Welcome back to Links! I don’t know if it’s the fact that January and February in New England is unpleasant, but I am so sleepy and all I want to do is nap beneath my electric blanket.
At first, my New Year’s resolution was to complete a puzzle a month. I thought that’d be easy to do! However, the lighting in my dining room is pretty dim and poor. It makes doing a puzzle anytime after 4pm really strenuous on the eyes, so I haven’t made as much progress as I wanted. My partner said I don’t have to be so strict and can maybe loosen it to just “do more puzzles.”
Maybe! I’m also thinking about making an effort to get more into skincare. I have decent skin, though I only wash it when I’ve worn makeup or have been exercising. I know I need to incorporate more sunscreen wear and I’ve love to focus on hydrating and brightening. It’s been fun to look at products and figure out a routine.
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R.F. Kuang’s Babel was excluded from the Hugo Awards and people are suspicious of the reason.
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This link comes from Betsy! If you’re looking to find an alternative to Goodreads, The Washington Post has some suggestions. (This one may have a paywall – sorry!)
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Have an Icelandic horse write your out of office message! I, sadly, have never explored Iceland; I’ve only had a layovers. However, one of my friends loves it and even got engaged on one of their black sand beaches surrounded by wild horses.
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I am positively obsessed by these teeny tiny crochets designs.
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Don’t forget to share what cool or interesting things you’ve seen, read, or listened to this week! And if you have anything you think we’d like to post on a future Wednesday Links, send it my way!
This business with the Hugo nominating stats really smells. Not only was Babel declared ineligible, Xiran Jay Zhao, author of The Iron Widow, was declared ineligible for the Astounding Award. No explanation in either case. A blogger called Camestros Felapton has posted about it, along with a lot of other people.
Here is a gift link for the Washington Post article:
https://wapo.st/42b29h2
It should work for everybody.
@Laurel Thank you! The WaPo link you included worked for me!
Skincare can be super expensive and ineffective if you get into it unawares – highly recommend Labmuffin and Dr Dray (both on YouTube) for evidence based skincare advice.
You can keep it simple at drugstore pricing as long as you find products that work for you – cleanser, moisturiser, sunscreen. You can then add products slowly for marginal impacts – e.g. plenty of decent drugstore retinols you can use at night. Using sunscreen everyday is always going to have a bigger impact than “actives” like retinol, Vitamin C, peptides etc – and if you use too many things that’s just going to irritate the skin.
I think your partner has a good point. Don’t stress yourself out over something that should be relaxing!
I have a couple of puzzles in the queue, but I always have to roll them up when I’m done or my little feline monsters will eat the pieces. It would be so much easier to leave them out and just put in a piece or two when I feel like it, rather than making a big production of getting it out. So I’m slow too.
I read the WaPo article on alternatives to Good Reads. I will credit the newspaper for running it seeing as Amazon owns GR and Bezos owns the WaPo. However, there is no real alternative to GR if you are looking for a real network. I think Story Graph is a pretty app to track books. But there’s almost no one on it. None of the other sites interested me. I just think they need to hire more people at GR to do more content moderation there. And maybe spruce up the design. But it’s clear we’re stuck with GR. For readers, reviewers, authors and publishers
I tried StoryGraph and found it kind of clunky and buggy (I was using it only on desktop, can’t speak for anything else). I also wasn’t very happy with the book recs for their ‘read alikes.’
@Laurel, thanks for the gift link! I may try out these other options, but for now, it’s just my spreadsheet for tracking and Smart Bitches for the social component 😉
I have used and liked LibraryThing, but then I specifically *don’t* want too much social aspect and don’t care *that* much about recs/suggestions, just a way to track my owned/read books. It’s not the smoothest or fanciest site/app but I liked it a lot and it’s flexible enough to set up how you want.
It does have some options for tracking your reading, but I’ve ended up using it more just for a database of what books I own in what formats (Kindle/physical/audio, etc) and sometimes keeping tags/notes/reviews on them.
I just don’t seem to be able to keep up with *any* app/site/spreadsheet for tracking my reading, as much as I want to. I’d love to know how many books I read in a year, etc – though a LOT of my reading is rereads (which some sites/apps have trouble with) – but I simply can’t seem to get in/stick with the habit of recording stuff.
@LGS: I know this feeling – I like tracking my reading but initially I struggled to update the spreadsheet that I use because I’d finish something or finish two things and suddenly the task seemed overwhelming. What helped me was adding a weekly reminder to my to-do list app (which I use daily) to update it. Then I’d get the boost of both updating and checking something off the list.
If you are open to suggestions (and totally ok if not!): if you’re looking for a yearly total, you might try LibraryThing or whatever app or site you like best and go for a very simple tag like ‘read 2024’ and set a reminder to update however often that would work for you?
I put a tablecloth over my in-progress puzzles when I want to use the table for something else.
@Sarah and @LGS—that’s what I do too, add a “read in 20xx” tag to my books as I finish. You can also search books by entry date, so if you add your reads as you finish them, it’ll basically keep track of when automatically. But I still use the tag because the advanced search works a lot better in the browser version than the app.
I love LibraryThing! But then, like LGS I’m basically using to keep track of my own books rather than the social aspect.
@Laurel, thank you for the WaPo link!
I’ve been a member of https://www.librarything.com/home for more than a decade. I don’t utilize it as much as I should. It’s no frills, but if you have a problem, their customer service is great.
You can get free books to review, but most seem to be indie authors or small press publishers. Sometimes you get a gem, sometimes it’s a hot mess.
It’s what you make of it, but it is independent.
Zibby Owens did successfully get an antisemitic review-bomb removed from GR last week.