J.A. Yang was born in Taipei and came-of-age in San Diego. He has authored a few books, been published online here and there, and podcasts when the mood strikes. His favorite font is Enviro.
What is this and who is "Jace?" With 2025 starting up, I’ve decided it’s time to return to the world of online writing. At first I was exploring alternative options, such as Instagram or creating another newsletter. However, there are major downsides to both. Instagram is primarily a visual medium and text posts on there are limited to 2,200 characters, which is just around 400 words. That’s enough for some things but not nearly enough for longer pieces—which sometimes I’d like to do. So Instagram was out. Newsletters are fun and I even now have a separate email address specificially for subscribing to them—an idea I strongly encourage you to try—but I like being able to just link to a post in my archives if needed Plus I'm sure nobody wants me to flood their inboxes. Also, there’s some debate on whether using the industry standard, Substack, is moral or not. Additionally, with Mailchimp's Tiny Letter service now discontinued, I just didn’t have the heart to start ano...
This was supposed to be the year of “let’s read more fiction books!” So far it’s shaping up to be a losing effort. But enthusiasm remains high and summer is around the corner! Books Read, Fiction Babel, R.F. Kuang ⭐ Homeseeking, Karissa Chen ⭐ Jade City, Fonda Lee ⭐ Books Read, Non-Fiction Emergent Tokyo, Jorge Almazán, Joe McReynolds ⭐ Killers of the Flower Moon, David Grann Shattering the Glass, Pamela Grundy, Susan Shackelford ⭐ Stay True, Hua Hsu ⭐ And it’s August, which is clearly not quarter two, but there has been a lot of travel so here we are. After essentially three months away, I’m back at home and ready to cover what I’ve read in April through July. The short answer is: next to nothing! After logging six books in quarter one, I only added three more eligible books in the four months since. So um, here we go and let’s hope second summer’s ocean waves brings a lot of beach reading! Why did my friends and frenemies not tell me to read Babel sooner? My video game...
Going over my year in books, movies, television, and games. Plus a quit list! Can you believe it? My first blog post in five years! I'm back baby! I know it's been dead around here since 2020 but I've never stopped blogging--in my head. I've got years of drafted posts--okay ideas for posts--stacked up and ready to go. I'll lead off with the classic annual review of stuff consumed! My tracking for all consumption was in dire straits in 2022-2022, but I've got it all down from 2023 forward so maybe I'll move backwards. Nothing says "fresh" like years old recommendations! Let's gooooo! Books I’m almost too embarrassed by my lack of book reading to lead off with this subject. I technically logged about twenty books read but some of those were awfully short, some were semi-graphic novel, and some of them I’m just in the middle of them, but past the fifty percent mark. Of those reads, I can only cite four as semi-recommends: 17 Things I’m Not Allo...