Complete Amnesty

For various reasons, I took a pretty extensive social media vacation, and then coming back seemed really hard. So I am just pretending that nothing happened and I am starting from scratch. 

This week I'm getting ready for Thanksgiving and doing a lot of Cybils Reading. 

Started

I'm counting everything I'm reading as "Started". And I'm reading so many things! Lots of things for the Cybils, and I haven't really finished anything for months, so everything is still on my currently reading shelf. Don't judge me.

Leviathan: The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier, Jack Campbell. Technically a reread but I had completely forgotten everything. 

Fridays With the Wizards, Jessica Day George. I'm on a Reading-My-Library quest at my second library, Renton Highlands, and this is from the children's audio section.

Primary Inversion, Catherine Asaro. I got this audio on Chirp, and I listen to it for ten minutes each night to bribe me to clean the kitchen. It's a reread -- I prefer my audios to be rereads.

Earth Clock: History of Our Planet in 24 Hours, Tom Jackson. Cybils nominee.

Attention Hijacked: Using Mindfulness to Reclaim Your Brain From Tech, Erica B. Marcus. Cybils nominee.

The Race of the Century: The Battle to Break the Four Minute Mile, Neal Bascomb. Cybils nominee.

Four Streets and a Square: A History of Manhattan and the New York Idea, Marc Aronson. Cybils nominee.

Wild Life!: A Look at Nature's Odd Ducks, Underfrogs, and Other At-Risk Creatures, Re:wild. Cybils nominee.

What's the T: The Guide to All Things Trans And/Or Nonbinary, Juno Dawson. Cybils nominee.

Crash From Outer Space: Unraveling the Mysteries of Flying Saucers, Alien Beings, and Roswell, Candace Fleming. Cybils nominee. 

Funky Fungi: 30 Activities For Exploring Molds, Mushrooms, Lichens and More, Alisha Gabriel. Cybils nominee.

American Murderer, Gail Jarrow. Cybils nominee.  

White Fragility (Adapted For Young Adults): Why Understanding Racism Can Be So Hard For White People, Toni Graves Williamson. Cybils nominee.

Be the Change: Making a Difference in a Messed-Up World, Rob Greenfield. Cybils nominee. 

You Are More Than Magic: The Black and Brown Girls' Guide to Finding Your Voice, Minda Harts. Cybils nominee.

Detector Dogs, Dynamite Dolphins, and More Animals With Super Sensory Powers, Cara Giaimo. Cybils nominee. 

Still Stace: My Gay Christian Coming-of-Age Story, Stacy Chomiak. Cybils nominee.

Completed

Earth Clock: History of Our Planet in 24 Hours, Tom Jackson. Cool idea -- big book, huge spreads, as you walk through the history of the earth using a 24 hour clock as the unit of time from the start until the present. It was competently but not spectacularly executed. The big problem of course is that the most of the day happens before life even appears, and then stuff like mammals/humanity happen in the last couple of seconds. I was hoping to see some cool stuff down helping me navigate the clock, but it just ciked along and it was hard to tell the difference. The illustrations were OK but not great, a bit muted. The spread of information was fine but rarely excited me.

Attention Hijacked: Using Mindfulness to Reclaim Your Brain From Tech, Erica B. Marcus. I really liked this. It's sorta a self-help book, but without starting from the idea that you need to fix a problem. It's about mindfulness -- noticing what you are doing, knowing your values and goals, and checking to see if those two aspects of your life are in balance. And the author has noticed that technology has a way of creeping past its usefulness, and so has looked into ways to maintain boundaries. But she's just as keen to use technology to help with her goals, so alongside the bits on how to pull back are ways to lean in. I'm a little worried about how it reads to actual teens, who might be reluctant to hear any adult cautions on phone use as anything other than negative.. 

The Race of the Century: The Battle to Break the Four Minute Mile, Neal Bascomb. This is a suspenseful retelling of last years before the magic barrier of a "four minute mile" was broken. Magic because it was always a very artificial wall, based around a silly measurement. But Bascomb is good at building the suspense, making the three front runners he picks real and showing their anxiety and ambition. Where it fell short a bit was really making me care about it. These guys made up the contest and then worried about who would win it. It doesn't seem very important to me, and I didn't like the men enough to want them to get it on their own. The English guy seemed hard-working and dedicated, but also kind of squirrelly; he was all into pacing and not really a true competitor. The American was very blustery; I sympathized with him but thought he was better off without the whole racing industry. I liked the Australian but not enough to care whether he got a meaningly award. So I needed more of a hook to get onto the ride -- while I was reading it was exciting, but I was never drawn to pick it up. It's would be good for track fans and people already invested. 

Crash From Outer Space: Unraveling the Mysteries of Flying Saucers, Alien Beings, and Roswell, Candace Fleming. I had a lot of fun with this book, which also does a great job of demonstrating skeptical techniques as well as curiosity. It follows the information as the public knew it and has good pictures (only black and white -- I did wish for some color) to break up the text a bit. It really shows why some people wanted to believe, and how many of them weren't wrong to do so, as well as when some people were persuaded too easily because they wanted to believe. The final conclusion is pretty clear that Roswell probably didn't have aliens crash into a farmer's land, but there are still flying objects that no one can identify. 

Leviathan: The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier, Jack Campbell. I have no memory of this, but this time around I enjoyed it a lot, partly because I recently read the start of the next arc and this filled in a lot of stuff. I have a real fondness for Black Jack, and the way he deals with the legend he became while he was out of touch. The computer controlled fleet he is up against is a good way to highlight this -- it's programmed to be him, so to defeat it he has to understand how the programmers understood him and then beat that version of himself. And the politician Victoria shows up and is awesome as always. Her Crowning Moment of Awesome was quite moving, and Tanya's reaction to seeing it is priceless. The feeling of dang, now I have to respect her is great. Campbell's characters aren't very emotional, but I like that. They are super professional, in the way that people who don't manage that like to believe is impossible. And it's not, it's just really hard. 

American Murderer, Gail Jarrow. Jarrow again writes a gripping history of a medical disaster. In this case, HOOKWORMS! I now look back at my barefoot days in Texas with a sense of horror averted. I guess sanitation in my neighborhood was good. I liked how she traced the discovery of the symptoms, the cause, and the transmission, and how she showed both the good side of Stiles -- he was dogged, smart, insightful and dedicated to dealing with the problem that he helped uncover. He was the guy who figured out the worms were in American, and that we had a second species involved. But he was also arrogant and tactless, refusing to change his methods even when they didn't work -- telling doctors they didn't know something was a hard sell, and backing it up with references to ignorance and stupidity was not persuasive. The efforts of the Rockefeller foundation are followed, along with an understanding of where the money came from and what it did and didn't accomplish. I really enjoyed learning all this stuff.  

Wild Life!: A Look at Nature's Odd Ducks, Underfrogs, and Other At-Risk Creatures, Re:wild. Lots of great pictures of animals, and info about their level of precariousness, along with what is being done for them, mostly with Re:Wilds' help. I was annoyed that sometimes the pages got out of sync, so that instead of a two page spread on the left and right, one would be three pages and then for a while I'd have to TURN THE PAGE to see the animal, until another three page creature came along and fixed things. They are sorted by continent, although I noticed that Hawaii counts as North American rather than Oceania. A good variety of animals -- mammals, bugs, fish, birds, big and small, and ranging from "least concern" to "probably extinct", and then each continent gets two profiles of people working with the organization. I also kept wishing that the fast facts listed for each included location.  

Bookmarks Moved (Or Languished) In:

So many more. Let me draw a curtain. 

Picture Books / Short Stories:

Let's save these for another post. 

Palate Cleansers

These books I'm barely reading; lately I use them as bribes to get me to deal with the mail. I've been ignoring my mail.

 

Dates From Hell, Kim Harrison & others. 

50 Great Poets, ed. Milton Crane (no picture). I like seeing how different people translated Horace and other Latin guys.

Stinger, Nancy Kress.  

Dragon's Breath, E.D. Baker. I think I've been brought up to speed (this is not the first book in this series)

You Can Write Children's Books, Tracey E. Dils. Picture books. 

Year of Wonder, Clemency Burton-Hill. I'm mostly keeping up with the present July selections. Mostly.

Reading Challenges

1. Cybils 2021: Not done.
2. Early Cybils:  Not done.
3. Reading My Library. My libraries have many shelves. 
4. Where Am I Reading 2022. Everything Blue was in Delaware!. 27/51. I've got 13 countries. 
5. Libraries: 44/55 for the Tacoma Extreme Challenge: Picked up 10-Fiction from 2022, 20-Refugee, 
   Finished Ancestral Night for KCLS 10 to Try.

Future Plans

I'm putting this at the end because I suspect it's complete fiction, but I feel I should attempt some structure.

I am reading: 

• Book I own: The Serpent in Heaven  
• Library Book: Stormsong  
• Ebook I own: Wine-Dark Sea  
• Library Ebook:  Jade Legacy
• Book Club Book: Six Wakes
• Tuesday Book Club Book: I Could Not Do Otherwise
• Hugo Book: She Who Became the Sun
• Review Book: Back Home 
• Rereading: Steerswoman 
• Meal Companion:
• Audio: Primary Inversion