Cheat Work Thursday

This is the second Cara Dee's book that I read, and my God, I love Casey! Just like Cara Dee's other characters and all human beings on earth obvs , Casey's not perfect. But seriously, how do I find someone this funny and fun and kind and apparently hot, too, in real life? Even as a friend? Do people like him really exist outside of a book or screen? So where are they? And if you are telling me that I have to be all those first to attract similar people into my life , this is where I'll get angry. I seriously need the scientific study that backs that discrimination up. Embarrassingly, my cynicism evaporates when reading Cara Dees. If this were real life or maybe a story by some other authors even, I'd probably question e-ve-rything. Because how too-good a two-week vacation in beautiful, secluded coves, jungles, rivers and waterfalls while falling in love is? Thankfully my brain ignores that because this book is good, and Casey is unfiltered, quirky and hilario...

I found Cara Dee's books recently, and the first three that I read quickly became three of my favourite books this year so far. Right now I'm just obsessed with her writing. If I were lucky enough to only have a tiny percentage of her talent, I'd grab it. Her words paint the characters so vividly -- all funny, charming, or hurting -- it feels like watching a movie complete with a score. I believe the scenes and the moods. She made me fall in love with her characters. So we meet Bennett and Kieran in this book. Bennett feels like his life is stuck: He needs friends and that promotion at work. His wife Allison is away studying in a different city, leaving him with their two kids, and his marriage is running on an almost-empty tank. Kieran, who is married to and has one kid with Maggie, isn't really happy either for a different reason: He's had to pretend he's straight for almost his entire life so he won't lose his huge family back home. The two meet ...

This is going to make you both-hands-covering-face cringe on one page and have you in stitches on another. The intro says something about shredding files faster than Jimmy Carr's accountant and that makes me roll on the floor laughing. I don't care who on earth this Jimmy Carr is. The book is a collection of Adam Kay's seven-year diary entries from the time he starts at the NHS as a House Officer until he quits as a Senior Registrar in 2010. He writes about the grueling schedule, the immense amount of pressure, the pay, the toll the work takes on personal lives, the things he found stuck inside patients' bodies, the good days, and the bad days. Honestly, to many outsiders, the NHS is one of the best healthcare systems in the world. But behind this world-envied and other healthcare institutions around the world, too, obvs , there is an army of hardworking medical heroes who sacrifice a lot. There's no particular one long storyline to follow in the book other th...

The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a story about four miserable souls who, at some point in their lives, have either cheated on their spouse or had an affair with a married person. My shorter summary is, this is a story about selfishness and, maybe, love. There are probably discussions about life or something too in the book, but they all graciously went over my head. So, the time is 1960s. Tomas is a Czech surgeon living in Prague, and he's also a womanizer. He meets Tereza and they apparently fall in love. The two get married, but Tomas continues to sleep with other women, which Tereza pretends to ignore. He also has an affair with a painter named Sabina, whom he considers a friend -- a relationship that started before he met Tereza. After the Russian invasion, Tomas and Tereza escape to Zurich. By this time, Sabina has also moved to Geneva. The womanizing continues, and eventually Tomas rekindles his affair with Sabina. A few years later, Tereza returns to Prague, ...

Because this is one of very few bright shots from the series. I don't own much stuff, but if I were ordered to leave my home due to a disaster nearby, even with the promise that I'll be able to return, I'd still bring with me at least two IKEA DIMPA bags of belongings. It's only my right, too. I don't keep garbage. Every single thing I own has function. Well, most of them but, still, it's in a high percentage. It gives me anxiety seeing everyone leaving Pripyat with just one tiny suitcase. I mean, I love living light, but not that light. I'd probably get thrown out of the bus for my excess baggage then, I realize. But seriously, what happened to the cars? Did these people get compensated? Then again, bringing stuff that has already been exposed to radiation is probably not a good idea either. This is so infuriating. Ok fine, it was people's lives that needed saving first, which brings us to another round of anxiety seeing how a nuclear catastrophe...

The book discusses how history may differ when told by different sources or at different times -- or "history is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation," if you are Adrian Finn. With this premise, I'm left confused by the ending. Seriously, I'm not sure who isn't. But if you don't mind these kind of twists, this may be for you. The story started with Tony's life at school with his friends Alex, Colin, and Adrian, who moved to the school in a later year. Adrian was that smart student who asked all sorts of questions and often came up with answers that were understood by others only half of the time -- that kind of classmate. They all went to different universities afterwards but remained friends. In college, Tony had a relationship with Veronica, whom he later described as difficult and manipulative. He visited Veronica's family one weekend, meeting her parents and brother J...

Chances are, your blood is boiling watching this four-part series: the harrowing account of Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam and Korey Wise's wrongful convictions and sentences. The five teens, all Black and Brown, ages 14 to 16 in 1989, spent the next 6 to 13 years of their lives in prison for a crime they did not do -- raping and assaulting Trisha Meili almost to death while she was jogging one night in Central Park. Meili was in coma for 12 days from the injury and had no memory of what happened to her. The series opens with the last hours before the lives of the boys derailed to a horrifying direction. It starts with a normal evening with their family and friends, then they decide to run around with a crowd of other teenagers in Central Park. What follows is one night at the police station for some of them while the police are rounding up young men of colour, looking for witnesses and suspects for the attacks on Meili and several other vic...

I promised to read one book every week this year. Although I've not been able to blog each of them, I’m doing good so far with the reading 🥳. And the key to that is by reading books that I like. If the rules were “they have to include various genres — politics, biography, and depressing storylines — and you have to read them regardless of whether you can connect with the writing style," I’d probably still be at book #3 right now. So Sarina Bowen and Elle Kennedy were collaborating again and came out with Top Secret earlier this year, and it's the usual Bowen-Kennedy fun book: new adult, romance. It’s the story of Keaton and Luke, who match on a hookup app Kink anonymously when Keaton is looking for someone to have a threesome with for his girlfriend’s birthday, which is her request. Yeah. What the two don’t know, however, they already know each other in real life, being next-door neighbours in a frat house. And in real life, they aren't exactly friends. Keaton...

I think DKNY PR Girl was one of the best things that ever existed on Twitter. It was a fresh, smart use of a relatable, playful and inspirational character to represent a brand. I was a huge fan of the illustrations made for the character, done by Dallas Shaw. It's a shame its time on Twitter was cut short. Leave Your Mark was written by Aliza Licht, the person behind the character. It's filled with tons of practical pointers -- from writing a resume when you have no work experience, to ways to communicate with your boss when things are tricky at work -- thus a super useful read, especially if you are just starting out. And even if you're already years into your job, there are plenty of reminders of what to do or not to do, or what to do next , too. I wish I'd been warned of some of those mistakes before I made them myself. This is not a book about building a brand on social media, though, if you are grabbing it because of DKNY PR Girl, hoping to learn the tri...

If there were no big-budget campaigns involved in movie award races, how different would they look? Granted that I don't watch that many movies to come out with a different Oscar list, I don't think I'll ever register the existence of La La Land or The Favourite then. A Star Is Born It’s not always easy to tell others that you are in pain. So, many would just drown in it — trapped, suffering in silence. But I’m at a point in my life where I can’t watch someone rich and successful self-destruct. I see A Star Is Born as nothing more than a movie with two huge Hollywood names. I can’t believe this is the third remake of the story. How was one not enough? Beautiful Boy Similar to A Star Is Born , Beautiful Boy is a story about addiction and life going off the rails. But I feel less angry watching this one, maybe because it’s based on real people and it also has a better ending. It's still uncomfortable watching someone try to lie the obvious, though — ar...