My latest library haul

 I got a sweet haul from the library this past weekend and wanted to show them off.

1. The Silent Patient

The cover is great but this copy felt like it was older than I am

This is the book I came to the library for. I had it on hold and picked it up. My friend told me about it and said (spoiler?) it has a twist. I know some people consider simply knowing that the story has a twist as a spoiler, but I kind of like knowing there's a twist because it keeps me engaged in what might otherwise be a bit of an underwhelming.

In full honesty, I just finished this book today. And (spoiler) the twist was indeed good.

Although the writing was a little bland, it was a super fast read with very short chapters, and the intrigue keeps you going. It's fun. Apparently it's going to be a movie with Anne Hathaway? Exciting.

 2. We Can Do Hard Things

I've never heard of this book before or anything. It just caught my eye because like look at it. It's eye-catching. It's cute. It's a good vibe book. I like the title. I opened it up and flipped around and it looks unique and eye-catching inside. I'm excited to try it out.

fun text

3. A Glitch in the Matrix

I've seen this book somewhere before (don't remember where; I've seen a lot of books in a lot of places) and it sounded interesting.

I thought it was cute that it's an influencer that talks about this stuff, seems like they're passionate about it. I like reading Reddit stories too and I've read a few spooky r/GlitchInTheMatrix stories before and they're pretty weird and freaky sometimes. So a whole book of them? Sure, sounds cool. I'm interested to see if they're just stories that people directly posted on Reddit or if there's some extra editing and commentary.

 4. Clamor

Going to the library, I told myself that I'd only get 3 books. I have to set these limits for myself but it can be hard because my little rat brain tells me I need to get all the books immediately or else I'll combust.

Anyways, I broke my limit but just by this one book. I mention it in an earlier post but I've been feeling more lately like the world has become so loud, mentally and visually and in a bunch of weird subconscious ways that I don't actively think about. Not sure if this book is going to explore any of those, maybe it just literally means like physical(? is it physical? auditory) maybe it just literally means like auditory noise and only auditory noise.

But we'll see! I'm pretty hyped about these choices, I think they're each fun in their own ways. 

 

CURRENT RAT EVENTS

It feels like work chewed me up and spat me out today. I think I did my best today and it kind of wasn't enough. One of those days. Now I'm just watching the wedding episodes of Love is Blind with my bf.

The Empress (upright)--Beauty, abundance, growth, maybelline.

Hoppers was fun but nobody laughed except me

When we bought our tickets, it was only our two seats and two seats in the very first row that were taken. So when we walked in at 5 pm and it was packed, I thought we walked into the wrong theater. Kids were everywhere.

The taken seats randomly turned into lizards after we bought our tickets (this was at 11 am)

We had to squeeze past three recliners, all full, one of which the adult of the group had taken off his shoes and was raw doggin his feet in the air, no socks. Intimidating for me. I think when I sat down it took me a solid 15 minutes to get my heart rate down.

lizard lizard lizard lizard lizard (at 5 pm)

The movie was cute. I think Turning Red still hit me harder, but the humor of Hoppers felt stronger overall. And the animation was adorable. Mabel was a cute protagonist and I liked her relationship with her Grandma. I also liked that she was 19, that's surprisingly old for a Disney/Pixar protagonist in my opinion!

I love him

The climax was absolutely hilarious and Dave Franco went absolutely nuts in the recording booth (good for him).

One thing that surprised me is how quiet the theater was. It was full of kids, so I assumed it was going to be a loud showing. But the kids only laughed at one joke where all the animals were yelling and screaming over each other.

I feel like when I used to go to the theaters, people were sometimes jerks, but not always. Like sometimes someone would pull out their phone a few times, and if it was annoying you'd be like, "Hey, can you please put that away" after like 20 minutes of hyping yourself up and picturing them reacting in the worst way. And then they would put it away.

My worst story was some couple brought a really young kid into John Wick 4 and gave him a phone to play some app with no headphones, and I think the kid got bored of John Wick and kept turning the volume up until it was blaring. That used to be my worst story.

But it's strange, in the last couple of weeks, I've gone to the theater twice and at Project Hail Mary a guy kept pulling out his phone at full brightness and Hoppers today there was a guy bare footing it who took a call during the climax. At FNAF 2, some dude talked the entire time. Is it just me or are audiences getting worse? It used to be every now and then, but these days, it's almost a certainty.

 

CURRENT RAT EVENTS

Current rat hobby: I am like 20 pages from finishing The Silent Patient.

Current rat worry: Work -_-

Can people at work please do any tasks on their own? I swear I feel like the only person that is working on my entire team... Someone is helping me with a task and they were told it needs to be finished pretty much as soon as possible. Guess what, not only did they never finish it, but they never even started on it. My manager said, "Oh, that's fine. We'll just push that then, they're busy." We can't push it, it needs to be done ASAP! Am I the only person at my job that understands what ASAP means? I feel like I'm going slightly insane.

The Fool (upright)--Beginnings, spontaneity, leaps of faith.

The peaceful silence of audiobooks

Lately, I've been really enjoying audiobooks, which is new for me. I've tried to get into audiobooks in the past and failed, and whenever I heard someone talk about a good audiobook, I'd think something like: Good for them, but not for me.

It started when I put timers on some of my apps, like Instagram and Reddit. I already had timers on them, but I went from 20 mins on weekdays and 40 mins on weekends to just 10 minutes for every day. I didn't think this would have a huge effect on me, after all, I already had a timer on them, but it did.

There would be times I'd be sitting around, timer already up, feeling bored. Trying to figure out what to do. And I guess all the times sitting around quietly made returning to those apps feel even louder.

I'd open Instagram and suddenly everyone is delivering their lines at me in over the top yelling, telling me what products to buy, what I should feel about a recent event, what exercises I need to do to maintain mobility by the time I'm 70, or asking me to comment something to get a DM with the link. Same with Youtube and Reddit: people speaking loudly and making me feel like I couldn't even think. I had never noticed it before, or maybe I was able to resist feeling pulled and stretched around (probably not that one honestly).

Anyways, I was craving something calmer than that. I had heard good things about the Project Hail Mary audiobook--only good things, actually (do I italicize if the book title is for an audiobook?) I read the book last year but the movie was coming out soon and I wanted a refresher, and the bonus to it being a book I've already read meant that if I missed a sentence or two I wouldn't be completely lost.

I actually really dig the poster. Probably related to that: I also really like Ryan Gosling.

So all the moments where in the past I would've put on a Youtube video or mindlessly browsed Instagram, I would instead put on my audiobook, and after awhile, the thing I really noticed was how much quieter it felt. Instead of influencers and content creators clamoring over themselves to grab and hold my monetized attention, feeling like every application was pushing and pulling me around, I felt nothing there. A silence. Nobody trying to sell me something, nobody trying to influence me. Silence.

It was lovely. Would recommend.

(I saw the movie and the book was better, which isn't a huge surprise. The movie did add some great ideas that I liked, like having video logs be a thing, having Project Hail Mary mission hats, and letting Carl have more of a presence, but the book was maybe my favorite book of 2025, so it was going to be hard to beat.) 

CURRENT RAT EVENTS

Current rat hobby: Reading The Silent Patient and constructing a planner I'll actually use.

Current rat worry: Work. Work work work. Work! Work...

Woke up full body sore today, but worked really hard. (Worked over the weekend too--for free! I'm that much of a dummy.) I did a full 30 minutes of yoga, I showered already last night, I have lunch and breakfast ready for tomorrow, and I already sent off my query to my coworker, created my PR for my other project. Even took a 40 min nap after work, read about 40 pages of my book already, and it's only 7:30. What does this mean? I think it means that for the first time in like two weeks I can sit here and feel okay. I mean, there's still a million horrible things over my head, looming like ugly rainclouds--my insurance appeal was denied, my remaining ovary is throbbing in a concerning way, and a guy in the PHM screening pulled out his phone on full brightness out three times. Listing these out side by side is a little funny because one is real dumb.

Five of Wands (reversed)--Inner conflict, conflict avoidance, confusion.

2026: The era of finishing

I am a serial incompletionist. It's taken me a lot of therapy to realize this lol.

I think something I've learned a lot about myself lately is how I react to discomfort, realizing I'm very sensitive to it. An unfortunate byproduct of being sensitive to discomfort is doing nothing, because everything has some degree of discomfort.

Things as small as going to the movies, answering phone calls, and coming back full circle to my first sentence: finishing things. Not finishing projects might be under the umbrella of common. But I have also realized how little I finish in terms of books, tv shows, and especially video games.

I've been thinking a lot about this year laid out ahead of me (Year of the Horse woo) and how I want to really change during it. 2024, I went through a very serious trauma at the end of it. 2025, I was healing from it in more ways than one, and now that the waters have settled somewhat, I think on 2026. For me, I think I want 2026 to be my year of discomfort and my year of finishing things I've started (aka also discomfort).

There are some bigger goals I want, like to seriously jump into some crazy hobbies and travel more, but on a smaller scale, I want to finish things.

Anyways, the other day I made a list of games I've started and not finished (but want to!) and I've been pontificating over how to tackle it. I thought it would be nice to write them here as I've been kind of using my blog as a bit of a journal, and I'm really hoping to come back at the end of the year and see where I was and track my progress.

Here is my list in no particular order:

• Detroit Become Human
• Expedition 33
• Loddlenaut kind of
• Resident Evil 2
• It Takes Two
• Cyberpunk
• Little Kitty Big City
• Baldur's Gate 3
• Cat Cafe Manager
• Monster Hunter Stories Wings of Ruin 2
• Hades
• Red Dead Redemption 2
• Disco Elysium
• The Coma 2 Vicious Sisters
• Carrion
• Sunset Overdrive
• The Witcher 3
• Okami
• Paper Mario and the Thousand Year Door
• Ori and the Blind Forest
• Devil May Cry 5
• Night in the Woods
• Yoshi's Island DS

I had all of this written on a tiny little list and writing it all out and seeing it take the full screen is a bit daunting.

Maybe I'll add all of them to a randomized wheel and spin it to pick which one to start on. Or maybe I'll just do a kind of... last in, first out method? Tackle the ones I started the most recently first. 

CURRENT RAT EVENTS

Not a huge fan of Daylight Savings. Windows fucked me on a failed update and I ended up having to reinstall. I'm still picking up the pieces of my PC. It ate half of today. The drain is clogged too (or something, not sure what), the disposal won't run. The dishwasher is connected to the disposal drain, so running it means this nasty un-disposed food water comes out of the drain, meaning the dishwasher is sitting full and has been since it broke. What does all of this mean? The kitchen stinks like old food. It's a horrible smell. I was unable to do my meal prep today like I normally do. This weekend was supposed to be relaxing and then all this happened. I have a work deadline due this week. I'm stressed.

Temperance (reversed)--Imbalance, burning out, excess.