Reading List: March 2021

I read some wonderful books this month – my top three being Beartown, The Midnight Library and The House in the Cerulean Sea.

Beartown
by Fredrik Backman
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

A Sky Beyond the Storm
by Sabaa Tahir
⭐⭐⭐⭐

Sex, Murder and a Double Latte
by Kyra Davis
⭐⭐

The Midnight Library
by Matt Haig
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Leah on the Offbeat
by Becky Albertalli
⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Mothers
by Britt Bennett
⭐⭐⭐

The Parable of the Sower
by Octavia Butler

The House in the Cerulean Sea
by T.J. Klune

Articles

Opinion: Joe Biden Knew He Was Onto Something Long Before We Did (New York Times)

Opinion: America Is Not Made for People Who Pee (NYT) – another piece on the severe lack of public toilets in the US (see also: this 1A episode When You Gotta Go: The Public Bathroom Problem)

Burnout Isn’t Just Exhaustion. Here’s How To Deal With It (NPR Life Kit)

The Stacey Abrams Effect (Marie Claire)

Why Black Women Are Rejecting Hospitals in Search of Better Births (New York Times)

An app that helps identify the Indigenous land you’re on

Late-Stage Pandemic Is Messing With Your Brain (The Atlantic)

Why This Wave of Anti-Asian Racism Feels Different (The Atlantic)

Handling the Emotional Weight of 1:1s

The Holy Grail of Transportation Is Right in Front of Us (New York Times)

She Experienced Busing in Boston. Now She’s the City’s First Black Mayor. (New York Times)

Other Bookish Things

Climate Fiction Reading List from Jeff VanderMeer (Goodreads)

Reading List: February 2021

Novels/Novellas

A Map of Days
Ransom Riggs
⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Conference of the Birds
Ransom Riggs
⭐⭐⭐⭐

Before We Were Free
Julia Alvarez
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Throne of Glass
Sarah J. Maas
⭐⭐⭐

Maybe in Another Life
Taylor Jenkins Reid
⭐⭐⭐⭐

Articles and Essays

Don’t Let Queen Latifah’s Acting Career Overshadow Her Rap Legacy (Slate)

The Life in The Simpsons Is No Longer Attainable (The Atlantic)

Bring Back the Nervous Breakdown (The Atlantic) — oof, this one hits home. This past year has been exhausting; mentally and psychically draining. I think many of us are due for a good ol’ fashioned nervous breakdown.

The Lies Hollywood Tells Us About Little Girls by Mara Wilson (New York Times)

Isn’t 400 Years Enough? The Failure to appreciate Black history leaves our nation incomplete. (New York Times)

People’s words and actions can actually shape your brain — a neuroscientist explains how (TED.com)

Podcasts

When You Gotta Go: The Public Bathroom Problem (1A)

Despite rising salaries, the skilled-labor shortage is getting worse (PBS NewsHour)

Seizing Freedom

“STORIES OF FREEDOM TAKING AND FREEDOM MAKING DIRECTLY FROM THE PEOPLE WHO DID BOTH.
In most history classes, you learn that the Emancipation Proclamation and Union victories “freed the slaves.” But ending slavery in America required so much more than battlefield victories or even official declarations.”

“Freedom gets built up over time—through a billion tiny, everyday acts. It’s there in the chance to enlist and fight for a cause. It’s there in the effort to reunite families torn apart by the cruelty of slave trading. It’s there in the right to learn to read or found a church or decide how you want to make a living. And it’s there in the insistence on the legal recognition of the right to do all these things.

That’s the freedom you’ll hear about on this podcast, and you’ll hear about it directly from the people who seized it. All of the stories on this show are drawn from archives of voices from American history that have been muted time and time again.”

Reading List: January 2021

January was a pretty solid reading month, 2021 is off to a good start on that front!

Novels/Novellas

Red at the Bone, Jacqueline Woodson ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Ardent Swarm, Yamen Manai ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Assassin’s Blade, Sarah J. Maas ⭐⭐⭐

Einstein’s Dreams, Alan Lightman ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Britt-Marie Was Here, Fredrik Backman ⭐⭐⭐⭐

A Kind of Freedom, Margaret Wilkerson Sexton ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Articles, Podcasts, Poems

The Pandemic Has Erased Entire Categories of Friendship (The Atlantic)

The Hill We Climb by Amanda Gorman

The Still-Misunderstood Shape of the Clitoris (The Atlantic)

The lost girls: ‘Chaotic and curious, women with ADHD all have missed red flags that haunt us’ (The Guardian)

What Joe Biden Can’t Bring Himself to Say (The Atlantic)

28 Mini Rules That Have Drastically Simplified My Life (The Financial Diet)

America’s hollow middle class (Vox)

Reading List: July 2020

Books

Such a Fun Age:

The Bright Side of Going Dark:

Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit:

Red, White & Royal Blue: I loved this book! It was so surprisingly sweet and charming and hopeful.

I’m Not Dying with You Tonight:

Articles

New York Times In Her Words: 7 Issues, 7 Days: https://www.nytimes.com/programs/womens-issues

Why Bus-Loving Rep. Ayanna Pressley Wants Transit to Be Free

The Bitter Southerner: The Power of Empty Pedestals

I learned about Town Line, NY from a discussion on Shavonda Gardner‘s IG Stories. Did you know the “last holdout of the Confederacy” was actually in upstate New York?