🐱Wormie Spotlight with Maxine Zhao (aka @maxine) 🐉

Welcome to the very first interview in our Wormy Spotlight series! 

Each month, we hope to chat with a wormy just like you. Bookworm is all about community, and it’s high time we get to know our neighbors. We want to learn more about your reading habits, favorite books, and the odd, beautiful things that make you you. 

First up is a wormy who loves dragons, mindfulness (with a twist), and the coziest reading sessions with her cat, Luna. Meet Maxine Zhao. 🐱🐉

Here's our conversation with Maxine. Our questions are in bold, and Maxine’s responses are directly below each question.

What’s one book you think everyone in the Bookworm community should read? Why?
How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell. I tell people it feels like taking a very long walk with your very smart, very thoughtful friend, and it feels like she's rambling nonsensically and you're thinking, "Wait, where are we going? How on earth did we get onto the topic of pigeons?" but then somehow she brings it all together in a shining golden nugget of insight. It's a book about art, technology, politics, mindfulness (but not in a woo woo self-help atomic habits kind of way), and living life as a caring human in this day and age.

What’s the book you’re always recommending to friends?
How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell <3 (The bookworm community is my friend....huhuhu)

What’s the book that made you love reading?
I have always loved reading, and was the shy bookish kid reading at gatherings my family went to. I loved Narnia, Harry Potter, Eragon, the lesser-known dragon-focused books The Last Dragon Chronicles, and Dan Brown (one of these is not like the others, but I can make a case that those are fantasy as well). I lost touch with reading for fun after generally forgetting all my hobbies in high school/college, and credit for helping me fall back in love as a grown adult on my own health insurance plan goes to Rick Riordan and the Percy Jackson universe.

How do you decide what to read next?
Nothing but vibes and whims and library holds! After feeling drained by reading for school, I'm pretty militant about keeping it fun now. My shelf of finished books is a bit random — a textbook about cuisines and world empires next to a spree of sleazy romance books — but I don't want to fight myself with my interests, so it really is whatever I feel like, and I don't really question why I feel a certain way.

How did you find out about Bookworm?
My VERY COOL coworker Alice (@harribeary) told me about her VERY COOL friend Amelia (@meelworm herself) and her VERY COOL app Bookworm and I reacted in a very non-chill way! To this day, I am still super chalant about the app and will force people to sign up as soon as they say a word that rhymes with "roodgeads".

What dream bestie do you want for your worm?
A hamster, pigeon or.. gasp, a DRAGON ??!? (I didn't realize until writing the previous answers how much of a dragon child I was.)

If you’re interested in being featured in our wormie spotlight series, feel free to fill out the form below!