Tag: books
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A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers
Right after I finished A Psalm for the Wild-Built, I began reading its sequel A Prayer for the Crown-Shy and... it's also wonderful. It takes a different-but-similar approach to the philosophy of identity and purpose, and the story provides a deeper look into Dex's world, but it's still a familiar-feeling continuation of a beautiful story that's comforting and sweet.
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A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
While I've been ill I read A Psalm for the Wild-built by Becky Chambers, which had been on my reading list for a while. It's a comforting and compelling story about purpose and identity in an environmentally-conscious utopia, and it's flipping awesome.
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Third day of being ill with what's probably a winter vomiting bug, with one child home sick from school... and just having had to collect the other kid who started throwing up on his school trip... I finally got back to my bed and picked up the next book on my pile, Becky Chambers' A Psalm for the Willd-Built.
The opening page reads: "For anybody who could use a break."
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Printed serifed text reading: 'For anybody who could use a break.'
Yes. Yes, please.
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The Blind Piemaker
Ruth and I spiced-up this week's date night with a challenge from a mysterious book: Ruth, blindfolded, baked pies while I instructed her only in non-verbal ways. It was challenging, stressful, and... pretty fun! (Also we got to eat pie.)
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We'll Prescribe You A Cat by Syou Ishida
I just finished reading We'll Prescribe You A Cat, and while I enjoyed the stories within, I felt like the overarching plot that bound them lacked a satisfying payoff.
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James Acaster's Classic Scrapes
James Acaster's Classic Scrapes - which I received during our Christmas Eve book exchange - was an enjoyable, occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, series of anecdotes with thematic links connecting them. It's perhaps not for everybody, but it was a great gift for me!
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Just visited the Logos Hope, an ocean-going, volunteer-staffed floating book fair (run by a Christian charity, but it's not-TOO-religiousy inside, if that's not your jam) that's coincidentally docked for a fortnight right next door to my hotel on Trinidad!
What a strange concept. Fun diversion though.
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White and blue passenger ship docked alongside a building whose roof reads 'Welcome to Port of Spain'.
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Entitled by Kate Manne
Entitled is a bleak and sometimes uncomfortable pop-sci dive into the issue of male entitlement. Covering a variety of different areas in which our patriarchal society somehow continues to disenfranchise women in particular and injure everybody by proxy, it provides neither a 'quick fix' nor even an optimistic outlook for the future, but it provides valuable focus areas for the continued fight for a better future.
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Our family Christmas Eve tradition, which we absolutely stole from Icelandic traditions (cultural appropriation? I'm not sure...) via some newspaper article we saw years ago, is a book exchange.
verybody gives each other person a book,then we sit around and read until people retire to bed (first the kids, then - eventually - the adults).
We love it.
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Dan sits by firelight reading a red-spined book.
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First-person view down a hammock in a rural garden. The hammock's occupier (Dan) is holding a novel and a can of premixed Pimms & lemonade.
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For World Book Day (which here in the UK is marked a month earlier than the rest of the world) the kids' school invited people to come "dressed as a word".
As usual, the kids and teachers participated along with only around two other adults. But of course I was one of them.
This year, I was "magical".
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Dan, a white man with long hair (tied back) and a beard, stands in a Cotswolds-esque village green wearing a black jacket and holding three large novelty playing cards and a magic wand.
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Where?
I'm pretty sure that Wally/Waldo, Woof, and Wizard Whitebeard must be out on this mountain somewhere, too.
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[Bloganuary] Reading List
At this kind of time of year, I've got a long reading list already. But when I'm done with that, maybe it's time for me to re-read Antkind, and see what I see in it the second time around.
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[Bloganuary] Traditions
By virtue, perhaps, of being a three-parent family, we draw family traditions from a wider array of sources than many. And then we supplement those with even more that we've adopted from elsewhere or invented for ourselves. Want to hear about some of them?
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[Bloganuary] Live Long and Prosper
I'd love to live as long as I can do so in reasonable health, and I'm happy for that to be longer than I'm predicted to. But if everybody lived longer, what would that mean for the world?