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What I read: May 2024




"Educated" by Tara Westover. Office book club selection for June, and one of my other colleagues who isn't in book club read it and found it good but harrowing. And my sister read it and said I'd like it. She made me cry, when her mother said "You were my child. I should have protected you." And then of course I was angry for the rest of the book. I hadn't realized when I started that her PhD is in history, that made so much of what I liked make sense (where she's presenting differing views in the footnotes, etc.) 

LHC #246: "For the Wolf" by Hannah Whitten. Hard copy because the TPL Overdrive site had 2 copies and 72 holds, so a wait of "at least six months". I found it sort of hard to read, something about the sentences and paragraphs didn't sit right. The characters' communication styles drove me crazy, maybe it was condoning toxic masculinity? Not the book for me I guess.

LHC #247: "The Women could Fly" by Megan Giddens. Audiobook because I needed something to knit to. Really good, highly recommended. 

LHC #248: "Customs: Poems" by Solmaz Sharif. Who knows why I put this on my list. I have discovered that the optimal way for me to read poetry is on a monitor that I can't reach, in the breaks between practicing my balancing. That way I have to read slowly and properly understand. 

LHC #249: "An Agent of Utopia" by Andy Duncan. Hard copy. Short stories. I read it mostly on the bus. People probably think I'm unhinged for laughing. 

LHC #250: "So you want to be a wizard" by Diane Duane. eBook. Another one I'm not the target audience for, and yet I feel like I knew someone once for whom this book was totally the jam. They had an obsession with lotuses, for example. 

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What I read -- October 2025

"The Moomins and the Great Flood" by Tove Jansson.  eBook. I read this because Marissa Lingen loves them. It was fine? This was the first one in the series and the only one available online; maybe the later ones are better. Maybe they're better if you read them as a child.  "The Relentless Moon" by Mary Robinette Kowal.  Hard copy. Read it because Ed had the whole series out of the library. It took a long time to get going, and sometimes I find MRK exhausting. Her white main characters all seem oddly aware of the Black experience.  "The Martian Contingency" by Mary Robinette Kowal.  Hard copy. Read it because Ed had the whole series out of the library. I don't often read subsequent books in a series in quick succession, and my reaction to this one is a lot of why: I found Alma's voice too similar to Nicole's -- sure, Nicole obsessed about food much more, but they both went on and on about "must support black guy in management" an...

What I read: September 2025

LHC #295: "The Last to Leave the Room" by Caitlin Starling. Audiobook. Workplace horror? Loved it.  "Careless People" by Sarah Wynn-Williams. Hard copy, for office Data Ethics book club. The stories about Sheryl Sandberg really made me like my boss better.  LHC #296: "The Fated Sky" by Mary Robinette Kowal. Hard copy. This got moved up the list because Ed had read book 1 in the series and got the rest out of the library. Loved it. He's got the next one in the series upstairs, I suppose I'll read it when he's done.  LHC #297: "Bluegrass: A History" by Neil V. Rosenberg. Hard copy. No idea why it was on my list, I don't care that much about bluegrass. Nevertheless, the second half was interesting. I guess the first half was necessary, as it described in great length the way people came and went in Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys band, and also how technology and social pressures affect how music is made and performed.   LHC #298: ...

In progress - January 2026

  Wind/Water/Salt  Chapters 39-51:   Nothing  Persephone  (probably not its real name): NOthing Vinterlys:  Worked on Chapter 2 some more.  Critted  4  Got back  1 Submissions  0  Out there   0   Rejects   0 Knitting Georgia  (Norah Gaughan). Started the month with one sleeve and half a front to go. Finished. Love this sweater.  Aberlady  (AS Celtic Collection). Did a few rows while listening to podcasts.  Summer in Tokyo  (Isager): Started. I was looking at the pictures and the charts, and the pattern as written is not what is in the pictures! So odd. I am going to finish up two cones of yarn with this project! Pretty exciting. I hope I don't run out of light blue.  I was working along on it, and if you go and look at the sweater, it's knit bottom-up, and I was at the part where I only had two colors, about 5" maybe. And I was thinking, "wow, this is pretty ugly! Maybe I should stop...