Shaina Reads

Many thanks to Heather of Bits & Books for turning me on to this weekly post! It's hosted by Christine over at Bookishly Boisterous.


1. I went on an outrageously beautiful hike in the North Cascades National Park this past weekend. Some friends and I hiked a 7-mile loop up, down and through the mountains, and none of the photos I took do it a bit of justice. I don't know when I'll have another chance to take an all-day trip like this, and I am so glad I seized my chance on Sunday.

My cute friends, my cute boyfriend and some cute mountains.

2. I officially started graduate school on Monday! I'm currently in my Population Health block. For my first assignment, I have to research the social determinants of health and how they intersect and summarize that in five pages, all to be turned in by 6 P.M. this Thursday. You know. Easy peasy.


via GIPHY
3. I am not reading anything. See #2.

4. Wait! That's a lie. I have been squeezing in a few pages of "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?" And Other Conversations About Race by Beverly Daniel Tatum. This is such an excellent primer for anyone looking to learn more about racial identity development. I may even be able to use a quotation from it in my paper!

5. I started using my Passion Planner this past week, and so far I've been using it as a daybook. I have never been good at accounting for my time (and, related, feeling like I'm spending my time wisely), so this has been a great exercise in doing that. Happily, I'm pleased with how my month-view for September looks. I accomplished so many things and saw my friends all the time!

6. I started running again. I am a very slow runner, but thankfully Seattle is a gorgeous place for taking your exercise slowly.

Lake Washington, along my running trail.

7. In honor of Monday's U.S. presidential debate, I present to you my favorite thing that this election cycle has given us.

8. I discovered that one of UW's libraries has a room that looks an awful lot like the Great Hall from Hogwarts. While visiting yesterday, I stumbled across (I kid you not) a Triwizard Trivia Tournament. So, yeah. Grad school is the best.

Good news, everyone! Litsy finally released an update for Android beta testers that allows me to post photos again, so this Litten is back in book-snappin' business.

For those unfamiliar with the app, Litsy is most quickly summarized as Instagram for books. You can share interesting quotations from or fun facts ("blurbs") about your current read, and you can even post reviews, complete with a 3-point rating system. You can stick with your standard book + random household/nature items shot, or you can get creative. I've seen people post photos of where they are or what they're doing and how it relates back to their current read. In short, Litsy is a bunch of fun, and I'm neglecting all my other social media apps in its wake.

Much like Shannon, I think this app is going to be a godsend once school really starts to pick up. I am going to be writing a ton for my program, and I don't know that I'll have the brain power for longer reviews here. I know I'll appreciate the flexibility that comes with dashing off a few quick sentences about how I liked (or didn't like) my last read.

In that spirit, here are a few quick and dirty reviews of some books I've been meaning to write about here:

It's been a hot thirteen months since I last participated in Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by the lovely folks over at The Broke and the Bookish.

This week's topic is all about audio, and so I thought I'd split it up between my ears' two loves: audio books and podcasts.

First, the books! Here are five books that were better via audio. (Disclaimer: I have not tried all of these in print to compare, but I have a hunch that my experience would not have been as good without narration.)

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

This was one of my favorite books of 2015, despite some serious reservations about Kesey's portrayal of women in the novel. Tom Parker brought our protagonist "Chief" Bromden and the interior world he was trapped in to life more than my internal narrator could ever hope to.

The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway

In high school, I almost read this entire book in print. Clocking in at a mere 127 pages, the fact that I didn't finish it says a lot. Donald Sutherland's portrayal of Santiago got me all the way to the end in a single evening. This book has the added honor of being the first audio book I ever listened to after assuming for so long that I would not like them.

Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor

Okorafor's story of a young woman on a journey to avenge her mother's death (and become a kickass magician in the process) was spellbinding when read aloud, but the prose may have been a bit too sparse for me in print.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

I tried this once in print but wasn't pulled in, and back to the library it went. To be trite, Gaiman's narration of his own tale of childhood and magic was just a treat. If you have not read or listened to this, I highly recommend pulling up your preferred audio book source and hopping to it.

The Killing Moon by N. K. Jemisin

You all knew this would end up here. I tried reading this fantasy novel two or three different times in print and kept abandoning it. After loving The Fifth Season, I wanted to try again. It took two tries, but I finally got swept up in Jemisin's world built upon the importance of dreams and the politics surrounding them. I am so glad I can stop writing about how much I need to read this one.

Honorable mentions: IT by Stephen King (narrated by Steven Weber), In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (narrated by Scott Brick), and A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving (narrated by Joe Barrett)

I have been making significantly more time for my podcasts than for my audio books lately (damn you, US election cycle), so I would be remiss not to mention a few of my favorites. I chose to highlight the ones that aren't dictated by our presidential candidates' every move.

FiveThirtyEight's What's the Point

All data, all the time. FiveThirtyEight's Jody Avirgan covers what happens when we quantify our lives, often with funny, fascinating and poignant results. It makes this research nerd's heart sing.

I recommend: Postcards

PRI's Otherhood

I think I stumbled upon this one while browsing through BeyondPod's category tab, and I'm so glad that I did. Rupa Shenoy illustrates the various angles of what it means to be an immigrant (or an immigrant's child) in America. If you want to learn more about what it means to be "other" in the USA, this is a great place to start.

I recommend: Otherness in an Integrated World

NPR's Code Switch

This find came courtesy of Jenny from Reading the End. The various contributors talk race in America, from the lightest subjects (why don't black people like the outdoors? hint: history and stereotyping) to the heaviest ones (ongoing, never ending, omnipresent police brutality).

I recommend: "I'm Not Black, I'm O. J.!" (I recently finished the excellent five-part documentary, O. J.: Made in America, and now I want to go back and give this one another listen.)

Two-Up Production's Limetown

Amy of Read a Latte turned me on to this fabulous bit of serialized fiction. People actually thought it was real when it first aired, and I can see why. It takes an episode or two to really hit its stride, but this Serial-esque investigation of a research facility (and how more than three hundred people mysteriously disappeared from it) will have you wondering who cranked up the A/C. Listen with a friend so you have someone to cling to in fear.

I recommend: Just start from the beginning and listen to it all.

Lore

I'm jumping the gun a bit here since I haven't listened to this podcast yet, but I discovered it today by accident (potentially embarrassing admission: I was looking up the exact definition of the word "lore") and cannot wait to dig in. The show page claims to uncover "the frightening history behind common folklore." Color me intrigued.

I recommend: To be determined once I listen myself!

It's finally arrived, guys: orientation week! My first official event is on Thursday, and it's only going to get busier from here on out.

I met some of my cohort yesterday at a picnic in an awesome local park. It used to be the site of Seattle's gas plant, and some of the original structures remain.



The rest of my weekend included a Daft Punk laser light show with friends, delicious ube ice cream in a still-warm waffle cone, and lots of time for crossing fun and productive things off my to-do list.

Reading was (and is) definitely on that list. I've just about rounded the halfway mark of FEED, the first in Mira Grant's Newsflesh trilogy. I originally assumed this was "just another zombie book," but it's more of a political journalist thriller with the undead wreaking havoc in the background. Goodreads has been recommending this book to me since 2012, and now I know why. It rocks.

On Friday, I picked up Catching Homelessness: A Nurse's Story of Falling Through the Safety Net by Josephine Ensign. It's the book of the year at UW's School of Public Health, and I hope to get through it before Thursday. It's slim, but I know the stories and information it packs in will be heavy, personal and extremely important.

Also also, I joined Litsy as a beta tester for their Android app! Add me @shainareads. I recently updated my phone and lost the ability to post pictures myself, but I'm loving scrolling through my feed to see what everyone else is reading.

I've been doing my best to steer clear of NetGalley lately. I haven't been making much time to write reviews, and, with a few month-old galleys gathering dust on my Kindle, I am a wee bit embarrassed to show my face around those parts.

This didn't stop me from doing a bit of weekend window shopping (read: allowing my cursor to hover over the "Request" button while I remind myself how little time I'll have to read for pleasure in just a week's time).

Here are a handful of upcoming fall and winter reads that had me struggling to resist:

Swing Time by Zadie Smith | November 15 | Penguin Press

ZADIE SMITH HAS A NEW BOOK COMING OUT. Maybe I should read more of her backlist before getting so excited over the new and shiny, but White Teeth was one of the first books I reviewed on this blog. It will always hold a special place in my heart.

Swing Time explores the short-lived friendship between two young brown women vying to be professional dancers. I don't usually go for stories that zero in on female friendship like this, but I've been meaning to branch out. Zadie Smith seems like a good reason to do so.

Slipping: Stories, Essays & Other Writing by Lauren Beukes | November 29 | Tachyon Publications

This is the NetGalley description:

A Punk Lolita fighter-pilot rescues Tokyo from a marauding art installation. Corporate recruits harvest poisonous plants on an inhospitable planet. An inquisitive adolescent ghost disrupts the life of a young architect. Product loyalty is addictive when the brand gets under the skin.

The excerpt I read was so bizarre that I've tried to summarize it for fifteen minutes and have completely failed. This collection from South African author Lauren Beukes either going to be gimmicky as hell or absolutely amazing. I can't wait to find out which.

Shadowbahn by Steve Erickson | February 14 | Blue Rider Press

Another one for the bizarre list, Shadowbahn involves the Twin Towers suddenly reappearing, intact, in South Dakota in 2021. Tens of thousands of people make the pilgrimage to view them and claim to hear the towers singing to them, though no one can agree on which song they are singing. Also, someone just might be living up there.

The novel follows several stories, including those of a pair of siblings and a stillborn baby(???), all united by this inexplicable event. Again, amazing? Gimmicky train wreck? Who knows. We'll find out in February.

Are Racists Crazy?: How Prejudice, Racism, and Antisemitism Became Markers of Insanity by Sander L. Gilman and James M. Thomas | December 20 | NYU Press

I honestly cannot even attempt to summarize this premise. From Goodreads:

In 2012, an interdisciplinary team of scientists at the University of Oxford reported that - based on their clinical experiment - the beta-blocker drug, Propranolol, could reduce implicit racial bias among its users. Shortly after the experiment, an article in Time Magazine cited the study, posing the question: Is racism becoming a mental illness? In Are Racists Crazy?, Sander Gilman and James Thomas trace the idea of race and racism as psychopathological categories, from mid-19th century Europe, to contemporary America, up to the aforementioned clinical experiment at the University of Oxford, and ask a slightly different question than that posed by Time: How did racism become a mental illness? Using historical, archival, and content analysis, the authors provide a rich account of how the 19th century Sciences of Man - including anthropology, medicine, and biology - used race as a means of defining psychopathology and how assertions about race and madness became embedded within disciplines that deal with mental health and illness. 

I am unbelievably intrigued despite my better judgment; I can't resist anything that discusses how to think about prejudice in terms of human cognition as well as (hopefully) better interventions to reduce implicit bias. I expect to be blown away, either by invaluable insight or intense rage. I find the latter option more probable, but a girl can dream.

Many thanks to Heather of Bits & Books for turning me on to this weekly post! It's hosted by Christine over at Bookishly Boisterous.

1. Can I first just say how excited I am that I get to write a blog post in list format? Despite having some ideas for real, fleshed-out, non-list posts kicking around in my brain, they just aren't coming out of my fingers lately. A list it is for now.

2. Did you guys hear about #Diverseathon? I'm not sure who originally started the tag and event (and, in fact, I managed to completely miss the nasty tweets and YouTube videos that led to its inception, which I'm counting as a score), but the bookosphere is all about reading underrepresented authors this week. If you need some tips on where to start, my dear friend Memory put together a list of 37 reads under $5 by queer authors and authors of color.

3. On the subject of #Diverseathon, I found a book that would be perfect for it yesterday. I'm only 15 or so pages in, and I'm already sad about how relevant this 20-year-old book still is in regards to police brutality and people fundamentally misunderstanding white privilege.

Today in $2 thrift store scores. // #bookstagram #igreads #nonfiction #diverseathon #booksbooksbooks #amreading

A photo posted by Shaina (@shainareadsbooks) on Sep 13, 2016 at 10:02pm PDT

4. MY BOYFRIEND AND I FOUND AN APARTMENT THIS WEEK. We planned to stay with family and house-sit until October to save money when we first got here, but we were starting to worry about being able to afford our own place (and, in particular, affording our own place that wasn't, well, a dinky, miserable broom closet). Lo and behold, we found ourselves a perfectly reasonable, perfectly nice place this past Monday. I can even bike and (take a rather long) walk to school if I want to! I cannot adequately describe my relief. I am already plotting out creative book storage solutions.

5. I went on the nicest hike last Sunday with two of my best friends from high school and our significant others. It wasn't anything intense (3.5 miles roundtrip with only 500 feet of elevation gain), but it was glorious to get outside in the fresh air and look at some beautiful scenery.


I fell (though not from the log) and busted my ass in this creek. No regrets.

6. I start orientation for school next week, and I'm starting to feel the jitters. I know it's going to be awesome, but your girl doesn't do well with schedule/environment change at first. Relaxing and getting myself into the right mindset are top priorities this week.

7. After reading Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals and thinking a lot about how the food industry shapes dietary and nutrition recommendations in the United States, this New York Times piece about how the sugar industry diverted attention away from the link between sugar consumption and heart disease is entirely infuriating and entirely unsurprising.

8. I've been spending a lot of time poring over Scentsy's wax melt offerings lately. Have I ever once used a wax melt? Nope. Whatever. One of my blogger friends Elle is a Scentsy consultant, and I'm considering taking the plunge and making my new apartment smell freaking awesome. Plus, I could melt the wax in a fox or an owl! Don't you want to melt scented wax in adorable woodland creatures?

Happy Monday, book buds, and happy Labor Day to my friends in the States! I've been unemployed for about a month now, so I have to admit that this whole three-day weekend thing means less to me than usual. I fully deserve any tomatoes you hurl my way.

I forgot to update y'all about my Bout of Books progress last Monday, and suffice it to say that I did not read a whole lot. Thankfully, the lovely Jenna of JMillWanders hosted the Take Back Your Shelves Readathon this weekend (still going today, too!) and I finally, finally managed to get N. K. Jemisin's The Killing Moon under my belt via audio.

I just checked, and I've posted about reading or wanting to read this book no fewer than eight times since last August, so it was about time. Sadly, the writing was a lot clunkier and the metaphors far more heavy-handed than those of the exquisite/wonderful/my bae The Fifth Season, but her world building is as glorious as always. I ended up grabbing its follow-up, The Shadowed Sun, to listen to today. Despite real differences in quality among the novels, I want to read Jemisin's oeuvre, so I will, dang it.

I also started Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer during Bout of Books 17 but sort of dropped it during my Jemisin audio fest, so I hope to jump back into that this week. I've only tried reading one other Foer before (Everything is Illuminated during a particularly tumultuous time in junior year of college), and I couldn't get through it. Naturally, I decided that his part-memoir, part-investigation of the world of factory and family farming might go over better. It's the first bit of food/diet-related nonfiction that I've read since Animal Liberation, and I'm learning a lot. For instance, did y'all know about fecal soup and how much of it commercial chicken absorbs during processing? Maybe you didn't want to know that.

Foer fans: what other novel can I try of his? I feel like I didn't give his fiction a fair shake the first time around.

Happy reading!