This was an IRL book club pick: I just couldn‘t get into the pop culture/humour, although I appreciated some of what Fey had to say about challenges she faces as a woman comedian and artist. Other club members really enjoyed it. I guess I‘m Just Too Serious.🧐

A powerful book about 19C Elizabeth Packard: forced into an “insane asylum” by her husband and separated from her five children with the collusion between her husband and the controlling institution director. It vividly portrays how she challenged the horrific institution staff, developed solidarity among the patients, fought back in the court system after discharge, and became an activist for mental health rights. #SheSaid #Nonfiction2025 #MeToo

#Bookspin August: the shortest books I can find anywhere in my list because I don‘t think I‘ll read the others I‘ve got already!
1. Liars
2. Orbital
3. Whale Fall
4. Be a Good Creature
5. The Details
6. Becoming Kin
7. Falling Back in Love
8. Shut Up You‘re Pretty
9. Troubles
10. A tranquil star
11. The Argonauts
12. Western
13. Manticore
14. Lot
15. Pure Colour
16. If An Egyptian
17. How not to drown
18. Cuba
19. Homesickness
20. Birdcatcher

In July 1998, the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics, INFN, decided to make its researchers start clocking in and out of the lab. They did not know the backlash this would inspire: not only at the institute but also across the world. Hundred of scientists around the world wrote in support of the INFN professor‘s complaints: saying that the book was needlessly bureaucratic, insulting, and out of step with how the researchers actually worked.

#Bookspin for July (yikes!)
only four books because I don‘t think I‘ll get to even one of these after all the others I want to read…

Even after a drastic rise in wage labour after the Civil War, it was compared to prostitution or slavery, sometimes by white workers wanting distance between sex workers and enslaved Black people. But Black free people too noticed the similarity of a hireling to a slave. Richard L. Davis, a miner, maintained that “none of us who toil for our daily bread are free.” “At one time we were chattel slaves, today we are, white and Black, wage slaves.”

Nanni notes the colonial missions tried to induce people not simply to work, but to work in a regular and uniform manner for a specific period of time per day. This view of abstract labour hours could not have been more alien to task-oriented communities, who recognized their activities based on different ecological and cultural cues, such as the flowering and rooting of certain plants, and where things took however much time they took. /1

Yet until Elizabeth spied Toffee‘s letter she had no idea what had happened. Even after that, encased in uneasy ignorance, she could not be fully sure what McFarland was doing: it was only one letter she‘d seen, she did not suspect the censorship was as extensive as it was. So, instead, she wrote bleakly of the fence of desolation which the total withdrawal of friends throws over a person‘s life. “It is hard to be forgotten,” she simply said. /1

#Bookspin June
1. Comfort of Crows
2. Saving Time
3. An Immense World
4. James
5. Some People Need Killing
6. An Immense World
7. An Immense World
8. Some People Need Killing
9. Some People Need Killing
10. Saving Time
11. James
12. Saving Time
13. Cobalt Red
14. One day
15. One Day
16. Crossings
17. We should not be afraid of the sky
18. We should not be afraid of the sky
19. Cobalt Red
20. Comfort of Crows

“Is there no man in this crowd to protect this woman?” Rebecca Blessing shouted, pacing the platform. “Is there no man? If I were a man, I would seize her!” But Rebecca was not a man, she had no power…[Elizabeth] was ushered to her seat, the train beginning to pull away, to bear her away from her home. But it was not just her home Elizabeth was leaving: her liberty lay shattered on the track, her reputation for sanity dead beside it. #SheSaid

This was immensely powerful: I‘d like to listen to it again. Although it‘s long! Set in Mississippi during the enslavement era, with a few throwbacks to Africa in an earlier time, it tells the beautiful passionate heartbreaking story of two Black men in love, the supportive, and crushing responses of those around them. I love how it works different characters with each chapter, going into the White as well as the Black ones, /1

Hive mind: a friend who‘s having a hard time asked me to suggest some “light reading” (audiobook) for her time away. I know not this “light reading” of which she speaks. Any suggestions? Thanks!

“Black boys don‘t get to be sad and feel their feelings.”
#RiseupReads

He did think about the ways in which his body wasn‘t his own, and how that condition showed up uniquely for everyone whose personhood wasn‘t just disputed, but denied. Swirling beneath them were the ways in which not having lawful claim to yourself diminished you, yes, but in another way condemned those who invented the disconnection…. what other answer, was there than some kind of flexible, stretching further, so others couldn‘t pull you apart.

#Bookspin May
1. Saving Time
2. An Immense World
3. Swimming in the Dark
4. Some People Need Killing
5. An Immense World
6. An Immense World
7. Some People
8. One Day
9. Saving Time
10. Cobalt Red
11. One Day
12. Art of Gathering
13. Swimming in the Dark
14. Swimming in the Dark
15. Comfort
16. Crossings
17. Crossings
18. Crossings
19. We should not be afraid of the sky
20. We should not be afraid
still the same books because I‘m so far behind!

You do not yet know, you do not yet understand. We who are from the dark speaking in the seven voices, because seven is the only divine number, because that is who we are and that is who we always have been.
#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl

A Toronto-based story centered on four Anishnaabe characters (a professor, a grad student, a visiting hockey player, and a bush pilot), a Caribbean writer, and a white detective: all brought unexpectedly together by a series of abrupt and incredibly brutal murders. This is far more than a murder mystery, going into Indigenous culture, history and human rights; sports culture; and a bit of romance. Very well developed, but the ending is a bit neat.

#Bookspin April: on hold only!
1. Saving Time
2. An Immense World
3. Swimming
4. Some People Need Killing
5. An Immense World
6. An Immense World
7. Some People Need Killing
8. Some People Need Killing
9. Saving Time
10. Saving Time
11. Saving Time
12. Art of Gathering
13. Swimming in the Dark
14. Swimming in the Dark
15. Swimming in the Dark
16. Crossings
17. Crossings
18. Crossings
19. We should not be afraid
20. We should not be afraid

Another Story: I‘m so glad they moved it to my part of the city many years ago! Full of progressive books, with particular emphasis on kid lit for a whole spectrum of young readers. My go to spot for nibling shopping and my beloved annual Syracuse Women‘s Art datebook.

“I was trying to suggest a reconciliation, but…”
“What was the reason for the separation?”
A third coffee. He definitely needed a third coffee. Normally Trent would be drowning his sorrows with tea, but there were some things in this world that tea could not fix. It was definitely a coffee morning.
“We were having some personal problems.”
“Who had the affair, you or her?”
The way Birch asked disturbed Trent more than the question itself.

When he laced up and adjusted his gear, Paul sometimes felt like a gladiator going into battle, complete with his hockey stick of death. Other times he felt more like an overdressed clown, being paid to chase a piece of rubber across an artificial frozen surface in a bizarre outfit to amuse the masses. Still, it wasn‘t as bad as football. At least hockey had some connection to reality, evolving from the need to move on the frozen lakes of Canada.

1. Time with a good friend I haven‘t seen for a while, after watching “No Other Place”: not “joyful,”but powerful and worth seeing.
2. Early wildflower shoots peeping up in my pollinator garden.
3. Chocolate ice cream!
4. An excellent choir workshop on Saturday, practising our new songs that explore water, ecology, Indigenous tradition in Tkaronto.
5. Bubbling stories amidst the doom of different kinds of resistance people are taking.
#5JoysFriday

I *loved* these short stories from my IRL group: major bonus was the meeting was attended by the author sharing her lived experience as a Canadian (from my Mom‘s town) of Filipina descent that provided context. Some common characters thread the stories together, but they‘re still quite separate, showing many different facets of life as a new Canadian, especially doing low-income work, or as someone left behind in the Philippines.

The book description captured me, partly because of the ref to the #PussyRiots, which are part of the #Nonfiction2025 challenge, and mainly because of the idea of exploring the punk rock world behind the former Iron Curtain. However, while the writing is very good, I just couldn‘t stay with it. Too many deep dives into philosophy and theory, and not quite personal enough for me. Also, unless he loops back, the Pussy Riots are just peripheral.

This was interesting and helpful: I think the fact that I‘m a Christian and what I‘ve learned about Womanism helped me understand that thread better, and I know a Black friend who works incredibly hard in church leadership who really values it. So many women need to push back against “grind culture!”
it did seem repetitive as others have said, but in a way that was helpful, as I was often listening to it at times when I was resting!
#SheSaid

There are evidently many men who feel entitled to regulate pregnant bodies without having the remotest idea about, or interest in learning, how they work. And there are evidently some women who are prepared to paint others as heartless for balking at these attempts to police and enforce their pregnancies. #SheSaid

Our focus is to lay down because it is our divine right to do so, not because it will prepare our bodies to be more productive. Our rest movement is not focused on productivity. It is instead a political and social justice movement rooted in our collective rest. We must liberate together. We must liberate together. We must rest together. We are going up against such violent systems in our attempt to disrupt and push back.

“Himpathetic”: my new very useful vocabulary word.

Misogyny is typically although not invariably a response to a woman‘s to gendered law and order. I think of misogyny as one of those shock collars worn by dogs. Misogyny is capable of causing pain, and it often does, but even when it isn‘t actively hurting anyone, it tends to discourage girls and women from venturing out of bounds. If we stray, or err, we know what we are in for.⬇️ #shesaid

Trying #ReadingBracket2025: I don‘t have to read more books and it looks like fun! Thanks @CSeydel for the graphic.

A compelling novel about two siblings, shifting between children and teens, trying to survive as Chinese Americans during the California gold rush. It vividly describes a father who is convinced that he can “make it,” and two very different siblings, who have to head out on their own, navigating one‘s desire to fit in and the other‘s desire to fulfill their father‘s dream. (Too many plot twists to summarize it all!) #LGBTQIA BIPOC

We don‘t need more of the same boxed-in, and limited thinking. It‘s time to tap into our imaginations. It‘s time to go deep into the crux of who we are to be able to make sense of our world. Capitalism is new, and our bodies are ancient. Grind culture has created exhausted, disconnected, and traumatized people moving through life unable to tap into their true power. We need rest to connect back to ourselves and dream. We will rest. #SheSaid

To rest in a dream space is a red brick through the glass window of capitalism. I want our intentional rest to scream at depression on a bullhorn, then emerge soft and full, slowly whispering in a pace that feels unnecessarily slow and awkward until it becomes your heartbeat. Let the space that dreaming asks for channel you back to your true self, the tender human bound up by a violent duty to overwork to justify your worth.
#SheSaid

#Bookspin March:
1. Saving Time
2. Mayday 1971
3. Cobalt
4. An Immense World
5. Unlikely Radicals
6. Sure, I‘ll Be Your Black Friend
7. The Prophets
8. It‘s not about the Burqa
9. Greta
10. Greenwood
11. Swimming
12. Dancing in the Streets
13. You or Someone You Love
14. A Market of Dreams
15. Crossings
16. Ordinary Notes
17. Coming Out as Dalit
18. Some People Need Killing
19. Island of Forgetting
20. Autumn Peltier

I enjoyed this #LiteraryCrew pick: I have only a hazy memory of The Scarlet Letter, so it was interesting to read this interpretation where primary character is living in a much later era and in a relationship with Nathaniel Hawthorne. Explores issues like class, immigration, gender abuse, the Underground Railroad, and “witchcraft” in the earliest part of the 19th century. Jumping back-and-forth to Puritan Salem could be confusing, though.

I‘ve barely heard of Dorothy Sayers, so I thought I‘d try out the #authoramonth challenge. What I thought would be a novelette turned out to be a BBC audio drama, which I think is good enough: the drama really brought the posh “cheerio/righty-ho/old boy” language to life. Murder isn‘t my favourite genre, and I found the plot hard to follow with so many characters, and couldn‘t honestly get engaged with many of them.

Books, you know, Charles, are like lobster shells: we surround ourselves with them and then grow out of them and leave them behind as evidences of our earlier stages of development.

#Bookspin Feb
1. Saving Time
2. Humorless Ladies
3. Island of Forgetting
4. An Immense World
5. All the Devils
6. Sure, I‘ll Be Your Black Friend
7. The Prophets
8. Crossings
9. Kids These Days
10. How Much of These Hills
11. Greta
12. Swimming in the Dark
13. Cobalt
14. The Cheese & The Worms
15. Reuniting with Strangers
16. Constant Struggle
17. Ordinary Notes
18. Coming Out
19. Some People
20. The House on the Cerulean Sea

I loved this first #AuldLangSpine book from @Chelsea.Poole--hoping to get to more later in the year!
Sy Montgomery, a nature writer for children and adults, chronicles a year spent in New England with diverse people committed to understanding, rescuing, and deeply loving all kinds of turtles. The main focus is on the Turtle Rescue League in Massachusetts, who gently unearth and incubate eggs, and release the hatchlings /1

In Hindu and Buddhist mythology the tortoise Akūpāra carries the world on his back, upholding the earth and sea. From Alaska to the Admiralty Islands in Polynesia, people say the World Turtle hatched the eggs that turned into the first humans. In North America‘s Haudenosaunee, Lenape, and Abenaki creation stories the Great Spirit places the Earth on the back of a huge turtle and many now still refer to the Earth as Turtle Island.
#auldlangspine

#ThreeListThursday #TLT @dabbe

I‘m surprised at how many of these I‘ve never even heard of! All three of these are about strong young women, and two are still on my bookshelf. I‘m pretty sure I did a (voluntary) study of “A Wrinkle in Time” when I was in teacher‘s college.

Runners-up: The Grey King, Jacob Have I Loved, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.
Join in if you want: @Chelsea.Poole @TheKidUpstairs

“If you help a female across the road, you must handle her with great gentleness. A turtle who feels threatened will often release urine to startle or deter predators, but a nesting mother who has to do this on the way to the nest has to detour for another drink of water.”

I don‘t remember what this had to do with Jesus or the Bible, but when I was a kid my dad, who is a minister, taught kids how to help a turtle cross without getting peed on.

Absolutely compelling read for my IRL: the story of four very different but strong sisters and their mother living in Roaring Twenties Vancouver. The narrator is sometimes the sister who has had an abortion, sometimes a third person, and occasionally the family dog, which works surprisingly well. It tackles complex themes that include marriage and betrayal, queerness in an age when it was illegal, abortion, immigration, smuggling, and more./1

I always have a deep, deep feeling for the turtles. If I could take their pain for them I would. Caring deeply comes at a cost. The word “compassion,” contains within itself its emotion price. The prefix “com” means “with.” The Latin root “pate” means “suffering.” To feel compassion, therefore, is to enter into another‘s suffering. It is the knowledge that there can never be any peace and joy for me, unless there is peace and joy for you.

Turtles are a red-hot commodity in the worthless world of the illegal wildlife trade. Turtle trafficking is networked, clandestine, and lucrative. A single three-striped Chinese box turtle, whose powdered plastron is rumoured incorrectly to cure cancer can fetch $25,000…Sea turtles, box turtles, spotted turtles, snapping turtles—no turtle is safe. Poachers mine scientific data and scour books and newspapers for clues on where to find them.

Most of us think of turtles as being silent but no, some of them are quite talkative. Various species croak, squeak, belt, whine, and whistle. For the velociraptors park in “Jurassic Park,” filmmakers used the sound of turtles having sex. Some species of Australian river turtle nestlings communicate vocally with each other and with their mothers while still inside the egg.

#FirstLineFridays #FLF @ShyBookOwl
Amid all the other homes on the suburban street—white, grey, beige, pale blue, light yellow—this two-story saltbox stands out.
(My first #AuldLangSpine read from @Chelsea.Poole !)

I wondered if we could have come up with the name of one woman who in the past decade had not lost someone. A husband, a brother, a son.
We who survived the war and the pandemic, we recovered-emotionally, mentally-despite our dreadful losses, didn't we? We went on. Why not Ahmie?
I thought of Dr. Blakeway, who first prescribed laudanum to Ahmie. To calm her nerves, the old man said.
Was he dead? I hoped he was.
Otherwise I wanted a word with him.

#TLT #ThreeListThursday @dabbe
So many memories here! My score was 56.

My favourites:
Anne of Green Gables
Narnia books
A Wrinkle in Time

Should have been on the list:
The Paperbag Princess
Stand in the Wind
Alligator Pie
Honourable mention: The Devil in Vienna is one of my favourite books of all time but maybe more a pre-teen book.

Would like to read (based on the cover 😉)
The Arrival
Julian is a Mermaid
Cianpollo the Little Onion

Flore, still seated, stretches her
hand out to Harriet. There's an endless second during which Harriet is certain she should never have come, but then Flore's mouth opens.
"You sexy thing," Flore whispers.
Now she has her arms around Harriet and
says, "Now take me dancing,
Harry."
And here, in these clothes, with Flore, Harriet is finally home. Relief, a spring river, floods every one of her bones. Every single one of them.