Recommended Reading: Silly, Serious, and Somewhere in Between.

To say I spent a lot of time on the internet is an understatement. A functioning wireless router enables me to do my research, keep abreast of the news, stay in touch with friends, watch four seasons of Bob's Burgers in three weeks, and do whatever it is I spend so many hours doing on Tumblr. Without internet access, I would spend a significant portion of my day lying in bed, glaring at the ceiling and wondering what other people with internet access are doing.

My browser history isn't all online shopping and social media, though. A significant amount of my bandwidth usage goes toward digital reading material that's undoubtedly wreaking havoc on my eyesight, but hopefully makes up for the headaches by providing some intangible sort of cultural enrichment, or at least fodder for the next time I have a conversation with an actual human being that doesn't live inside a small box on my laptop screen. I'm always wary of deluging my unfortunate Facebook friends and Twitter followers with too many links to articles they may not be interested in, so I'm experimenting with a weekly reader's digest of sorts here, instead, where anyone can elect to read (or not read) what I've been reading lately. Reading reading reading.

I haven't decided yet what day of the week would be best to commit to this feature; Sunday night is probably the worst, since everyone has school and work to get to the next day, but I forgot to do this yesterday and I want to start the week fresh. (Let me know if there's a certain day you would most appreciate seeing these published!) This first set of articles ranges from a little bit frivolous to significant and worth sharing; they may not all be to one person's taste (unless that one person is me), but they're all pieces I think are worth featuring.

All article titles are clickable, and all links will open in a new tab.

Playing with privilege: the invisible benefits of gaming while male by Jonathan McIntosh, Polygon
     I was glad this piece received some attention when I first linked to it on Facebook, where I called it a well-written introduction to certain advantages men who play video games might take for granted, not even realizing how much worse the gaming experience can be for "girl gamers." As the title suggests, it takes inspiration from Peggy McIntosh's classic piece on "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack," in that both pieces attempt to deconstruct ways in which the author's belonging to a dominant group makes life easier for them in ways that an underprivileged population does not experience. It's especially salient to discuss "male gaming privilege" now, when recent statistics from the Entertainment Software Association show that adult women have overtaken teenage boys as the largest demographic in video games, and yet women who play, discuss, or even make video games are subject to derision, sexual harassment, and even death threats for daring to enter supposedly male spaces. Jonathan McIntosh's checklist of invisible benefits of gaming while male sheds welcome light on male privileges that should, in a happier future, be applicable to all.

The Strange & Curious Tale of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel, GQ
     This is a longer piece, but "strange and curious" sums up the reasons for reading it pretty well: a man lived alone in the woods of Maine for almost 30 years, surviving on stolen goods from nearby cabins, with no desire to re-enter society at any point. This account seems to be the closest anyone will ever get to understanding his choices from his point of view.

I Ate 2,346 Calories of Chocolate in My Sleep Last Night and I Don't Remember Any of It by Philippa Willitts, XOJane
     Explaining that this is an article about the consequences of one woman's sleep-walking doesn't ruin her fascinating and sad account of what it's like to live with such an unpredictable, often frightening condition.

It Took Me Two Years to Realize My Boyfriend Was Racist by Tiffany Tsai, Everyday Feminism
     I met my first boyfriend's parents just a few weeks into our relationship, and it would be a lie to say I wasn't nervous about it. Not only was I his first "real" girlfriend, but I was also very much not white in the home of blue-eyed Brits and a mother raised in the American South. I was lucky: they're a wonderfully kind family, who went out of their way to make me feel welcome on that first visit and during every interaction that followed. Though I occasionally teased that "half-American" boyfriend about his late, beloved, Fox-News-watching grandparents, our interracial couple status was a non-issue, and he was always quick to listen and sympathize with accounts of non-white experiences. Tiffany Tsai's piece reminds me to be grateful for that.

I was taking pictures of my daughters. A stranger thought I was exploiting them. by Jeff Gates, Washington Post
     Transracial adoption is a sticky subject that I'm not particularly educated about, but the idea of a white family going overseas to adopt Chinese babies when there are so many foster children in need of homes in their own country does give me pause. However, that doesn't stop me from being upset at this white adoptive father's story of how a man saw him with his teenage Asian-American daughters and assumed the worst. Human trafficking is a serious problem, but so is the assumption that good-looking young girls with foreign features must not belong here, must somehow be victims, can't possibly be happy American citizens on vacation with their loving, white parents. Plenty of people think "better safe than sorry," but that's probably cold comfort to those two girls.

Experience: I gave birth on a plane at 30,000ft by Debbie Owen, The Guardian
     And the baby was okay! Phew.

My Week on the All-Emoji Diet by Kelsey Rexroat, The Atlantic
     I was mostly excited about this because I finally learned what those unfamiliar Japanese food emojis represent. Fish cakes, rice crackers, and "sweet dumplings made from rice flour and often filled with red bean paste" -- now those symbols don't have to haunt me with their unfamiliarity.

I read many, many more articles this week, but I only thought to start collecting them about two days ago. Future weekly editions of Recommended Reading will have even more, um, recommendations. Get ready.

10 books.

I've never been able to pick favorites. It's not for lack of strong opinions (go on, ask me whether nuts belong in brownie sundaes: they don't); it's that I'm reluctant to declare one thing unquestionably "better" than another without any context. My favorites are circumstantial: favorite food can depend on the season, its availability, whether or not I have to cook it myself, the last thing I ate, and how hungry I am at any given moment; favorite band can depend on the definition of "band," what mood I'm in, who's asking, and whether or not I'm trying to impress them; favorite scarf depends on the weather; favorite book is impossible. To a reader, being asked to choose a single favorite book is an outrage akin to being asked to choose a favorite...well, nothing else, really. Film fans might disagree, but books are arguably a category unto their own, so infinitely diverse and carrying such a range of implications about the readers who choose them that being asked to decide on just one feels like an insult.

When well-meaning and/or nosy adults asked bookish little me what my "favorite book of all" was, I used to lie and name the last thing I'd finished simply to get them to leave me to whatever current thing I was reading, or if I was feeling particularly annoyed at the intrusion, I would name a great classic that I knew would both impress them and get them to abruptly end the conversation themselves. It was particularly effective if the title sounded bleak: Crime and Punishment and The Plague worked well. As I've gotten older and even more impatient with the impertinence of the favorite book question, I've resorted to bluntness: "I don't have a favorite book." It's true enough that I don't make many friends with that answer, but then I wouldn't be likely to enjoy the company of anyone who asked me that anyway.

I'm not exaggerating when I say I was horrified to see that my friend Molly had tagged me in one of those "answer these questions and pass it on to someone else" posts about books. I felt betrayed, because Molly is one of those people who I believed would know better, would understand that a person can't simply list their 10 favorite books at the drop of a hat and move on as if the decision were final. Sorry I doubted you, Molly, because the "rules" of this game turned out to be more nuanced than that:

List ten books that have stayed with you in some way. Don’t take but a few minutes, and don’t think too hard — they don’t have to be the “right” or “great” works, just the ones that have touched you.

Oh. Okay. I can do that.

1. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
2. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
3. The Catcher in the Rye/Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
4. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
5. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
6. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
7. I Wish Someone Were Waiting for Me Somewhere by Anna Gavalda
8. A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket
9. The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen
10. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

My list skews heavily towards books I first read years ago, some of which are considered children's/young adult titles. I did think twice about publicly laying claim to some of them, but what is more touching than the book that all my friends passed around to each other when boyfriends were nothing more than fictional devices, or the ones whose screen adaptations lured us to midnight premieres where we clutched each other's hands when our emotions got to be too much? What has stayed with me more than the book I packed first of all when I left for college, or the one I read alone in bed after I'd arrived at school when no other words made sense? I don't even feel the need to justify the three that made me seriously consider my own mortality.

If you want to ask me about books, don't ask me about favorites. Ask me which ones made me feel a certain way; which ones changed my mind or shaped my beliefs; which ones I'd recommend to a friend and which ones a friend recommended to me; ask me what I was doing when I read a book and what I did after. Then tell me about your books.

My matching set of Salingers.

Men of Tinder.

In a particularly man-hating mood, I thought it might be a fun indulgence to download Tinder and swipe left for (i.e. reject) every single person, reveling in my opportunity to turn guys down with absolutely zero consequences except the possibility that they might have wanted to message me but won't get the chance; so like I said, zero consequences. It was super fun! And then it was depressing, because men of Tinder: you are all the same, and you're all pretty lame.

Here are some sure-fire ways to make sure I never even bother to look through the rest of your pictures or read your Twitter-length profile, all based on actual profile pictures I encountered in the very brief period of time before amusement turned to horror:

• Be shirtless.
• Be shirtless by the pool.
• Be shirtless in bed.
• Be half-shirtless, i.e. wearing a shirt but lifting it up to show your abs.
• Be naked on a sailboat, facing out towards the water, butt towards the camera.
• Be naked sitting on the toilet, because what?!
• Hold a cup of beer.
• Hold a can of beer.
• Be surrounded by a bunch of empty cans of beer.
• Wear a stupid hat that's supposed to be ironic.
• Wear a stupid hat that isn't supposed to be ironic (I really hate hats).
• Have super-short hair -- just a personal preference.
• Conversely, have your hair covering most of your face, because then I'm just suspicious.
• Button all the buttons on your polo shirt.
• Have your hoodie unzipped with no shirt underneath.
• Smoke a cigarette while looking away disinterestedly even though it's obviously a selfie.
• Smoke anything.
• Have your arm around a girl; come on, this is basic.
• Take a mirror selfie with your phone visible in the frame. It's not 2012 anymore.
• Take a selfie on the toilet. Seriously, why the toilet?
• Be named Djonathan because I can't take that seriously, even if it's not your fault.
• Look like the Hulk, because I couldn't care less about how much you can lift, but I'm sure you'd tell me anyway.
• Use a group picture, because I don't want to click through for more pictures and discover you're not the member of the group I hoped you were.

Long story short, I uninstalled Tinder.