pammab's 2021 challenge

My challenge this year is to complete 5-in-a-row on my own personalized Bingo card. Creating my own Bingo card gives me room to both set ambitious goals that will push me where I'd like to be pushed, while also leaving me freedom to take a path of least resistance. There'll undoubtedly be a bunch of books off the card.

I took this approach for the first time in 2020, and I achieved 3 Bingos! In 2021, I'm both expecting less time to read and I'm setting fewer "easy achievement" squares (like "YA", "recommended", and a free square), so I'm targeting just one Bingo.

--

Despite the best of intentions, I find myself ebbing and flowing in LT (and general internet) activity -- especially this past year, as I struggle to focus on books of length or substance -- so please don't be offended if I disappear for a stint! I still think of people here often, and I'm always wishing you the best.

I tend to read a lot of speculative fiction, just about anything except high fantasy/magical realism/grit or edgy settings, and I read a sizeable amount of nonfiction (mostly of a social/psychological bent). I've been steering far away from darkness, depression, and such, and putting down books that aren't either light or completely engrossing, and I try to track what I put aside as well. I particularly love engagement with (all) religion, education, social identity, and culture.

Ratings:
I rate according to this scale:
1 - Eek! Methinks not.
2 - Meh. I've experienced better.
3 - A-OK.
4 - Yay! I'm a fan.
5 - Woohoo! As good as it gets!

Two stars don't mean I hated it! It just means the book wasn't especially shiny when I read it. In fact, when I'm not screening tightly, I tend to end up with a bimodal distribution, with a small peak around 2 and a larger peak around 4.

The card...



Books used...

• Where the Crawdads Sing
  
• Charlie Jane Anders -- The City in the Middle of the Night
  
• John Irving -- The Cider House Rules
  
• indigenous author -- Braiding Sweetgrass
  
• The Grammar of God by Aviya Kushner
  
• Amal El-Mohtar -- This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
  
• too-long-ignored-author -- Naomi Novik's A Deadly Education
  
• cook 10 new recipes -- (1) lemongrass boiled peanuts from Afro-Vegan, (2) blackened cauliflower from Afro-Vegan, (3) black bean chili from The Grit Cookbook, (4) spinach and hominy in tomato garlic broth from Afro-Vegan, (5) spinach-peanut sauce from Afro-Vegan, (6) lentils with orzo from Mediterranean Vegetarian Cooking, (7) carrots in harissa from Mediterranean Vegetarian Cooking, (8) winter vegetable stew from The Grit Cookbook, (9) blueberry pie from The Grit Cookbook, (10) mango puree from Afro-Vegan
  
• in translation -- The Divine Comedy
  
• off-the-old-shelves -- Under a Painted Sky
  
• off-the-recent-shelves -- The Queen's Gambit
  
• burst your bubble -- United States of Socialism
  
• under-explored genre -- In a Sunburned Country
  
• new author -- The Thief
  
• adult novel that needed an extra boost -- The Parable of the Sower
  
• 2021 release -- The Galaxy, and the Ground Within
  
• auf Deutsch -- Mord im Santa-Express
  
• Latinx author -- Alexis Daria's You Had Me At Hola
  
• Toni Morrison -- Sula
  
• Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
  
• Black author -- The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart
  
• burst your bubble -- Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist
  
• Asian American author -- The Face: A Time Code
  

CATs and KITs

HistoryCAT
January: The Middle Ages: The Divine Comedy by Dante
February: Modern (c.1800 to now) (skipped)
March: Early Modern (c.1500 to c.1800) (skipped)
April: Ancient (8th century BC to 6th century AD): Zealot by Reza Aslan
May: Dynasties/Civilizations/Empires (skipped)
June: Military/War/Revolution (skipped)
July: Social History (skipped)
August: Your Own Country (skipped)
September: Religion/Philosophy/Politics/The Law Antisocial by Andrew Marantz
October: A country/region of your choice Empire of Wild by Cherie Dimaline
November: Events
December: Adventure/Exploration and Discovery

GenreCAT
January: Nonfiction The Purpose of Power by Alicia Garza
February: Memoirs/biography The Face: A Time Code by Ruth Ozeki
March: Action & Adventure (skipped)
April: Literary Fiction (skipped)
May: Short stories/essays (skipped)
June: Historical fiction (skipped)
July: Romance (skipped)
August: Poetry/drama/graphic novels (skipped)
September: YA/children Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne
October: Horror/supernatural Empire of Wild by Cherie Dimaline
November: SFF
December: Mysteries

Completed books

★★★★★
1. Afro-Vegan by Bryant Terry
23. A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
27. Manacled by senlinyu
31. Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
32. The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
37. Antisocial by Andrew Marantz
46. The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik

★★★★½
7. The Face: A Time Code by Ruth Ozeki
25. Uprooted by Naomi Novik
28. The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers
34. The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold
50. The Elephant Chaser's Daughter by Shilpa Raj
53. How To Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber

★★★★
5. Dawn on a Distant Shore by Sara Donati
8. Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez
9. Mediterranean Vegetarian Cooking by Paola Gavin
10. The Grammar of God by Aviya Kushner
11. The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner
14. The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula Le Guin
17. Sula by Toni Morrison
18. Zealot by Reza Aslan
21. Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist by Judith Heumann
24. My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki
30. Under a Painted Sky by Stacey Lee
35. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer
38. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
40. You Had Me At Hola by Alexis Daria
43. The Wake Up: Closing the Gap Between Good Intentions and Real Change by Michelle MiJung Kim
54. A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher
55. Staff Engineer: Leadership beyond the management track by Will Larson

★★★ and ★★★½
2. The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart by Alicia Garza
3. The Grit Cookbook: World-Wise, Down-Home Recipes
4. The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis
6. The Divine Comedy by Dante
12. In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson
13. Covering by Kenji Yoshino
15. United States of Socialism by Dinesh D'Souza
16. The Book of Essie by Meghan MacLean Weir
19. Pet by Akwaeke Emezi
20. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
29. How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community by Mia Birdsong
41. Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne
42. Fat Vampire by Johnny B. Truant
44. The Cider House Rules by John Irving
52. Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell
56. Mord im Santa-Express by Jan Beinßen

★★ and ★★½
22. Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear
26. This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
33. The Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler
39. The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders
45. Empire of Wild by Cherie Dimaline
47. The Secrete Commonwealth by Philip Pullman
48. You Are What You Love by James K. A. Smith
49. Gods of the Upper Air by Charles King
51. Betty Crocker's Vegetarian Cooking

½ and ★ and ★½

Fiction options (books that have caught my eye recently -- potential TBR)

Spec fic/science fiction/fantasy
-- Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty
-- Time and Again (via DeltaQueen50, whitewavedarling)
-- And Then There Were (N-One) by Sarah Pinsker (mathgirl40's choice over All Systems Red) -- at https://uncannymagazine.com/article/and-then-there-were-n-one/
-- The Wrong Stars - Great found-family light-hearted science fiction, with an interesting set-up, and tropey but satisfying alien adventures! (Arifel, santathing 2019)
-- Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear - I think this is her most "levelled up" work, a fantastic space opera with a lot to say about mental health and some really great galactic adventures. (Arifel and AurumCalendula, santathing 2019)
-- Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer - near-ish future utopia (Arifel, santathing 2019)
-- The Wheel of the Infinite by Martha Wells (AurumCalendula, santathing 2019)
-- Planetfall -- colonists, religion, first contact, biology, relateable characters (mathgirl and JayneCM)
-- Stealing Worlds -- new future, lots of thoughts and tech (mathgirl)
-- Wee Free Men by Pratchett (susanna.fraser, if pratchett is a like but not love)
-- Dark Matter by Blake Crouch (loved by avanders, santathing 2020)
-- Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett (loved by avanders, santathing 2020)
-- Flyaway by Kathleen Jennings (TheDivineOomba, santathing 2020)
-- Death of the Necromancer by Martha Wells (spiralsheep)

YA
-- Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (elusiverica, 2021 SantaThing)
-- Out of Salem - spec fic zombie YA trans novel (kjgormley)
-- Interim Errantry by Diane Duane
-- A Wizard's Guide To Defensive Baking (Crazymamie)
-- The President's Daughter (katiekrug)

General adult - guessing lighter
-- Girl, Woman, Other (Booker Prize, Ridgeway Girl)
-- Midwife of Hope River (DeltaQueen50, uplifting, interesting setting)
-- Depart, Depart by Sim Kern (very strong rec from whitewavedarling)
-- And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
-- Howard Engel (mysteries and then memoir of head injury -- VivienneR)

General adult - guessing heavier
-- Never Let Me Go by Ishiguro
-- A Thousand Splendid Suns (via lkernagh)

Placeful fiction
-- Moloka'i via LittleTaiko (Hawaii, leprosy)
-- Whiskey when we're dry (new western, deltaqueen50, kindly prostitutes, booze, lgbtq)
-- Upright Women Wanted badass libraries (JayneCM)
-- Terra Nullius -- Claire Coleman for fiction colonization of Australia, PICK UP BLIND; via JayneCM)
-- When Christ and His Saints Slept by Sharon Kay Penman (Tess_W, fuzzi)
-- A Toast to Tomorrow (pamelad) by Manning Coles -- ludicrous, missing memory, Nazis, amnesia
-- House on Endless Waters by Emunah Elon -- Israeli author, Jewish children hidden by Christians (charl08)
-- Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice -- postacopalyse First Nations (VivienneR)
-- News of the World by Paulette Jiles (christina_reads)
-- Sankofa by Onuzo (RidgewayGirl)

Short stories
-- Paper Menagerie (owned)
-- Strange Weather: Four Short Novels by Joe Hill (rec from mathgirl40)
-- Not For Use In Navigation: Thirteen Stories by Iona Datt Sharma (AurumCalendula, santathing 2019)
-- Incomplete Solutions - a favourite collections from 2019, Nigerian speculative fiction writer; I particularly loved some of the longer SF pieces, including the title novella "Incomplete Solutions". (Arifel, santathing 2019) (owned)
-- Dreams and Swords by Katherine V. Forrest

Other formats
-- America Chavez comic series by Gabby Rivera (owned)
-- C. P. Cavafy (poetry)

auf Deutsch
-- Der Vorleser (Schlink)
-- Die Verwandlung (Kafka) (owned)
-- Erich Kästner
-- Nirgendwo in Afrika 334p by Zweig

Non-fiction options

Native American
-- Neither Wolf Nor Dog (susanna.fraser)
-- The Inconvenient Indian (rabbitprincess)
-- A Mind Spread Out on the Ground by Elliott (memoir)
-- Empire of the Summer Moon via tess_schoolmarm

Politics
-- Local is our future (JayneCM)
-- Tell me how it ends (RidgewayGirl)
-- Slavery by another name by Blackmon (threadnsong)
-- Jesus and John Wayne by Du Mez (threadnsong)
-- The Truths We Hold: An American Journey by Kamala Harris (MissBrangwen, katiekrug)
-- When They Call You a Terrorist by Patrisse Khan-Cullors (RidgewayGirl)

Food/cooking
-- Real Vegetarian Thai (wisemetis)
-- Teff Love
-- The Greek Vegetarian by Diane Kochilas via mooingzelda - absolutely brilliant. Lots of great recipes involving beans, pulses etc, as well as cheese-reliant ones
-- The Green Roasting Tin by Rukmini Iyer via mooingzelda - recipes from around the world separated into quick/medium/slow and vegetarian/vegan
-- Fresh India by Meera Sodha via mooingzelda - brilliant

Religion/philosophy
-- Discerning Religious Life (christina_reads) - discernment of religious vocation, Catholic, questions to reflect on and the meaning of that choice in daily life
-- God in search of man by Heschel
-- Beyond Religion (scaifea)
-- You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit by James K. A. Smith (casvelyn)
-- The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Tess_W)

Sociology
-- Leisure: The Basis of Culture by Josef Pieper
-- something by Ivan Coyote
-- Raised by Unicorns (access)
-- Unconditional Parenting
-- The Address Book by Deirdre Mask (cbl_tn)
-- Australia Day by Stan Grant (pamelad)
-- Educating by LaRee Westover (Tess_W)
-- The Courage to Care by Carol Rittner (Tess_W)
-- Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty (rabbitprincess)
-- Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul's School by Shamus Khan
-- Class: A Guide Through the American Status System by Paul Fussell
-- The Open-Hearted Way to Open Adoption by Lori Holden

Education
-- Illiberal Education by D'Souza
-- Welcome to the Ivory Tower of Babel by Adams
-- Classroom Instruction That Works
-- Never Work Harder Than Your Students
-- Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School
-- Moebius Noodles

Professional development/self-help
-- Bayesian Data Analysis by Gelman
-- Influencer
-- Crucial Accountability
-- Impro
-- Conversationally Speaking (access)
-- No Hard Feelings by Fosslien and Duffy (rabbitprincess)
-- Resilient Management by Hogan
-- Rebel Ideas by Syed
-- Radical Candor by Scott
-- A Civic Technologist's Practice Guide by Harrell
-- The Culture Code by Coyle
-- PeopleSmart by Silberman and Hansburg (eight discrete interpersonal skills for facilitating discussions, recommended in Not Light, but Fire)

Other
-- The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within (scaifea)
-- Nicholas and Alexandra by Massie for Russian history, recommended by DeltaQueen50 in prep for approaching Russians as part of suggestion by Tess_W of getting more appreciation with more history
-- Diary of a Young Naturalist by Dara McAnulty (nature, autism) (JackieK)
-- A River in Darkness by Masaji Ishikawa -- Japanese repatriated folks to North Korea, memoir, shortish (LittleTaiko)
-- How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built
-- Why Buildings Fall Down
-- Prescriptive Stretching
-- The Body Keeps The Score

Oh, you've got some great choices in those lists!

Welcome back! Hope you have a great year of reading!

Awesome lists! I think you're set for a great reading year!

>7 scaifea: >8 thornton37814: >9 rabbitprincess: Thank you!

Great to see you all set up. I love your personalized Bingo Card and I am looking forward to following along with all your 2021 reading.

Happy New Year! Wishing you a wonderful year of reading in 2021.

What an excellent Bingo Card! Wishing you plenty of good reading this year.

Happy new year!

I'm a fan of your personal bingo card! I love it!!!
And I've been shying away from Where The Crawdads Sing for more than a year now. I was so happy when I bought it, but I can't bring myself to start.

Die Verwandlung and Der Vorleser are both books I love and I taught Der Vorleser in a German course a few years ago. That was rather tedious, though, because my students hated it, but they weren't readers and hated reading in general. I'm looking forward to reading about your thoughts should you decide to read it this year and post about it!

The personal Bingo card is a great idea! Looking forward to checking out some of your non-fic reads in particular.

I like your personalized bingo card. I could use the square "10 new recipes", I always go for the same old ones.

Love the Bingo card! Happy reading to it!

>11 DeltaQueen50:
I'm looking forward to following along with your reading as well, Judy!

>12 lkernagh:
Happy new year to you as well! May 2021 bring you joy, laughter, and lots of good entertainment.

>13 VivienneR:
Thank you! I hope the Bingo stretches my reading and also leaves space for serendipity and even some easy reads.

>14 katiekrug:
Happy new year!

>15 MissBrangwen:
I'm also very intimidated by Where the Crawdads Sing. Someone recommended it as on par with two other books that are some of my favorites that I didn't expect to like, so I have some high hopes -- but it also seems like it might be depressing, so I've got to slot it in around some happier reading, I think.

I have had Der Vorleser on my list over a decade, but it's also got that depressing aspect that I'm trying to limit. I'd have thought it would be perhaps "edgy" for students and enjoyable for that reason alone; too bad they didn't get into it.

>16 Jackie_K:
I'm looking forward to the non-fiction too. A lot on the list seem to be political in some way, so I'm unlikely to read randomly distributed through the list because I'd spend the year agitated, but there are a bunch on there that really pique my interest.

>17 Montarville:
I have a bunch of cookbooks that I love but don't use, and just got two more this winter. I really hope I can cook out of a few of them this year! Which reminds me, I owe a review on that front too. :)

>18 MissWatson:
Thank you! I'm hoping it'll be fun to use the card.

1a. Afro-Vegan: Farm-Fresh African, Caribbean, and Southern Flavors Remixed
Bryant Terry
2020.01.03 / only 1 recipe made so far

Beautifully bound, full of the brilliant strong flavors that are the key to my palate -- I have high hopes for this cookbook. The recipes are not particularly complicated, though they do assume a stocked kitchen with a depth of spices, a spice grinder, and access to a variety of markets or gardens for ingredients that are less common in major grocery stores (none of which is a problem for us; we've been veering this direction for years).

Last weekend I took on a snack recipe for lemongrass boiled peanuts. Having never cooked with fresh lemongrass nor eaten Southern-style boiled peanuts, I was curious and not at all sure what to expect. It turns out that boiled peanuts are deliberately very salty, with a soft potato-like texture. I quite liked the lemongrass flavor and the way some of the whole peanuts were left with a brine inside that "popped" when eaten, and I suspect people who like boiled peanuts might appreciate this variant. I think I'll keep this recipe in mind for themed parties, but it was on the whole much too salty for me to make again myself; I'll stick to cooking with peanuts in other ways.

Just about every page of this book has a recipe that intrigues me, so I'm looking forward to more!

No boiled peanuts for me, thanks. When we first moved to the Deep South everyone was wanting us to try these, and I am not a fan. They are a Thing down here and even the gas stations have them in big pots where you can bag up what you want.

The cookbook looks interesting, though - what will you try next?

2. The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart
Alicia Garza
2020.01.06 / ★★★½ / (review)

Alicia Garza, one of the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement, published a short memoir last October that positions herself in her own history and reflects on the questions she gets asked regularly around what it means to organize people, to create and support a movement, and how to make real change.

I suspect everyone who comes to this book will take away different experiences depending on what they're looking for. I'm looking to learn, and I'm starting from a place of being pretty ignorant of activism (I stopped being involved around the point my politics started to get complicated and I started to become cynical). Coming from that perspective, I found a bunch of reflections here that were intellectually interesting and useful to me in my preference to reduce or at least not add to the pain in the world. My main take-away (and, I think, the major theme of the book) was further reflection on the power of narrative to write and re-write history, and the importance of finding and telling the narrative that helps people see the reality that you want them to see. (I bet you can see cynicism coming through even in that characterization.) But even so, it's shared social narrative that impacts and affects the conditions of our lives -- I know this in my bones, for working environments and social environments alike -- and some narratives are inherently divisive while other are people-first and lift everyone. We've got to be conscious of the narratives and metaphors we're living, and repeat only the ones that move the world toward the world we want.

I found myself taking notes to synthesize, because there's a bunch of thoughts in this book that engender reflection, but the ideas are all expressed in a more narrative style than I tend to prefer for thinking. (Me, I like bullet points and ironclad arguments. And to be clear, some of the arguments here are cheap or rhetorically misleading -- but most are right on, and that's enough for me.)

And for fair warning, I know politically engaged Black people and committed activists who mostly found this book extremely emotionally draining, as it offers a perspective on a rather depressing tour through race in American in the last forty years.

>21 Crazymamie: I love the idea of gas stations actually making anything to sell, rather than row after row of prepackaged junk food! I'll have to keep an eye out to see if I notice this in the future, and buy some really authentic ones to see how mine measure up.

I'm almost definitely going to move on to blackened cauliflower this weekend. It's pretty intense though -- he wants it blanched, then fried, then broiled, if I recall correctly. I'll obey the instructions the first time, but I might do some of the cauliflower just broiled and compare them, because there's no way I can commit to a regular recipe that uses three separate types of cooking and pans that each only get 5 minutes of use. But it does sound good....

>20 pammab: I just saw that one on a listing of cookbooks that everyone should read. I'm not a fan of boiled peanuts either. I'll take mine "parched." I think boiled ones are just plain nasty.

>22 pammab: Sounds like an interesting book.

Brazilian author Joao Ubaldo Ribeiro wrote in 1984: 'The secret of Truth is as follows: there are no facts, there are only stories'. And I bet he wasn't the first to voice that thought.

>20 pammab: I highly recommend the green tea lemonade, and the grits with corn, tomatoes & greens!

>24 thornton37814: I have definitely been in the mood for some parched peanuts since I had a big bowl of boiled ones! Another cookbook on my mind is Real Thai Vegetarian (which, like this vegan Afro-Caribbean-Southern cookbook, is pretty fusiony); would be very curious if your cookbook list included that one too.

>25 spiralsheep: Absolutely that. That is a wonderful quote. That's really been a persistent theme in my reading the past few months, with almost all of my non-fiction touching on it in some way.

>26 markon: I immediately went to look those up. They sound fantastic! I love grits, but I'll probably wait for summer for the corn and tomatoes. Green tea mint lemonade, though -- that one is not unseasonable to make in early spring, so it's probably coming sooner!

1b. Afro-Vegan: Farm-Fresh African, Caribbean, and Southern Flavors Remixed
Bryant Terry
2020.01.09 / only 2 recipes made so far

Today came blackened cauliflower and plum tomato sauce. It's an absolutely delectable spice blend that I will be using in the future, possibly on straight roasted cauliflower (blanch-bake-sear was interesting, but it didn't add enough to the dish to pay for itself). I'll also definitely be reworking this recipe idea with sweet potato rounds or other foods that form a slab shape more naturally than does cauliflower. The tomato sauce was quite easy and gave just the right balance to the cauliflower. Top notch.

>28 pammab: Do you feel comfortable sharing the tomato sauce recipe?

>27 pammab: I first read that Brazilian quote spoken by a Dutch newspaperman in a 1993 book written by a Zimbabwean so it's travelled and aged well.

>28 pammab: That recipe book sounds marvellous but I'm definitely not in the cook-it-three-times demographic... for any food. In my very humble opinion the best way to cook cauliflower is always to undercook it and that's the only secret I've found. It has a good texture and it picks up sauces well provided it's not allowed to go limp and that's it.

>28 pammab: That looks like a great cook book! I've noted it down as a birthday or Christmas gift for my husband. We have a West African restaurant in town (also offering vegan meals) and he absolutely loves it, and the dishes and flavors described sound similar.

>19 pammab: I see what you mean regarding the depressing aspect. It's not a story that is very easy to stomach.

I see that you've added Erich Kästner to the list and read your response in the other thread! I think it's so great that we learn things like this in this group and get so much inspiration. I love it!!!

>28 pammab: I love the look of that cookbook! But I know what I'm like - I'd get it, look at the pictures and drool over the recipes, but never actually make any of them!

>27 pammab: Here's the list. It's one of those slide shows: https://skillet.lifehacker.com/10-cookbooks-to-read-in-2021-1846008862

>29 Tess_W: Absolutely comfortable sharing the tomato sauce recipe. Recipes can't be copyrighted, and this one is so simple a copyright wouldn't even make sense. It is... heat a bit of olive oil in a pan, mince a clove of garlic and get it fragrant in the oil with a bit of salt, chop up a 28 oz. can of whole plum tomatoes, stir it all together and let it simmer 15 minutes partly covered. Then add splash (half teaspoon) of red wine vinegar and pepper to taste.

I don't think it would work as well on pasta, but it balanced out the blackened cauliflower with all its base flavors of garlic/onion/cumin very well.

>30 spiralsheep: That's definitely where I'm going with this blackened cauliflower in the future -- roasted with the seasoning and done. I adore cauliflower (and broccoli), and completely agree that overcooked is no good for them. Dry roasted at high heat, or maybe blanched for cauliflower, and that's enough for me.

>31 MissBrangwen: I'm very pleased with it so far. Great pictures, great flavors, and it actually uses vegetables so it's friendly for anyone who cooks, not just folks who like tofu or whatever.

And, absolutely Erich Kästner! He apparently has a whole worthwhile oeuvre that I'm wholly ignorant of -- definitely someone to keep in mind as I'm choosing books this year. He probably would have been one of my goals if we'd had that conversation a few weeks ago!

>32 Jackie_K: Drool-then-shelve is exactly the fate of most of my cookbooks! While the energy is taking me there, I'm looking forward to continue to fix that a bit.

>33 thornton37814: Posted at the same time you did. Thanks for the link! I will definitely go salivate a bit now.... :)

>34 pammab: TY TY TY~

>20 pammab: - Something I have never tried before, but your description of the lemongrass boiled peanuts makes them sound tempting! Mind you, my favorite nut is cashew (roasted and salted), so not sure if I will be completely sold on the peanuts. ;-)

>23 pammab: - That sounds like a lot of work for blackened cauliflower (I am a bit of a lazy cook).

>36 Tess_W: You're welcome!
>37 lkernagh: Yeah, it was a bit much. (And I love cashews too!)

3c. The Grit Cookbook: World-Wise, Down-Home Recipes
Jessica Greene
2020.01.10 / only 1 recipe made so far

Another cookbook, this time from a restaurant in Atlanta (just realized there's a Southern theme in these cookbooks, heh). Made the black bean chili. It was totally fine chili, better than I'd have invented myself, but about on par with a quality can. If I'd have found this recipe on the internet I'd probably have been pleased with it, but I was really hoping for a revelation.

4. The Queen's Gambit
Walter Tevis
2020.01.12 / ★★★½ / (review)

Beth is an 8-year-old orphan with a drug problem instilled by the Home she lives in. She's also brilliant -- absolutely brilliant -- at chess.

The dark tone of the book is completely in keeping with it being a Netflix series, which isn't usually my cuppa; I can't even really say I liked the book. But there's something extremely compelling in the writing here -- page after page of chess matches made somehow thrilling, a mental state characterized by absolutely flat affect right until sudden bursts of violent emotion, gut punches as the main character makes bad decisions. I struggled to put the book down, despite some very hard-to-read scenes, dated stereotypes, and no real plot twists or setting changes or character growth. I devoured it, and I really can't explain why.

1d. Afro-Vegan: Farm-Fresh African, Caribbean, and Southern Flavors Remixed
Bryant Terry
2020.01.16 / only 3 recipes made so far

The fourth recipe toward my goal of 10 uses of cookbooks -- spinach and hominy in tomato garlic broth. I was dubious at starting with stock to make stock, but the resulting tomato garlic broth was fantastic. The hominy, bit of parsley and spinach were a nice stir-in for a light starter soup. On the other hand, deep frying hominy for a garnish was a total failure that produced explosions of oil as the hominy popped. Maybe that's fixable if you actually know how to deep fry? if you don't use canned hominy? Not sure, but I'll stick with revisiting the broth and avoiding deep frying.

>41 pammab: Well, I've learnt something new today - I'd never heard of hominy before. Every day's a school day on LT!

I remember eating hominy as a child, but I don't remember Mom making it much after I was out of elementary school years. I'm guessing either she or dad didn't really like it that much. While it wasn't a favorite of mine, I would eat it. I think it probably got replaced by the LeSeuer white corn which became regular on the table about then. I thought of one other reason it might have been removed from the menu--perhaps my nephew didn't like it. After his mom died of cancer when he was 18 months old, my brother moved back to town so we could help take care of his son.

Oh hominy, just yuck! I shuddered when my mother served it up---not often, thankfully. I haven't had it for 50 years and unless I'm starving, won't, either! I love all other forms of corn, 'cept this one!

I'm late to your thread, but I love the idea of a personalized bingo card and yours is so diverse and wide-reaching. I modified the Pop Sugar reading challenge for myself - I started off altering the ones that I had no interest in, and then just made up a bunch at the end for myself.

>22 pammab: I'll look for a copy of this one. I learned a lot from a memoir by another of the BLM founders, Patrisse Khan-Cullors.

>42 Jackie_K: It is funny how regional food still is!

>43 thornton37814: Oh dear! I actually seemed to recall disliking hominy from my childhood too, but it turns out I quite liked it in this recipe. Tasted like corn tortillas, which I've also grown to like. I'm glad your family was able to take care of each other that way -- being a grieving newly single parent with a toddler, yikes, your poor brother.

>44 Tess_W: I love these strong reactions to hominy! I wonder how much is tied to canned vegetables in general getting better over the years (or at least I think they've gotten much better).

>45 RidgewayGirl: I always like looking at the PopSugar prompts, but the challenge itself has always intimidated me. I'm not sure I'd be able to find books I liked to fill in the categories....

I hadn't realized Patrisse Khan-Cullors also wrote a book, though as it turns out, I do recognize the title When They Call You a Terrorist. I'll add that one to my list too then.

1e. Afro-Vegan: Farm-Fresh African, Caribbean, and Southern Flavors Remixed
Bryant Terry
2020.01.16 / ★★★★★ / review

The next recipe was inspired by Cameroon's national dish ndolé: spinach-peanut sauce. The story captured me, but the recipe didn't. It's basically just vegan creamed spinach, using peanut cream instead of the traditional vegan milk substitute of cashew cream. I've never really been a fan of creamed spinach, and I didn't get a noticeable peanut flavor from it either.

5. Dawn on a Distant Shore
Sara Donati
2020.01.22 / ★★★★ / review

In the midst of late 1700s political tensions, a series of events lead to Elizabeth and her family in Scotland engaging an Earl.

Loved the political and historical narrative, but I found the plot a bit convoluted and farfetched (and I miss Paradise!).

Having spent fifty hours immersed in Kate Reading's narration of this series the past couple weeks, I'm thinking it's time to move on to some other fare and come back fresh and wanting more later.

>47 pammab: We frequently order spinach in peanut sauce from the West African restaurant I mentioned above, and we love it! It tastes a lot like peanut sauce. But who knows, it might be a different recipe!

>48 pammab: Next to Outlander, Donati's series has been my favorite. I think I thought like you, I much preferred Paradise to the other locales.

>49 MissBrangwen: Well maybe it was my peanuts then! It was really the peanuts I was looking forward to.

>50 Tess_W: I have really enjoyed the series. It's making me reflect a lot on cultural expectations and the stories we tell ourselves about the past. I struggled a lot the first hundred or so pages of the series to believe in the heroine's level of self-actualization, but I do now. Good historical fiction.

I’ve enjoyed reading about your cooking adventures. Unlike some, I like hominy but my husband is not a fan so it rarely appears on our table.

>44 Tess_W: I'm with you Tess. Got a can of hominy by mistake a few years ago and thought it was awful! I'd never had it before, and don't plan to try again.

>41 pammab: I ordered this book as a Valentine's present for my husband now, I'm looking forward to seeing how he likes it :-)

I'm loving all the cookbooks and food talk. I've only ever had hominy in pozole, and liked it fine...

>52 hailelib: >53 markon: >55 katiekrug: I really didn't anticipate this many reactions to hominy! I just thought it was rare-ish outside certain cultures -- I didn't realize it probably scores higher than cilantro in eliciting strong reactions.

>52 hailelib: I'm glad to post a bit about recipe reading/making. All my other books are doorstoppers, so it's nice to feel like I'm making some progress.

>54 MissBrangwen: I hope he likes it! It's certainly aesthetically pleasing, even for a cookbook. :)

6. The Divine Comedy
Dante, translated by Clive James
2020.01.28/ ★★★½ / review

This recent English poetry translation of Dante's The Divine Comedy by Clive James incorporates into the text a lot of the political context that usually gets relegated to footnotes. I listened to an excellent audiobook performance by Edoardo Ballerini.

I love the translation, I love the performance, but I found myself getting lost in the flow of beautiful words and not tracking much actual story -- with a few notable exceptions that made me giggle and reflect on how saucy Dante must have been politically. I'm going to leave this book unfinished because it isn't calling to me right now, but I think it's likely I'll revisit it in the future.

(HistoryCAT: Medieval)
--
I'm calling it off on this book because I've decided it's the book I can more easily drop of two thick tomes that I'm not particularly into. The other is Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, which I'm about 25% through and already tired of.

7. The Face: A Time Code
Ruth Ozeki
2020.01.29/ ★★★★½ / review

A philosophical memoir on selfhood from Ruth Ozeki, part of a series of writerly reflections on their face, identity, and books. Intermixed with a thoughtful traditional memoir on race, parental impact, femininity and aging, she also includes snippets from the experience of meditating on her face in a mirror for three (long) hours, a practice inspired by the Buddhist charnel house meditation.

I found this book gripping and very easy to read, with a few observations that particularly resonated and a few that feel ever so slightly sore. I'm sure my appreciation is in part related to my fascination with Buddhism and identity, and would recommend this book to anyone with similar interests. I'll definitely read more by Ozeki, and I'm quite curious about what the other equally-unknown-to-me authors in this series produced on this theme (Chris Abani and Tash Aw).

>58 pammab: That sounds great - onto the wishlist it goes!

>59 Jackie_K: I really liked The Face: A Time Code! It's very short and in a particular very summarizable niche, but it executes on the niche very well, I thought.

8. Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men
Caroline Criado Perez
2021.02.11/ ★★★★ / review

Invisible Women takes on the assumption that men are the default human beings, elaborating at length on how women are indeed different, and equally human, and generally forgotten or ignored, to the detriment of their lives, success, and health. Criado Perez covers wide-ranging examples: spoke-and-hub transit planning that doesn't accommodate caretaking and chores, stress being an inhibitor of work success and women consistently having more background stress, medical trials deliberately not including women because of the complications of hormonal fluctuations and risk of pregnancy, and a cornucopia of other dimensions.

This book will hit you over the head with its message, and then hit you 1000 more times for good measure. It was good, and I'm glad I read it, but egads was it repetitious. Despite my antipathy, I have to admit that Criado Perez was darn effective. It would be hard for someone to walk away from this book without being converted and sent on their way with a salient handful of facts.

Overall, an excellent book for someone hyper-rational who doesn't quite see the point of feminism today, or for someone who wants to be able to argue for women rationally rather than morally or emotively.

I gave Afro-Vegan to my husband this morning and he was so delighted with it! We spent an hour or so just browsing the recipes. We love that there are so many music and book recommendations, too. We had to use the online dictionary from time to time because we didn't know a few ingredient names, and there are a few that might be a bit hard to get here, but that's not a problem. I'm really happy because this was such a great surprise!
So thanks again for sharing this book here :-)

>62 MissBrangwen: I'm so glad he was happy with the surprise! I hope your husband and you get a lot of use and enjoyment out of it. It definitely includes some ingredients that I have struggled to find too, but I really have enjoyed it so far.

9f. Mediterranean Vegetarian Cooking
Paola Gavin
2021.02.14 / ★★★★ / review

This cookbook has been on my shelf mostly unused for about 15 years (I had to go look it up when I saw the ISBN began with a 159 :)). It's text-dense with over 200 recipes across nearly 350 pages (and no pictures); the paper quality has aged very well. Each recipe is labeled with its country-of-origin and a bit of introduction text, and the recipes tend to be quite simple and healthy.

I made two recipes this weekend. The first was lentils with orzo, which they labeled as Greek but I found to be an even faster take on fast Egyptian kushari كشري (this cookbook includes the caramelized onions and tomato in the cooking liquid rather than atop, and doesn't include rice or chickpeas). It's a solid base recipe, and would been a nice introduction to the lentils-and-carb-and-caramelized-onion combo if I weren't already intimately familiar with kushari.

The second recipe was carrots in harissa, labeled as Tunisian. This is quite similar to some of the delicious carrots I've gotten at Israeli and Lebanese restaurants. The spice profile is not one I'd have ever created (garlic, harissa, paprika, caraway, cumin, vinegar), which is exactly what I like in a cookbook. I'll use this approach for carrots again.

10. The Grammar of God
Aviya Kushner
2021.02.14 / ★★★★ / review

Raised speaking Hebrew in a small Orthodox Jewish community 25 miles outside New York City, Aviya Kushner discussed the Bible regularly, studied it in school, at home and in synagogue, and knew her community's take on the stories and their meaning. When she first read the Bible in English translation for class at the Iowa Writers' Workshop as a young adult, she found herself repeatedly surprised at the difference in what was highlighted and what was lost in translation. Her teacher Marilynne Robinson, after reading her class essays, encouraged her to publish the reflections.

I found this collection of essays fascinating because it fits right into my favorite niches: an insider reflecting on religion, a deep dive into linguistics, Biblical over-reading and intertextuality, self-reflection and personal story, the ways in which context informs one's understanding. The overall effect definitely was one of personal essays from a poetry/literature class on the Bible (rather than a memoir, an academic take on Judaism or Biblical translation, or a devotional text), but it fully delivers on its value proposition. In particular, The Grammar of God makes plain that much of what is unremarkable and obvious to an observant Jew reading the Hebrew Bible in the context of a religious community is completely opaque to most people reading the Bible today.

Two particularly poignant reflections may give a sense for the way the book meanders through academic/intellectual reflection and basic memoir formats. Near the beginning, Kushner notes that the name "Adam" is grammatically tied to the Hebrew word for "earth", and that since the fall from Eden entails backbreaking labor in the earth, it is not a hard leap for a Hebrew reader to notice the implication of backbreaking labor on oneself. On the other hand, near the end, she ties Isaiah 40:1-2 to her grandfather's personal struggle with faith following first losing his entire family in the Holocaust and then his wife to breast cancer at age 36, and her family's need to see where they came from. Both sections are very powerful, in completely different ways.

And of course, the book raises a few core and very tantalizing questions that Kushner cannot reasonably address: If you believe the Bible is the literal Word of God, how do you integrate that belief with not reading it in Biblical Hebrew? And then, if you read the Bible even in Biblical Hebrew but without the benefit of building on centuries of deep rabbinic thought, would you indeed come to similar conclusions as Kushner? (Personally, I suspect not; I recall a haftarah discussion of 1 Kings 1:1-31, in which others needed to call out what they were seeing very explicitly before I could see it too.)

This was a lovely book for its intended audience, but like most books on religion, probably holds no appeal for general audiences. Thank you to markon for mentioning it, because it really is right up my alley and it's unlikely I'd have seen it otherwise!

11. The Thief
Megan Whalen Turner
2021.02.19 / ★★★★ / review

Gen is a thief. Captured by a king while bragging about a heist, another man at court sees a way to use Gen for different political ends. A YA journey adventure ensues.

Very cute! Entertaining, very well drawn characters, and an excellent YA foray into a relatively uncommon shtick that leads to a nice payoff. Though I didn't find it gripping, I will definitely read more in the series.

3g. The Grit Cookbook: World-Wise, Down-Home Recipes
Jessica Greene
2021.02.20 / only 2 recipe made so far

Made the winter vegetable stew from The Grit Cookbook last weekend, and it was good. It struck me as a slightly thinned version of a pot pie base. It was unavoidably salty from a 1/2 c. of soy sauce in the base (and it called for even more salt!), but it was also creamy without cream and not hard at all. In particular, its roux technique was more efficient than mine so I'll be adopting that (saute the onions/carrots/whatever in extra oil, stir in flour and let it cook quite dry, then gradually whisk in stock to loosen the floured vegetables). So far the recipes in this cookbook definitely feel like volume restaurant cooking.

>66 pammab: I am glad that you enjoyed the first book in The Queen's Thief series, I thought they just got better with each book. I just read #5 in the series and I loved it.

>66 pammab: I'm so glad you enjoyed The Thief and hope you will continue with the series! As >68 DeltaQueen50: says, it only gets better! :)

>68 DeltaQueen50:
>69 christina_reads:
I'm really looking forward to it! I've seen some notes that books 2 and 3 especially are even better as well as what you are saying, so that's shortly around the corner!

>67 pammab: Sounds like an experience! That is how I've always made my roux, not sure where I picked it up. For many years I had high blood pressure, and had to avoid salt--so I used low sodium soy sauce--which eliminated many salty tastes. Good luck with future recipes.

>71 Tess_W: I learned to make a roux as a very pure white sauce, so all this with random vegetables being included is new to me. But it works! And it didn't dirty another pan, which pleased me immensely. :)

That way of making a roux sounds worth a try. You are finding some interesting recipes.

Also interesting books! I’ve had Invisible Women on my wishlist for a while so glad to see your review.

>73 hailelib:
I've definitely found myself thinking back on Invisible Women often! I've seen a number of its facts and studies and arguments come up in other places the past month, so it feels quite comprehensive.

3h. The Grit Cookbook: World-Wise, Down-Home Recipes
Jessica Greene
2021.03.14 / ★★★½ / review

Tried to make dijon onion soup, but I couldn't bring myself to eat more than a couple bites. I found it aesthetically displeasing (muddy brown with onion strands) and too sweet (apple juice base plus caramelized onions).

Moved on to dessert with a blueberry pie, which was delightful. Set up well, very easy, used a touch of brandy and cinnamon. A full cup of sugar in the pie was too sweet for me and/or my berries, but I'll definitely reuse this recipe.

12. In a Sunburned Country
Bill Bryson
2021.03.17 / ★★★ / review

For the February HistoryCAT focusing on modern history (1800-today), I thought I'd both learn a bit about Australia and try on Bill Bryson via his 2000 book In a Sunburned Country.

I did gain a bit more background knowledge about Australia (not much, but enough). I mostly had two reactions: (1) Bill Bryson is kinda mean. (2) Australia has SO MUCH overlap with my science fiction genre reading, it's not even funny. At least half of "new planet" science fiction books seem to be based on white people coming to Australia. That is totally obvious in retrospect, of course.

>75 pammab: I've often felt as if I'm the only person on earth who finds French onion soup aesthetically displeasing in appearance, smell, and taste, so I'm glad to find an ally. It's a speciality of a local cafe run by a Frenchman and I love the cafe but can't go in around lunchtime because oof onion soup.

>77 spiralsheep: I even want to like onion soup! I might try again with a different recipe before I give up. But this version definitely was not very appetizing for me.

I suspect the reason we cover French onion soup in cheese is to make it prettier. (And cheese is tasty, too, of course.)

13. Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights
Kenji Yoshino
2021.03.20 / ★★★½ / review

In Covering, Yale law professor Kenji Yoshino has three themes. First, he tells his personal story of "covering" his gay and Asian identities to fit in in America, distinguishing covering (making it easy for others to ignore the identity) from the related demands of conversion and passing. Second, he explains that current American law protects only "essential" aspects of identity, which in practice makes covering required. Third, he argues for shifting the burden of establishing "essentialism" to the institution rather than the individual ("it is an essential aspect of the job to do X; employees can behave how they like as long as they can do X" vs. "it is an unchangeable aspect of my class to be Y; because I can't change it, it's inappropriate for you to harm me because of it").

I wanted to love this book, in part because it was so explicit about parallels for religious identities with racial, queer, gender, and disabled identities. Overall, however, I found myself uninspired by the primer to queer studies (it's fine; I've just had it many times before) and underconvinced by the legal argument. I absolutely believe that everyone has some aspects of their identity that they cover for general palatibility, and that it would be better to live in a society where that doesn't need to happen. But I laugh at the idea that court decisions supporting "everyone has a right to behave in any way that isn't essential to the job" would do anything favorable for civil rights. I can well imagine organizations choosing between competing narratives of a role depending on the situation, and I suspect that old court cases might impose a regressive effect on entire industries (consider flight attendants: is the essential nature of the role to make passengers feel more comfortable in a pressurized tin can or to improve safety in an emergency?). Generally I suspect Yoshino's desired shift would devolve to our current definitions and/or reinforce problematic cultural narratives, and it could even reduce rights by putting the power to write the narrative first in the hands of organizations rather than individuals. But I'm not a Yale law professor, so who knows.

This book is absolutely worth a gander if you're not very familiar with the literature on assimilation, especially if you haven't really noticed or considered the politics of your own assimilationist tendencies yet.

>76 pammab: I remember reading bits where Bill is quoting the locals and I thought, "They're having you on, Bill."

>79 pammab: That's a very interesting topic that I would like to explore more, but I think I'm not that into reading about the legal aspects.

>78 pammab: Oddly, I like English style onion gravy, and have nothing against leeks or garlic.

>80 pamelad: One of Australia's top five sports: taking the mickey.

>80 pamelad: >82 spiralsheep: Like when he's learning to surf and everyone is going "no one has died on this beach for, oh, two weeks now"? Yes, I completely believe people were toying with him! I wonder if he recognized it too but played it up for the book anyway...

>81 MissBrangwen: Yoshino tries to soften it by being 70% a memoir and talking about the stories behind the court cases, but it definitely felt like an academic book.

>82 spiralsheep: I wonder what makes French onion soup different from onion gravy then!

>83 pammab: I can imagine Bryson going along with all sorts of local customs to get copy for his books, including the tradition of taking the mickey out of the stranger.

I'm now trying to work out why I dislike most/all onion soups but enjoy onion gravy and I can't think of a single reasonable excuse, lol.

>84 spiralsheep: Is it that one is a condiment and one is a meal? I don't think I'd want to eat a meal of gravy...

>85 pammab: In England onion gravy is traditional served with sausages and mashed potatoes (and possibly peas), and I admit I do like sausage and mash more than cheese on toast but I was trying to account for my general dislike of French onion soup and clear onion soups when I don't dislike onion gravy or leek soups or garlic. I don't know. People are odd and I am a people.

Maybe I had a traumatic onion soup incident as a child... ;-)

>85 pammab: Now admittedly I was probably a bit weird as a kid, but one of my favourite treats on a Sunday after dinner was being allowed to have a bowl of gravy. I don't think I could do that now though!

>85 pammab: Love French Onion soup and onion gravy. In fact, at my house, the "motto" is: you can never add too many onions or too much garlic!

>86 spiralsheep: "People are odd and I am a people." -- love this!

>87 Jackie_K: That's so funny! I would have asked for something sweet and not gravy...

>88 Tess_W: Agreed! Onions are garlic are delicious. And very, very cultural.

14. The Lathe of Heaven
Ursula K. Le Guin
2021.03.27 / ★★★★ / review

A pretty trippy literary work, in all the best ways. George Orr's dreams change reality. It's terrifying, and he's been taking drugs to eliminate his dreams. His drug use is illegal, and his explanation for it sounds insane, so he lands in the office of an overbearing psychologist. The doctor seizes the opportunity to fix George through untested dream research technology.

The Lathe of Heaven feels like a Dick plot with all the anthropological richness of Le Guin. I was surprised how very un-dated it felt (it was published in 1971 and seems to be set 50 years in the future / approximately now, though in clearly a different timeline). In addition to blatant near-future environmental commentary, this book boasts very rich literary themes of power and morality and love and otherness. It's a prescient, well-executed story, and a worthwhile read for fans of literary speculative fiction.

>90 pammab:

Maybe when I’ve actually read the Le Guin that I own I’ll get to that one.

>91 hailelib: Which Le Guin do you own? The Lathe of Heaven is my favorite of her books so far, but it does feel quite far from the others I've read. A lot of what I've read from her I thought suffered from being so groundbreaking/influential that today it feels derivative and trite (but this one doesn't; it's just trippy).

15. United States of Socialism: Who's Behind It. Why It's Evil. How to Stop It.
Dinesh D'Souza
2021.04.07 / ★★★ / review

Modern polemicist Dinesh D'Souza explains why the push for socialism in the United States is bound to fail, with what seem to be reasonably steelmanned explanations of what American socialists believe. After the first third of the book, he takes some detours into memoirish reflections on the unjustness of the Deep State for bringing felony charges against him (career civil servants prosecuted his illegal campaign contributions in 2014 -- he pled guilty) and unctious flattery for Trump (Trump pardoned him). D'Souza concludes the book with a call to unceasingly confront the other side.

My reaction is twofold. First, D'Souza seems like a total prick. Most tiring is the way he unswervingly and aggressively ascribes selfish and lazy motivations to literally everyone he disagrees with. (I find ascribed motivations of all sorts to cast a bright light onto the speaker's worldview, as well as any listeners' who unthinkingly agree -- I read a lot into this.) Near the end, his passage celebrating Trump's willingness to kick other people in the shins and imploring "harder! kick him again harder!" was so graphically violent that I had to turn the audio volume down until it was over. I'm sure he'd deride me for that squeamishness. Regardless, these are not the words of someone I'd consider a good man.

On the other hand, he makes a very cogent criticism of modern leftist discourse being muddled. The only socialism that has ever worked, he notes, has been Nordic socialism that is deployed with a consistent ecumenical "we're all in this together" message. That message is in stark contrast to the divisive narrative currently being reinforced by American socialists, which leads many people to feel vilified by their peers for characteristics they never chose: their maleness, their whiteness, their straightness, their cisgenderness, their ablebodiedness, and so on. It's a legitimate and thought-provoking criticism, and it's exactly this kind of valuable take-away I was hoping to find.

If you'll enjoy 2020 American rightwing polemics, this book is made for you. For others, though, this book will quickly become dated, and I doubt it's worth much time.

16. The Book of Essie
Meghan MacLean Weir
2021.04.11 / ★★★½ / review

Seventeen year old Essie has grown up in public -- her father is an evangelical preacher, and her family has starred in a reality TV show since before she was born. But she wants out. She has a secret plan to make it happen.

This is utterly predictable YA that reads like second-rate Duggar fanfiction with the serial numbers filed off, throwing in a mix of other hot button religious community stereotypes with their historical serial numbers also filed off (most prominently ex-gay camps, incest, regretted childhood memoirs, cults, and deadly standoffs with law enforcement). The characterization is weak, the plot is unrealistic, and the implicit lessons seem somewhat questionable. But.... it's also pretty darn gripping. I devoured this book faster than anything else I've read for months, swallowing around the gristle of its flaws, and kept going back to it in every spare moment despite rolling my eyes. That's a pretty neat accomplishment for its author. The excellent pacing means I'll recommend it, though only to folks who are comfortable with every weakness of YA as a genre being turned up to 11.

>90 pammab: I also love The Lathe of Heaven and agree that it's a book with a very 1969-70 vibe that has aged unusually well.

>93 pammab: "The only socialism that has ever worked, he notes, has been Nordic socialism that is deployed with a consistent ecumenical "we're all in this together" message. That message is in stark contrast to the divisive narrative currently being reinforced by American socialists, which leads many people to feel vilified by their peers for characteristics they never chose: their maleness, their whiteness, their straightness, their cisgenderness, their ablebodiedness, and so on."

I don't know if you want discourse about this on your personal thread, and if not then please ignore, but....

The successful aspects of "Nordic socialism" which you correctly identify with a "we're all in this together" ideal, only work after a significant proportion of those people with unearned privilege have recognised that their privilege is unearned and decided to prefer equality (with earned privilege). This is why North-Western European socialism only partly works in England. We have the "we're all in this together" National Health Service but we also have institutionalised unearned privilege (especially in England privileges of class and ethnicity) which those who are born into privilege have demonstrated they will do anything and everything to hang onto. Leftists aren't pushing away people with unearned privilege (see Tony Benn etc), because they're constantly actively invited to participate in national projects such as the NHS but they reject "we're all in this together" to retain their unearned privilege. People with unearned privilege then have to justify their unearned privilege, at least to themselves, by claiming it's earned in some way, which at it's most extreme is seen in the divine right of monarchy and white supremacy (and anyone else claiming they were appointed to rule by god/genetics/etc), and/or claiming victimhood for being asked to share more equally and embrace egalitarian ideals. Yes, they "feel vilified" because that choice of feeling is more palatable to them, and more useful in retaining their unearned privilege, than feeling "we're all in this together" equality with those who weren't born into unearned privilege.

As I said before, ignore my analysis at will, and I'm sorry if my explanation isn't as helpful as intended, yours sincerely, a North-Western European :-)

>92 pammab:

A long time ago I read A Wizard of Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness but at various times I have acquired several others of hers. Among them are Always Coming Home, Lavinia, and more recently Four Ways to Forgiveness; ten in all. I really should read at least some of them before acquiring more!

>95 spiralsheep:
I'm laughing a bit, because it sounds like you're attributing intent too! I also think maybe you're arguing that causality should go the opposite direction of how this book suggests causality tends to be perceived in righter circles. It sounds like you see a necessary precursor to "we're all in this together" as "I'm on your side", and that "I'm on your side" means "I will try not to hurt you or anyone else accidentally going forward". That's totally fair, and I don't disagree (that's pretty much where I've ended up too). But it's simultaneously true that many people are hearing something more like "you're too <insert characteristic> and I judge you for being you", which doesn't feel good and which makes them not believe their conversation partner is on their side, and that perception across a large number of people ultimately weakens the case for "we're all in it together" socialism. I'm really not sure what to do about the direction of causality, except to keep it in mind as a potential landmine for people talking past each other....

>96 hailelib:
I've heard great things about the Earthsea books! And I wouldn't have even known that Le Guin wrote more than 10 books -- I'd have guessed an ouevre of maybe 7 or 8 total (though I see now how wrong that was). It does seem like you have your shelves full already! I'll be very curious what you think if you do choose one of them to pick up.

>97 pammab: I see you are kindly attributing some of your own admirable idealism to me so, as I don't want to reveal the depths of my cynical pragmatism, I'll take it! >;-)

:D

>98 spiralsheep: So much laughter!!! <3

17. Sula
Toni Morrison
2021.04.14 / ★★★★ / review

Sula and Nel grow up together as best friends in the Bottom in the 1920s and 1930s, the black part of town that is nestled in the hills of Ohio above the white part of town. We learn about their lives and community as they act for foils for each other and for the town.

Toni Morrison's second novel was not at all what I was expecting. Its beautiful language is pointillist in its structure (I wouldn't have wanted to read this one on audiobook), and it walks some sharp edges and a lot of darkness without giving any impression of self-consciousness or pretentiousness. The lack of either plot or clear authorial arguments-in-novel-form is rather discomfiting to me, and I can't put my finger on why I liked this book. The best I have is that it was fascinating to read something so very different to my usual forms, and also so unbelievably well-executed.

well done on this review, >100 pammab:. I tend to go for Morrison's longer works when I think of my favorites, but of her short works, this is the one that stands out and stays with me. I need to re-read it some time.

>101 whitewavedarling: Sula is definitely a book that would reward rereads. Morrison makes me want to read more Nobel laureates....

18. Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth
Reza Aslan
2021.04.18 / ★★★★ / review

Zealot places Jesus in the historical context of Judea, a land of magicians, claimed Messiahs, and rebels inspired by religious zeal to fight the Romans and their governing rich Jewish proxies. Aslan spends just a bit of time on the founding of the early church, ultimately concluding that although they are quite different, both the historical Jesus and the deified Jesus are inspiring.

Since this book came out in 2013 and garnered both religious and academic controversy, it seems like many religious people have assimilated "Jesus was an anti-rich insurgent" into their understanding of their faith. I've heard all the main points from believers and religious leaders before, but I appreciated Aslan's clarity of presentation in fleshing them all out to something more substantive than soundbites. His interpretation is not universally accepted by scholars and it fits too cleanly into our current interests, but I appreciate now having historical context where previously I had little.

19. Pet
Akwaeke Emezi
2021.04.20 / ★★★½ / review

In Lucille, they've driven off all the monsters. Schools teach this, and everyone knows it's true -- especially the adults who were around for it. But when Jam's mother's monstrous painting comes to life with a different story, Jam and her family and friends confront how they understand the world.

Pet is falls somewhere between middle grade and YA and plays with magical realism in a strange kind of utopic/dystopic world. Its setting is exactly the world that conservatives worry we're headed for, where everyone is unapologetically self-actualized as trans, selectively mute, poly, male, wheelchair using, and so on. The execution is so excellent that I can't tell whether the novel stands as pure wish fulfillment or as tempered criticism. Maybe it's both. The whole story left me a bit uncomfortable, which is pretty valuable as a source for reflection, and not at all what I expected going in.

20. Station Eleven
Emily St. John Mandel
2021.04.27 / ★★★½ / review

On the same night that a famous actor dies on stage, a deadly flu pandemic starts wiping out most of the human race. Our story is told in the 20 years before and after that night, pivoting around that night and the major players in it.

Station Eleven is a literary meditation on the fragility and beauty and robustness of civilization. I found it brutal and much too close to reality, given this world still so nervous about COVID-19. If I'd read it earlier, I think I'd still have noted that it felt rather self-consciously English-class-y (heavy intertextual motif, literary psychology-heavy stylistics, attempts at weighty themes). Not a bad book at all, but not to my taste right now; I wouldn't have picked it up if I'd realized it would feel like The Walking Dead plus Shakespeare and minus zombies.

>105 pammab: This book was hyped so, so much on instagram when I was still a member of the bookish community there. It's good to read a more balanced and down to earth review of it.

>106 MissBrangwen: Well, Station Eleven is a solid literary post-apocalypse book! Very well written, lots of (sad) scenes that will stick. But also too close to home right now, I think, plus I'm rarely in the mood for bleak in recent years. For some reason I thought I was picking up space opera... whoops.

21. Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist
Judith E. Heumann
2021.05.02 / ★★★★ / review

Judith Heumann was paralyzed with polio at 18 months of age in 1949, and is now internationally recognized as a civil rights leader.

Heumann didn't start school until fourth grade. When she did, she shared her her special education, nap-included classroom with teenagers who still couldn't read. As she grew into high school and at summer camp in the early 1960s, she became increasingly aware of how the lives of disabled people were excessively -- and unnecessarily -- circumscribed. Despite the odds, she went to university, engaged a legal battle to become a teacher that even the ACLU was hesitant to take, and transitioned to a lifetime of local, then national, then international disability activism, including leading departments at the World Bank and State Department.

Being Heumann is an excellent memoir of political change in action. I'm a bit disappointed that it is so single-track, however; almost everything directly calls back to radicalization, activism, or progress. Perhaps this is the influence of co-author (not-so-ghostwriter?) Kristen Joiner, whose clear agenda is to change how people see the world. Regardless, despite having an extremely political lens on what it means to be human, Being Heumann is worth reading for its treatment of how recently American built spaces came to be accessible and the fight required.

22. Maisie Dobbs
Jacqueline Winspear
2021.05.09 / ★★½ / review

The first book in a mystery series of the same name, set in post-WWI England.

Gosh, I wanted to really like this book after liking To Die But Once earlier this year, but it was all kinda "meh" for me. I think a large part of my unenthusiasm was that it's really more about Maisie's experiences as a child and then in WWI than about any actual mystery. Her historical backstory is bookended by what felt more like a mystery frame than a mystery story to me, and I found it all weakly motivated. This may be one of those series where the first book has maximal resonance only once you're deeply invested in the series.

23. A Deadly Education
Naomi Novik
2021.05.12 / ★★★★★ / review

A dangerous magic boarding school story with a snarky reject harbinger-of-doom teen main character. Ostensibly YA, but quite obviously written at least as much for the now-adult Harry Potter fan contingent.

Clever, entertaining, fun, intertextual (the name of the school is the Scholomance!), with a definite thread of high school as a metaphor for/microcosm of adult life and modern equality power politics, for the enjoyment of folks who get into intellectualizing their fiction. I found it very hard to put this one down, and I'm looking forward to the second in the series later this year.

1i. Afro-Vegan: Farm-Fresh African, Caribbean, and Southern Flavors Remixed
Bryant Terry
2020.05.15/ ★★★★★ / review

I made the Amy Ashwood, a cocktail dedicated to Marcus Garvey's first wife, with a very ripe mango I'd picked up with nothing in mind for it. The mango nectar would have been easier (and likely more delicious) if made from frozen mango chunks or one of those thick imported European juices, but the combination of mango, ginger, lime and a bit of cayenne garnish was indeed quite tasty. I liked the mango nectar with a bit of ginger and lime seltzer quite a lot as well.

(And that's my goal of 10 new recipes! This last feels a bit like cheating, but it worked pretty well at using up that mango....)

24. My Year of Meats
Ruth Ozeki
2021.05.19 / ★★★★ / review

Jane Takagi-Little is a broke documentarian who jumps at the chance to turn the heat back on in her apartment. The job? Be the English speaking liaison for a propagandist Japanese TV series sponsored by the American beef and meat product industry. She tries to turn the job into something more, and she takes us on a ride through authentic American heartland and through the hearts of Japanese housewives.

A very weird book. Everything was a bit too bright and over the top, which perhaps was its own commentary on the content. It has the moral you'd expect, plus human-on-human violence, and some strange structure like emails and faxes interwoven with the text. The author's own identity also seemed to merge with that of the narrator in some sections as well. I enjoyed it, despite all its strange caricature-ish nature.

25. Uprooted
Naomi Novik
2021.05.24 / ★★★★½ / review

Every ten years, the Dragon takes one of the 17-year-old girls from the valley to live in his castle. They emerge changed, having been isolated from everyone but the Dragon -- and sometimes, when he's out fighting the evil magic that comes from the Wood, they are entirely alone. Agnieszka never expects to be chosen.

A Russian fairy tale spun into world-saving adventure. Lots of tropes, most notably the naive but strong girl who is forced into close quarters with a prickly man many times her age, where the proximity grows into deep appreciation and then love (people tend to love or hate that one). It also avoids a lot of common tropes, like a female main character lacking close female friends. I thought the evil in the book was very well done, the writing was compelling, and my minimal familiarity with Eastern European fairy tales was likely a boon. Definitely worthwhile for adult fairy tale readers, and for folks who like fannish storytelling even in non-fannish settings.

>113 pammab: on my WL it goes!

>113 pammab: I adored Uprooted...it felt like one of those books that was written specifically for me. :) Glad you enjoyed it too! If you haven't read Novik's Spinning Silver yet, it's in a similar vein (though more wintry than forest-y in terms of mood).

>114 Tess_W: It's quite good -- I hope you enjoy!

>115 christina_reads: I am definitely going to turn to Spinning Silver next! I thought these two were in series, but now I don't think that's the case. I don't generally read a lot of pure fantasy, but Novik's take on it is really working for me.

26. This is How You Lose the Time War
Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
2021.05.25 / ★★ / review

In the future, an earthy side and a machine-y side have their war for supremacy through making small historical changes that change the probability of different futures. One spy taunts another, and over time an illicit relationship grows between them.

For me, this novella was totally meh. Way too literary, too many sentence fragments, too many Themes, too much trendy lesbianism -- in a word, overwrought. But lots of folks love it, and it somehow beat out Ted Chiang's fantastic novella on paths-not-taken "Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom" for both the Hugo and the Nebula, so mine is clearly a minority opinion.

>116 pammab: Yay! They're not in a series, which is a bit confusing because the cover art is so similar. But Spinning Silver is a totally different setting and characters.

>118 christina_reads: It's exactly the cover art that had me confused. A snow book sounds fun!

27. Manacled
senlinyu
2021.06.01 / ★★★★★ / review

This 2019 fanfic by senlinyu brings the central conflict in JK Rowling's Harry Potter series to a darker and more realistic conclusion. Departing from a intertextual relationship with The Handmaid's Tale rather than the genre of magic boarding school fiction, Manacled follows Hermione Granger facing the aftermath of the desperate, long wizarding war that Voldemort eventually won.

In addition to being an excellent story delivered stunningly, this work is a shining example of the power of fanfiction to transform readers' understandings and reveal the vulnerability of the author's perspective. The work tackles Harry Potter and the central conflict and plot points of the series through a Slytherin sensibility, and it raises uncomfortable questions that the original series skirts or handles glibly. What dirty work are we blind to because we prefer to be? How do narratives reinforce themselves? Can love and light really win against darkness? Manacled uses its narrative to firmly answer: "no, evil will win and then call itself good; find personal meaning where you can." Ouch. But it's a perfectly in-sync message for the aging audience that came to this series as teens and whose experiences have driven a wave of dystopian media up through the age brackets.

Brilliant, transformative, powerful, intertextual. This is the fanfiction genre at its best.

N/A. The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
Stuart Turton
2021.06.05 / ★★★ / review

Abandoned after about an hour due to the narration delivery (strange emphasis, voices pitched very differently, characterization choices -- reasonable ones, but ones that left me annoyed and disliking all the characters). I didn't see any reason yet to dislike the text itself so I'll leave 3 stars, until I have a chance to come back to this book on paper. I've heard this is a time-tipsy-turvy locked-room-style puzzle mystery, which should be up my alley.

>121 pammab: Interesting, I, also abandoned this book.

>122 Tess_W: On audio, or on paper for you?

>121 pammab: I flew through this one in ebook -- the print edition was intimidatingly large, but on ebook I was able to get sucked into the story. I would likely have been totally lost in audio!

>123 pammab: Ebook. Had I done my research better, I would not have attempted it...not into fantasy or magical realism and LT readers had tagged it as such. It was a library borrow--so no harm, no foul, except for lost time!

Way behind on threads, but want to say thanks for your post about Manacled. Haven't heard of this one and it sounds interesting.

I've been gone! Very busy, but I'm behind a few reviews -- and owe some replies!

>124 rabbitprincess: >125 Tess_W: I can't decide whether to try The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle on ebook or whether to let it go for now. I don't particularly like magical realism, but I've seen it done really well often enough that I hate to abandon it just on that front!

>126 markon: I hope you like Manacled if you read it! It's quite dark but I really was impressed by what the author pulled off.

28. The Galaxy, and the Ground Within
Becky Chambers
2021.06.11 / ★★★★½ / review

Becky Chambers finishes her Galactic-Commons-setting books with The Galaxy and the Ground Within. Chambers uses her sensitive touch and awareness of humanity to paint a slice-of-life book of travelers paused together at a waystation. It spoke to me mostly as a meditation on diversity and privilege, where her previous books had focused on death and the numinous (Record of a Spaceborn Few), LGBTQ issues and found family (A Closed and Common Orbit), and humanity's relationship to science & spaceflight (To Be Taught, if Fortunate).

Lovely, and well worth reading for fans of Chambers' character-and-theme-driven style.

29. How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community
Mia Birdsong
2021.06.23 / ★★★½ / review

In this 2020 book, Mia Birdsong provides seven chapters of community anecdotes, after an introductory chapter decrying how the rugged individualism of the American Dream is antithetical to community.

I completely agree with the premise, but I didn't get much out of the book. I wanted a self-help-style book organized around ways to show up for others and build community that provided at least a few methods or situations that I hadn't anticipated, and I didn't get that at all. The book is actually mostly personal narratives centered on themes like "how so-and-so showed up for childcare" and "how whosit showed up in hardship". There's also some weird celebration of individualism despite decrying it (queer chosen family and single motherhood both come especially to mind here). It lacks much attention at all to traditional community organizations that bring together local people who share only a single aspect of identity, like religious organizations, military and veterans groups, adult sports and hobbies, and ethnic associations, focusing instead on building unstructured community among people who naturally make us comfortable and are already in our lives.

Definitely not the book I'd have written. I'd recommend it as filling the same kind of niche as Chicken Soup for the Soul, with woke morals rather than Christian ones.

30. Under a Painted Sky
Stacey Lee
2021.07.14 / ★★★★ / review

In 1849, Chinese-American girl Sam and her runaway slave friend Annamae disguise themselves as boys and head west to California to escape what's chasing them and to find key elements of their pasts.

An excellent potato chip YA book, where the premise is a bit unlikely and some of the background is spoon-fed/lacking depth, and you can kinda guess what's coming, but it doesn't matter because the story and character voices and especially pacing are so well done. (I think the author put a lot of herself into Sam.)

If you like complex, this book probably isn't for you -- but if you're a fan of YA escapism and the premise tickles you, I'd encourage you to go for it.

31. Spinning Silver
Naomi Novik
2021.08.01 / ★★★★★ / review

Spinning Silver is one of the best books I've read in quite a while, and I don't think I'll be able to do it justice in a review. It's a wonderfully executed long-form fairy tale (it's so long and so rich that I thought the novel might be reaching a reasonably satisfying conclusion, only to find that it had just finished establishing the premise). Despite opposites being pitted against each other as is traditional in fairy tales, we get deliberately blurry lines about what's good and evil from our viewpoint characters, and the author just lets us sit with it. The commentary on Judaism and Eastern Europe is understated and fascinating, as is the inclusion of autism. Even though I sometimes found it difficult to know which of the three female leads was giving the point-of-view (they're foils for each other), the rest of the story depth more than makes up for that challenge.

Strongly recommended to everyone who likes fairy tales, as well as anyone who likes Novik's writing even if fairy tales aren't particularly enticing.

32. The Parable of the Sower
Octavia Butler
2021.08.08 / ★★★★★ / review

A post-apocalyptic journal in which our teenage author Lauren Olamina documents her experiences in her walled town, her forced flight from that sanctuary, and the religion she calls "Earthseed", which centers on her philosophy about change, power, and humanity's destiny to reach space, while living with "hyperempathy syndrome" that was induced by her birth mother's drug use while pregnant.

This book is so much more substantive than I was expecting. It takes on all kinds of themes, mixes them together to comment on society of the 1990s, and somehow manages to comment just as well or better on the world of the 2020s -- probably because all of those themes seem increasingly urgent and still utterly unsolved. Homelessness, economic despair, drug use and its effect on families and communities, climate change, California drought and fires, political power and personal identity increasingly being state-level rather than federal, the powerful privileging the desires of corporations, wealth getting more and more concentrated, the decline of Christianity, the criminal justice system segueing into a kind of "New Jim Crow" and legal slavery, sociopathic companies deliberately feeding off people's empathy for each other -- it's all there. Prescient and disconcerting.

I don't know if I'd have been as impressed without Lynne Thigpen's phenomenal narration. Her delivery gives Lauren a clear opinionated voice even when the sentences themselves are short and generic. Lauren herself is a fascinating character, and it's unclear how well she really knows herself and her motivations. A reasonable number of signs point to "not as well as she thinks she does" -- which is in keeping with being a very young adult, and makes her voice fun to read.

And that's me caught up with what I've finished! Not a ton of books recently, but the ones I've read have been on the whole excellent.

Glad you've had some good reads. I have the Butler book on my TBR as I read her Kindred and liked it.

>131 pammab: Spinning Silver has been on my TBR forever. I must get to it!

>132 pammab: I just picked up Kindred from the library but I have this series on my radar as well.

Looking forward to both these books after your five star reviews!

I have both Spinning Silver and Under a Painted Sky on my Kindle so if I can't fit either of them in soon, I will be adding them to my next year's list.

>134 Tess_W:
I think this one is much better than Kindred! I'm not sure I'd have thought that without Lynne Thigpen narrating Parable of the Sower, though, so your mileage may vary quite a lot from mine.

>135 JayneCM:
I hope you like them as much as I have! I can't tell if these books are really amazing or whether my brain is just starved for stories. :) They can't possibly be terrible, though, because other people do seem to like them too? (And it's honestly hard for me to imagine the kind of person who wouldn't like Spinning Silver. The best I can imagine is "someone who doesn't read much", which won't be the case for you, heh heh.)

>136 DeltaQueen50:
I strongly encourage this! I think you'll like them both.

>137 pammab: I love fairy tale retellings and I have heard so many good things about this. Although I do agree, it can often depend on the timing. Some days I would be happy to read just about anything and some days I am more discerning! :)

>128 pammab:
I've been meaning to try something by Becky Chambers and my local library has that one so on my list now.

Spinning Silver was great.

You've had some good reading recently - apart from the Stuart Turton that I too abandoned.

I enjoyed the conversation about onion soup. I've tried in vain to make a vegetarian onion soup that is edible. Failed every time.

>139 hailelib:
The Galaxy, and the Ground Within will give you a very good taste of the kind of stories that Becky Chambers writes. Hopefully you'll walk away from it knowing if you want more!

>140 VivienneR:
There must be a way to make such a vegetarian onion soup.... I just don't know what it is. (But I can guarantee that apple juice is definitely not a main ingredient in a solution that will work for me.) I don't usually tend to even try vegetarian versions of meat recipes, but I wouldn't have expected the presence or absence of beef drippings in a soup base to matter as much as it seems to!

33. The Parable of the Talents
Octavia Butler
2021.08.17 / ★★ / review

After adoring The Parable of the Sower as narrated by Lynne Thigpen, I immediately picked up the sequel The Parable of the Talents. I abandoned it after a couple chapters, because it seemed so in line with the low expectations I initially had for this universe -- lots of telling without much showing, characterization that feels more like stereotype than development, and heavy-handed summary that flattens all the rich complexity of the first book into a single viewpoint.

I may continue with more distance. I just hate to mar the thought-provoking experience of living in Lauren's head for a while.

34. The Curse of Chalion
Lois McMaster Bujold
2021.08.31 / ★★★★½ / review

Excellent soft political fantasy featuring a hero who doesn't want to be a hero, an in-narrative explanation for the fantastic coincidences that are the bread-and-butter of fantasy plots, really well developed characters, and -- this felt like it was designed especially for me -- an inspired and believable religion. The only thing to be disgruntled about is that this is one more book from Bujold's ouevre that I won't ever be able to read again for the first time, alas.

35. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
Robin Wall Kimmerer
2021.09.10 / ★★★★ / review

Well, what a different book from The Curse of Chalion! It took me longer than I'd have liked to settle into the reflectiveness and immediacy of this book, and to make peace with its very-much-not-escapism meditative vibe.

In Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer writes something of an action-oriented environmentalist memoir. We hear her story, which is the story of the plants she loves -- both from her viewpoint as a Potawatomi person and her viewpoint as a practicing biology professor.

It's lovely and long and environmentalist and spiritual and iconoclastic without being bombastic. If you like plants or indigenous thought or environmentalism, this is a book for you.

>144 pammab: I read that earlier this year and loved it.

>145 Jackie_K: I probably came across it from you then! Braiding Sweetgrass was a lovely read, especially outside.

And in the last few months while I wasn't managing the top-of-the-thread, I managed to get 4 BINGOs on my challenge -- so that's complete, despite a less voluminous reading year than the last few! Looking forward, I don't think I'll be able to manage the fill the entire card, but I'll keep trying for the next couple months and maybe I'll surprise myself.

First BINGO: Under a Painted Sky 7/14
Second & third BINGOs: The Parable of the Sower 8/8
Fourth BINGO: Braiding Sweetgrass 9/10

>143 pammab: I really, really need to get back to Lois McMaster Bujold! The Curse of Chalion sounds great, and I hope to get to it soon!

>148 christina_reads: - The Chalion books are great.

>144 pammab: - I've put Braiding Sweetgrass on my list.

>148 christina_reads: The Curse of Chalion definitely seems up your alley, Christina!

>149 hailelib: It's a lovely book. I hope you enjoy it too when you get to it.

36. Not Light, But Fire: How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the Classroom
Matthew R. Kay
2021.09.13 / ★★★★★ / review

Matthew Kay teaches English in Philadelphia, working at a public high school that with academic admissions standards and a very diverse student body. He asks his students to wrestle with race in his classroom, and his approach is "dialogic" -- classroom discourse is the means of education. After working directly with his students, he began running professional development sessions on how to productively discuss race. In 2018, he released Not Light, But Fire, a book aimed at educators that synthesizes his approach.

The first four chapters of the book discuss the "how" of tackling race conversations in the classroom (I'm redacting the details of each to make this 900 word review -- argh -- less huge on my thread):
1. Race conversations require feeling safe.
2. Teachers need well-developed interpersonal skills; without them, race conversations will devolve and damage classroom culture.
3. Teachers need to think about how to structure the conversations.
4. Race conversations must have clear and respectable educational purposes.

The final four chapters give examples of how these principles manifest in lessons that Kay teaches (the n-word in Kindred, students' names and themes from varying texts, Native Son and cultural appropriation, and a pop-up conversation about the 2016 presidential election). The epilogue applies the usual professional development methods to developing skills at handling race conversations.

---

I tend to find books aimed at teachers to be excellent for teaching group engagement skills, so a book that bridges education and race was right up my alley. There's a lot of value in this book, though its applicability to non-classroom settings takes a bit of reflection. It's also quite dense; I simultaneously found it hard to pick up (it's only 250 pages and it took me 6 weeks to read) and very hard to put down (I stayed up very late multiple nights, thinking fruitlessly "just one more page"). After finishing it, I could tell it was valuable, but apart from one or two anecdotes that will stick with me, I couldn't have immediately told you what I learned.

All that to say -- I think this would make a great book club book for educators, and a great independent read for folks who are very interested in pedagogy and effective modern English classes, which are exactly the groups Matthew Kay is targeting. For folks primarily interested in having race conversations in their everyday life, well, that's not at all this book's purpose. (In fact, one of my take-aways from Kay's book is that effective conversations engaging race are probably not even possible outside a closely knit community with a shared relevant purpose and a highly trained facilitator.) I'd recommend this book with zero reservations for its target audience.

>151 pammab: I just retired in 2020 from teaching high school full-time. This would have been a great read for me.....I'm still debating, even though it will no longer be applicable. (in the classroom) Very nice review!

>152 Tess_W: I think I knew and forgot that about you! I think you'd appreciate the second half, with stories of students having tremendous insights about books, especially. That part felt almost like a memoir with a pedagogical purpose, but it tells enough stories of the kids and of growth in the author that it's quite entertaining as a standalone (and especially if you're familiar with the books being discussed -- I walked away with a better understanding of both Kindred and Native Son, which I was in no way expecting). So if it piques your interest, I don't think it'd be a waste of time, even for a retired teacher!

37. Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation
Andrew Marantz
2021.09.17 / ★★★★★ / review

A Jewish journalist writing for the New Yorker spends multiple years getting to know people in what became known as the "alt-right". Each chapter is essentially a New Yorker article with more commentary, taking on one person and characterizing them (faithfully, it seems). We meet alt-right social media stars, white nationalists and supremacists, men's men who troll liberals by acting gay, gay-for-Trump folks, meek women, anti-Semites and anti-establishment Jews, entrepreneurs interested in profiting from misinformation, true radicalized believers, the technologists who own social media, and everyone in between, as they define their in/out-groups, beliefs, and rationalizations. Marantz explicitly ties the rise of the alt-right to the "techno-utopians" of Silicon Valley, who still proclaim that "the best stuff gets shared" and that free speech is sacrosanct -- far past the point when parts of the country began to question these principles.

Marantz's insights and core theses are well-known at this point, years past when he began his reporting. Although the topics have been taken up repeatedly (most recently in the Pulitzer-Prize-winning "No Compromise" podcast), this book still felt fresh and like it had substance worth its length, likely in part due to its long-form personal story format. It also was immensely, immensely depressing. I found myself both addicted to reading and in a horrible, snappish mood from starting to finishing the book. There is very little here to actually give hope. Reading between the lines, we need policy action to make ads non-remunerative so eyeballs don't pay, we need stronger community ties to undercut radicalization, we need tech companies to abandon libertarian ideals and to be willing to sacrifice profits for (expensive) moderation, we need deradicalization programs at home. All of these are immensely counter-cultural prescriptions in their venues, they risk backlash, and they aren't anything that individuals can really do much about. But without them, our future seems to be impotent democratic processes, manipulation of swing voters, and/or violence -- and the spectre of liberal elites supporting an authoritarian regime that promises stability seems not-as-impossible as I'd like to imagine.

So yeah, depressing book. But I'll give it 5 stars for entertaining and informative reporting that raises key questions around what it means to live in a democracy when marginal voices reinforce themselves and there is a fiscal incentivize to agitate.

38. Where the Crawdads Sing
Delia Owens
2021.09.19 / ★★★★ / review

Where the Crawdads Sing requires suspension of disbelief, but it rewards that suspension with a good yarn. This book merges nature writing about a North Carolina tidewater marsh, a murder mystery and small-town courtroom drama, a 1960s coming-of-age, and a psychological study. It does a solid job at all of them individually, and I'm willing to guess that there are very few books in this niche. That leaves this book in a league of its own, and readers' reactions based on their expectations and their happiness reading outside their usual genres.

Personally, I could probably have done without the post-1969 portion altogether -- though I don't know how else Kya's story might have concluded. Also, in real life the author's stepson and husband are wanted for questioning in Zambia for murdering a poacher and covering up the crime?!? (that casts this book in rather a different light). This book was entertaining, but not as powerful as I was hoping; perhaps my expectations were too high.

>154 pammab: I'm contemplating adding that to my wishlist - depends how much I'm in the mood for rage and depression, I guess.

>156 Jackie_K: Exactly that, yes.

>154 pammab: I have this on my shelf to read. Thanks for a great review!

Just catching up on your thread.
>155 pammab: I loved the writing itself in that one, so lyrical in places.

>158 Tess_W: Antisocial is a fit for the HistoryCAT this month. You'll have to find another motivation. ;)

>159 VictoriaPL: Yes! It is really beautiful language. (I think I was underwhelmed in part coming directly from Braiding Sweetgrass, which is also full of lyrical writing about marshes, and is non-fiction from a narrator who has multiple real-life connections to the ecosystems she writes about.)

39. The City in the Middle of the Night
Charlie Jane Anders
2021.09.21 / ★★ / review

In a planet that doesn't rotate, humanity has settled the twilight zone and is hanging on by a thread. Sophie, a student revolutionary, makes an unwise decision that forces her to confront the sentient native inhabitants. Despite trying to stay unnoticed, her path snowballs into something bigger.

Abandoned, alas. The story here wasn't working for me -- too derivative in both themes and execution of 1970s classics from folks like LeGuin and Delany. The novelty I perceived was all in what seemed to be a modern lesbian perspective (manifesting in, say, the prime problematic relationship, and in the imagery of shared crocodile experience). Unfortunately I didn't find that perspective sufficiently novel to make up for audiobook narration that made me dislike a lot of characters and the YA present-tense tell-and-not-show stylistics. I may go find a full plot summary though to figure out if Anders how resolves the "modern" and "classic" tension around whether the aliens will double-cross Sophie or show they're better than humanity -- I'm intrigued!

40. You Had Me at Hola
Alexis Daria
2021.09.25 / ★★★★ / review

A short modern romance, in which a Netflix-equivalent assembles a telenovela cast & crew of entirely self-identified Latinx people. The romantic leads, of course, fall for each other.

This is a perfect potato chip book, as long as you're comfortable with explicit sex and characters whose existence celebrates modern definitions of diversity. The story does exactly what it says on the can -- and it does it well. The obstacles are more interesting than poor communication, the leading lady has close female friends, everyone is embedded in family they love, and it's generally pretty upbeat.

This isn't a mind-expanding or perfect book, but it's good light fun.

41. Winnie-The-Pooh
A. A. Milne
2021.09.26 / ★★★ / review

Ten-stories-in-a-story for children, in which Pooh Bear and his associates go on adventures. They also interact from time-to-time with the audience surrogate, Christopher Robin.

Well, for being written nearly 100 years ago(!), this book is only barely dated! (All the characters are male except for the mother, of course, and young Christopher Robin shoots a gun toward his friends, but that's rather surprisingly the bulk of it.) This book achieves a perfect mix of adult-with-child humor (my favorite was a joke about the letters written on pencils)... but I also found a lot of characters did or said things that would make me hesitant to actually be their friend (a bit too much "laughing at" rather than "laughing with"). So a bit of a mixed bag for me, really. Even so, I'm glad to have read this touchstone work!

42. Fat Vampire
Johnny B. Truant
2021.10.05 / ★★★½ / review

A story based on a thought experiment: why don't we ever see fat vampires?

Very entertaining! Written by a screenwriter, nothing substantive here, but extremely cute and funny.

43. The Wake Up: Closing the Gap Between Good Intentions and Real Change
Michelle MiJung Kim
2021.10.13 / ★★★★ / review

This book contains the 2021 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion education to rule all others.

Kim sources the need for DEI in the humanist ideal of doing minimal harm, and where possible, making others' lives easier. Though rather unsurprisingly she steers far from the religious overtones of that motivation, she simultaneously criticizes the idea that diversity is valuable because it makes companies more valuable -- that iconoclasm is a breath of fresh air. She's clearly an educator (she owns a company that delivers corporate trainings). The book is structured to reinforce take-aways so readers find it hard to miss them, and it balances generalities with anecdotes and appeals to authority.

I expect this book won't age particularly well (it's only two weeks old as I write this, and it draws extensively on recent news and today's zeitgeist for examples). But then again, I'm not sure it is supposed to age well. I also get the impression that the book is a labor of love for its author, who deeply believes in and wants to spread this gospel in a way that will be most relatable to people today. I also suspect that she expects the ways to show others you actually care will be so substantially changed in another 10 or 15 years that a new book & training will supersede hers.

MiJung Kim has written the exhaustive and actionable training that folks are unlikely to have ever received at work. It delivers more tangibly on the promise implied by the title of Kendi's How to be an Antiracist than anything else I've read. If you're looking for that kind of guide, this is your book. If you've had some trainings and done some reading, you probably won't find much new here -- though it might still be nice to have someone talk you through it all with a "what should & can I do" lens.

44. The Cider House Rules
John Irving
2021.10.15 / ★★★½ / review

Abandoned about a third of the way through this 600 page book.

I think I love John Irving -- his writing is brilliant and the perspicacious commentary is immensely enjoyable. But this is a Bildungsroman about a young orphan protege of an abortionist & orphanage director in the 1930s/1940s, and I just can't handle the un-sign-posted graphicness. Irving doesn't seem to revel in it, to his credit, but it's far too much for me. (The observation that finally made me put the book down, which isn't a spoiler but maybe shouldn't be in plain sight given my reaction, is a pregnant women dies from a stabbing; the fetus was nearly at term and could have been delivered but it bled out, and teenage Homer is asked to do an autopsy as part of his off-the-books medical training: "Homer Wells borrowed Doctor Larch's sternum sheers before he realized that a pair of heavy scissors was all he needed to open the fetus's sternum. He cut straight up the middle" -- and I silenced the audiobook to squirm and decide to go find some YA fantasy.)

45. Empire of Wild: A Novel
Cherie Dimaline
2021.10.15 / ★★½ / review

Also abandoned, this one about two-thirds through the 300 page book. A Canadian Métis woman's beloved husband goes missing walking the trap lines after a fight, and she's distraught -- until she accidentally comes across someone who looks exactly like him who is a reverend in a traveling revival. Then she starts trying to bring the pieces together.

I loved the backdrop, the rich characters (especially Zeus), the Métis flavor, and what the author was doing artistically with the rougarou (North American French werewolf) and land rights and Christianity and mental illness parallels. Intellectually, it has everything I like in my fiction. But I found myself struggling to actually pick up the book to read more, which I chalk up to a mismatch between what it delivers and what my tastes are. I found the tone too dark, message too transparent, and magical realism too large of a dash for me.

I also started Benediction by Kent Haruf, but got only 1 chapter in. Haruf writes so beautifully but it's oh so depressing -- definitely not one for me right now. The first paragraph sets the tone:

When the test came back the nurse called them into the examination room and when the doctor entered the room he just looked at them and asked them to sit down. They could tell by the look on his face where matters stood.

The slice of life focus for Benediction is very clear, and I think I'll go pick up something else. Top of my list right now? The second book in Philip Pullman's 2017 revisit to His Dark Materials, and Naomi Novik's most recent book in the Scholomance universe. Maybe the whimsy I apparently needed in my Halloween seasonal fare will show up there....

You've had some stinkers lately! I hate that when it happens! Here's to some better reading.

>154 pammab: Just catching up with your thread and your review of Antisocial caught my eye. Looks really interesting and relevant to the current times.

>169 Tess_W: I definitely chose a set of books a bit more out of my groove because I had so many near-perfect reads in a row -- and I'm willing to say now that it wasn't just my reading attitude that had me thinking that set were all so great. Onto less depressing fare, I say!

>170 mathgirl40: Antisocial was very well done. I would definitely read more by Andrew Marantz (though it seems like all his work is exactly on the theme of "social media intersected politics is bad", so I'm not sure there's that much more to read?)

46. The Last Graduate
Naomi Novik
2021.10.17 / ★★★★★ / review

The second book in a delightful series in which wizard kids enter a boarding high school that kills three-fourths of them within four years, which is still much better than their odds outside.

Great worldbuilding, character voices, plot and hole avoidance, and adult themes of politics and the naming of the dynamics of privilege that made the first book especially thoughtful. Our narrator gains a few more friends and her teenage unreliability becomes a bit more noticeable, and it's just fun to spend more times in this place, with this point-of-view, and with a well-plotted adventure. I suspect nothing will compare to my first encounter with this Scholomance universe, but Novik knows how to write, and this is a perfect installment. Devoured in a weekend.

>172 pammab: My library hold just came in, and I am really looking forward to reading it!

>173 christina_reads: I'm glad you get The Last Graduate soon and enjoy it just as much! Part of me wishes I'd taken more time reading it, and the other part says "nope, embrace it while you can" (hah).

47. The Secret Commonwealth
Phillip Pullman
2021.10.26 / ★★ / review

Abandoned Pullman's The Secret Commonwealth, which is the second in a post-His-Dark-Materials trilogy, about 60% through. I found La Belle Sauvage, the first book in the reboot, to have excellent pacing and storytelling, but this one never caught my attention. I think part of my lack of engagement is that Pullman's teenagers/young adults are too "bad kid" for me, part is that I don't like the narrator, part is that the plot goes multiple directions and feels contrived, and part is that Pullman seems to be deliberately trying to use a 20-year-old Lyra to comment on the world he put together in HDM and especially its reception & controversy, but he doesn't seem to have much to actually say about it. I don't think I'm the target audience for this one.

48. You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit
James K. A. Smith
2021.11.08 / ★★½ / review

Our habits of doing form our habits of mind, and habits are more powerful than we give them credit for. Unfortunately most spaces and narratives we interact with reinforce secular values. Worse, religious spaces, in an attempt to be "relevant", have reformed themselves to fit into the secular narratives that people are comfortable with. We should ask people to engage in the same practices, iconography, and liturgy week after week -- especially those practices that have stood the test of time, and which are centered on God rather than on our experience of God.

I'm quite torn on this book. It became gradually apparent that its intended audience is practicing evangelicals who eschew Christian tradition. Personally I think the thesis is clever, correct and well-argued -- probably because of some pre-existing biases in my viewpoint. But I only got the slightest bit more out of reading the entire book than I got from reading a few review paragraphs about it before picking it up. And though I'm trying not to hold it against the book, the reliance on teleology gave me flashbacks to reading Robert Pirsig as an undiscerning young teenager, and the aw-shucks-I'm-just-a-downhome-boy(who-can-smoothly-quote-Pascal-and-Augustine-and-bell-hooks) vibe of the audiobook narration seemed disingenuous at best.

I'd strongly recommend a Cliff's Notes version of this book, but it's hard for me to recommend the whole work.

49. Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century
Charles King
2021.11.27 / ★★½ / review

The story of the founding of anthropology as we know it today.

I really appreciated the impression from this book that even though Franz Boas founded what is today a powerful school of thought, to everyone else in his world, he looked very aimless. His rich father paid to send him abroad because otherwise there'd be nothing on his resume, that kind of thing. I don't know whether to read a children's book narrative into this -- that if you just persist in following your dreams you'll be successful -- or whether to read a story of inherent unworthiness of anthropology as a field -- or whether to read a story of accidentally stumbling into inspiring a new view of reality -- or something else entirely.

Abandoned regardless, because I found it much too dry, academic, and interpersonal for a world I'm unfamiliar with, despite the book's exciting title. (I also found I was more interested in Margaret Mead than Franz Boas, and she doesn't appear in the beginning because she's an inheritor of his rather than a peer -- not something I'd realized when I picked up the book). I'm thinking this is primarily a history for people who are already interested in the early days of anthropology.

50. The Elephant Chaser's Daughter
Shilpa Raj
2021.12.04 / ★★★★½ / review

Born within the Dalit (untouchable) caste in extremely poor rural India, Shilpa Raj only narrowly avoided being abandoned in the dung heap at birth. At age 4, she is sent by her father, against her mother's desperate wishes, to a residential school run by an American philanthropist in Tamil Nadu. The school promises it will change her family's fate by educating its children through college entirely for free and then helping them attain good(-paying) jobs. For the families, everything but room, board, and clothing is intangible. Raj returns home for school vacations, but otherwise spends the next 14 years receiving an American-style international education in India. By school policy, her two younger siblings are not allowed to attend; they remain in the village. Raj's younger sister especially seems to chafe against her lack of future, and her lack of familial status from being youngest and female, before she dies mysteriously as a teenager caught up with the wrong crowd. Raj wrote this memoir from that school immediately after graduating high school, before starting college to become a journalist, reflecting on her history and interviewing both her family of origin and her school community.

It's an impressive memoir, most especially from someone not yet 20 years old. Raj doesn't seem to hold back; she opens a vein and bleeds on the page. Her own story -- and the story of all the other students she tells -- are very powerful, and very well written.

The vast, vast majority of the book focuses on her relationship with her family, which was surprising and fascinating to me. I was expecting much more of a focus and analysis of her relationship with the school, which changed her life so extraordinarily and which seems to have left her struggling to "fit" outside that context -- neither in her village nor in college among the rich students. In retrospect, I completely understand her focus. Her school identity seems to be her identity as of writing this book. The questions that are problematic for her and that take up her headspace are around how her family fits into her self-image and values and identity. Her shaping childhood school experiences are (to her) entirely unremarkable. This is as it should be, though I'm immensely curious if she'll have a different perspective once she's into middle age.

As an outsider, I am engaged particularly in the role of the school's founder and philanthropist. An American of Indian heritage, he made large amounts of money in the US, and then decided to quit his job and start a school to educate the poorest of the poor and change lives, family by family, in a decades-long project. This is simultaneously one of the most inspiring stories I've ever heard, and also one of the most ethically fraught. He frames the children as family, and quickly and effectively used them to bust a strike among school staff, who were also very poor and the families of students. His American values are in tension with the values of the community he hires from (one beloved teacher is fired the day he learns she engages in corporal punishment). The school teaches "universal" values like honesty, rather than any individual religion, and it doesn't seem to interrogate what it means to be teaching the religion of capitalism. Certainly "you'll get a good education" is means less about education than "your original class markers will be washed away and you'll leave prepared to be perceived as a higher social class, leaving you a class traitor to your previous life"; this isn't unlike the purpose of American college, even in its hesitancy to actually call that dynamic out explicitly. I also find the ethical implications of indoctrinating small children into the burden of "raising up one's family" rather fraught. But even so... even so... he has done a truly amazing thing. These children, especially the girls, who otherwise would have very few prospects now have choices. That is an incredibly powerful, and a worthwhile project to devote one's final decades.

This book offers an entertaining story and potentially a lot of space for personal reflection. It's very well-written, and the audiobook is well-narrated. Recommended to anyone interested in education, class, poverty, gender, inequality, culture, castes in India, or ethics.

51. Betty Crocker's Vegetarian Cooking
Betty Crocker Editors
2021.12.03 / ★★ / review

The Betty Crocker editors seem to be aiming for a meat-eating American audience who trusts the Betty Crocker already on their shelf, is curious about the idea of vegetarianism, and is overwhelmed by all the other resources for doing that exploration. Perhaps this is unsurprising, in retrospect.

At about 200 one-recipe-per-page-at-best pages, this cookbook is so thin compared to most Betty Crockers that I suspect it's mostly lifting meatless recipes from existing content. The recipes are extremely American, if a bit more international in flavor than the 1970s Betty Crockers. For me as an actual vegetarian, the recommendations for what kind of meat to add to dishes is disconcerting. This book also doesn't have the "core skills" content that I'd turn to Betty Crocker to actually help with, like what are the various ways to prepare an egg, or how are all the ways you can make frosting. It's not a terrible cookbook (lots of nice pictures and recipes aren't half bad), but I'm also not its target audience.

52. Any Way the Wind Blows
Rainbow Rowell
2021.12.06 / ★★★ / review

The third in a trilogy about the ex-Chosen One and his friends from a magical boarding school after their defeat of the Big Bad. The A plot focuses on a new possible Chosen One, and the B plot focuses on the Chosen One's ex finding herself.

The more this series becomes an actual story with characters and plots I'm supposed to care about, the more its fanfiction stylistics grate on me. The strength of fanfiction is on commenting through narrative on source texts and genres, and the first book in this series was outstanding at that, effectively and humorously taking on the whole idea of Chosen One stories. The second two books have established the world and characters, though, which means they're just books. So this is just a book that jumps between half a dozen POVs, explores hackneyed relationship stresses, plays a lot and winks at multiple forms of queerness, and is scraping the bottom of the barrel for catchwords-as-magic-phrases. The lack of any wider commentary means our boon for all those writing & thematic weaknesses is just yet-another-weak-YA-book.

>179 pammab: Both we and my in-laws have the same Betty Crocker cookbook (the big red one), but different editions, and it's interesting to compare how the recipes were updated for our version (which is newer).

What I really like in a cookbook is when every recipe is photographed, not just some of them. The Company's Coming series was generally very good about that.

>181 rabbitprincess: I have one vintage cookbook with recipes for aspic. I doubt those get included today…

I like photographs too! For me, it is especially for stages of a basic technique I have never done before, like what should bread or biscuits or roast look like at each stage. The final product isn’t as useful to me, though it is often enticing….

53. How To Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk
Adele Farber
2021.12.16 / ★★★★½ / review

A self-help classic full of useful nuggets (albeit pretty chatty). More worthwhile than I'd expected for all kinds of communication, though, even though it's been 40 years and two or even three generations have been exposed to these lessons.

54. A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking
T. Kingfisher
2021.12.26 / ★★★★ / review

Mona is a fourteen-year-old with a magical affinity for dough. Her ability to convince dough to behave the way she wants is a boon in the family bakery where she works, even though it's a very minor magical power. She's living a quiet life... until she find a dead body. Then she enters the crosshairs of a powerful person.

A delightful fantasy about a girl swept up in political intrigue. It doesn't shy away from the strangeness of the trope about children saving the day for the adults, and it's full of delicious humor and baking references. A really fun read!

55. Staff Engineer: Leadership beyond the management track
Will Larson
2021.12.27 / ★★★★ / review

A solid book (possibly the first or only?) about what it means to be a senior leader who sets direction and carries substantial latitude and responsibility, while being in a non-management role for software-first organizations. There's a bit in here about managing folks in this "staff plus" engineering role, but it mostly synthesizes the experiences of people who are actually doing these roles -- including an admirable and useful number of voices from people in demographics underrepresented in the field. The book articulates best practices and a technical leadership "how-to" that mirrors all the management track support books that exist. It doesn't say much that is surprising, but the normalization of experiences, especially minority experiences, makes it worth reading for its target audience (the very small subset of folks considering/in/managing this particular role).

NB: The book is self-published and almost all of the content is also available on Larson's blog. Proceeds from book sales fund increased access for underrepresented communities in technology.

Oops, I forgot one because I started it a year ago -- it was so far back in my library I missed it!

---



56. Mord im Santa-Express
Jan Beinßen
2021.12.24 / ★★★½ / review

On the Intercity Express on Christmas Eve, a passenger dies. It seems like just a heart attack... but one of the first responders has some doubts. Jumping between a blossoming love story and the story behind the death, this story transports us across Germany with a short and accessible mystery.

This story took me a year to read, but I finished it -- on Christmas Eve no less! I'm not sure how much was the language barrier and how much was not being all that invested in the characters. Certainly the author does a good job of giving them distinct POV voices, though -- most especially the snack cart minder, who is a bit slow.

I'm glad to have finally finished this one, because "something in German" has been on my challenge for two years now. :)

And that's 2021! I finished a bit more than one book each week, and not even one of them was terrible. I achieved my challenge over the summer, and got 92% of my target BINGO squares (I lost out on Gabriel Garcia-Marquez and a very old book from my shelves -- I had my eye on Byatt's Possession, but again I couldn't get more than 10 pages into it). This, I must say, was a most excellent year. I'd have rather spent more time visiting others' threads -- I had some high months but more low months -- so I'll have to think if I can incorporate that into next year's challenge.

★★★★★
My best reads of 2021 were....

1. Afro-Vegan by Bryant Terry -- a beautiful and tasty cook's cookbook

23. A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik -- a clever fantasy of a magic school that wants to kill its students
46. The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik -- second in that series

27. Manacled by senlinyu -- dark but beyond excellent shining example of Harry Potter fanfiction

31. Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik -- long-form fairy tale, gorgeous & thoughtful

32. The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler -- disturbingly prescient near-future sci-fi

37. Antisocial by Andrew Marantz -- nonfiction about how the world of social media is devastatingly broken

And the completed card (and tracking post with details):


Happy 2022 to you!

Woo hoo, a great reading year! And I think I'm going to have to request A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking from the library sooner rather than later.

Congratulations on a good reading year.

>188 rabbitprincess:
>189 hailelib:
Thank you!