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....

Today's Top Ten Tuesday is a freebie topic, but I saw the Chocolate Lady doing book to movie adaptations, so I decided to list my favorite book to screen adaptations, which are often TV series. However, I won't get into the ones I hate, which my husband finds an endless source of amusement. Happy Top Ten Tuesday over at That Artsy Reader Girl ! My Favorite Book to Screen Adaptations The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society-Netflix's adaptation is quite true to the story, leaving out only some extraneous details and characters, and upping the gorgeous Guernsey scenery! Game of Thrones/A Song Ice and Fire-I know people are divided on this, especially since the book series isn't finished, but having read all of the books, I frankly thought the TV series was better and much less convoluted. The Witcher-I've only read one of the Witcher books, but I loved the Netflix adaptation and hope there's more. To All the Boys I've Loved Before-I LOVED ...

Reading This Week I finished So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo, which I bought from the Black-owned Mahogany Books in D.C. during the #BestsellerBlackout. Highly recommend as a helpful guidebook to racial issues in the United States. Chapters cover definitions of racism, intersectionality, privilege, police brutality, cultural appropriation, and more. I was familiar with the concepts, but Oluo explains them fully, illustrating with her lived experience as well as research. This is definitely the kind of book that makes me feel like I need to learn more though, kind of like bell hooks' Feminism is for Everybody. This week, I also got the third magazine that I subscribed to in a deal with magazines.com, Martha Stewart Living . I've never been a Martha Stewart fan (or hater), but it seemed like the kind of comforting content I would appreciate these days, and I was absolutely right. Plus, it has a surprising number of book recommendations! Watching This Week ...

I've had the good fortune to attend a lot of dream book festivals, namely the National Book Festival in DC, since I live so close, which always has an incredible lineup of headliners, even though it's gotten way more crowded in recent years! Sadly, I'm sure it will not take place this year. I'm also lucky enough to live close to the Baltimore Book Festival, which is always a fun local event with authors I love and lots of new local authors to meet and books to buy. If that weren't enough, I've also been spoiled enough to be close to the Gaithersburg Book Festival, which often draws some big names due to its proximity to the capital as well as lots of local organizations and booksellers. I lived in Boston when the first annual Boston Book Festival occurred, and I also got to attend the Chicago Humanities Festival when I lived there. I'd highly recommend all of those events and definitely want to attend them again, but I still do have some dream bookish events...

I've done a fair amount of reading this week, but, most exciting, I finished the first draft of my book yesterday! Reading This Week Finished Your Perfect Year by Charlotte Lucas. I got the ebook for free from Amazon on World Book Day. I got started on #WIT (Women in Translation) month a little early this year. This book is translated from German and takes place in Hamburg, and I really enjoyed it. The story centers around a pre-filled planner for a perfect year, discovered by a man named Jonathan, who finds himself drawn to following the events written out in the planner. Meanwhile, we also see the story of Hannah, whose place in the story gradually becomes clear. I love this idea of a pre-planned year and it's definitely a fun and thoughtful read.  This week, I also finally got a couple of new-to-me magazines that I subscribed to recently, Real Simple and Better Homes & Gardens. Although I probably wouldn't have had time for them in the pre-pandemic era, I real...