This was an interesting reading year for me. I read less than I have in the past couple of years, probably in part due to the easing of pandemic limitations and the return of busyness that came with it. But I also seemed to hit the distracted malaise this year that many described having earlier … Continue reading 2022 Reading List
Speculative Fiction
But They’re Not Really People—Clones and Artificial Friends, Oh My!
It seems to be a perennial question but one focused on a future we anticipate and aren't sure yet what to do with: what is humanity's ethical obligation to the consciousnesses we make? We see this question in the replicants of Blade Runner to the clones of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go to the … Continue reading But They’re Not Really People—Clones and Artificial Friends, Oh My!
‘The Midnight Library’ is Low-Key Cli-Fi
Matt Haig's The Midnight Library scratches a lot of itches—speculative fiction, reckoning with life choices, learning how to human. But amongst those threads, I propose that The Midnight Library functions as low-key cli-fi, a.k.a. "climate fiction," a narrative exploring the impacts of global warming. *barely spoilery spoilers for The Midnight Library and mild content warning … Continue reading ‘The Midnight Library’ is Low-Key Cli-Fi
Notions, January 2021 Edition
This is the time of year I realize just how much dark time we still have to go. Work is busy. The outside is dark and dreary. And I mostly want to just curl up with a book. Alas. While we wait for spring, here are some of the fun, interesting, and/or gorgeous things I've … Continue reading Notions, January 2021 Edition
2020 Reading List – The Final
In one of the two holiday movies I watch without fail, It's a Wonderful Life, lead character George Bailey is a man who has always resented his meagre, small town life until he gets a chance to see what said town would have been like if he'd never been born. George discovers that he actually … Continue reading 2020 Reading List – The Final
The Wheelhouse Project – New Addition! – Tantalizing Taste Books
I know I promised some hot Jane Austen content. I planned for this focus because I'm currently working my way through a history of five female abstract impressionist painters that, while mesmerizing, is a 700-page beast of a book. But last weekend I took a break from the behemoth because a slim, YA fantasy needed … Continue reading The Wheelhouse Project – New Addition! – Tantalizing Taste Books
Notions, Of Memory and Forgetting
I spent my 21st birthday at a casino in Wendover, NV with my mother; my father's oldest friend, who had been Best Man at my by then-divorced parents' wedding; and a Catholic priest. I ordered a gin martini because I loved the glasses. It came in a cortado glass, however, filled with probably the worst … Continue reading Notions, Of Memory and Forgetting
Notions, the How is it October?!?! edition
When I was in Scotland a few years ago, I started to notice that "sticky toffee pudding" was on the dessert menu of every restaurant I went to, from the most basic of pubs to hipster joints elevating classic Scottish comfort foods. It began to feel like the de facto dessert of Scotland. So on … Continue reading Notions, the How is it October?!?! edition
Beyond Dystopia
A woman revisits the detention center where she and other Muslim/Arab-Americans were interned to retrieve her dead brother's property in Omar El Akkad's "Riverbed." A contemporary bruja carves out a new society with her lover in Mexico, one where brainwashed American soldiers may find respite from the atrocities they've committed, in Lizz Huerta's "The Wall." … Continue reading Beyond Dystopia
On Being a Credulous Reader
As a young person, I read virtually everything by Kurt Vonnegut and I took it completely at face value that in Slaughterhouse-Five Billy Pilgrim had come unstuck in time. I accepted that he toggled between periods in his life, including his time as the male half of a human pair in a zoo on the … Continue reading On Being a Credulous Reader
Dogs, Coffee, & Books 