book group

Jun. 28th, 2025 12:10 pm
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I hosted book group last Sunday and I'm only just feeling recovered today. We read How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community, by Mia Birdsong, which is a very timely book about weaving the web of connections that we all need to survive the current omnidisaster. Eight people showed up at my house!

I made broccoli & tofu with peanut sauce, a tomato-lentil dish, spiced nuts (sweet and not sweet), and served salad, bread, cheese and crackers. My friend Karen made mojitos.

I also had door prizes: a stack of books. Six of them went home with someone.

pics )
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I just hated The Berry Pickers, the first book I finished this year. It has a good topic: A very young Canadian First Nations child is stolen by a white woman who wants a child, and the next fifty years are narrated in alternate chapters by the stolen child and her brother. I appreciated the author's choice to make the kidnapper parents ordinary people who did their best to be good parents; it makes it clear that stealing a child is a monstrous act that damages everyone it affects, even if you don't pile more child abuse on top.

But the writing is just sentimental and dull. It doesn't deserve to be hated. I should have just put it down when I realized it wasn't for me. But this is for book group. I refused to read the books this member chose in previous years, which were also sentimental, melodramatic, and dull novels about worthy topics, so I had made up my mind I was going to push through and finish this time. Mistake.


The other book I'm reading is a delight:
The baby plant root has forty-eight hours after it decides to emerge to locate water and nutrients, and then push out a leaf or two and begin photosynthesizing, before it runs out of resources and dies. The first green parts of any plant are folded preassembled and waiting inside the seed. This preassembled plantlet bears little resemblance to the plant itself; it consists of one or two cartoonish green lobes on a short green stem, the manifestation of the plant emoji, and it is entirely temporary.
From The Light Eaters, by Zoe Schlanger.
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I just read Not Lost (Never Lost), a moving short story by Premee Mohamed: https://psychopomp.com/not-lost-never-lost/

I'm in the middle of The Light Eaters, a good book about plant intelligence by Zoe Schlanger, and Free Love, a novel by Tessa Hadley, which are both due back to the library but I'm not willing to relinquish them and pick them back up after someone else has had a turn yet, even though

I have A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn,
How to Read Now, by Elaine Castillo,
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, by Lisa See,
The Berry Pickers, by Amanda Peters,
Kings of the Wyld, by Nicholas Eames,
and Self-Made Boys, by Anna-Marie McLemore
all on deck for book groups this month.
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https://www.haymarketbooks.org/blogs/517-ten-free-ebooks-for-getting-free

Haymarket Books is offering free ebooks, until Dec 5:

Freedom Is a Constant Struggle
by Angela Y. Davis


Hope in the Dark
by Rebecca Solnit


How We Get Free
Edited by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor


Class Struggle Unionism
by Joe Burns


Elite Capture
by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò


Socialism . . . Seriously
by Danny Katch


Let This Radicalize You
by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba


Unbuild Walls
by Silky Shah


The Black Antifascist Tradition
by Jeanelle K. Hope and Bill V. Mullen


Palestine in a World on Fire
by Katherine Natanel and Ilan Pappé
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Now I know what Matilda's face looks like when she has been scolded.

warning for shredded book, wincing dog )
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Forget your madeleines; nothing summons the remembrance of things past like an old book.
I freecycled this large, beautiful bookcase with deep shelves, and started unpacking boxes of picture books. Now I am welling over with nostalgia. Mixed feelings mostly joyful, except when I look at all this treasure and think about not having grandchildren to share it with.

bookcase )
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University of Chicago Press's free e-book of the month:

Men without Maps
Some Gay Males of the Generation before Stonewall
John Ibson

In Men without Maps, John Ibson uncovers the experiences of men after World War II who had same-sex desires but few affirmative models of how to build identities and relationships. Though heterosexual men had plenty of cultural maps—provided by nearly every engine of social and popular culture—gay men mostly lacked such guides in the years before parades, organizations, and publications for queer persons. Surveying the years from shortly before the war up to the gay rights movement of the late 1960s and early ’70s, Ibson considers male couples, who balanced domestic contentment with exterior repression, as well as single men, whose solitary lives illuminate unexplored aspects of the queer experience. Men without Maps shows how, in spite of the obstacles they faced, midcentury gay men found ways to assemble their lives and senses of self at a time of limited acceptance.


Go to https://press.uchicago.edu/books/freeEbook.html and give them an email address to get a link to download the book.
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How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, by Jason F. Stanley

This book is not about how fascism works when it is in power, it is about how fascism works on your relatives and neighbors (who don't think of themselves as Nazis) in order to attain power.

Suppose you know that racism is bad, and you are not bad, so you are not racist. But there is something making you uneasy about seeing a Black man in the presidency. It definitely isn't racism. It definitely, definitely isn't. But there's *something* wrong with this picture.

Because the audience for conspiracy theories readily discount their own experience, it is often unimportant that the conspiracy theories are demonstrably false[....] The idea that President Obama is secretly a Muslim pretending to be a Christian in order to overthrow the U.S. government makes rational sense of the irrational feeling of threat many white people had upon his ascension to the presidency. (p.65-66)


Suddenly the consensus reality, that "birtherism" was cooked up by Republican 2016 presidential campaign operatives, to get out ahead of the fact that John McCain was born in Panama, seems less persuasive than the idea that President Obama was born in Kenya, and his birth certificate, the hospital record, the newspaper archives, his baby photos, his family, their neighbors, are all part of a conspiracy. How did they know that *this* baby would grow up to be the Democratic candidate for President? Or are there thousands of Manchurian Candidate babies being seeded all over America every year? Wait, how does being born in Kenya turn a baby into a Kenyan Muslim terrorist anyway? Why didn't being born in Panama turn John McCain into a corrupt Latin American communist drug dealer? You don't know! You don't need to know!

It's a little book, with ten little chapters on The Mythic Past, Propaganda, Anti-Intellectual, Unreality, Hierarchy, Victimhood, Law and Order, Sexual Anxiety, Sodom and Gomorrah, and Arbeit Macht Frei.

Why the sudden mania for laws attacking trans women and children? From the chapter on Sexual Anxiety:
Highlighting supposed threats to the ability of men to protect their women and children solves a difficult political problem for fascist politicians. In liberal democracy, a politician who explicitly attacks freedom and equality will not garner much support. The politics of sexual anxiety is a way to get around this issue, in the name of safety; it is a way to attack and undermine the ideals of liberal democracy without being seen as explicitly so doing. (p.138)

preorders

Apr. 27th, 2023 11:16 am
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Barnes & Noble is having a 25% off sale on preorders online through tomorrow, April 28. I heard about it from Malka Older, whose The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles can be preordered now.

What else am I going to want?
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From Verso Books:

Download Andreas Malm's How to Blow Up a Pipeline for free, along with all our other free ebooks, before April 27th.

https://www.versobooks.com/products/2649-how-to-blow-up-a-pipeline

How to Blow Up a Pipeline—the film inspired by Andreas Malm's book of the same name—released this month, with rave reviews across the UK and US press.

In a response to the film's release, Andreas Malm told the Guardian that he has not "a shred of hope" that climate diplomacy will avert catastrophic climate change.

"If we let the dominant classes take care of this problem, they’re going to drive at top speed into absolute inferno," Malm said. "Nothing suggests that they have any capacity of doing anything else of their own accord because of how enmeshed they are with the process of capital accumulation".

To mark the film's release, we have made How to Blow Up a Pipeline free to download, alongside a number of other ebooks (including books from Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Franco Berardi). See all the free ebooks here!

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/80-off-ebook-sale

Please note: the 100% discount will be applied after you add the ebook to your cart.
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I'm falling in love with Michelle Obama's mother, Marian Robinson.
Once, when I was in high school, and unhappy about having to deal with a math teacher who struck me as arrogant, my mom heard my complaint, nodded understandingly, and then shrugged. "You don't have to like your teacher, and she doesn't have to like you," she said. "But she's got math in her head that you need in yours, so maybe you should just go to school and get the math." She looked at me then and smiled, as if this should be the simplest thing in the world to grasp. "You can come home to be liked," she said. "We will always like you here."

--Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry
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Tawanda bookgroup: "Before We Were Yours" by Lisa Wingate. Not interested in the book but I do care about the group.
SF bookgroup: Swamp Thing vol. 1: Saga of the Swamp Thing by Alan Moore. I do want to read this, and talk about it with my group, but there is a virtual Roeper School reunion the same night. SF bookgroup is also voting on picks for next year. I'll have to send in my votes early.
Classics bookgroup: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, by Italo Calvino. Excited about book and discussion!

My library stopped charging overdue fines during lockdown. They haven't reinstated fines, but they just reduced the number of times you can renew a book from six to three. This is putting some gentle pressure on my tendency to hoard books but... yeah not making much progress there yet.

The right to sex : feminism in the twenty-first century / Amia Srinivasan.
Ten steps to Nanette / Hannah Gadsby.
Tarot for change : using the cards for self-care, acceptance, and growth / Jessica Dore ; illustrations by Xaviera López.
Rosaline Palmer takes the cake / Alexis Hall.
The Suicide squad [DVD] / Warner Bros. Pictures presents ; produced by Charles Roven, Peter Safran ; directed and written by James Gunn.
Young civil rights heroes / by Allan Zullo.
Tell me I'm worthless / Alison Rumfitt.
Yellowjackets. Season one [DVD] /
The last wild horses : a novel / Maja Lunde ; translated from the Norwegian by Diane Oatley.
Don't worry darling [DVD] /
How fascism works : the politics of us and them / Jason Stanley.
Reader, come home : the reading brain in a digital world / Maryanne Wolf ; illustrated by Catherine Stoodley.
Range : why generalists triumph in a specialized world / David Epstein.
The light we carry : overcoming in uncertain times / Michelle Obama.
Just like home / Sarah Gailey.
Letters to my weird sisters / Joanne Limburg.
Zentangle untangled : inspiration and prompts for meditative drawing / Kass Hall.
Mod Podge rocks! : decoupage your world / Amy Anderson.
Paris Daillencourt is about to crumble / Alexis Hall.
Ordinary monsters / J.M. Miro.
Walking in two worlds / Wab Kinew
Diary of a young naturalist / Dara McAnulty.
Nature's best hope : a new approach to conservation that starts in your yard / Douglas W. Tallamy.
Golem girl : a memoir / Riva Lehrer.
Shattered / Dick Francis.
The Whalebone Theatre / Joanna Quinn.
Paper collage workshop / Samuel Price.

Only the first three are overdue!

I don't even want to talk about how many books I bought last month.
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SF bookgroup: Unity, by Elly Bangs
Classics bookgroup: "The Price of Salt" by Patricia Highsmith.
Tawanda bookgroup: The mountains sing, by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
Christmas present: Dickens and Prince, by Nick Hornby
1001 books challenge: Wise Children, by Angela Carter

and everything I have checked out from the library:

Reader, come home : the reading brain in a digital world / Maryanne Wolf ; illustrated by Catherine Stoodley.
Ducks : two years in the oil sands / Kate Beaton.
The bullet that missed / Richard Osman.
Everything is ok / Debbie Tung
Flying solo : a novel / Linda Holmes.
The right to sex : feminism in the twenty-first century / Amia Srinivasan.
The mountains sing : a novel / Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai.
The island / Adrian McKinty.
Zentangle untangled : inspiration and prompts for meditative drawing / Kass Hall.
Year of the tiger : an activist's life / Alice Wong.
Mod Podge rocks! : decoupage your world / Amy Anderson.
To the chapel perilous
Ten steps to Nanette / Hannah Gadsby.
Ghost story / Peter Straub.
Face / Joma West.
Easy beauty : a memoir / Chloé Cooper Jones.
Olga dies dreaming / Xochitl Gonzalez.
Paper collage workshop / Samuel Price.
Into the riverlands / Nghi Vo.
Walking in two worlds / Wab Kinew
Carol / Patricia Highsmith.
The conjure-man dies : a mystery tale of dark Harlem / Rudolph Fisher ; edited, with an introduction by Leslie S. Klinger.
Rosaline Palmer takes the cake / Alexis Hall.
Philosophy illustrated : forty-two thought experiments to broaden your mind / edited and illustrated by Helen De Cruz.
Winter counts : a novel / David Heska Wanbli Weiden.
Everything below the waist : why health care needs a feminist revolution / Jennifer Block.
On earth we're briefly gorgeous : a novel / Ocean Vuong.
My three dads : patriarchy on the Great Plains / Jessa Crispin.
A marvellous light / Freya Marske.

(No, that is too many battles. Put some of those back.)
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There's a lot of violence and threat of violence in this book, which I hadn't osmosed from its reputation. The narrative doesn't dwell on it, but it is always there, in the background. As little girls, there is a lot that Lena and Lila don't understand about the dangers around them, so they make up stories that make sense to them.

I love this depiction of friendship that is as important as familial or romantic love. Lena and Lila may go on to love other people, but this formative relationship shapes who they are, and who they can be to other people.

Someone at book group said, about the jealousy and cruelty the girls sometimes showed each other, "I don't mean to be sexist, but that's how women's friendships are, aren't they? You love her so much, you would do anything for her, as long as she isn't better than you." I puzzled over the implication that men love it when their friends outdo them. Then I realized that she wasn't contrasting women's friendships with men's friendships, she was contrasting how women are with how women are supposed to be. Women are always supposed to put other people's interests first. A woman who grasps at something for herself is a bad woman.

Well, Lena and Lila aren't bad or good, they're just fully-rounded humans.
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I got this idea from [personal profile] rachelmanija. Here are two pictures of my most random bookshelf. Do you have any opinions, recommendations, questions about any of them? Comment below!

bookshelf pics )
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Book Lovers, by Emily Henry

The one thing I cannot do without, if I'm going to believe the author's claim that two characters are falling in love, is that they make each other laugh. The protagonist of this novel is named Nora, after Nora Ephron, and I took that as a promise that she and her love-interest would make each other laugh a lot. And they do.

The obstacles keeping the lovers apart are real, and believable. None of them depend on Stupid Failure to Communicate.

Nora's sister, on the other hand, keeps secrets in a way that does not seem plausible, given her personality, their relationship, and human nature; and reveals them in a time and manner that serves only to add maximum drama to the plot. Twice!


I got my flu shot and my bivalent Covid booster today, and I am very sore, so maybe I will spend tomorrow in bed with books. I have four overdue library books, plus four book groups this month: Nightbitch, by Rachel Yoder, for SF bookgroup; The Duchess of Malfi, by John Webster, for classics bookgroup; World of Wonders: In Praise Of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, And Other Astonishments, by Aimee Nezhukumatathil, for Tawanda bookgroup; and On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, by Ocean Vuong, for library bookgroup.


Right now I am reading Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky. So good! I do not know what is more delicious than seeing two people from different cultures, each doing their best to communicate clearly, and each interpreting the other's communication in a way that makes sense in their own culture, but is not what the other person meant.

baggage

Jul. 2nd, 2022 01:59 pm
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When I moved out of my husband's house I didn't take most of my books with me; my new house was going to need a lot of work to be habitable, so it didn't make sense to fill it up with heavy bookcases.

Most of them are here now, but they are still trickling in, a box at a time, as I make space for them. I didn't sort them and pack them, so it's always a surprise, usually a pleasant one. Today I got a box of relationship books.

I have one bookcase for what I think of as "interpersonal": psychology, parenting, teaching. Miss Manners is there too. The bottom shelf is half-empty, but this box has too many books to fit on it. So I should weed them, right?

I don't want to. Just looking at the covers is making me remember the time when I read all those books, when I was trying to be in a relationship. I don't want to crack those covers and let the memory of misery back out, in this new house that belongs to me alone.

I read the other books in that bookcase at the same time-- trying to be happy, trying to be a good parent, trying to do the work-- but they don't carry the same feelings. I could read through any of them and decide whether I wanted to keep it.

I don't want to consign the whole box to Little Free Libraries unlooked-at. I do want to look through them... later.
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I read this for book group, and I shouldn't have. I don't want to read fiction about the pandemic that we are still in, especially not where the pandemic is used as the engine of a romance novel.

The pandemic traps successful career-minded New Yorker Diana O'Toole in a tropical island vacation, away from her #relationshipgoals rich white handsome kind doctor boyfriend, who loves her completely, whose life plan matches hers like left and right hands, and who is "steady. Like...white noise."

spoiler )

Also, using fake Yoko Ono to establish just how brilliant Diana's pre-pandemic prospects were is gross.
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My library twin's holds this week are
The Souls of Black Folk, by W.E.B. duBois
A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn
The Deficit Myth, by Stephanie Kelton
The Candy House, by Jennifer Egan
The Intersectional Environmentalist: How to Dismantle Systems of Oppression to Protect People + Planet, by Leah Thomas

her holds )
I love her. We should be friends. I do not know whether she feels the same way about me: My holds this week were Red Moon, by Kim Stanley Robinson, and the movie Free Guy.

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