Incredible, honest book. Manages to be kind and tender even as it hurts so openly.

finally finished this book. I think I liked it better than the first one. I'm so excited for the show.

"I am old enough to choose a country for myself, but by now I do not want one." [photo: "Khadija" by Hassan Hajjaj]

"It's not a toy."

"Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you."

If 300 people have already told you to read this book, allow me to be the 301st. Rich with history, intergenerational loves and hurts that will feel familiar to you no matter who you are or where you come from, and characters you‘ll miss when they‘re gone.

“He was wrong to think he could now forget that the big, hard, oily, dirty, rainbow-hung Earth on which he lived was a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot lost in the unimaginable infinity of the Universe.” // fanart / fancast by RhymeWithRachel

😼

“It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtle.”

loved this so much. for fans of afrofuturism, zombie stories, and black girl heroes.

Such a lovely and beautiful (in content and visuals) book. Thoughtfully curated essays, cool recipes, and gorgeous images. Good for kitchen or coffee table.

“We‘re all aliens to someone.” Saga is back this week and I‘m beside myself.

I LOLed! I did the audiobook of this which I think is honestly even more fun than reading the hard copy.

“If there was a god, it seemed my mother must have had her foot on his neck, demanding good things come my way.” Terrific memoir about moms and daughters and grief and trying futilely, through the simple acts of cooking and eating, to make sense of it all.

“What are the conditions we need so that a thirteen-year-old Black kid and their single mom can go look at a dark night sky, away from artificial lights, and know what they are seeing? What health care structures, what food and housing security are needed? What science communication structures? What community structures? What relationship with the land do they need?” Image: the Milky Way Center aglow with dust. NASA, taken w/the Spitzer telescope.

This book is so many things that I do not usually read. A corporate memoir is not usually my style. But a friend recommended it, gave it a shot as a Pixar fan, and I enjoyed it quite a bit and found a lot to chew on.

This book covers centuries, which incidentally is how long it took me to finish it LOL. But really fun to focus on the history of the Targaryens and their cousins. [Illustration by Doug Wheatley]

Black women are rational and human.

”How can I write about us living together when there isn‘t too much precedent for it? Can I write about it without restoring to some facile vision of multicultural oneness or the sterilizing language of virtue signaling? Can I write honestly? Not only about how much I‘ve been hurt but about how I have hurt others?”

I‘m glad I didn‘t read this at the beginning of the pandemic... but awfully glad I read it. It‘s not technically about zombies, but it‘s about zombies, but like all content about zombies, it‘s about humans and the awful things we do to one another. And it‘s about connection and disconnection, memory, soulless and unethical work under capitalism, New York City, feeling lost, and ghosts. And it‘s just a really good novel.

“When I recognize people, it lets me hope that maybe they recognize me too.” [delayed post! I finished Yolk on May 24.]

This book was every bit as good as everyone says and absolutely nothing like what I expected. The premise itself is mind-boggling and led me to hit Wikipedia for some physics refreshers, but also the way the novel is structured was really unusual and gave me a lot to think about on a craft level. [this is a belated post; finished May 6, 2021.] Art by Mateusz Ambrożewicz.

this book has an incredibly high ratio of how much I enjoyed it versus how little it fits into my usual reading habits. Captivating storytelling within the context of a part of history that I was pretty ignorant of, and gave me lots to reflect on in matters of history, violence, and what we mean when we say revolution.

“If you show up & show the world your real self

You don‘t have to wait for others to claim you

You don‘t have to wait for others to pick you

You pick yourself, I mean”

“here among them the americans this baffling
multi people extremes and variegations their
noise restlessness their almost frightening
energy” — from “[American Journal]” by Robert Hayden

“An emancipatory Black fantastic requires interrupting the dark fantastic cycle in order to create new paradigms.”
- Ebony Elizabeth Thomas // Hermione fanart by Sophia Canning 🧙🏽‍♀️

“Every door I get through, this guy is always on the other side. Patting himself on the back for being open-minded while making sure I scrub myself before I enter.”

“The world‘s now placid, featureless, and culturally dead: nothing really new has been created since the Overlords came. The reason‘s obvious. There‘s nothing left to struggle for, and there are too many distractions and entertainment.”

this novel is so bizarre. apparently it was a SyFy miniseries in 2015? This art is by Neal Adams, concept artist for an unformed movie planned in the 1970s.

“The mainstream discussion about fast food and health in communities of color disguises the intertwined histories of capitalism, racism, and violence that undergirds every part of the nation‘s existence.”

“So, sure, an older man is a wonder because he has paid thirty-eight years of Con Ed bills and suffered food poisoning and seen the climate reports and still not killed himself, but somehow, after being a woman for twenty-three years, after the ovarian torsion and student loans and newfangled Nazis in button-downs, I too am still alive, and actually this is the more remarkable feat.”

“Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” obviously I had to take this photo in front of a literal Dune, by law.

“Do you think it‘s possible to ever see the past as it actually was?” [illustration by Sonia Pulido]

“Trust. Yourself, mainly, but the world, too. There is magic working in your favor.”

“Why did I even come here?”

“Run long enough, and everything comes into view, be it a finish line or a home, a new one or one remade. What running has given me, most of all, is the practice of patience.”

I will be thinking about this book for a long, long time. If ten thousand people have told you to read this book, allow me to be ten thousand and one. Yes, it‘s an incredible and often heart-breaking memoir, but it also has some really thoughtful insight on the nature of history and historiography. It‘s about abuse, but it also illustrates so much about how incredible humans can be. And it‘s beautifully written.

“As American poet Mary Oliver wrote, ‘To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.‘ She must be a great cook. Indeed, the best cooks I‘ve ever met— whether in home or professional kitchens—are careful observers.”

This came to me just right on time.

“Postscript,” by Seamus Heaney. Inspired by my love of this poem, I just finished this collection of poems from the last three decades of his illustrious life. I‘m glad I did. There were a lot of allusions I had to look up to understand, and the payoff on reading and rereading and search and study was so worthwhile. I‘m so grateful that he lived.

What a stunning, heartbreaking, unforgettable novel. Rebecca Makkai has given us a necessary reminder to thinking critically and empathically about the early days of the AIDS crisis, the casual hatred that literally killed people, and the friendships and circles of care that sustained. With real, real, real characters that make you cry like you really know them. (Photo from the National AIDS Actions for Healthcare, Chicago, 1991, by Linda Miller.)

“We were better than them—we had to be. Sloth was literal death for us, while for them it was the whole ambition of their lives.”

My husband teases me because I‘ve been reading this book in bits for over a year. It‘s the first time the Best American series has done a food collection! and “food writing” is expansively defined. great essays from Lauren Michele Jackson, Mary H.K. Choi & others. But now the 2019 one is out (edited by Samin Nosrat) so I had to stop playing around & finally finish. If you value the craft of creative nonfiction & great reporting you‘ll dig it.

“But burning was their fate; they were the generation meant to be consumed by fire.” in Kentucky for spring break and my brother-in-law put me on but I been wanted to read this anyway. won‘t have time to finish this trip but it‘s good and I‘m motivated to get a copy when I get home! Sci-fi set against the backdrop of the Cultural Revolution, which I also want to now learn more about.

A few weeks ago I had the great joy of talking to Ross Gay about this book. Ross‘s poetry transformed my own work and the way I look at the world. (Even if you don‘t know him you may have seen his viral poem about Eric Garner, “A Small Needful Fact.”) For this book, he tried to write a small essay about delight every day for a year, and what results is sweet but not sugary, and challenging in quiet and unexpected ways.

This was a whirlwind story that was impossible to step away from, largely because Ng manages to make each of her [quite large ensemble of] characters have at least some moment of fullness, or complication. Sweet, often painful, and a little bit scandalous.

I‘m still so saddened by the passing of Anthony Bourdain, and I figured I was overdue on this one. The fact that the audiobook is read by him is a delight. There‘s a lot of uncouth and fairly predictably bad stuff about race (mostly essentializing people, e.g. lots of talk about “hard working Ecuadorians” and unfortunate attempt to imitate accents) but I still loved it. What a writer. We‘re worse off without him around. [painting by Thomas Evans!]

This book may not be true, but it‘s real. A ghost story, a family story, a love story, a southern Gothic for our ages, it‘s brutal and brilliant and tender. This is a great American novel with all the glory and violence that implies. [image: boys in captivity under the convict leasing system, c. 1903]

I know this book doesn‘t need me to add to its chorus of accolades, but I‘m gonna do it anyway. Not often, but every once in a while, I read a novel that spans generations in a way that makes you deeply invested in a family as though they were your own. A novel that‘s primarily important not for its social commentary (though it has that) but for the tender realness of its depictions. A novel you mourn when it‘s done. This is that.
[image: NYT]

So I‘ve never been really good at the idea of “summer reading” or I feel like it confuses me as a social construct but this book has me feeling like I finally get it. Talk about sucked in. I just sat down and read 60 pages in one go. Eager to finish and my friends are eager for me to finish so we can debrief!