Not to start with, no. In fact I firmly recommend reading it last if you intend to read the whole series. There are things about it that mean something different after reading everything else; it would be tough to start with for a new reader who wouldn’t have all that context.
That said, I do recommend reading it at all. I know some people have put their copies aside because they aren’t ready yet. I held onto mine for a year. I get it. Sometimes it takes time. But go easy on a resolution to never read it so it will never be over. It was written to be read. It has some important things in it. And after you read it, well, no, there won’t be any more. That was the last one.
But it isn’t over, not over over, the way things are when they’re dead. The Disc is too big for that; we know it because we’ve been there so many times and every time we go back it’s been moving even while we were away. I’ve been reading and re-reading these books for over half my life and I still find things I’ve never noticed in them before, little bits and pieces of the Disc that I’ve never ever seen. And sometimes things I’ve seen a hundred times look totally different through eyes just a few years older. And sometimes it’s places I’ve been and things I’ve seen before, all familiar, all recognizable, and that’s good too. It doesn’t have to be new. The familiar places just start to feel like home.
If you decide never to read it, I understand. Sometimes it’s just nice to know that it’s there, that there’s still an adventure that you can have for the first time. And, hell, reading it isn’t easy. It’s probably the hardest time I’ve ever had reading a book, if only physically because it’s hard to read while lying on the floor in the fetal position.
For me it was worth it. And I do recommend it. But ultimately it’s got to be up to you.
Kaitlin Cawley finished grad school with $95,000 in student loans,
including a $24,000 variable-rate loan that started at 9.4% and now
stands at 11%, a loan that the US government lender Sallie Mae brokered
for her when she was 20.
Sallie Mae’s portal makes it almost impossible to find out how much
you’ve paid into your loans; after a lengthy runaround, Cawley found
that she had paid back $18,000 of her $24,000 loan, but that she still
owed the full amount, thanks to sky-high interest and stiff penalties
the government assessed against her because she opted to save tens of
thousands of dollars by going to grad school outside of the USA.
Cawley comes from a working-class background and her family was not able
to substantially offset the expense of her university. She attended
anyone, convinced that postsecondary education was the path to social
mobility. Despite an advanced degree, Cawley lives in relative penury,
largely thanks to her student debt.
Americans owe $1.4 trillion in student debt. Student debts are largely
not dischargeable through bankruptcy, and is the only form of debt that
you can be forced to pay your Social Security into.
The President of the United States has declared bankruptcy six times.
His university defrauded its students of millions of dollars, which they
are still paying back. He enacted a policy that makes it impossible for defrauded students to escape their loans; while his Secretary of Education has killed the rules that prevented debt-collectors with a track-record of committing illegal acts from collecting student debts.
I’m outside and despite two doses of different antihistamines and my vogmask I’m wheezing like the steam train at the start of Dumbo trying to make it up the mountain.
Allergy season in MN is bad this year fam, it’s not good at all 😦
Also becuse this is not something you often get told when your pcp is like “lol it’s just seasonal allergies take some zrytec”, seasonal allergies are a huge contributor to worsening chronic fatigue.
So no you’re not going crazy or being lazy. It’s the tree pollen taking a toll on your body and you need to be kind to yourself and make allowances for that.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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