Taking a short break from Feminist January to bring you an inauguration-related book: Hope Never Dies, “an Obama-Biden Mystery” by Andrew Shaffer. I read this right before the inauguration, but I hesitated to write or post until we knew that everything had gone smoothly. If you’re looking for a little comic relief, you should absolutely … Continue reading Book Review: Hope Never Dies
For the second book of my feminism theme month, I read Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby. It feels a bit like cheating to read something so fun and count it toward a serious theme, but, hey, there is some real stuff about gender roles and expectations about women’s bodies. If you’ve read any … Continue reading Book Review: Wow, No Thank You
The first book in my feminist January is Talking from 9 to 5: How Women's and Men's Conversational Styles Affect Who Gets Heard, Who Gets Credit, and What Gets Done at Work by Deborah Tannen, Ph.D. This book came out in 1994 and has been on my shelf for ages--not quite since 1994, but for … Continue reading I Feel Seen: Dr. Deborah Tannen’s Talking from 9 to 5
This book-haul stack doesn't have a theme at all--just a random selection of books from my pre-Christmas buying spree. I picked up Scandals of Classic Hollywood after enjoying another book by Anne Helen Petersen last year. I'm always looking for funny memoirs, so I bought Sandra Loh's Depth Takes a Holiday and Over the Top … Continue reading Book Haul: A Miscellany
The title sums it up well: The Arsenic Century: How Victorian Britain was Poisoned at Home, Work, & Play by James C. Whorton. We all know about issues with lead poisoning, whether in water pipes, paint, or from industrial processes, and I had read about the problems with exposure to phosphorus in match production and … Continue reading First Book of 2021: All About Arsenic
Before Christmas, I bought several grab-bag/mystery book bundles from various bookstores and Etsy shops. A few were major disappointments--I do not recommend the Half-Price Books grab bags--but I wound up with several awesome choices, including the ones in this photo. It's obviously a gamble, but kind of fun to see what booksellers pick within certain … Continue reading Grab-Bag Book Haul
The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror by Daniel Lavery* is a collection of short stories that are, loosely, retellings of fairy tales, myths, and religious stories, but not quite in the way you might think. Lavery uses the old stories as jumping-off points but transforms them, mixes them with other stories, and gives them … Continue reading Book Review: The Merry Spinster
I've never tried rolling around in my books, but I love organizing them and planning my reading almost as much as the actual reading. In December, I completely reorganized my books by theme, so the system pretty much only makes sense to me. But I'm using this physical organization to plan my 2021 reading. I'm … Continue reading 2021 Reading Plans!
I started this blog mid-year, so it doesn't capture all of my 2020 reading. As I'm sure is true for most people, it was a weird year reading-wise. Some months I read a ton, and in other months I couldn't read at all. Despite that, I wound up reading 64 books--not quite my goal of … Continue reading 2020 Wrap-Up
I don't usually read holiday-themed books around Christmas, but I think this year I was looking for plenty of comfort reads and found those in books with a Christmas-y theme. The final two I read were Royal Holiday by Jasmine Guillory and Murder on a Midnight Clear by Sara Rosett. Reading Royal Holiday is like … Continue reading Two Last Christmas Reads
