Currently reading: White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo πŸ“š

Finished reading: The Mermaid, the Witch and the Sea by Maggie Tokuda-Hall πŸ“šAnother one that I quit reading, it just wasn’t doing it for me.

Currently reading: The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea by Maggie Tokuda-Hall πŸ“š

Finished reading: The Guest Book by Sarah Blake πŸ“š I loved this book. It’s a good story, with interesting and unexpected plot twists. It’s also a fine history of the changing role of (admittedly, white well-to-do) women over the past 100 years.

Currently reading: A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker πŸ“š

Currently reading: Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader’s Guide to a More Tranquil Mind by Alan Jacobs πŸ“š

Currently reading: Ulysses by James Joyce πŸ“š

Finished reading: David Copperfield by Charles Dickens πŸ“š

Finished reading: Inland by Tea Obreht πŸ“š I didn’t love it, mostly because I liked none of the characters, except perhaps Burke the camel.

Currently reading: The Guest Book by Sarah Blake πŸ“š

Currently reading: David Copperfield by Charles Dickens πŸ“š

Finished reading: Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand πŸ“šA cracking good read. Interesting insights into the world my parents grew up in - 1930s and 1940s America (they had nothing to do with horses!).

Currently reading: Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand πŸ“š

Currently reading: Inland by TΓ©a Obreht πŸ“š

Finished reading: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel πŸ“š Turns out this is a novel about surviving a pandemic, one which kills 99% of the world’s population. The tension is that I think the author believes the world would be a better place. It is good storytelling.

Finished reading: 2666 by Roberto BolaΓ±o πŸ“š Ugh. The book is made up of five smaller books. I was quite interested by the first three books, thought-provoking tales which made me consider the nature of reality. But book 4 is horrific, to the point of being sick. Is this a novel about the awfulness of men? Perhaps.

Currently reading: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel πŸ“š

Currently reading: 2666 by Roberto BolaΓ±o πŸ“š

Finished reading: Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan πŸ“šA fascinating, thought-provoking, and beautifully written novel. Highly recommended, especially for all of us techies here. There’s an interesting alternative history subtext: “what if Turing hadn’t been essentially murdered by the uptight Brits?”

Finished reading: Balm in Gilead: Journey of a Healer by Sara Lawrence Lightfoot πŸ“š Definitely worth reading. The story of a black woman, the only one in her class at Cornell in the 1930s, who goes on to medical school and becomes a renowned child psychiatrist. Useful perspective both from her daughter (the author of this book) and herself about living while Black in America. We have wasted so much energy on racism and prejudice in this country. You can see it in the energy her white male bosses put into thwarting her, and of course the energy she has to waste on being allowed to do the work she is so good at.

Currently reading: Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan πŸ“š

Currently reading: Balm in Gilead: Journey of a Healer by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot πŸ“š

Stopped reading: Bone Rattler: A Mystery of Colonial America by Eliot Pattison πŸ“š Started and stopped in the same night. Read the first 30 pages, skipped to the last 10, said “Nope I don’t want to read this.”

Finished reading: Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin πŸ“šAnd Nabokov as translator redeems himself in my eyes with his excellent notes. Now I need to find a version in verse in English.

Finished reading: Gertrude and Claudius by John Updike πŸ“š