books and links
pretend it's yesterday. :D
What I just finished reading:
the lost girls of paris, which i kind of liked and kind of didn't. there was an interesting story there but i don't think pam jenoff really wrote it. one of the three pov threads had a dumb romance - the lost girl in that segment and the love interest (who was pretty easily pegged as the love interest from the beginning) knew each other like a week, during which time they spent maybe twenty-four hours together, and suddenly she's crazy in love, and then he's crazy in love, and i rolled my eyes so hard i could see my brain. and then she did some MONUMENTALLY STUPID, RISKY SHIT because she looooved him soooo much. just... ugh. (also this particular character was supposed to be so strong and brave and smart and resourceful, but you never really saw her being any of those things.) the framing story had a couple of HIGHLY coincidental plot points that were necessary to move the story along, there was a major, very tense mystery with an incredibly anti-climactic resolution, and a smaller mystery with a resolution that wasn't really borne out by earlier parts of the story. like the author went "ok, i need to solve this... oh, i know!" and then never went back and added anything in to make it make sense. it was a frustrating read because it had so much potential.
also the very last giant days, sigh. totally adorable, highly recommended.
What I am reading now:
the badass librarians of timbuktu, by joshua hammer, which is about, uh, well, badass librarians saving thousands of books from radical islamists in timbuktu. i've learned a bunch of things about mali and timbuktu's long history of scholarship and bookmaking (altho apparently not bookbinding - a lot of times these very old books seem to be basically unbound manuscripts) (possibly with covers?) and that part is totally fascinating, as is the part where random malians and tuaregs and miscellaneous desert dwellers kind of randomly pull these two-hundred-year-old books out of nowhere, but now we're at the point where joshua hammer is going into detail about how the fundies took over and i care slightly less. i mean, this is probably stuff we need to know before we get to the librarians saving all the books, but it's kind of repetitive and i'm not as interested. i want to get to the smuggling!
What I'm going to read next:
light from uncommon stars, by ryka aoki, which was recced on one of the discords i'm on, and when i went to the bookstore one of the booksellers likewise totally pimped it at me. we had a fun conversation.
i have shit to share but i also want to go to bed, so have some links to tide you over. :D
ann arbor, mi, where the university of michigan is which is where i went to college (go blue :D ), is now the first city in the us to have free menstrual products in public bathrooms. which, holy crap, how cool is that?
i know it's not thanksgiving any more, but if i'd shared this link when i found it, you would have known that you could get a giant reese's peanutbutter cup for t-day. it was nine inches, like a pie.
meet jessica watkins, the first black woman to join the crew of the international space station. someday this will be no big deal. it will still however be pretty damn cool. i mean, come on, space.
and speaking of black ladies, josephine baker - singer, dancer, resistance hero - was buried in the pantheon in paris, becoming only the sixth woman and first black woman to be so honored. her body is actually buried in monaco so the coffin in paris has some dirt from st louis (where she was born), paris, monaco, and milandes (where her chateau was, and can i just say how much i love that she had a chateau). the ceremony was held on the anniversary of the day she got french citizenship, which is an especially nice touch.
have an interview with keanu reeves. most excellent. :D
so barbados removed queen elizabeth ii as head of state and replaced her with an actually elected prime minister, and then declared rihanna a national hero. her title is "the right excellent". there's nothing about this story that i don't love.
there's an elfland in somerville. a little boy told his parents he saw elves in an empty lot and now there are tiny buildings and an ice skating rink and a community garden and even little street lights. and of course elfland has an instagram.
ikea japan is renting out tiny tokyo apartments for almost nothing. by which i mean, less than a dollar a month. the places are, uh, let's say "compact", and come fully ikea furnished. i think there's only one available right now. i'm surprised there's even one, because that kind of rent in tokyo is a miracle.
this guy is driving the length of great britain in the world's smallest car to raise money for a children's charity. it's an intensely adorable little vehicle but it is seriously so small.
seth meyers and his wife had a baby, which i share for the video, because it includes not only the baby dressed as a butterball turkey and the dog dressed as a pilgrim, but the amusing fact that seth's dad wanted the baby to be a boy so they could name him albert, because dad had six dogs all named albert. five have gone to the great dog run in the sky, so he's on albert vi. (the littlest meyers is a girl. her name is addie.)
What I just finished reading:
the lost girls of paris, which i kind of liked and kind of didn't. there was an interesting story there but i don't think pam jenoff really wrote it. one of the three pov threads had a dumb romance - the lost girl in that segment and the love interest (who was pretty easily pegged as the love interest from the beginning) knew each other like a week, during which time they spent maybe twenty-four hours together, and suddenly she's crazy in love, and then he's crazy in love, and i rolled my eyes so hard i could see my brain. and then she did some MONUMENTALLY STUPID, RISKY SHIT because she looooved him soooo much. just... ugh. (also this particular character was supposed to be so strong and brave and smart and resourceful, but you never really saw her being any of those things.) the framing story had a couple of HIGHLY coincidental plot points that were necessary to move the story along, there was a major, very tense mystery with an incredibly anti-climactic resolution, and a smaller mystery with a resolution that wasn't really borne out by earlier parts of the story. like the author went "ok, i need to solve this... oh, i know!" and then never went back and added anything in to make it make sense. it was a frustrating read because it had so much potential.
also the very last giant days, sigh. totally adorable, highly recommended.
What I am reading now:
the badass librarians of timbuktu, by joshua hammer, which is about, uh, well, badass librarians saving thousands of books from radical islamists in timbuktu. i've learned a bunch of things about mali and timbuktu's long history of scholarship and bookmaking (altho apparently not bookbinding - a lot of times these very old books seem to be basically unbound manuscripts) (possibly with covers?) and that part is totally fascinating, as is the part where random malians and tuaregs and miscellaneous desert dwellers kind of randomly pull these two-hundred-year-old books out of nowhere, but now we're at the point where joshua hammer is going into detail about how the fundies took over and i care slightly less. i mean, this is probably stuff we need to know before we get to the librarians saving all the books, but it's kind of repetitive and i'm not as interested. i want to get to the smuggling!
What I'm going to read next:
light from uncommon stars, by ryka aoki, which was recced on one of the discords i'm on, and when i went to the bookstore one of the booksellers likewise totally pimped it at me. we had a fun conversation.
i have shit to share but i also want to go to bed, so have some links to tide you over. :D
ann arbor, mi, where the university of michigan is which is where i went to college (go blue :D ), is now the first city in the us to have free menstrual products in public bathrooms. which, holy crap, how cool is that?
i know it's not thanksgiving any more, but if i'd shared this link when i found it, you would have known that you could get a giant reese's peanutbutter cup for t-day. it was nine inches, like a pie.
meet jessica watkins, the first black woman to join the crew of the international space station. someday this will be no big deal. it will still however be pretty damn cool. i mean, come on, space.
and speaking of black ladies, josephine baker - singer, dancer, resistance hero - was buried in the pantheon in paris, becoming only the sixth woman and first black woman to be so honored. her body is actually buried in monaco so the coffin in paris has some dirt from st louis (where she was born), paris, monaco, and milandes (where her chateau was, and can i just say how much i love that she had a chateau). the ceremony was held on the anniversary of the day she got french citizenship, which is an especially nice touch.
have an interview with keanu reeves. most excellent. :D
so barbados removed queen elizabeth ii as head of state and replaced her with an actually elected prime minister, and then declared rihanna a national hero. her title is "the right excellent". there's nothing about this story that i don't love.
there's an elfland in somerville. a little boy told his parents he saw elves in an empty lot and now there are tiny buildings and an ice skating rink and a community garden and even little street lights. and of course elfland has an instagram.
ikea japan is renting out tiny tokyo apartments for almost nothing. by which i mean, less than a dollar a month. the places are, uh, let's say "compact", and come fully ikea furnished. i think there's only one available right now. i'm surprised there's even one, because that kind of rent in tokyo is a miracle.
this guy is driving the length of great britain in the world's smallest car to raise money for a children's charity. it's an intensely adorable little vehicle but it is seriously so small.
seth meyers and his wife had a baby, which i share for the video, because it includes not only the baby dressed as a butterball turkey and the dog dressed as a pilgrim, but the amusing fact that seth's dad wanted the baby to be a boy so they could name him albert, because dad had six dogs all named albert. five have gone to the great dog run in the sky, so he's on albert vi. (the littlest meyers is a girl. her name is addie.)