Space Station Mir

Bookish (And Not So Bookish) Thoughts are hosted at Bookishly Boisterous ! 1. We bought a house! Taking care of the paperwork and scheduling and now packing has been a second job, although, imo, not as stressful as planning a wedding! So glad we waited a year after the wedding to do this. 2. Packing my books is an ongoing saga. I reduced my collection from approximately 700 to approximately 400 three years ago, and yet, it seems they've been reproducing! So far, I'm at 17 boxes with two and a third bookcases (of four) packed... 3. I'm not even counting my cookbooks, which got packed (generously, by my parents) with kitchen stuff. 4. Let me know if anybody wants these! I found the Dummies book helpful for understanding basics; I think the 100 Questions book would be useful for anyone who hasn't bought a home in several years, although of course, each market is individual, so for example, the negotiating advice isn't very helpful in a sellers' market! ...

I've had some wonderful bookish adventures lately! A family friend was downsizing her collection... I browsed the aisles at Barnes & Noble with birthday gift cards... and I absconded to the library for a lunch hour or two this week.

Just Finished: We Are Okay by Nina LaCour The cover art perfectly encapsulates the claustrophobic college dorm room, gradually overlooking the lonely seascape of the life Marin left behind. This poetic gem of a YA book lives up to all the hype though it reads more like The Writing Life by Annie Dillard than The Hunger Games , and its raw emotions are all the more poignant for being gentle. America Is Not the Heart by Elaine Castillo Although set mostly in the United States, the Philippines are the heart of this novel, and how the Filipino-American characters relate to each other, their homeland, and other Filipinos in America. It's refreshing to read an "immigrant" novel that showcases the immigrants' cultures and isn't about fitting in with Americans at all. There are Pangasinese, Ilocanos, manilenos, not to mention religious and ideological differences. At least this book mentions enough ethnic dishes, from pancit to pinakbet to sisig, to feed t...

Just Finished: FINALLY finished the audiobook. And...I'm still conflicted. There is so much here that's intellectually interesting. But also, the narrator and all the characters except maybe one are terrible people. I mean, straight up murderers and torturers terrible. And characters are usually what I care about most. Instead, what's compelling about this book is the worldbuilding, the politics, economics, religion (or lack thereof), professed gender neutrality, philosophy, and obsession with the 18th century. However, even though the central concept of their societies are being future versions of the 18th century Enlightenment, what stood out to me most were the clever similarities to Thomas More's Utopia , perhaps because I'm a student of the 16th century Renaissance. Anyway, still deciding if I want to read the next book or not. I finally read it! I have no excuses. It was just as good as everyone said.  Jemisin did some interesting experimenting with t...

Currently Reading: I've been listening to this audiobook for about three weeks, and I've still got 5 discs left of 17. It's a tome, to say the least. I've got complicated feelings about this Enlightenment-centered future heterotopia (a term I learned from my class on utopian sf in grad school that feels most appropriate; essentially future utopias and dystopias coexist). It feels ostentatiously performative yet satisfyingly intellectual. It's got, at current count: an "18th century" preface, an unreliable narrator, Latin, literal Utopians, Masons, living toys, economic and political intrigue, and shifting gender pronouns and racial/ideological markers. The gender pronouns are the most deliberately performative and distracting element, far more noticeable than the consistent "she's" in Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch books or the nonbinary pronouns ("xyr" "they") in Becky Chambers' Galactic Commons books. It doesn...

Book Review: Would You Rather? A Memoir of Growing Up and Coming Out by Katie Heaney * Released March 6, 2018 from Penguin Random House * Katie Heaney's second memoir expands on a "bigger truth" following her first memoir, Never Have I Ever , about never getting the guy at twenty-five. Three years later, she is happily dating her first girlfriend. Although each chapter tells a self-contained story regarding Heaney's unexpected epiphany, they build on each other and are best read in order. Heaney's writing is structured, funny, and wordy in an endearing way, like your best friend who can't wait to spill (and micro-analyze) every detail. She's undoubtedly a millenial, and references to Twitter, Instagram, and being sucked down internet rabbit holes will be familiar to readers of her generation. Heaney's late-blooming revelation isn't the answer for single girls everywhere, as she's quick to point out, but it paints an alternative narrative...

I would have no problem being a human father. Being a human mother, on the other hand, is much more complicated. Science fiction, however, offers some inspiration, and after I finished reading Becky Chambers' Galactic Commons books, The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet and A Closed and Common Orbit, I   realized--I want to be an alien mother. I’ve long been impressed by the parenting solutions of science fiction. For example, the group marriage parenting in Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land , or the village parenting model in Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time . However, Heinlein’s solution problematically had only women doing the parenting, which, although it freed up some of the women to pursue careers, is marginally superior to today’s model of childcare for those who can afford it. Piercy’s solution has long seemed the most elegant to me. Get rid of women’s unique biological ability to bear children, and--voila!--goodbye gendered inequality overall, and inequali...

Just Finished: Song Yet Sung by James McBride I listened to this on audiobook, and I'm glad I did because of the atmospheric accompanying music. I've read McBride's two best-known books, The Color of Water and The Good Lord Bird , both of which I loved, especially the latter. I didn't like Song Yet Sung quite as much, mostly because it is just extremely hard to live up to  The Good Lord Bird, but I do think it's an important read for a portrait of the psychology of slavery from surprisingly diverse viewpoints. Not only are the two primary main characters, Liz and Amber, African American slaves, but there's also some viewpoints from white slaveowners and slavecatchers, and the book has a surprising amount of sympathy for them. Another interesting point for me, and others, is that the book takes place on Maryland's Eastern Shore, a mere "80 miles from freedom." Characters imagine they can see Philadelphia on a good day. It's a very particu...