hot potato book club

Fahrenheit 451  starts off as almost a gripping sequel/spinoff novella to Orwell's work, but about halfway through chapter two ( note: the whole book is three chapters long ) it devolves into being a two-dimensional caricature...much like those newspaper comics that boomer artists make about millenials being mindless zombies incapable of critical thought or enjoying anything that isn't a TV show. I was disappointed because the premise is actually pretty good, but unfortunately it just doesn't hold up after the first chapter... :( (side note: as you can probably guess by the cover, F451  has been made into a movie starring the wonderful Michael B. Jordan...but the ratings are pretty bad!)

  Before reading this, I had suspected that I might  be a highly sensitive person (HSP), but I wasn't entirely sure of that because I can be quite insensitive at times. After reading this, I have come to realise I am definitely an HSP...and that those "insensitive" behaviours are often just acts of self-preservation e.g. keeping my contact with other people - with a couple of exceptions - to a seemingly abnormal minimum, being direct (read: blunt) in communication to avoid others overthinking, experiencing almost-extreme annoyance by seemingly innocuous things like noisy people in the background, etc. The HSP  is a goldmine full of practical advice that I'm sure anyone who considers themselves to be sensitive could benefit from implementing. The advice covers a range of topics from individual and interpersonal settings to career and spiritual settings. The most interesting piece of advice for me was to avoid the self-fulfilling prophecy of negative labels - especially