I learned a lot in this book: supplementing awareness of white supremacist policies, with the main focus being the extreme imbalance between punishment of Black and White people in the US, with focus on drug crime, and extent to which incarceration is an industry. Lots that made me uncomfortable in a way that I need to be made uncomfortable. Now I want to learn what happens in Canada. #bookspin
#Nonfiction2023 #KillingInTheName first bingo line!

June #Bookspin
1. We Measure the Earth
2. Lesser known Monsters
3. Seeing Ghosts
4. River Sing
5. Bad Girls
6. Dream States
7. Pedagogy of the Oppressed
8. How Much of these Hills
9. The Savage Detectives
10. The Sleeping Car Porter
11. Fresh Banana Leaves
12. A Small Place
13. Night Tiger
14. Rememberings
15. Nasty Brutish
16. What You Have Heard Is True
17. Of Women and Salt
18. Beekeeper of Aleppo
19. Pure Colour
20. Wild Tongues

Five years for five joints. Once released, Drake found he was forbidden by law from voting until he paid his court costs…”I put my life on the line for this country. My son‘s in Iraq. My oldest son fought in the Persian Gulf conflict. This is my baby son over there right now. But I‘m not able to vote. They say I owe $900 in fines. To me, that‘s a poll tax…I was on the 1965 voting rights march from Selma. I was 15. When I was 18, I was in Vietnam.”

Racial bias is most acute at the point of entry into the system for two reasons: discretion and authorization. Although prosecutors, as a group, have the greatest power in the criminal justice system, police have the greatest discretion. Discretion that is amplified in drug law enforcement and unbeknownst to the general public, the Supreme Court has actually authorized racial discrimination in policing, rather than adopting legal rules banning it.

During 2006 NYPD officers stopped an astounding 508,540 people… who were walking down the street, often on their way to the subway, grocery store, or bus stop. Searches frequently required people to lie face down on the pavement or stand spreadeagled against a wall while police officers aggressively groped all over their bodies while bystanders watched or walked by. The vast majority were racial minorities and over half were African-American.

I thought this was excellent: I really enjoyed the authentic voice of the main character, narrating his way through all kinds of struggles and crises as he comes of age in Appalachia. Lots of emphasis is put on Appalachian, culture and dignity, and insights, particularly into the opioid epidemic. I can‘t compare it to David Copperfield, as I haven‘t read it, but understand there are many parallels. #Booked2023 #AModernTakeOnAClassic

#Bookspin for May:

1. We Measure the Earth
2. Lesser known Monsters
3. Seeing Ghosts
4. River Sing
5. New Jim Crow
6. Dream States
7. Pedagogy of the Oppressed
8. How Much of these Hills
9. The Savage Detectives
10. The Sleeping Car Porter
11. Fresh Banana Leaves
12. A Small Place
13. Night Tiger
14. Rememberings
15. Nasty Brutish
16. What You Have Heard Is True
17. Of Women and Salt
18. Beekeeper of Aleppo
19. Pure Colour
20. Wild Tongues

Such a moving novel: shifting back and forth in North Vietnam between an early teenage girl‘s experience of the end of the Vietnam war and her grandmother‘s survival of the 1945 Great Hunger and later Communist land reform, with the middle generation being the struggling children in the early phase, or those who went to war later. A country I know almost nothing about: so many good insights. #Booked2023 #SetInAMountainRegion
#Bookspin

I enjoyed this part in the Inspector, Gamache series, one which has a lively narrative and some interesting plot twists. The focus is on financial crime, which doesn‘t interest me as much as other issues, but it also gets into the opioid crisis, which I think is an essential topic to look at.

Really intriguing: not what I expected but multiple themes, in looking at the contents of a sack given from a mother to her enslaved child daughter, and then passed down through generations. The book reflects on each of the contents (a dress, pecans, a lock of hair) and how they fit into the context of history, the nature of enslavement, the family‘s history, and how such articles are preserved and controlled.
#SheSaid
#Nonfiction2023 #JustAGirl

Embarrassingly silly, but it appeared in my book box and has a #ProperNounInTheTitle. Light fiction about boys' hijinks in a private school popular when I was a kid, written by a 14-year-old. I thought of sending it to my nine-year-old nephew in England, but can't bring myself to send him anything that includes a “panty raid,“ even if the girls are the co-planners. Some things don't bear the test of time. #Booked2023

This was an excellent piece of Canadian women's history I didn't know about: a caravan of 17 women who travelled from BC to Ottawa in 1970, with multiple stops en route, to demand a just law for abortion on demand from the federal government. The climax was a few chaining themselves to seats in the House while 300 more protested outside. Vivid descriptions of people, and dynamics.

#Booked2023 #ReproductiveRights
#Nonfiction2023 #GoodbyeEarl

This was such a good book, starting with how to be quiet, find still space in nature, create relationships with friends, and be intentional. Unlike others, Odell takes those fairly familiar approaches and tools and looks at how to use them to break down “the attention economy” and move towards “manifest dismantling” of oppression and the increasing destruction of our planet. One I want to return to.
#Booked2023 #Balance
#Nonfiction2023 #SoWhat

Manifest Destiny wears a strange expression, aimed at the target of “progress.” What is the opposite of manifest destiny? I think it would be something like the angel of history. It‘s a concept I call “Manifest Dismantling.” I imagine another painting, one where Manifest Destiny is trailed, not by trains and ships, but by Manifest Dismantling, a dark-robed woman who is busy undoing all the damage wrought by Manifest Destiny, cleaning up her mess.

The law in 1970 favoured some women over others. At some point in the meeting, someone shouted, “Poor women can‘t get abortions! If your wife or rich women wanted an abortion, they could get one!” And then came the moment that all the women remember. [Canadian Prime Minister] Trudeau responded, “So?” The women echoed in perfect chorus, “So!“ and then with one voice, they burst into song: “Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on, hold on!“

#Bookspin for April

1. We Measure the Earth
2. Lesser known Monsters
3. Seeing Ghosts
4. River Sing
5. New Jim Crow
6. Dream States
7. Pedagogy of the Oppressed
8. How Much of these Hills
9. The Savage Detectives
10. Sleeping Car Porter
11. Fresh Banana Leaves
12. The Mountains Sing
13. A Small Place
14. Night Tiger
15. Rememberings
16. Nasty Brutish
17. What You Have Heard Is True
18. Of Women and Salt
19. Beekeeper of Aleppo
20. Pure Colour

When I try to imagine a sane social network it is a space of appearance, a hybrid of mediated and in-person encounters, of hours-long walks with a friend, of phone conversations, of closed group chats, of town halls. It would allow true conviviality, the dinners and gatherings and celebrations that give us the sustenance we need and where we show up for each other in person and say, “I am here, fighting for this with you.”

I wasn‘t expecting a #Grenada book for #ReadingtheAmericas2023, with none in my audiobook library, but by chance I got two when grabbing a bunch during Black History Month to Skype with my niece in England. This rich fable was written for a girl in Grenada who asked the author if he knew of any stories about black princesses: the kids who meet the princess here are brave and kind. I also love the fun and colorful creation story Mama God, Papa God.

There are those who migrate to El Norte because of poverty.
#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl

The attention economy profits from keeping us trapped in a fearful present…I worry about what this means long term for our propensity to seek out context, or our ability to understand context at all. Given that all of these issues facing us demand an understanding of complexity, relationship, and nuance, the ability to seek and understand context is nothing less than a collective survival skill.

Similar to many Indigenous cultures‘ relationships to land, bioregionalism is first and foremost based on observation and recognition of what grows where as well as an appreciation for the complex web of relationships among those actors. More than observation, it also suggests a way of identifying with place, weaving oneself into a place through observation of, and responsibility to, an ecosystem.

While it may seem at first like refusal is a reaction, the decision to actually refuse—not once, not twice, but perpetually until things have changed—means the development of and adherence to individual and collective commitments from which our actions proceed. In the history of activism, even things that seemed like reactions were often planned actions…Rosa Parks was “acting, not reacting” when she refused to get up from her seat.

Curiosity, something we know most of all from childhood, is a forward-driving force that derives from the differential between what is known and what is not known…. Through attention and curiosity we can suspend our tendency toward instrumental understanding, seeing things or people one-dimensionally as the products of their functions, and instead sit with the unfathomable fact of their existence which opens up toward us.

Audre Lorde: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

I‘ve always found it funny that it‘s called bird-watching, because half if not more of bird-watching is actually bird-listening. (I personally think they should just rename it “bird-noticing.”)…What amazed and humbled me about bird-watching was the way it changed the granularity of my perception, which had been pretty “low-res.” At first, I just noticed birdsong more-now that I was paying attention to it, I realized that it was almost everywhere.

Is there anything to say about this book that hasn‘t been said? An anguished, loving, beautiful tribute to the immense strength of people who resisted, endured, or died in the Nazi holocaust. Wiesel was a teen when his Jewish family in rural Romania was sent to Auschwitz after months of rumors and occupation: he remained completely dedicated to sustaining his elderly father with himself.

#Booked2023 #Trilogy
#Nonfiction2023 #IWillSurvive

“Seneca, in ‘On the Shortness of Life‘ [49 CE] described the horror of looking back to see that life has slipped between our fingers. It sounds all too much like someone waking from the stupor of an hour on Facebook.”

A real eye-opener, especially for these times, unless, of course, you don‘t want to think about pandemics😉.
A really thorough explanation of the Spanish flu, including its precedents, false nomenclature, impact and diverse responses all over the globe and particularly links to World War I, outcomes related to healthcare support systems and deeper understandings of the biology of viruses and pandemics.
#Booked2023 #Pandemic
#Nonfiction2023 #Toxic

War has a victor, and to him the spoils, the version that is handed down to posterity… when the story of the Spanish flu was told, it was told by those who had got off most lightly, the white and well-off. With very few exceptions, the ones who bore the brunt of it, the ones living in ghettos, or at the rim, have yet to tell their tale. Some, such as the minorities whose language has died with them, never will.

Well, I‘ve had this on my list for a long time, pulled it as a #Bookspin at least twice, but I just couldn‘t get into it. I feel bad, because the author is a queer Muslim Torontonian, whom I met many years ago in a book group, and I was really expecting to enjoy this. Maybe someday I‘ll try one of her others.

“Hemoglutamine, ‘H,” looks like a lollipop. Its stalk projects into the membrane. It is the metaphorical crowbar that allows the virus to break into a cell, while neurominidase, ‘N,‘ is the glass cutter that allows it to exit again.”

H1N1 was the later-assigned code for the “Spanish” flu, as well as the more recent “swine” flu.

#Bookspin March
1. We Measure the Earth
2. Lesser known Monsters
3. Seeing Ghosts
4. River Sing
5. New Jim Crow
6. Dream States
7. Pedagogy of the Oppressed
8. How Much of these Hills
9. The Savage Detectives
10. The Sleeping Car Porter
11. Fresh Banana Leaves
12. The Mountains Sing
13. A Small Place
14. Night Tiger
15. Rememberings
16. Nasty Brutish
17. What You Have Heard Is True
18. Of Women and Salt
19. Beekeeper of Aleppo
20. Time War

Thanks to @Lindy for welcoming me to this buddy read!
Beautifully written, a winner of Canada‘s Giller prize, but also challenging in its intentional lack of clarity. The nature of truth and memory, voice and silence, and past and present are explored through a narrator‘s relationship with her father, a Vietnam War vet, and the father of her dad‘s killed war buddy, living together in her dad‘s last years near an underwater childhood home.

“We avoid things we find disgusting…when contagion is a threat. The Caribbean spiny lobster is highly sociable by nature, but it refuses to share its den with another lobster that is infected with a lethal virus.”

This guy looks pretty healthy: he can share my den anytime!

Rose was in existential distress that fateful winter when her would-be earthly master, Robert Mutton, passed away.
#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl

This was just incredible. Non-fiction with dialogue and poetic description, about Black American women in the Depression who resisted being easily categorized as “victims” or “respectable.” Hartman lifts up runways, prison rioters, sex trade workers, queers, and others seeking freedom and dignity. Some are famous (who knew Billie Holliday was arrested in a disorderly house at age 14?) but the focus is on these struggles‘ universality.
#Bookspin

Thanks to @TheBookHippie for this fun insightful rec! I really enjoyed the intricacies of the platonic and romantic relationships, as well as the humour and tensions found in a faith and neighbourhood community, which totally ties into my background. It felt very “small town,” though it was set in London. The post-War thread was interesting, and I appreciated the subtle presence of the queer characters. #AuldLangSpine #Booked2022 #AuthorNotLIving

The chorus gathers…few understand them, study them like they are worth something, realize their inherent value. If you listen closely you can hear the whole world in a bent note, a throwaway lyric, the singular thread of a collective utterance. Everything from the first ship to the young woman found hanging in her cell: marvel at their capacity to inhabit every woman‘s grief as their own, all the stories ever told rush from her opened mouth.

As a preacher‘s kid, I loved this sentence near the opening of the book:
“With my parochial experience, I knew myself to be capable of dealing with most of the stock situations, or even the great moments of life: birth, marriage, death; the successful jumble sale, the garden fête spoiled by bad weather.”

“I‘m supposed to be having dinner with somebody, and I shall probably have to help with the cooking.”
“How very anxious for you,” said William. “I always like to have full control of a meal, or no part in it at all. I‘d rather not see people adding Bovril to the gravy and doing dreadful things like that.”

Sonic tumult and upheaval: it was resistance as music, it was a noise strike, in the most basic sense the sounds emanating from Lowell were the free music of those in captivity, the abolition philosophy expressed within the circle, the shout and speech song of struggle. If freedom and mutual creation characterized the music, it too defined the strike and riot waged by prisoners…the chants and cries escaped the confines even if their bodies did not

Black folks had been owned, and being an object of property, they were radically disenchanted with the idea of property. If their past taught them anything, it was that the attempt to own life destroyed it, brutalized the Earth, and ran roughshod over everything on God‘s creation for a dollar.

#Bookspin list for February:

1. We Measure the Earth
2. Undala Trees
3. Seeing Ghosts
4. Mother Tree
5. New Jim Crow
6. Permanent Astonishment
7. Pedagogy
8. How Much of these Hills
9. The Savage Detectives
10. Seven
11. Fresh Banana Leaves
12. The Mountains Sing
13. You are your best thing
14. Night Tiger
15. Rememberings
16. My Grandmother‘s Hands
17. Matrix
18. Kiss the Red Stairs
19. Lot
20. People Love Dead Jews

“I suppose I did not want him to remember me as being the kind of person who is always making cups of tea at moments of crisis.”

It was really fun listening to The Two Gentlemen of Verona as my first #AuldLangSpine pick: audio voices and music brought it to life in a way that reading it from my heavy tome wouldn‘t have. A light story about BFFs pursuing the same woman, with one of them having abandoned his own partner very abruptly, prompting her to come after him dressed as a man. (Not so cool: things get patched up after a sexual assault.)
#Booked2023 #ALoveTriangle

I inhabited that half-shadow no man‘s land which exists between boundaries of the two sexes. Throughout the world there are thousands of us furtive humans who have created for ourselves a fantasy as old as civilization itself, a fantasy which enables us, if only temporarily, to turn our back on the hard realm of life. Our number is legion, and our heart rate inconceivable.

The first generation after slavery had been so in love with being free that few noticed or minded that they had been released to nothing at all: they didn‘t know that the price of the war was to be exacted from their flesh. People were too busy dreaming of who they wanted to be, where they wanted to live, acres they would farm, and searching for the mother they would never find, wondering what had happened to their uncle; was their sister dead?

If she could feel deeply, she could be free. Beauty was not a luxury, but, like food, a requirement for living. She loved cashmere sweaters, not because they were expensive, but because the fabric felt exquisite against her skin, and the way a gold bracelet glinted and flashed and made the tone of her blue-black flesh so lush, as if right below the skin there were layers of indigo and ochre, a vortex of deep black in which you could lose yourself.

Does anyone have recs for #audiobooks that are good to fall asleep to?

I‘m not looking for books or podcasts for inducing sleep, just ones that don‘t demand my full concentration to understand them (but aren‘t empty) and don‘t have a lot of drama. Sometimes I drift off and am awakened by something an angry character is saying.

Also, of course, a good narrator! A couple of examples are Braiding Sweetgrass and the Three Pines mysteries.

This was a beautiful, poignant read, bringing up so many struggles a sweet but tough kid can have in a small town: being Japanese-Canadian when everyone else is white, the survivor of a family tragedy, a bookworm, the younger sister of a queer sibling. Kobayashi does an amazing job of tapping into the main character's quirky Harriet-the-Spy soul, as well as portraying the Prairie context.

#Booked2023 #QuietYA#
#ReadingTheAmericas2023 #Canada