So, I’ve been reading a bunch this year, and I want to talk about that for a bit. In this post I’ve listed all of the books I’ve read this year, and, more importantly, which ones were my favorites.
Most of my reading this year was on a Kobo Libra Colour. I wrote a few posts related to my Kobo experience, for example my post about Carta and Kaleido screens, and patching fonts for Kobo devices.
I’m also working on a comprehensive review of the Libra Colour, which I intend on publishing early next year.
Read blog postI have not been spending much time on the computer, lately. This is mostly due to the rest required that is part of dealing with my burn-out. I’ve been working on getting the basics under control. I’ve also been reading a bunch: it’s one of the few activities I can spend more time on without mental exhaustion kicking in quickly.1
For reading fantasy books I settled on reading those with EB Garamond, but I wasn’t entirely happy with that font. Nonetheless, it was good enough. After scouring the net, I stumbled upon EB Garamond Absinthe. Notably, it contains larger glyphs and better line spacing, which are both welcome changes.
I started using this version, but I noticed some ligatures weren’t rendering nicely on my Kobo. So, what’s a man to do? Tweak the font myself, of course.2
Read blog postI suppose it was to be expected. The signs were there.
You may recall last year’s post about taking a sabbatical on this very blog. In it, I laid out my motivations as to why I needed to take a longer break to recover.
I also briefly wrote about prior experiences with mental exhaustion and burn-out, which I dismissed. Perhaps I was simply bored?
You may also recall that in a blogpost reflecting on the break I wrote:
I must admit that while I have gotten a lot of rest over the last three months, I don’t feel in a remarkably better mood than I did when my break started. I had hoped that things would shift dramatically, but sadly the dreadful weather has worked against me and as a result my overall mood has been middling at best.
After feeling off during my vacation time in August, I became extremely tired, both physically and mentally, and my sleep quality fell off a cliff: I started waking up once every hour. That makes everything much worse, very quickly.
Read blog postI actually enjoy writing. I always have, and writing blog posts on this website is not exception. In fact, besides blogging and writing code, I also maintain a daily journal.
When things are written well, reading is a ton of fun. It is a shame then, that so many folks online are only interested in selling merchandise, shilling sponsors or selling their latest course. I get it, you need to bring in the dough.
But the majority of my blog posts here, I simply write because I enjoy writing and I write them because it’s plain fun. My Linux experiments, my video game retrospective posts every year, my programming posts, all of them are written because they’re fun.
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