Space Station Mir

 With all the Netflix watching I've been doing this summer and generally in quarantine, this should be my jam! In the past, I've probably spent more time critiquing movie adaptations and less thinking of new ones that might be mangled, but perhaps I should put my mind to adapting more books into shows, since I do think Netflix often does a pretty good job! 1. Your Perfect Year by Charlotte Lucas This one would fit well for the first season of a show--it's got two leading characters  and a mysterious connection between them that could definitely be played up. Plus, I loved finding out what the planner was going to have Jonathan do next! 2. The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi This one would be so much fun to see on screen. All of the heists have The   Italian Job and Ocean's Eleven vibes, and it's such a lusciously described alternate history/fantasy world. It would be a wonderful opportunity to showcase all the diverse actors they would need. Finally, there's a...

 Reading This Week (and Last) Last week, I finished The Stars and the Blackness Between Them by Junauda Petrus. My husband bought me it for my birthday since it was on my summer TBR and I'm glad he did! Audre, a girl from Trinidad, is sent to live with her father in Michigan after her mother catches her en flagrante with another girl from their church. Mabel, from Minneapolis, where Audre lands, becomes her lifeline in her new American world. The story is told from the viewpoint of both girls. Audre speaks in Trinidadian English Creole and Mabel in Black English. Honestly, it's the first book I've ever read written entirely in these dialects, and I love it. As a "standard American English" speaker (realizing that the standard part of that is a myth; it's just another dialect), it was easy to understand for the most part, but I did have fun looking up some words I either didn't know or that were used in an unfamiliar way. It was altogether a captivating, t...

 Reviewed is a strong word. I've mostly stopped doing formal book reviews except for author requests and/or when I feel like it, but I usually give some description and or opinions of books I'm reading, usually multiple times, through weekly and monthly wrap-ups. I do find that it' s more difficult to review my absolute favorite books than books I either disliked or engaged with strongly on an intellectual rather than emotional level. For example, I rarely review poetry beyond "I loved it'" or "Meh." It's much easier to explain criticism of vocabulary usage or a plot device than explain how the book felt like a snug little snow globe. So, for this Top Ten Tuesday , I'm listing books that I loved, didn't give a formal review, and (I think) didn't discuss too much.  Books I Loved But Never Reviewed A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers Tess of the Road by Rachel Hartman We Are Okay by Nina LaCour The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. J...

July was a productive reading month for me! I finished  Middlemarch , which I will definitely be reading again. Then, I read  Blink  for one of my book clubs. It isn't the type of book I would normally read, but it was interesting, even though the whole book was mainly illustrating Gladwell's two points about how instant decisions can be accurate if based in expertise but can also have dire consequences, like police shootings, if based in stereotype.  Giovanni's Room  is a book I've had on my physical TBR shelf for a while, and I decided to pick it up. It was totally not what I thought! It was my first James Baldwin book, and I know he was a Black gay man, so I was surprised that he's writing about two white gay men in the book. Or, well, they could be bi, since both have female lovers as well. It was a wonderful book though, highly recommend.  Your Perfect Year  was a fun, early #WIT read, and I'm excited to read a couple more #WIT books this month....