Animals do weird stuff! LOTS of weird stuff. Zombie Birds, Astronaut Fish, and Other Weird Animals by Becky Crew is a collection of short descriptions of some of the world's weirdest animals, from spiders that create a diving bell out of their own webbing to male anglerfish that latch onto and merge into female anglerfish … Continue reading Freaky Animal Stuff
This is my last package of books for a while (or at least that's what I'm telling myself). I picked up some new mysteries and the new Samantha Irby book. I think I'm going to do a buddy read of Hood Feminism with a friend soon. All of these came from Black Pearl Books in … Continue reading The Big Haul
I thought The Minotaur: Sir Arthur Evans and the Archaeology of the Minoan Myth by Joseph MacGillivray would be a nice nonfiction companion to The King Must Die (a retelling of the myth of Theseus) and it was, once the author got us to Knossos. The author is an archaeologist specializing in Crete, so I … Continue reading The Real Minotaur…ok, maybe not
What I'm loving on the internet this week: Analyses of celebrity bookshelves seen on video conferences. Royals/British politicians, mostly Americans, and more mostly Americans. More of this, please. Vanity Fair's interview with the multi-talented Nicole Byer, who has a new book out. The Paris Review's article on Fanny Fern, a mid-1800s newspaper columnist who wrote … Continue reading Friday Fun Links
One of the Reading Women 2020 Challenge prompts is to read AND watch a book-to-movie adaptation. I had a hard time finding a book for this because I had already read (or watched) many of the good choices, but also because I don't necessarily look for the same things in books and movies. I settled … Continue reading The Eternal Book vs. Movie Question
More incoming books, this time from indie bookstores--The Book Nook, Blue Willow Bookshop, and The Bookshelf. I'm so excited about the new Kevin Kwan book, Sex and Vanity, because it's a retelling of one of my very favorite books, A Room with a View by E.M. Forster. Yes, No, Maybe So is a rom-com about … Continue reading Small Haul, Indie Edition
I found Zahrah the Windseeker by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu in looking for a book for the "Afrofuturism" prompt for the Reading Women 2020 Challenge. I had a hard time finding something I wanted to read for this prompt because futurism of any kind is not my usual fare, and almost everything I saw involved a dystopian … Continue reading I’d Like Some Social Spice
What I'm loving on the internet this week: Taco Bell Quarterly, a new literary magazine. Bizarre, inventive, delightful. I can't resist a reading list. One positive outcome of the coronavirus is that some festivals are going online, which makes them far more accessible. Watch the 2020 JASNA Jane Austen Festival on YouTube. Fiona the Hippo … Continue reading Friday Fun Links
Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise of the Unruly Woman by Anne Helen Petersen looks at reactions to ten "unruly" women, including Serena Williams, Melissa McCarthy, Madonna, Nicki Minaj, Caitlin Jenner, and Jennifer Weiner. For the first couple of chapters, I wondered what I was getting out of this--I'm already pretty familiar with … Continue reading Review: Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud
I have had this reading nook in the works for maybe a year and finally finished it by getting a lamp and a recycled-stump side table! I'm looking forward to having a place to read that isn't the couch (i.e., away from the TV) or bed. Where do you like to read?
