for a long, long time, but I wanted to buy it in person, because I like to support my local bookstores. I finally found it at a local store called Indigo Bridge Books, and as I’ve been searching for good LGBT books to give to my parents after coming out as nonbinary, it was like a sign from God Herself. My parents are in the learning stage, and most of the information they’re finding is online, but I feel like books seem more legitimate to many people. This book is a great reference material for many, many LGBT+ identities—some of which I didn’t know of and was excited to learn about. I saw my own identities represented in this book, which is exciting as my sexuality and gender are not really “mainstream.” What I love most about this book is that Ash made a point of sharing the perspectives of people who actually have these identities, rather than just giving definitions, which is super valuable in humanizing LGBT people instead of reducing them to a list of labels. I am happy to say this book is now sitting on my mom’s nightstand, and I hope she finds it as informative and accepting as I did.

The zines I read—surprise, surprise—were about punk rock. The one about Black Flag was super interesting, as I love reading books about bands and music, so why not read a zine about that? This detailed the story of Black Flag’s first album and their origins. I don’t listen to a lot of Black Flag, but it was still an interesting story.

The other one, I’m going to be honest, I don’t remember much. It was one of those Punks Around the World zines about the Moscow punk scene. I do remember thinking it was interesting, but because it was only one limited perspective, I didn’t learn a ton except for this guy’s one story, which could have been better written.

The magazine about Queen taught me quite a few things about how very strange that band (especially Freddie Mercury) was, but the pictures were what really dazzled me. It’s not hard to find good pictures of a Queen concert, but with the story alongside them, these photos had so much more impact.

My mom got me the mental health zine (or collection of essays) for Easter, which I’d discovered after researching Ruby Tandoh, my all-time favorite contestant on Great British Bake Off. She has written several food-related books, but it was this zine that caught my eye. One of my general goals is to get back into healthier self-care habits that I’ve slacked on lately, and I felt like reading about other people’s experiences with mental health would be a good kick in the pants. So far, I’ve both related to and learned from this zine, and that’s the best thing I can ask for in a collection of essays. I can build compassion while also feeling represented. (Also, side note, Ruby and her partner Leah are ADORABLE. I mean it. Look at their Instagram.)

Under the Feet of Jesus and The Dew Breaker were books I read for school, so I won’t talk about them much here except to say that though I understand that immigrant stories are extremely important and should be read about, I didn’t like the style of either of these books. They both jump around between perspectives a lot, which I’m not the biggest fan of.

Harry Potter was a re-read. This month is the last month of classes for the semester, and I always end up re-reading an HP book during this stressful time. The Order of the Phoenix was one of the two HP books I have at my apartment, and I didn’t want to re-read the first book for the thousandth time. I really enjoyed the second half of this book as a re-read, but the first half felt really slow. I’m not sure if this is because I already knew the story, or I was stressed, or something else. But I read much faster during the second half, when the action picked up and Dumbledore’s Army began and Umbridge was being her usual bitchy self. Not to mention, centaurs. CENTAURS. I love when they show up in the HP books.

And now, for the titles everyone is curious about: An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England and Punk Rock Jesus. Yes, those are two actual books I picked up, bought for myself, and read. If the titles aren’t enough to make you curious, I don’t know what will be.

Let’s start with Brock Clarke’s book about an accidental arsonist. This book tells the story of Sam Pulsifer who accidentally burned down Emily Dickinson’s house while two people were in the bed upstairs. He is now out of jail, has a life with a wife and kids— 51y4F0H7TjL who know nothing about his past—and is living normally until the son of the people who died in the Emily Dickinson house fire shows up again. More literary figures’ houses are getting burned down—a clear attempt to get Sam back in jail.

This book was a trip. The thirty-something-year-old narrator reminded me of Holden Caulfield, which was annoying at times and made him seem very childish and emotionally stunted. I don’t know, maybe that was the point. The narration wasn’t my main problem with the book, though. Sam’s passiveness really grated on my nerves. He did a lot of hemming and hawing and then ultimately deciding to do nothing. In the rare circumstances that he did take action, it was always the wrong action, and I could see the outcomes of those actions a mile away. There isn’t much active solving of the mystery, just information plopping into his lap conveniently. The book was entertaining, and I don’t regret reading such a quirky story, but I can’t say I’ll ever pick it up again. The only thing keeping me reading toward the end was wondering if he went back to jail or not. As the reader, I knew he wasn’t burning the houses down, but he did a lot of stupid things that implicated himself. That question gets answered—in the way I actually hoped it would—but I won’t spoil it in case anyone decides to pick it up.

Though The Arsonist’s Guide wasn’t a big hit—more like a pop song I listen to begrudgingly and end up liking only while I’m listening to it—Punk Rock Jesus was a roaring success. For the past few months, every time I walked into a Half Price Books, I would see this amazing cover and the title Punk Rock Jesus, reminding me immediately of Green Day’s Jesus of Suburbia character. This month, I finally picked up the book, knowing nothing about it except that it was a graphic novel involving sci fi, punk rock, and Christianity. I mean, that’s enough to hook anyone, right? I’ve been wanting to find a graphic novel to delve into, as it is a type of book I don’t really reach for, and this seemed like a good fit. I was a bit nervous about buying the book, because it was fairly expensive for something at a used bookstore (because it was a “deluxe edition” and unopened), but I went with my gut and brought it home. This is the last book I finished in April, and it is my favorite of the month.

To summarize, this graphic novel tells the story of Chris, who is supposedly the clone of Jesus Christ, and his life in the limelight as a reality TV star. When he learns about all of the shitty things that led to his creation and all of the subsequent bad things that happen, Chris escapes and joins a punk band to preach anti-religion lyrics and atheism. (This story is not, as it seems on first glance, completely anti-religion. There are several spiritual characters who are morally upright and good people. This story explores both the good and bad of organized religion.) The book even brings in the IRA—the Irish Republican Army—even though most of this takes place as a U.S. TV show. Sean Murphy is a creative guy, and even though the drawings were all black and white, I thought they were really well done. My only critique of this book is that some of the characters looked too similar (namely the children and women) and I could only tell them apart by the storyline. Even with this complaint, I liked the book enough to read the extra materials about the creation of the story, which made me like it even more. Murphy started writing/drawing this story in the mid-2000s, which explains why I like it so much. In case you didn’t know, the 2000s are my favorite era. Strange, I know, but I’m also a pop punk fan, so are you really shocked?

Because April marks the beginning of spring weather in Nebraska (even if it is off and on), I was in the mood to spring clean, which for me, means purge my bookshelves. I even made a point of going through my bookshelves at my parents’ house, as well as at my own apartment. I won’t list all of the books I’m ditching, but to give you the general idea: I got rid of books I will never re-read, don’t have an emotional attachment to, or will never actually get to reading. A lot of them were children’s or middle grade books, but there was a big chunk of YA and adult books in the piles as well. They will be finding a nice home at Half Price Books or with other readers I know who want them. And, honestly, now that my bookshelves have extra spaces, I’ll feel way less guilty acquiring more books. Marie Kondo does something right—if the books didn’t spark joy, they had to go.

giphy

Posted in LGBT+, new era, polysyllabic spree | Tagged 2000s, ash hardell, books, freddie mercury, GBBO, graphic novels, great british bake off, harry potter, library, life lessons, mental health, punk rock, punk rock jesus, queen, reading | Leave a comment

Cookies and Jams: How Jamming to Music and Feeding Squirrels Makes Me More Resilient

Posted on April 15, 2019 by Ryn PB

A few days ago, I woke up, went for a 4-mile run outside, then jammed out to Walk the

This is from 2014, but come on… Brendon Urie is so beautiful!

Moon and Panic! at the Disco while getting ready for the rest of the day. And honestly, it was one of the best mornings I’ve had in a loooong time.

The couple days before this great morning were rough. I’d cried a lot, been very sad and anxious, and had a lot of bodily insecurities. It was hard to focus on anything because I was worried about the past and the future instead of enjoying anything in the present. I’m graduating next semester and worried about life beyond school (and also excited, but mostly worried), along with a bunch of other worries such as when will I ever get top surgery and why didn’t I let myself be sad about family members and friends being in the hospital until now? I’d also gotten sick on my run (IBS flareup… yay…) and couldn’t enjoy my first run outside in months. The world seemed to be against me—even the wine and movie night I had with my friend wasn’t as fun as I’d hoped.

Needless to say, I was spiraling into a pit of negativity. The Hydra monster was dragging me down into the depths of its dungeon, having many more heads than before because I cut off the ones that were connected to sadness.

Then Saturday came, and I cried. I cried so hard that I panicked about how sad I was, and I was exhausted the next day. But by Monday—the day of the great morning—I realized how relieved I was to have expelled that emotion. I don’t want to be an emotionless robot, so I need to accept the sadness along with the happiness, the anger along with the comfort.

Sunshine!

So Monday morning—I finally woke up to my alarm and to the sunlight instead of sitting in bed for an hour with my eyes closed wishing the day wouldn’t start yet. I helped my roommate stretch out her hamstring. I got dressed and went for a run, feeling so good that I went an extra mile than planned. I didn’t even let the annoying Nebraska wind detract from the experience, and I didn’t worry about how fast I was running. All I cared about was that I was working toward my goal of running a 10K this year. I could enjoy the scenery and the people and the muscle strain more than I could have if I were worried about how slow I am or what I look like.

Afterward, I had to ice my ankles (runner problems!), but then I got in the shower. And I put on a Walk the Moon song. And I jammed the heck out. I took an extra-long shower just so I could jam out to the other fun, upbeat songs that I love—“Hey Look Ma I Made It” by Panic! at the Disco, anyone?

I highly recommend starting your day with music you love. In fact, I made an entire playlist of songs that I would want to jam to every morning (which is always subject to change, as I change each day). The days that I start with music or books or writing that I love are often the best days I have. I am certainly more resilient on those days, because I start the day with some positivity.

For example, on the Monday in question, I thought I had an appointment with Career

Outside with a friend!

Services to figure out a plan for the future and assuage some of my anxiety. Well, I showed up, and apparently they didn’t have my appointment scheduled. On a normal day, I would have been upset and annoyed and let it ruin at least the next few hours, if not the rest of the day. Instead, I made an appointment for the following Monday and spent the hour that was set aside for the appointment reading a book outside. I’m reading a quirky novel, so it was nice to set aside some time to read for fun instead of for school. I did get sunburned, but again, I didn’t let it bother me too much. I dipped my feet in the fountain outside of the student union and splashed some cold water on my neck to cool down. All in all, it was a good hour.

After I was productive, I walked to a local coffee shop and treated myself to an iced tea and cookie—which I promptly shared with my squirrel friend. Have I told you about my squirrel friend? There was another day when I was having a panic attack and knew I needed to distract myself and get out of the situation, so I got a cookie and sat on a bench. Then a squirrel came up and started begging for food. Now, normally I wouldn’t

Name ideas for my squirrel friend, anyone?

feed a wild animal for fear of giving it something bad for it. But this squirrel had clearly eaten human food before, and sharing is one of the things that almost always puts me in a positive mood, so I shared. He got so close to me, even touching my leg at one point—I felt like a goshdarn Disney prince.

Anyway, I decided to take my cookie and tea to the same bench, and lo and behold, my squirrel friend showed up again. He didn’t show up until I was down to the crumbs, but I dumped them on the ground for him on my way over to sit in the shade (because, ouch, sunburns).

The purpose of all of this is to say that I’m trying to actively add positivity into parts of my day that have previously been neutral, therefore tipping the scales in my favor from the beginning. Then if bad things happen, the day is not ruined and I can handle them better with a clearer, calmer mindset.

And, you know, I think I’m going to stop telling myself it’s stupid for Walk the Moon songs to be the guiding light in my day. I think I’ll just shut up and dance.

Posted in mental health, new era | Tagged anxiety, exercise, hydra monster, life lessons, music, panic at the disco, positivity, running, sadness, walk the moon | Leave a comment

March 2019: How I Made it Through a Rollercoaster of Reading and Buying and Sickness

Posted on March 31, 2019 by Ryn PB

What I Read:

King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo
Part of Let Fury Have the Hour: The Punk Rock Politics of Joe Strummer edited by Antonino D’Ambrosio
This Book is Gay by Juno Dawson
Quidditch Through the Ages by Kennilworthy Whisp (a.k.a. J.K. Rowling)
The Handmaid’s Tale (re-read) by Margaret Atwood
Our Dark Duet by Victoria Schwab
Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

What I Bought:

This Book is Gay
Quidditch Through the Ages
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling
An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England by Brock Clarke
Shelf Life: Stories by the Book edited by Gary Paulsen
Daisy Jones
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Women who love books too much by Brenda Knight
Funerals are Fatal by Agatha Christie

March was a month of ups and downs—it started out well, dipped down, and then shot back up to a peak. This was true both in my reading and in my life.

I started out the month with King of Scars, which took some preparation. This book takes place after the events of the Six of Crows duology and the Grisha trilogy, both also by Leigh Bardugo, but I read the Grisha trilogy a while ago and have no intention of re-reading them. So I had to find online summaries of the books in order to remember what led to the plot of this novel. The result of this was that I found myself enjoying the parts narrated by the character from Six of Crows more than the other two-thirds narrated by characters from the trilogy. This did not really take away too much from my reading experience, at least not as much as THE ENDING. The ending is one of those where it seems like some things are tied up and others aren’t, so there could possibly be a sequel but there doesn’t need to be one. Have I committed myself to another book? Or is this it? Will I be left with questions? I normally like open-ended endings, but only if I know it’s the end of what I’m reading.

After this, I started reading Let Fury Have the Hour, because I felt in the mood for some punk rock. Unfortunately, the flu struck me down while I was reading this, and it’s surprisingly hard to read smart analyses of punk music while extremely sick. So I put Joe Strummer aside and picked up This Book is Gay from Barnes & Noble, assuming it would be an easy read. I was right. It was an easy read. But I didn’t get much out of it. Most of the information was stuff I already knew, and the humor was not as funny as I expected. This might have been a good read when I was questioning my sexuality and gender, but it was not a book I needed in my life at this moment.

I read Juno Dawson’s book at the beginning of my spring break, still sick but able to get through an easy book. While I was home, my mom, sister, and I went to my favorite bookstore: Half Price Books. I don’t have an HPB where I go to school, so I always make a trip when I visit home. This is when my Harry Potter buying spree happened. Although I own all of the original series, I am on a mission to get all of the British versions of the HP books, hence the purchasing of books I already own. I also got the quidditch book because, although it doesn’t match my Tales of Beedle the Bard and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them books, it has a stamp on the cover that says “Property of Hogwarts Library” and I knew this was the edition I wanted. Plus, it was only four bucks… Anyway, who says your books have to match? (I also got my first Blink-182 album there—I’m a real emo now.)

Quidditch Through the Ages was another easy read for me while I was busy being sick, but I still enjoyed it, because what’s not to like about being in the Harry Potter universe? I’m not that into sports (even fictional ones), so I’m not sure I’ll ever read it again, but it was certainly fun!

I will only touch briefly on The Handmaid’s Tale, because I read it for class and have already written a ton about it for school, but I enjoyed re-reading it. It felt more emotionally difficult to read this time around, maybe because I’ve grown as a person and have a more nuanced view of rape, sex, sexuality, religion, and gender. Maybe it’s because I was emotional about being sick. I don’t know, but it still felt like an important read, and I understand why everyone recommends this book.

As far as reading goes, March ended on such a high note (pun intended). Our Dark Duet and Daisy Jones and the Six were both SUCH GOOD BOOKS. Honestly, they are new favorites.

Our Dark Duet, which is the sequel to This Savage Song, definitely delivered. Not only did it include a nonbinary monster with a complex personality, but it also made me want to throw it across the room while at work—the sign of a good book. I cared so deeply about the characters, and we get to see a different part of this world and how that region operates. The only downfall was the inclusion of a romance I was hoping wouldn’t happen. I won’t spoil it, but the first book steered clear of this particular relationship, and then it happened in the second book. I’m not a fan of this relationship becoming romantic, and the way it happened was a bit cheesy, but I didn’t absolutely hate it. It certainly didn’t ruin the book for me, but only because it ended up adding to the complexity of human vs. monster and pain vs. beauty vs. love. This is a book about monsters that is so profoundly human and heartbreaking—a work of art. I can’t wait to read more books by Victoria Schwab.

Although it offered an extremely different experience, Daisy Jones and the Six absolutely blew me away. One day during this past week, it was 75 degrees outside, so of course, I sat outside and read for three hours in the sun. I got a sunburned nose (and, weirdly, some sunburned fingers)—but any book that can make me read for hours and forget that I should be doing my homework is an exceptional book. I even stayed up late to finish reading it, and everyone who knows me is aware of how much of a stickler I am for having a regular sleep schedule.

Daisy Jones tells a fake oral history of a band that formed in the 1970s and had a huge falling out after a concert in Chicago. That’s basically all I knew going into it. Now, I already had an inkling that I would like this book, because I love reading oral histories about musicians and music scenes (e.g. Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil and Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City by Lizzy Goodman). I also love reading fiction of all types (except, maybe, romance…). This book was a combination of amazing storytelling, complicated musicians in a drug- and sex-filled music scene, and characters that were entirely believable. I often forgot I was reading something fictional, and I could barely make myself put it down to go to class or go to sleep. If possible, I think I liked it even more than the This Savage Song duology, and I LOVE duologies.

I’d like to end this post on a bookstore trip. In an attempt to finish a Baginski_Ryn_narrative_8 photography assignment, I found a tiny used bookstore called Badger’s Bookshop to take pictures at. But, to nobody’s surprise, I also ended up browsing and buying a few books.

This bookstore has the most character out of any bookstore I’ve been to. This guy, Will, literally sells books out of his home. You browse in the kitchen, the living room, the bathroom, a bedroom—it’s a house full of books that he still uses as a living space. He was very gracious about me taking pictures, and I even chatted with some book collectors who were also browsing. I wanted to spend hours and hours there, but I had errands to run, so I picked three books—a beautiful copy of Beloved by Toni Morrison, Women who loved books too much, and an Agatha Christie novel with an amazingly cheesy and fitting cover from the 1950s—and checked out. Even though I certainly don’t need any more books, I can’t wait to go back and bring my friends there. Plus, I got some unique pictures for my assignment. It was a win-win-win—cool bookstore, fellow book-lovers, and I finished an assignment.

This March has made me excited for all of the books and experiences I have ahead of me—perhaps another Daisy Jones or Our Dark Duet is in my future.

Posted in polysyllabic spree | Tagged agatha christie, badgers bookstore, book buying, books, daisy jones and the six, duologies, gay, grisha, grishaverse, handmaid's tale, harry potter, LGBT+, oral history, our dark duet, punk rock, quidditch, reading, toni morrison | Leave a comment

Skeleton Faces and Coming Out: How I’m Learning that Confidence and Insecurities Can Live Side by Side

Posted on March 18, 2019 by Ryn PB

This past month has been weird, to say the least. My face got turned into half of a skull, I visited my friend Tricia in the hospital three hours away, I’ve been sick with a flu-sinus-infection hybrid, AND I came out as nonbinary to my parents.

Let’s start with the half-skull. Now, I love being queer—I think it is an important part of me and has introduced me to a wonderful and diverse community. What I do not love about being queer is that everyone wants to hang out at the gay bar. Bars aren’t really my scene. I like to go to bed around 11 p.m., and a lot of times, nights at the bar don’t end until 2 a.m. I’m the first to admit that I’m an old person, but I like my regular sleep schedule! (Where are the gay coffee shops? Gay bookstores?)

That being said, every once in a while, something will convince me to go out late. This time, it was a Harry Potter-themed drag show. That’s right. HARRY POTTER. I know it’s cliché to love Harry Potter, but I do and I’m not ashamed! A few of my friends would be performing, and of course I wanted to support them, but I also probably would have gone anyway. (It was cool to hang out with Lucius Malfoy and Sirius Black, though…)

Another thing you should know about me is that I am the definition of a lightweight. I don’t drink that often, and when I do, it only takes one drink for me to feel the effects. So I had a beer in me that night, and this somehow meant that I thought it was a good idea to put purple gel in my hair and have a friend of a friend paint a skull on half of my face. Don’t get me wrong, I looked AWESOME, but I realized when I got back at 1:30 a.m. that I would have to shower so I wouldn’t get my pillow all dirty. Ugh… all I wanted to do was collapse into bed and complain silently about the person bouncing a basketball in the apartment above me.

Fortunately, the skull-face got lots of compliments and distracted from the two glaring zits on my forehead. No one was looking at my zits, and I realized that, even if I didn’t have a skull painted onto my face, no one would really care that I had zits, anyway. So why should I? It’s okay to be insecure about them, but I wanted to spend the night being proud of my identity and my community and my friends. I didn’t want to be focused on my zits. And guess what? It’s easier to do than one would think. I still didn’t dance much, but I had fun in my own way—and I didn’t have to have perfectly clear skin to do it.

I’m not going to spend a lot of time talking about my visit with Tricia because I don’t want to tell a story that’s not mine to tell. Tricia has a serious illness and it’s been way too long since I’ve visited her, so I’m glad I went. But I thought I was getting sick before I went to visit her, so I chugged some Emergen-C and didn’t get sick until after the visit. Taking the precautions not to get Tricia sick is actually what made me insecure at the hospital. I didn’t want to hug Tricia—just in case—but I also felt like I needed to apologize about it. What’s up with that? I shouldn’t apologize for keeping a friend safe.

I also tend to have bursts of quietness and bursts of talkativeness, especially when I’m tired, and I tried not to overthink my interactions too much. I’m trying to become more comfortable with my own rhythms, not just when I’m alone, but also when I’m with other people. I don’t feel comfortable falling asleep on top of someone else’s legs or playing my ukulele for a bunch of people in a hospital like the other two friends I went with, but I’m learning to feel comfortable being the observer who occasionally interjects. My fear of the awkwardness of the social situation at the hospital has been what has kept me away, but I don’t want that fear to rule my life, especially when I want to hang out with someone cool and fun. So, yes, it was awkward at times. Yes, I didn’t know how to react in a lot of situations. And yes, I spent a lot of time overthinking what I was doing, how I was sitting, and what I was saying. But I went. I visited. I participated. I laughed and sang and loved and talked about my feelings and enjoyed my friends. I did all of this even though I was insecure about certain parts of myself.

Since that visit, which was a week and a half ago, I’ve been sick. It started off with the flu, and it has morphed into a sinus infection. Whoopee. I’m feeling much better today, though my ears and nose are still pretty stuffed up, hence why I am able to write. I’ve spent a lot of my time watching TV, zoning out during conversations, trying not to sleep in class, and reading sub-par books that don’t take much thought.

But I had a plan: over spring break, I would tell my parents I am trans/nonbinary. I wrote out a letter—which ended up being a good thing because I lost my voice for a few days—and set a date for coming out. This is another thing I don’t want to go into too much detail about, but I do want to say that coming out was not easy. My parents love me and are going to make an effort, but the initial reaction was hard to stomach. There was a lot of crying and then a lot of hugging and then a lot of blowing my nose—sinus infections nbflag8 plus crying are a bad idea.

Honestly, I was so tired that day that I barely remember the second half of it. Then the next few days, my anxiety hit me like a tsunami. That Hydra monster reared all of its heads until I could barely focus on reading my book, which I was enjoying. But I realized that my anxiety meant my illness was getting better. It meant my body was returning to healthiness, and it meant that I could finally think about the consequences of coming out. Namely, I can be myself now. I can be Ryn, even if my parents don’t call me that yet, and I can be proud and confident in who I am. Keeping this a secret from my parents—two of the most important people in my life—has held me back from fully accepting my identity as nonbinary. But now I feel free to embrace this body that I’m in, and also to embrace the things I would like to change about it to lessen my dysphoria. I am proud to be a part of the nonbinary community and confident that this is my true identity. Sure, I’m insecure about whether people will take me seriously and use my pronouns, and I’m insecure about how people read me when I walk down the street, but I know who I am and so do the important people in my life.

I am proud of my zits. I am proud of my awkwardness. I am proud of my gender identity. Because these things make me who I am, and in the long run, these insecurities will only ever make me more confident in myself.

Posted in LGBT+, mental health, new era | Tagged anxiety, books, confidence, friendship, hospital, illness, insecurity, life lessons, mental health, nonbinary, sadness | Leave a comment

February 2019: How Reading Through my Emotions Helps, a.k.a. February Was Weird

Posted on February 28, 2019 by Ryn PB

What I Read:

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
Wild Beauty by Anna-Marie McLemore
This Savage Song by Victoria Schwab
The Tea Dragon Society (graphic novel) by Katie O’Neill
Autoboyography by Christina Lauren
Parts of On The Road (re-read) by Jack Kerouac
The Tales of Beedle the Bard (re-read) by J.K. Rowling
Some punk rock and conspiracy zines

What I Bought:

Punk rock and conspiracy zines
This Savage Song (gift)
The Tea Dragon Society
Our Dark Duet by Victoria Schwab
King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo
Crown of Feathers by Nicki Pau Preto
Mick Jagger: The Unauthorised Biography by Alan Clayson
Let Fury Have the Hour: The Punk Rock Politics of Joe Strummer edited by Antonio D’Ambrosio

February was a weird month. Not just because I bought more books than I actually read,

Getting a drink at a bar with Dad!

but because lots of things happened. I turned 21 and got drunk for the first time (on two separate days). We had a family crisis toward the end of the month that is still ongoing. It has snowed for the last three weekends and will snow again this weekend, forcing me to stay inside or drive white-knuckled to anywhere I want to be. February was an emotional rollercoaster, but (or maybe because of this) I was still able to read quite a bit.

Their Eyes Were Watching God and The Prince were both school books, so I won’t spend too much time on them. All I want to say is that TEWWG is the first book that uses eye dialect that I haven’t actively disliked reading. And it was written by black woman in the 1930s, which made it perfect for Black History Month! It was a great way to start out my reading for this month, even if I didn’t really stick with a black authors theme.

On The Road was also a school read, and I have to say, I really disliked re-reading it. Usually when teachers assign chunks of books, I’ll read the whole book anyway to get the whole story. I could not bring myself to do this, in part because I was reading This Savage Song and in part because I have a whole new perspective on this book’s racism, sexism, and homophobia. The Beat Generation was interesting and important, but I have to be in the mood to read their novels. I was not in the mood.

There were three books that took the cake this month: Wild Beauty, This Savage Song, and Autoboyography. Oddly enough, two out of these three have a central theme of romance, and two out of these three are told from different perspectives—two things in books that have to be done really well or I don’t like them.

Wild Beauty is about a family with generations of women who look after these gardens because they have magical flower powers. If they fall in love with someone, their true love always disappears, until one day all five of the youngest generation fall in love with the same girl and a boy springs up from the garden with no memories. This book is one that I carried everywhere just to show people the lovely cover—it’s SO PRETTY.

This Savage Song is one of my new favorite books. It is about a world in which bad/evil/immoral actions create monsters. This book was given to me by my friend Jax along with a mug that says “Please go away. I’m reading.” (It’s a mug I never knew I needed.) She told me she picked this book because it was on a list of books with no romance, and she knows how much I prefer my books without romance. TSS surpassed my expectations so much that I bought the sequel a few days after I finished it, but I’m waiting for a time when I’ll be able to read the sequel uninterrupted. (Spring break, maybe?)

The two main characters are complex and real and problematic and emotional and smart and strong and THEY DON’T FALL IN LOVE! This is a fast-paced book (which was a nice break from the slower books I’ve been reading lately) and I flew through it without losing any enjoyment or being confused. I highly recommend this book, especially to people who prefer their books without romance, or to people who like complex monsters that make you question what the word monster really means.

Wednesday the 20^th is when shit went down in my family. A family member was rushed to the hospital for a potentially fatal surgery, my parents flew down to be with her and the family, and I drove home on Thursday to spend all weekend alone in my parents’ house with the dog, Reggie, so he wouldn’t have to be in a kennel. During this long weekend alone, I went to Half Price Books and bought the two weird music-related books about Mick Jagger and Joe Strummer, played an entire Nancy Drew computer game, and read Autoboyography. And, of course, I snuggled with Reggie and shoveled snow. What a weekend…

Autoboyography is quite unlike This Savage Song in that the whole central plot is romance/love-based. This book is about a bisexual boy who falls in love with a closeted Mormon boy and how their relationship evolves. This book deals with the difficulties of the Mormon boy being unable to fully accept his sexuality. The boys meet in a class called “The Seminar,” in which students have to write a book in a semester, which is one of the reasons I loved this book so much. Books about readers and writers are some of the best books I read, and this book also had nuanced queer main characters in a complex relationship. It wasn’t just a happy-go-lucky romance story between two boys; it really dealt with both the good and the bad of growing up queer and falling in love. I’ve never read a book that goes so in depth into these issues before, so I read this one fairly fast. It was one of those books that makes you happy, rips your heart out, puts it back together, rips it out again, and puts it back together again. But trust me, the torture is worth it.

As a side note, a book that caused me very little torture at all but is also super beautiful and lovely and queer was The Tea Dragon Society, a short graphic novel about people who care for dragons that produce tea leaves. I got this in my first and only OwlCrate box for this month, along with Crown of Feathers, as a birthday gift to myself.

Especially with how emotional this month has been, I am pleased and surprised that I was able to read as much as I did. Sure, I put off On The Road too long, but I read some

Ignore my weird expression…

amazing books instead. And I’ve found a new favorite book in This Savage Song. I even began writing a new short story (about a boy that wakes up with wings) that I still have yet to finish, ending my writing slump of a few weeks.

Later today, I have to pop on my “Accio Books!” beanie and trudge through the ice to copy edit at my school newspaper. I’ll be bringing my copy of King of Scars to start March off with another amazing author, and to continue to show myself that books that make me FEEL are the best ones to read.

Posted in LGBT+, new era, polysyllabic spree | Tagged autoboyography, books, jack kerouac, jk rowling, one the road, owlcrate, punk rock, queer lit, reading, this savage song, victoria schwab, zines | Leave a comment

Demetri Martin and Paw-Shaped Cake: How I’m Learning to Ask for What I Want and Need

Posted on February 11, 2019 by Ryn PB

I have this horrible habit of bottling up anything that’s bothering me because I don’t want to rock the boat of any of my relationships. This inevitably leads to an explosion, usually in the form of a panic attack or yelling at someone I love.

The most recent form this took was me having a panic attack and then snapping at my friends because I felt like I’d been backlisted. Everyone got tickets to a concert I wanted to go to without thinking to ask me, some people went to visit my friend in Kansas City without even cluing me in, and when I asked several people to go to a comedy show with me on the following Saturday, no one wanted to go or spend the money. I felt lonely and unloved and spent most of my weekend alone in my bedroom, wallowing in misery. I even felt like my attempts to leave and go listen to jazz music at a local bookstore while everyone was at the concert failed, because the jazz musicians were god awful.

You know what would have been an easy solution before I snapped at my friends? Actually telling them that I felt left out. It seems easy, but I hate confrontation and am always afraid that if I point out an issue, someone is going to hate me or do things out of pity, and not because they care about me.

After this meltdown, my friends have done some very nice things for me. One friend got me a mug and a book as birthday gifts, my roommates baked me a paw-shaped cake for my birthday, and one of my friends agreed to go see Demetri Martin’s show with me.

Now, though my friends did pay more attention to me this weekend, I’d rather not have to cry to get my point across. I’d rather have a rational, calm conversation about what’s bothering me. I need to learn how to express these issues and ask for what I want/need without immediately thinking that my friends are going to ditch me or hate me.

Then I need to learn how to accept nice gestures after I say these things as genuine, and not as pity. This is a tough one for me. I felt guilty for a while about “using my emotions to get what I want,” but I realized I was twisting the situation into a negative one. After that, I still worried that my friends were only doing this nice things out of pity, which I still think, because my anxiety likes to lie to me. It’s hard to see nice gestures as genuine if you’ve asked for them, but I’m learning to enjoy these gestures no matter what the purpose.

This is why I had an amazing time with my friend, laughing at Demetri Martin’s snake, donut, and broccoli jokes. She seemed to genuinely enjoy herself as well, and I didn’t make her pay for the ticket (even though I wish my friends would have been willing to make that sacrifice for me if they had the extra money), so I felt a little less guilty. I enjoyed my paw-shaped cake that my friends made dairy-free just for me—and they got me rainbow sprinkles! I’m such a lucky person.

This blog post, like most of the ones I write about my life, has basically been a way to dissect the past few weeks on paper. In 2019, and for the rest of my life, I want to fight to make sure my anxiety isn’t the one dictating my decisions all the time. It’s time to put myself on a level playing field with everyone else in my life, because I’m worthy of it. And everyone who doesn’t think they should do the same: you’re wrong. Instead of putting yourself first or over everyone else, which can make people like me feel guilty, make yourself equal to those you love. You deserve just as much as they do.

And you know what? If you get a cake out of telling people what you want, that’s just a bonus.

P.S. I’m not going to edit this post, because if I re-read it, I know I’ll second guess posting this. It feels more personal than other posts, because this internal guilt and fear of rocking the boat are pretty much the root of most of my problems, so I apologize for any grammatical errors you may have encountered and the lack of pictures. I am aware this isn’t my best piece of writing, but it felt important to write, and the whole point of this blog is to be honest about my journey, whatever that may entail.

Posted in mental health, new era | Tagged anxiety, cake, comedy, demetri martin, friendship, guilt, ocd | Leave a comment

As Cool As Mint Ice Cream

June 2019: How This Month of Reading and Connecting Reinvigorated My Mind

Mom Hugs and Puppy Snuggles: How I Let Depression Get the Best of Me Before I Explored Why Life is Worth Living

May 2019: How I Read Too Much Because of Boredom, Anxiety, and Unemployment

Mixed Media and Turning the Page: How I’m Learning to Deal with (and Embrace) Uncomfortable Situations

April 2019: How I Read and Loved My First Graphic Novel

Cookies and Jams: How Jamming to Music and Feeding Squirrels Makes Me More Resilient

March 2019: How I Made it Through a Rollercoaster of Reading and Buying and Sickness

Skeleton Faces and Coming Out: How I’m Learning that Confidence and Insecurities Can Live Side by Side

February 2019: How Reading Through my Emotions Helps, a.k.a. February Was Weird

Demetri Martin and Paw-Shaped Cake: How I’m Learning to Ask for What I Want and Need

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