I reread a lot of books this year. Nice to bury myself in the comfort of a favorite tale. I wrote a few essays at the beginning of the year, an exercise in can-do spirit more than anything. I highly recommend #14, #74, and #154.
The Raven Spell - Luanne G. Smith. A book about magic and memories that I downloaded to have something to read while waiting in line before and after my C-19 booster shot. Not horrible, not great.
Yellow Bird - Sierra Crane Murdoch. Oil, Murder, and a Woman's Search for Justice in Indian Country. Heavy, sometimes depressing. Really well written though.
The Constant Rabbit - Jasper Fforde. His latest. Not sure my brain is up for untwisting the satirical jabs at British politicians, though the bit on libraries is very funny.
How to Prune Fruit Trees, Twentieth Edition - R. Sanford Martin. Originally written in the 1940s, it has that hilarity factor of over-long sentences, as well as decent advice.
My Life, My Love, My Legacy - Coretta Scott King (w/ Dr. Barbara Reynolds). Good. Not as helpful on the one story I was researching, but good.
Embody Disruption - Cyclista Zine # 5. Book club pick for Feb. Also full of good shit
The Sound of Stevie Wonder - James E. Perone. Words, music, stories. And some musical critiques that are too wordy.
Cats of the Louvre - Taiyo Matsumoto. An odd graphic novel about cats and people who can walk in (and sometimes out) of paintings. Had way more potential than I think it achieved.
Grave Reservations - Cherie Priest. Funny. Cuter than her usual.
Coming Back - Jessi Zabarsky. An adorable graphic novel about finding your place.
Data Science for Dummies - Lillian Pierson. Learning is cool.
An Embarrassment of Witches - Sophia Goldstein and Jenn Jordan. A cute graphic novel about magic.
Solutions and Other Problems - Allie Brosh. Sometimes funny, sometimes cringy.
The Parker Inheritance - Varian Johnson. A book set in the south with Black protagonists inspired by The Westing Game, what’s not to like?
Becoming a Data Head - Alex Gutman & Jordan Goldmeier. Learning rocks.
When You Reach Me - Rebecca Stead. Supposed to be a response/inspired by Madeleine L’Engel’s book A Wrinkle in Time. Not bad, though I figured out the mystery in the first 3 chapters.
One Last Stop - Casey McQuiston. A friend gave it to me. At first, I thought it was just boring, but around pg 100 one of the characters is discovered to have not aged in over 45 years and is never seen outside of a subway train. So it has that going for it.
Appelhof, M. (1982) Worms Eat My Garbage: How to Set Up and Maintain a Worm Composting System. Kalamazoo, MI: Flower Press. (reread)
Atha, A. (2000) The Container Kitchen Garden. London: Collins & Brown; New York: Distributed in the United States and Canada by Sterling Pub.
Ellis, B. and F.M. Bradley. (1996). The Organic Gardener’s Handbook of Natural Insect and Disease Control. Emmaus, PA: Rodale Press.
“Guide to Raised Garden Beds: Plans, Timing, Tending: Gardener's Supply.” Www.gardeners.com, Gardener's Supply, https://www.gardeners.com/how-to/raised-bed-basics/8565.html.
Gutierrez, A. G. and M. Gray. (2017) Potted: Make Your Own Stylish Garden Containers. Portland, OR: Timber Press.
Harmonious Technologies. (1992). Backyard Composting: Your Complete Guide to Recycling Yard Clippings. Ojai, CA: Harmonious Press.
Lamp’l, Joe. “Raised Bed Garden from A - Z: What to Know: Joe Gardener®.” Joe Gardener® | Organic Gardening Like a Pro, 5 Nov. 2021, https://joegardener.com/podcast/raised-bed-gardening-pt-1/.
McSheehy, Jill. “Raised Bed Gardening for Beginners.” The Beginner's Garden, 30 Sept. 2021, https://journeywithjill.net/raised-bed-gardening-for-beginners/.
Nolan, T. (2020) Gardening Your Front Yard: Projects and Ideas for Big and Small Spaces. Beverly, MA: The Quarto Group.
Obama, M. (2012) American grown: the story of the White House kitchen garden and gardens across America. New York: Crown Publishers.
Peirce, P. (1993). Golden Gate Gardening. Davis, CA: agAccess.
Singh, D. J., & Davidson, J. (2014). Beginner's Guide to Raised Bed Gardening: Gardening Tips and Techniques on Organic Raised Bed Gardening. JD-Biz Corp Publishing.
Sunset. (1995) Sunset Western Garden Book. Menlo Park, CA: Sunset Publishing Corporation. (reread)
Williams, F. (2017). The Nature Fix. New York: W.W. Norton Company.
Strange Piece of Paradise - Terri Jentz. A first-hand account from a woman who was attacked while bike camping and maimed with an ax in the 1970s and her search for more information about the unsolved police case.
The Malhoa Connection - Estelle Ryan. Fifteenth in the series.
Bored and Brilliant - Manoush Zomorodi. How spacing out can unlock your most creative and productive self.
Heart Sick - Chelsea Cain. billed as a great thriller full of suspense. So far is just weird and violent.
Catch Me When I’m Falling - Cheryl Head. Third in the series.
Brown, J. J., & Wong, J. J. (2017, June 6). How gratitude changes you and your brain. Greater Good. https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_gratitude_changes_you_and_your_brain
Francis, Neil. (2019). Positive Thinking: How to create a world full of possibilities. LID Publishing.
Graham, L. (2018) Resilience Novato, CA: New World Library.
Hasson, G. (2019). Positive Thinking Pocketbook. John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Kogan, N. (2022, February 18). 3 simple strategies that boost your mental fitness and well-being. Fast Company.https://www.fastcompany.com/90721718/3-simple-strategies-that-boost-your-mental-fitness-and-well-being
Oettingen, G. (2014). Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation New York: Current.
Peele, N. V. (1952) The Power of Positive Thinking. New York: Touchstone.
Peiffer, V. (2012) Positive Thinking: Everything you have always known about positive thinking but were afraid to put into practice. HarperCollins Publishers.
Schrader, J. (2016, October 16). Feelings aren't facts. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/emotional-fitness/201310/feelings-aren-t-facts
Schultz, K. (2019, April 19). What is spoon theory? Healthline. https://www.healthline.com/health/spoon-theory-chronic-illness-explained-like-never-before#1
Seligman, M. (2011) Flourish A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being. New York: Free Press.
Van der Kolk, B. (2014) The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. New York, New York: Viking. (reread)
Samaritan - Estelle Ryan. First in a new series from her. Follows the life of an investigative reporter who just happens to be black and transgender.
Across the Green Grass Fields - Seanan McGuire. Sixth in the series
Steal Like an Artist - Austin Kleon. Reread
Time Management for the Creative Person. Reread
From Chaos to Creativity - Jessie Kwak. reread
The Writing Life - Annie Dillard. Reread
My Spiritual Journey - The Dalai Lama. reread
You Are a Badass - Jen Sincero. Reread
The Painted Word: A Treasure Chest of Remarkable Words and Their Origins - Phil Cousineau reread
Unfuck Your Brain & Unfuck Your Body - by Faith G Harper. Rereads
Statistics for Business Decision Making and Analysis - Robert Stine and Dean Foster. For a class.
Faerie After - Janni Lee Simner. Third in the series.
Walk With Me - Kate Clifford Larson. A biography of Fannie Lou Hamer. I had to return it to the library before I finished it.
The Circus Infinite - Khan Wong. Queer/Ace sci-fi tale of weird powers and found family. Moves too slowly for me.
The Crystal Bible - Judy Hall. reread
Practical Magic - Nikki Van de Car. A beginner’s guide to crystals, horoscopes, psychics, and spells.
Geology - Jan Zalasiewicz. A very short introduction.
Simplified Mineral Identification - Neil Fahy.
Minerals and Gemstones - David Cook and Wendy Kirk.
The Divination Handbook - Liz Dean. A modern seer’s guide to using tarot, crystals, and more.
Love Magic - Anastasia Greywolf. A handbook of spells, charms, and potions.
Crystal Muse - Heather Askinose and Timmi Jandro. Everyday rituals to tune into the real you.
Gems and Crystals - George Harlow. From the collection of the AMNH.
The House Witch - Arin Murphy-Hiscock. Rituals and spells for the hearth and home.
The Curious Lore of Precious Stones - George Frederick Kunz. found it on Project Gutenberg.
Fresh Banana Leaves - Jessica Hernandez. Healing Indigenous landscapes through Indigenous science. Really good.
Reaching for the Moon - Katherine Johnson. An autobiography for middle grades.
The Liar’s Dictionary - Eley Williams. Word nerd heaven. I love it!
AMA Manual of Style, 11th edition. Actually reading it, not just consulting. Learning is fun!
TCAR manual. One of the manuals I am editing and indexing for work. Whee!
The Peacekeeper - B.L. Blanchard. North America was never colonized. Detective/murder mystery story from an Indigenous point of view. Reading it as an ebook, I’d like it on paper to better access the glossary.
Tahira in Bloom - Farah Heron. A teenage, Canadian-Muslim fashion designer goes on a summer adventure.
When She Returned - Lucinda Barry. A weird novel about a woman who joins a cult and returns after eleven years.
The Quarter Storm - Veronica G. Henry. A New Orleans voudon detective novel.
Felonious Monk - William Kotzwinkle. A monk with anger management issues on a rampage against drug cartels.
My Evil Mother - Margaret Atwood. An odd novella.
Queen of the Conquered - Kacen Callender. Well written. The story moved too slowly for me. Didn’t finish
Creative Nonfiction # 77. Really liked the essay by Laura Pritchert
The Library Book - Susan Orlean. Nonfiction about the burning of the Central Los Angeles Public Library in 1986. I don’t remember hearing about it, but at 16 my thoughts would’ve run to “yeah, the whole fucking world is burning, who cares?” Enjoying learning about it now.
Noir Is the New Black - Fabrice Sapolsky ed. Noir comics written drawn & colored by Black artists. All good. None of them are long enough.
Are You Listening? - Tillie Walden. Good. Not what I expected, but good
I Hate This Place #1 - Kyle Starks & Artyom Toplin. Picked it up at Books With Pictures, a cool kid-friendly, queer bookshop here in Portland. Yay, comics!
Giant Days vol 13 - John Alison & Max Sarin. It has been too long. I must find at least vol 12 and reread it. I have no idea what is going on.
The Closet #1 - James Tynion & Gavin Fullerton. Ok. Don’t know if I’ll continue this one.
Mending Life - Nina & Sonya Montenegro. A handbook for repairing clothes and hearts. Recommended by a friend. Even better than I thought it would be.
Ordinary Monsters - J.M. Miro. Really good. I wanted to live inside it.
To March for Others: The Black Freedom Struggle and the United Farm Workers - Lauren Araiza. Five separate differently organized Black organizations and how they formed solidarity with the Latino-focused UFW. Easy to read. Lots to think about.
Some regular blogs with essays a/o links to articles that I read from 2-3 times per week
Book Riot Libraries
Literary Hub
Words without Borders
Publication Coach
Some articles I read as part of data science class
Learning how to learn - Barbara Oakley
Tips from neuroscience to keep you focused on hard tasks - David Badre in Nature
Brains sweep themselves clean of toxins during sleep - Jon Hamilton for NPR
Cleaning Big Data - Gil Press in Forbes
Dealing with Missing Data - Marina Soley-Bori
Tapping Your Anxiety Away - Lydia Long. a blog post
Nightcrawling - Leila Mottley. An eloquent novel set in Oakland not far from where I used to live.
Rule 53 - Andy Austin. An artist who liked drawing people and wound up talking her way into the press box in a Chicago court and then getting hired. Mostly her own memories supplemented by the court transcripts. Her drawings are lovely.
How Not To Kill Yourself - Set Sytes. Reread
SKY Index User’s Guide - Kamm Schreiner. I seriously love my job.
Blackout - Erin Flanagan. Got it as a free ebook. Too much alcohol, and paranoia for my taste, but well written.
Legends and Lattes - Travis Baldree. Exactly the amount of well-written fluff I needed!!!
Embers on the Wind - Lisa William Rosenberg. Weird ebook I got for free. Ghosts, abolitionists, intertwined lives. A nice distraction
Cities of Magick vol 1&2 - Will Tempest, Jakob Free. The story is eh. The colors run a nice palette, but make some of the art hard to see clearly. Nice imaginative details and fiddly bits
The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream - Dean Jobb. The hunt for a Victorian-era serial killer.
The Last Lie Told - Debra Webb. Another free ebook I downloaded to read while waiting for things to happen.
Hedge Witch - Silver Ravenwolf. An ebook I downloaded after a conversation I had. Reading is the easiest way to know more things
What Ho Automata - Chris Dolley. A goofy spoof of the Holmes/Watson tales
Lady Joker - Kaoru Takamura. It got good reviews so I got it from the library. Could not get into it.
In the Dark - Loreth Anne White. Closed room mystery Akin to Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians
A Kitchen Witch’s Cookbook - Patricia Telesco. Lots of cultural appropriation here, but some of the recipes are pretty decent.
The Family She Never Met - Caridad Scordato. A woman raised by her father’s Italian family in New York travels to Maimi to meet her mother’s rich Cuban relations for the first time. Too heterosexual
Beneath Devil’s Bridge - Loreth Ann White. Another free ebook to get me through waiting. It had a decent twist toward the end.
No One Is Coming To Save Us - Stephanie Powell Watts. A library book I pulled off the shelf because the title was how I was feeling that day. The writing is good.
The Juicing Recipies Book - Mendocino Press. I’ve never been great at eating my veggies, and this book is part of my renewed effort to drink them.
The Water Dancer - Ta-Nehisi Coates. Nice to have his prose in a fictional story
Axolotl - Jose Cortazar. Lovely short story
What's the Furthest Place From Here? - Tyler Boss & Matthew Rosenberg. A strange post-apocalyptic graphic novel where kids live in territorial gangs and disappear when they become adults.
The Man From the Train - Bill James. True crime novel. The timeline jumps all over. There are a lot of names.
A Journey to Freedom - Kent Blansett. Richard Oakes, Alcatraz, and the Red Power Movement
Women in the Shadows - Ann Bannon. Some lesbian pulp fiction to pass the time away
DIE vol 1 (reread) & vol 2 - Kieren Gillan & Stephanie Hans. DnD graphic novel
The Book of Bugs - The best writing about insects, arachnids, and other arthropods from Orion magazine. Because bugs.
The Great Passage - Shion Miura. Yet another novel about making dictionaries. This one is cool because I am learning Japanese words for things.
Too Loud Too Bright Too Fast Too Tight - Sharon Heller. What to do if you are sensory defensive in an overstimulating world
The Witch Elm - Tana French. Slow start. I keep wishing something would happen. I’m only continuing because the author has such a good reputation
Queen & Country vol 1 - Greg Rucka et al. Reread
The Sky Is Yours - Chandler Klang Smith. Fun world. I wish I actually liked the characters.
Camouflage - Dr. Sarah Bargiela & Sophie Standing. The hidden lives of autistic women.
Agent Josephine - Damien Lewis. A true tale of Josephine Baker as a spy for the Allies during WWII.
To Say Nothing of the Dog - Connie Willis. Reread
Fungipedia - Lawrence Millman. A brief compendium of mushroom lore. Not very technical.
The Memory Librarian - Janelle Monae. Her facility with words is a pleasure to revel in. It has Fahrenheit 451 vibes.
Keeper of Enchanted Rooms - Charlie N. Holmberg. Haunted house adventure
The Stroke of Winter - Wendy Webb. A free ebook. Are the plots of all horror novels this obvious? Or did I win the jackpot? Why are there so many chapters?
The Long Way Home - Karen McQuestion. A free ebook. Still waiting to see if I like any of the characters.
The Gaugain Connection - Estelle Ryan. Reread
One of Those Faces - Elle Grawl. A free ebook. Pretty awful
Stumptown v. 1-4 - Greg Rucka et al. Reread
The Forest Lover - Susan Vreeland. Reread
The Dante Connection - Estelle Ryan. reread.
Art Matters - Neil Gaiman and Chris Riddell. Reread.
Gathering Mosses - Robin Wall Kimmerer. Awesome bryology essays
Mosses of the Northern Forest - Jerry Jenkins. A photographic guide. New obsessions are fun to learn about!
The Braque Connection - Estelle Ryan. Reread
Belonging - bell hooks. A culture of place. Had to read it with a pencil to underline the bits that resonate.
Check Please! Vol 1 - Ngozi Ukazu. Reread
Check Please! Vol 2 Sticks & Scones - Ngozi Ukazu. The stunning sequel
We Lie Here - Rachel Howzell Hall. A free ebook. The characters all say they love each other and then do things that show the opposite. I don’t like it.
Not Wanted on the Voyage - Timothy Findley. Reread. Best when it is pouring rain.
- Autism FAQ - Joe Biel & Faith Harper. I helped crowdfund it. I both want to devour it, and I’m finding it hard to read.
American Sirens - Ken Hazzard. The incredible story of the Black men who became America’s first paramedics. Read it.
HeartStopper - Alice Oseman. A sweet story set at an all-boys school
No comments:
Post a Comment