At this point, I don’t need to explain to anyone what Kpop is. Korean pop has taken the world by storm. It started with second generation groups like TVXQ and then was taken to whole new heights by groups like Black Pink and BTS. In some ways, Shine by Jessica Jung is perfectly timed. A kpop YA novel that focuses on the industry and is written by a veteran performer feels like it should be a smash hit.

Add into that that Jung’s departure from Girls Generation was a big scandal back in the day and this book feels like it should be brimming with juicy, tell-all secrets. I was expecting the book to be a lot trashier than it was and Jung surprised me with her restraint. Although the other girls in the book (aside from her family members) are terrible human beings, there’s some attempts at humanizing the other trainees.

Jump into the glittering world of kpop to see the sweat and blood beneath it. Immerse yourself in the world that Jung is crafting for us and see for yourself if being an idol is all it’s cracked up to be.

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Canada for an advanced copy of this book. Even if I didn’t enjoy the book, I appreciate the chance to read it.

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Everyone knows what it’s like to have a bad boss. It’s a universal feeling. Some of use even know what it’s like to be the bad boss or to struggle with feeling like you’re doing a bad job. Kim Malone Scott’s Radical Candor addresses these feelings head on. She’s not here to judge you, just to look at the problems and fix them.

While it could be easy to look at the title of Radical Candor and boil it down to bosses being too direct jerks, that’s not what this is about. It’s really an antidote to a lot of the toxicity of the workplace. I don’t even know if I think Radical Candor itself is the exact thing that most offices need, but the book should be read regardless.

I’m not huge on self-help books. I have nonfiction books I love, but self-help in general is hit or miss. Radical Candor, however, has a universal feel to it.

We need to fix our office cultures and while offering bagel Fridays is nice, Radical Candor can help with the deeper problems.

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Did you know that speculative poetry existed? Science fiction poetry wasn’t something I’d even considered before stumbling upon The Octopus Museum, but Soft Science has sold me on the genre. The Turing Test is a test that we use for AI in order to see if they have developed consciousness. These poems takes the Turing test and twist it, evolve it into something new.

What would poetry written by an android look like? If we’re cyborgs, does that remove our humanity from us? Could we say it does if art is still created?

Would we even be evolved enough to understand and empathize with these new types of beings? Or would we be stuck with the same old ugliness?

Soft Science leaves the answers to you.

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