Alessandra is reading…

To begin this blog on this first blog post, I’d like to say thank you for coming to this website and reading!

Here’s the blog’s origin story…

This all began (or was closer to beginning) when I completed graduate school in 2020. I acquired several neuropsychology and clinical books while in graduate school, and read about 5 books outside of those assigned for my classes. 

Rather than talking about what I studied and believed I was passionate about, I read more of basically every genre (I’m being somewhat dramatic, just several genres) outside of psychology and spoke to people more about those books. I started and quit multiple jobs from graduation until April 2021, when I finally realized that my most hated job wasn’t worth what I was feeling. So I quit. I [partially] changed my life and started reading more and enjoying life more. 

After talking about it for a while, a friend and my partner gave me the final push to just start writing about books.

But I didn’t start the blog that I wanted to. I started a professional Instagram account (which you can visit) that came with both pros and cons.

Instagram pushed me to start this blog a few weeks ago when they removed my comment that included the title of a book because it promoted hate speech or violence. The book was White Trash Warlock by David R Slayton. 

I started this blog because that was 1) inane (this book was the fantastical opposite of what it was said to promote) and 2) I don’t want  someone controlling what I blog about and discuss. If any of my future posts on Instagram were to be removed by them, I figured I now have my blog here to freely discuss what I want regarding books and reading.

I know that may seem ridiculous, but I find it asinine that my comment was removed for a couple reasons.

1. Removing content on social media and determining what users can post and talk about is taking one step closer to fascism – simply, it’s a higher power controlling what people can and cannot discuss. 
2. I feel that it’s inauthentic if I’m not posting about and discussing books that I want to truly discuss if I’m afraid that I’m going to be shadow banned or even banned.

In a way, this was a good thing that happened. Because I got two great things out of it.

1. I read and absolutely loved White Trash Warlock and highly recommend it
2. I finally started this blog

This blog is for free discussion and I encourage you to email me with any comments – agreements or discourse with my opinions or analyses. As I believe I should be free to have opinions on the books that I’m reading and writing about, you, as my reader, are free to have opinions as well and I encourage you to be an advocate for your opinion.

Thank you for coming with me on this journey and I hope it’s a fun one.