Memoirs often have the effect of reading like a novel, because it’s someone telling the story of their life, except they’re not tidy and satisfying like a novel because nobody’s life is tidy and satisfying with all the loose ends and plot points neatly tied up at the end. A bunch of stuff happens, and there’s no real underlying plot. Might this be your issue?

That said, one of the most entertaining memoirs I’ve read is Harpo Speaks! by Harpo Marx. There’s a remarkable amount of real history in there, related by a guy who lived it, from the Vaudeville era to early Hollywood to the stock market crash of ‘29 to the Algonquin Round Table.

To the extent that it grows from resources provided by the mother’s body, sure. But the coded instructions, so to speak, for growing the placenta, come from the fetus.

BUT, Biden can appoint members of the board which can remove him. And so far…hasn’t. https://www.cbs19news.com/story/43368305/urging-biden-to-quickly-fill-openings-on-usps-board

There is something I’ve read more than once from authors about ”not starting unfinished series;” one of the problems is, sometimes the contracts they’re working under stipulate that if there isn’t enough interest in the first books, the publisher isn’t required to order up sequels. (Not in the publishing industry myself, so I don’t know how the details work.) So, if enough people refuse to read a series before it‘s finished, that becomes WHY it never gets finished. While this probably doesn’t apply to authors who are already super-successful like Martin or Rothfuss, it’s food for thought. Support the authors you love when they start new series.

I’d be writing “of idiots” right under that

Dogs figure out the benefits of the tiny human fairly quickly

“If you try to hack me I will report you to the authorities” oh lordy Bing is a complete Karen

I will have to look for that one. I have enjoyed a couple of her other books, The Hollow Places and The Twisted Ones. Both also horror, and the Twisted Ones especially; I'd never really run across as effective a jump scare in a book before.

The whole panic about drag is seriously new in America too, like within the last 10-20 years. Used to be way more common. I mean people still love the movie Mrs. Doubtfire. There was an entire sitcom starring Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari called Bosom Buddies about two dudes who dressed in drag so they could live in an apartment building that was for women only (which is an interesting artifact itself.) Can’t say it tanked their careers; on the contrary it was extremely popular.

In my lifetime I’ve watched certain groups of people get WAAYY more skittish about drag, as if there MUST be a sexual connotation to it, and it’s not a good thing.

You can do that? Just, like, have the police raid the house of someone suspected of trying to overthrow the government a mere couple of weeks after the incident?

Why would this work?

There's a screenshot going around of someone who convinced ChatGPT that 2+2=5 by...telling it that 2+2=5.

ChatGPT is not lie detection. Quite the contrary, it's been well demonstrated that it just makes stuff up.

I had an odd experience with this series; I first read the first book at about 19, and just...didn't fucking get it.
Read it again a few years later and couldn't fathom how I hadn't realized HOW FUNNY it was. I don't know if it was too British, or what, but the humor just hit much different after I had a few more years on me.

But it sounds like it's just not to your taste. I don't know how funny I'd find it now, I haven't read it in many years.

Well, it's not originally a book, but in the webcomic Gunnerkrigg Court, the main character loses an item in chapter 8, written in 2006.

She gets it back in chapter 60, written over 10 years later.

Well…when the author wrote the book did they write it to be taught in schools, picked apart for themes and symbolism, and analyzed for historical context and literary importance? Or did they write it to tell a story they wanted to tell? I suspect some authors actually would care if you enjoyed the story as written without knowing what came next. Writers put as much craft into foreshadowing and plot twists as they do into describing the curtain as blue because it symbolizes depression.

It’s essentially a dictionary. If your parent wrote a dictionary, would you expect you’d want to sit down and read it A to Z?

Look into Afro-Futurism. It’s a movememt aimed at rectifying the exact problem you‘ve noticed; it creates a place for stories of black people and African cultural influences in a sci-fi or fantasy context. For a very pop-culture example, Black Panther is considered Afro-Futurism.

Clearly your book has been visited by the Suck Fairy!

https://www.tor.com/2010/09/28/the-suck-fairy/