User Profile

Taylor Drew

mollymay5000@bookwyrm.social

Joined 6 months, 3 weeks ago

A Canadian (she/they) Japanese to English translator based in Tokyo. Previously a speaker of English and French, now a speaker of English and Japanese.

Portfolio & Blog → taylordrew.me/ Manga Tracking → anilist.co/user/mollymay5000/

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Taylor Drew's books

To Read (View all 8)

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Success! Taylor Drew has read 65 of 52 books.

松浦 優: アセクシュアルアロマンティック入門 (Paperback, Japanese language, 集英社)

LGBTに関する議論から取りこぼされてきたものがある。 それが「アセクシュアル」「アロマンティック」などのセクシュアリティだ。 アセクシュアルとは「他者に性的に惹かれない」という指向で、アロマンティックとは「他者に恋愛的に惹かれない」指向をいう。 私たちは「誰しも他者を恋愛的な意味で『好き』になったり、性的な関係を持ちたいと思ったりするはずだ」という前提で日々を過ごしがちだが、そういった思い込みは彼らの存在を否定することになる。 本書ではアセクシュアルやアロマンティックの人々の経験や置かれている状況、歴史、そして関連する用語や概念を詳細に解説する。

Oh yes, a Japanese language book telling its Japanese language readers that looking at a word in English will help them understand a concept with ease...

I don't even know what to say. This can't be how you effectively help people learn about an unfamiliar topic that for the most part shouldn't require a knowledge of English at all if the book is doing its job well though.

Taylor Keen: Rediscovering Turtle Island (Paperback, 2024, Bear & Company)

While Western accounts of North American history traditionally start with European colonization, Indigenous histories of …

Not enjoyable as an audiobook

This book covered a lot of things I've never heard of before, which is exactly what I was hoping for. Unfortunately, I think this book really relies on the images that are included and I listened to it.

The author references a supplementary PDF, and maybe that exists in my file somewhere, but I listen to audiobooks while I commute, which means that I definitely can't be looking at dozens of pictures as I listen to the author explain things that I have no knowledge about. The fact that there is a supplementary PDF is good, but I didn't have access to it, so that sucked for me.

I must admit that I also wasn't that partial to the way the book was structured anyway. So even though there were a lot of small tidbits that I was really interested to learn about, I couldn't really focus or keep up …

Emma Hooper: Etta and Otto and Russell and James (2015)

Otto, the letter began, I've gone. I've never seen the water, so I've gone there. …

A fever dream?

This book wasn't at all but I expected and I'm not even really sure I know what happened? It was definitely more on the literary and than I expected it to be. I didn't think that it was jump between different periods of time either or people. Good thing I didn't go in with expectations, because none of them would have been met.

Yet I still cried at the end, so I assume that the hidden chambers of my mind have a better idea about what was going on than my more logical and present mind.

I think I'll have to read this again someday. Would recommend.

Viet Thanh Nguyen: To Save and to Destroy (Hardcover, Belknap Press)

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sympathizer (now an HBO series) comes a moving …

To all of the Others

This book was really interesting because it's a compilation of several lectures that the author did. I listened to the book and I feel like that's a good choice for this one because of its origins as a set of it in-person lectures.

It was really interesting to me how he focused on ideas of othering. But it wasn't just about the more common kinds of othering that we think of when it comes to race or ethnicity. He also talked about the othering that happens within yourself and knowing or not knowing yourself.

I haven't read any of his novels or his memoir, but the way he talked about those books and referenced them throughout the lectures, it's clear that they also follow a similar vein of being othered in different kinds of ways. And I think the most interesting part is that in the author's mind, it doesn't …

reviewed The Last Wish by Danusia Stok (The Witcher Saga, #1)

Danusia Stok, Andrzej Sapkowski: The Last Wish (Paperback, 2022, Orbit)

Geralt is a Witcher, a man whose magic powers, enhanced by long training and a …

Far far beyond my expectations

This book was awesome. I'm always a little hesitant to start stuff that has a pretty extensive following because mega fans are wearing rose coloured glasses. But this was in fact extremely awesome.

A main character who's cool, badass, but also somehow a bumbling idiot? And to make it all even better, the book avoids being a misogynistic disaster with a very little effort. The fact that this impresses me says a lot about this genre of fantasy writing, but I will be impressed nonetheless.

I've already got the next book out from the library and ready to read.