Shaina Reads

I've struggled with how to start this post, but you know what? I'm just going to start.

I've finished graduate school, and I'm back in the world of full-time work and part-time rediscovery of what I like to do when I'm not at work. I keep thinking that second part should be simple now that I'm not a student, but I've never been great at transitions.

I still love to read and am thrilled to have more time for it now, but I've been circling my TBR hesitantly. I've had a harder time than normal focusing, retaining information, and sinking into narrative in any lasting way. Maybe I overstretched those attention muscles for school. It's possible facing the dung heap of the United States on a daily basis is training my brain to shut down as self-preservation.

What I do know? I want to try writing again, especially about the books I'm reading.

Here are a couple of my 2019 aspirations:

Chip away at my Audible backlog

I've waffled over cancelling my Audible subscription for months. It's felt especially handy ever since moving to Seattle. I never thought I'd be mad about living in a city full of readers, but the library holds lists for every medium are often backed up for weeks, if not months. For what's felt like a reasonable fee, I'm able to snap up whatever I want to listen to when I want to listen to it through Audible. But, joke's on me: for $17 a month, I've now got 22 books I couldn't wait to read at the time gathering virtual dust bunnies. Those holds lists don't seem so ridiculous now.

I've also recently realized 1) how much better I absorb and understand information when I'm reading it, and 2) how much longer it takes to listen to a book than to read it. Sometimes that information retention factor is less important, and often the audio versions of books have made my experience far better than they would have been if I'd read them. Sometimes, though, I want to better remember what I've read, and I also want to get through what I'm reading faster than an audiobook allows me to.

My Audible subscription is on hold now, and I'm going to cancel it when the time comes. I want to whittle away at my current backlog, shift more of my reading back to books and e-books, and give those interminable library holds lists a try.

Host a readathon or other event for Heather of Bits & Books

Just under two years ago, a fellow book blogger and dear friend Heather passed away. It was one of those accidents that felt fiercely unjust because of its complete randomness. I wish I'd known her better than I did, but I knew her enough to see how her enthusiasm (for budgies, baked goods, and especially books) and warmth touched not only me, but everyone around her. My heart still lurches when I see her blog in my RSS feed or her Twitter account pop up as I'm doing a search for something else. Knowing her, she'd probably just want me to smile at her memory and then find a delicious pastry and equally delicious novel.

Even while I've been out of the blogging world, I've kicked around the idea of hosting an event for Heather, perhaps in June for her birthday. I'm not sure what it would look like, but let me know if you'd have any interest in brainstorming or hosting with me.

It's funny how intimidating it can be to try to reenter a space you've left for a while. My blog was once the coziest, safest room I could find in which to put my feet and think things over by writing them out and sending them into the Internet tubes (and to a few lovely friends!). Now it feels alien in a way I could never have anticipated.

But then graduate school happened, and my quiet, introspective bubble expanded. My program centers case studies, group work, and intense personal and interpersonal reflection. We spend a ton of time talking about our work and how we can do it more effectively or equitably. This is both hella stressful and the most fulfilling way I've ever worked with others. I've forged a lot of strong bonds in that crucible of team work and trial and error. I never expected such an interpersonal program to work well for non-confrontational me, but, hey, personal growth, right? I'm leaving this program* with a better idea of what I value, personally and professionally.

I'm still trying to figure out where a book blog (or any kind of blog) fits into this new understanding of myself. Since I last posted here fourteen months ago, I've read a total of 26 books, a bit fewer than two a month. I still read, but it's slower. I savor picking up a book for fifteen minutes a day when I can, or squeezing audio in while I do the dishes. I did not expect it, but I'm enjoying that pace. I'm a distractible person, and I find books blur together when I try to read them back-to-back. I take more time now to embody the author's universe, more time to mull the characters and the big ideas over. Oh, and it has to be fiction, fiction-based, or told like a story. Ain't nobody got time for hard nonfiction in grad school.

My favorite books from the past year and change have been Born a Crime by Trevor Noah, Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri S. Tepper, and Lilith's Brood, the Xenogenesis trilogy by Octavia E. Butler. Two audiobooks, two paperbacks, all standouts during a time when nonessential content fell by the wayside. Part of me thinks they mean more, somehow, but it could also be they came to me at the right moments. I'd recommend any of them if you want to get swallowed up by a story or let a narrator whisk you off. Everyone and their mother knows Noah narrates his own audio and how excellent it is. Rebecca's narrator was just aces at bringing the spooky factor to the story). Right now, I'm making my way through One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. I put it down for a month or so, but the benefit of Márquez's meandering magical realism is not losing any plot threads.

I plan to tinker around a little more here and see if the mojo returns. I can't say how it will turn out, but I'll feel better knowing I didn't let this space perish from sheer inertia.

*Did I mention I finish school in three months? What the hell. When did that happen?!

A blurry photo of me, ostensibly doing field work in eastern Washington but mostly enjoying snow.

Wow, hey, hello! A blog post. I've sort of forgotten what to do with this big, blank text box, so you'll have to bear with me for bit.

Welp, the thing happened. I officially went blog silent. I knew graduate school would be a huge investment of time, tears, and brain cells, but I had the tiniest sliver of hope that I would keep up at least a trickle of reading and posting. Men We Reaped for Social Justice Book Club? The most wishful of thinking. All of the books I packed up and shipped across the country? Graciously keeping track of all of the dust in my apartment.

My graduate program gobbled me up in September and, with yesterday's submission of a 60-page report, only just spat me back out. Now I'm sitting here, a little bit dazed and rumpled, wondering what the heck to do with myself now. Because, guys, so much has happened.

1. I have learned so. much. I have more than 200 pages of Microsoft Word documents, including two real, actual, useful projects for local and state health organizations, to show for it.

2. I have started making friends. The way my program is set up makes this just about inevitable (you can't spend 6+ hours per week with seven other people without getting to know each other), but y'all know how hard this is for me. I can say without reservation that I am going to carry some of these people with me for the rest of my life, and I feel so lucky to have them.

3. Trump got elected. I spent a couple of weeks deep inside my own head, trying to figure out what I personally could do to make the world better, even in the smallest of ways, especially for my friends and peers of color. I succeeded sometimes and I failed at others, but I tried. I am going to keep trying.

4. On that note, I feel more certain than ever that I am on the right path, personally and professionally. I went into this quarter determined to be open, to learn, and to get the work done. I'm leaving it with more confidence than I have ever had that I can handle all of the stuff this life thing wants to throw at me and that I can handle much of it in way less time than I ever thought possible. I am amazed by what trust in myself, my colleagues, and my loved ones has produced in the past three months.

All right, anything else? Oh, BOOKS. I have read a grand total of *drum roll* FOUR books since school started.

• FEED by Mira Grant
• The Shadowed Sun by N. K. Jemisin (audio, narrated by Sarah Zimmerman)
• Kindred by Octavia Butler (audio, narrated by Kim Staunton)
• Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching: A Young Black Man's Education by Mychal Denzel Smith

That is just over one book per month. I cannot remember the last time my reading numbers have been this paltry, but thankfully, everything I did read was wonderful. I'd like to give a major shout out to Audible for getting me through half of that list while I did dishes. (RIP apartment with dishwasher.)

All right. I'm off to drink tea and do laundry, because apparently that's what the first day of winter break is for.

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?

• Being done packing and moving for the near future (until we find an apartment of our own in September/October, eek).
• Reuniting with my best friend from middle and high school.
• Knowing I have the opportunity to reunite with another best friend from high school.
• Spending time with friends from college (have I mentioned I'm excited to have friends here already?).
• Eating inadvisable amounts of delectable local cheese.
• Seeing a bald eagle flying about the park pictured above.
• This sunset:

Hi, guys. In case you hadn't noticed, I have not been blogging. Not a darned word! In fact, I haven't even been reading all that much since July began. Gasp.

Here's a handy-dandy list of what I've been doing instead:

Gamifying my life with Habitica.

Consuming more media.

Aging.

I turn 25 tomorrow. Two very good friends from college are coming up from New York to celebrate, and I'll be locking them in a room with some local friends and forcing everyone to problem-solve until we can escape. (I love nothing more than a good puzzle, particularly a puzzle that involves BEING ON A SPACE STATION.) I'm sure there will be further festivities involving food and alcohol, given that we don't end up locked on the space station forever.

I have a very good feeling about my twenty-sixth year. Big changes are coming, changes that will be actively catapulting me toward the life I want and the person I want to be. It's cliché to say it, but I can't remember a time in my life when I've felt so much like I'm on the right path (hence the photo accompanying today's post). It's terrifying, of course—change and I don't always mesh well—but the terror is tempered by healthy doses of anticipation, of eagerness to get started, and of certainty that I'll be able to handle whatever comes. I'll ride the highs, I'll weather the lows, and I'll keep on fighting to milk the most that I can out of this thing called life.

I hosted my first ever #chillafathon this past weekend. I use the term "hosted" very loosely, since I basically stopped checking in on the hashtag by Saturday. I don't feel guilty, because this event was about making a concerted effort to take a load off. I'm not good at that by nature, and after a particularly trying couple of weeks and a brain buzzing with anxiety, I knew something had to give.

And it was wonderful. I read. I slept. I tidied my apartment. I took myself out for a wonderful dinner. I made spontaneous plans with friends. I drank a good deal of beer and wine. I honestly can't remember the last time that I relaxed so thoroughly. Even now, by mid-week, I am calm.

It's a good time to be calm. If you've stuck around Shaina Reads for a while, you know that I believe in knowing what's going on in the world and bearing witness to all of it, good and bad. A lot of bookish people feel the same way, and I love this about them. They are so engaged with raising up the voices of those who would otherwise go unheard and exposing the atrocities in the world for what they are.

Naturally, on Sunday, everyone in my Twitter feed was reeling from the news of the massacre in Orlando in my home state of Florida.

That day, I remembered my commitment to taking care of myself (to the spirit of #chillafathon, which suddenly seemed like such a glib moniker) and made a deliberate decision to log off. The news of the shooting was devastating, but I knew that scrolling through social media all day would not change that. I went to the park with friends, and then we met others at a concert. The performers asked for a moment of silence for Orlando, and I closed my eyes and thought about how grateful I was that people I knew from high school were safe and how sorry I was that so many more were not. And then I enjoyed the music.

It's so easy to feel guilty for taking a step back, but an acquaintance from college, one committed to making the world safe for anyone who does not identify as straight and cisgender, put why we shouldn't so well:


There's so much more to say, but I'll leave it at that. Take care, each and every one of you.

A headline making the rounds on Twitter caught my eye last week: "Australian Parents Angry Over Books in Happy Meals."

You can check out the article from GalleyCat (or the longer piece it cites) for more information, but the gist is this: an Australian children's health advocacy group is angry at McDonald's for its "Happy Readers" promotion. Instead of receiving a toy with a Happy Meal, children are offered a choice of a soft-cover physical book or a code for a digital book via a McDonald's-branded reading app. There are 23 books in total, and parents can opt to buy the books individually at a rate of $2 AUD each.

As someone interested in both early literacy and public health, I've been mulling over the implications of this program since I first saw the article. On the one hand, I believe that putting a book in a child's hand, regardless of the source, is a net positive. Scores of research findings agree with me; in fact, on the very same day that GalleyCat tweeted its piece, the New York Times tweeted one summarizing two recent studies showing how important early reading may be to kids' brain development. If a child is getting a Happy Meal anyway, why not give them a book instead of a possibly vulgar Minions toy?

On the other, I understand why framing the book collection in a "gotta catch 'em all" fashion could entice kids to ask their parents for McDonald's more often or encourage parents to buy it for them more than they otherwise would. While the Golden Arches does offer lighter options these days, not all will order them; considering that rates of childhood obesity have more than doubled in the United States in the past 30 years, it's likely in a child's best interest to limit the number of smiling red boxes in their diets.

Beyond this is where things get hairy for me. Some of the comments on the Herald Sun article suggest that parents buy the Happy Readers books individually or take their children to the library or bookstore instead. While most likely well-intentioned, they miss the fact that not all families have these options. The individual books and books from other stores cost money, and if the choice is between a book (or, like, half a book, if you compare a bookstore paperback to a Happy Meal) and dinner, what's going to win out? At least in this case, when a parent opts for the meal, the child gets the book, too. As for libraries, they may not be conveniently located or, even worse, they may not exist at all.

As for the health aspect of the debate, there's a difference between discussing the physical health ramifications of fast food and lambasting the moral characters of the individuals who eat it, one that gets confused far too often for my taste and, again, reeks of classism. While I didn't notice any particularly egregious comments on either article I linked, I would not be surprised to see them crop up eventually.

Like I said, there's a lot to think about here, and I'd love to hear your opinions on the matter! Feel free to bring up things I didn't touch on here, because there are plenty of 'em.

Weekend Cooking is a weekly meme hosted over at Beth Fish Reads. Go check it out to see what else the blogosphere cooked up this week!

Happy Sunday, everyone!

About a week ago, I mentioned that my boyfriend would be going out of the country on a business trip soon. He left in the middle of the night on Wednesday, and I've been enjoying playing single lady ever since. (Read: dinners with friends, quiet nights in, and one particularly binge-y evening of Friday Night Lights. I blame these four.)

Before he left, I asked him what he'd like to be sent off with. At first he wanted brownies, but then he said that chocolate cookies might be easier to transport. Lucky for him, the chocolate chocolate chip cookies I picked out ended up being the gooiest, most pillowy treats ever. He only left four for me to snack on, which was probably for the best. I wonder how many are still hanging around with his team in Honduras.

A photo posted by Shaina (@shainareadsbooks) on Aug 4, 2015 at 5:46pm PDT

Brief, unexpected Weekend Cooking post ahoy! Weekend Cooking is a weekly feature hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

As a Latina (more specifically, a Jewban from South Florida), I've got a long, storied history with beans. Ask me what I miss most about living near Miami, and I will invariably wax poetic about Pollo Tropical's pulled pork (sadly out of reach now, due to newfound vegetarianism), black beans and rice, and plantains. I will probably follow up with an ode to Publix subs and the ability to wear shorts year-round.

Anyway, I'm getting off-topic. Today, my boyfriend and I were inspired to make a veritable butt-load of beans. We prepared the oft-missed Cuban black beans, and they're still simmering away on the stove. However, the refried beans are ready, and... well. They're freaking delicious.

Homemade refried beans. Looks like poo, tastes like heaven.

A photo posted by Shaina (@shainareadsbooks) on Jul 19, 2015 at 2:29pm PDT

They're also absolutely stuffed to the gills with butter. (Those two things are possibly related.) The recipe calls for a lot of fat—oil, butter or lard—so if that isn't your thing, steer clear. But, if so... who are you?

We doubled the following recipe and will be eating these beans until the end of time.

Refried Beans

Adapted from Serious Eats

1/2 pound dried pinto or black beans (note: we soaked these overnight, so we started off with the soaked and drained beans)

Water

2 sprigs fresh epazote or oregano (note: we used one teaspoon of dried oregano)

1 medium white onion, 1/2 minced and 1/2 whole

2 medium cloves garlic

Kosher salt

6 tablespoons lard, bacon drippings, vegetable oil or butter

In a large pot, cover your beans with water (they should be covered by about two inches). Add your herbs, onion half and garlic cloves and bring to boil. Lower the heat to simmer and cook until the beans are very tender, one to two hours. Season beans with salt. Take off heat and drain beans, reserving the cooking liquid. This should leave you with three cups of cooked beans.

In a large skillet, heat your fat of choice and cook minced onions until tender and translucent, about seven minutes. Stir in drained beans and cook for two minutes. Add one cup of reserved bean cooking liquid. Using a masher (chunky) or immersion blender (smooth), purée your beans. (Note: We used an immersion blender for the consistency above.) Reduce heat to medium and cook until your desired consistency is reached. If the beans are too dry, add more of the cooking liquid, a tablespoon at a time.

Do you love refried beans? Hate 'em? Don't care a whit about 'em but also cooked something delicious this weekend? Talk to me!

"This is a communal story. This is the story of black bodies across this country. This is not just my story." - Claudia Rankine, June 20, 2015

Last Saturday, I had the privilege of attending a free talk by poet and playwright Claudia Rankine. She came as part of New Haven's International Arts and Ideas Festival to discuss how "art teaches a poet to see." She read from her latest collection, Citizen: An American Lyric, and shared how she selected some of the art that goes along with the pieces, including Nick Cave's soundsuits and her struggle to obtain the rights to Public Lynching from the Hulton Archives.

Though slim in size, Citizen pulls together cultural and political commentary about being black in America and searingly personal moments of micro (and macro) aggression. "What happens when people get in the same space and are forced to negotiate?" Rankine wanted to know. She told us that she thinks of the book as a "community project," as she collected many of the stories in her poems from friends. She fleshed out one of her more disturbing pieces about a friend who made an appointment with a trauma counselor:

"At the front door the bell is a small round disc that you press firmly. When the door finally opens, the woman standing there yells, at the top of her lungs, Get away from my house! What are you doing in my yard?

It's as if a wounded Doberman pinscher or a German shepherd has gained the power of speech. And though you back up a few steps, you manage to tell her you have an appointment. You have an appointment? she spits back. Then she pauses. Everything pauses. Oh, she says, followed by, oh, yes, that's right. I am sorry.

I am so sorry, so, so sorry." - Citizen: An American Lyric, pg. 18   

Rankine told us that this friend kept that appointment (as she said, she'd "already gone all that way") and even made another, though she later ended up canceling it.


I've been struggling with how to write about Citizen since I read it a week ago. What I kept coming back to was that, as a young, privileged white woman, this isn't my story, and so who was I to comment on it? After seeing Rankine speak, I realized that, in a sense, it is my story. This is my story because I'm part of a society that allows people of color to be killed every single day. This is my story because I have what Rankine calls "the fluidity of white privilege," in that I'm able to feel terrible about atrocities like the Charleston massacre and wake up the next day and drink my coffee as though nothing happened. Andi made a fantastic point in her review about how Rankine's poems work "like a mirror," forcing you to grapple with not only the pain and anger of being erased, of being reviled, but also the act of negating another human being, whether out of hostility or simple thoughtlessness. Just because the story Citizen tells about me is infuriating and unflattering, I will not shrink away and say, "Not me!" because it's absolutely me. It's all of us. And the sooner we can accept that, the sooner we can do something about it.

In the interest of getting Citizen into the hands of as many people as I can, I'm hosting a giveaway. I'm going to select one lucky reader from the comments below to win a paperback or Kindle copy of Citizen: An American Lyric. (If you want to comment but don't want to be entered in the giveaway, just say so!) Leave your comment by 6 PM EST on Friday, June 27, 2015 to be entered to win. If you don't have a Disqus account, be sure to leave me a way to contact you. Good luck!

EDIT TO GIVEAWAY TERMS: I realized that I can open this up to international readers by offering a Kindle copy or $15 Amazon giftcard instead of a paperback. U.S. residents will have their choice of paperback or Kindle.

This is Tory, the prettiest pup around.

Last week, my boyfriend and I had the good fortune of spending nearly a week in Chicago. Not only did we watch two lovely friends get married, but we also got to spend multiple days with a few of our best friends from college. My boyfriend has an aunt, uncle and cousins in Evanston (northern suburb of Chicago and home to our alma mater), so we also spent a delightful evening with them, eating, talking and basking in that glorious feeling of home and lots of puppy kisses.

Getting to spend so much time with friends and family really threw into relief how much I've struggled socially since leaving college. My boyfriend and I moved to Connecticut on a whim after I got my lab manager position. We packed up our tiny apartment and headed off, cheerfully and more than a bit nervously, to a place where we didn't know a soul. Two years later, I still feel like I know very few souls here. For the most part, I've made it work—it's amazing how far a wonderful partner, a goofy cat and a penchant for solitude can get you—but sometimes I have to acknowledge how lonely it can be.

College bestie, boyfriend, me pre-wedding.

Academic environments are transient. Everyone is always shuffling between universities, and, beyond the graduate students (who are shackled here indefinitely), most people don't hang around for more than a year or two. For someone who forms friendships as slowly as I do, it can be devastating to feel like you're finally making progress with someone only to have that person pick up and move back across the country. Two of the closest friends I've made here are leaving this very weekend for graduate school and greener pastures in California. I'm thrilled for them, but I can't help but think about the gaping hole they'll leave in my social circle. (Actually, my social circle is more like a social pentagon, and they're leaving me with a social triangle.)

I know that things, including my social life, will never be like they were in college again. For the most part, I'm happy about that; I certainly didn't love every minute of my undergraduate career, and, on the whole, I feel much more love for the person I've become since donning my cap and gown. And yet there's nothing like having friendship and community at your fingertips. All I can hope is that there's more of it out there for me, and I'll continue doing my best to call it forth.

Speaking of being in Chicago and making new friends... LOOK AT THIS PRETTY LADY. Her name is Julianne, and she runs Outlandish Lit.

Don't kill me, Julianne.

She took me to a bookstore called Bucket o' Blood and made me buy some China Miéville. She fed me Oreos and toast (not in a weird way). We declared our undying love for each other. I also drank way too much wine while she filmed us talking about books. The evidence might pop up sometime soon. All in all, it was a really good time, and I'm glad our weirdness is just as compatible in real life.

I didn't have a ton of time for reading during my trip, but I did get some done (including some nonfiction, thank goodness) and hope to get reviews up soon. The writer's block has been fierce as of late, but at least I've been loving my reads.

Happy Sunday! Today I've got something decidedly unbookish for you to close out the weekend.

The past two days have been blissfully chilled-out, which is exactly what I needed after playing host to family last weekend and working a ten-hour Sunday the weekend before. Oh, and two bouts of illness. (OK, whining quota met.) I read, I played video games, I coded, and, tonight, I whipped up a beautiful batch of blueberry muffins.


One of my favorite hobbies besides reading is being in the kitchen, and I especially love to bake. I even had an extremely short-lived cooking blog in college. (Is anyone else noticing a pattern in my blog names here?) I don't bake nearly as often these days. In addition to being busier (you know, reading, gaming, and coding), my stomach has developed this annoying habit wherein it doesn't want me to constantly feed it sugar. What's up with that?

Anyway, these muffins are not only gorgeous but also delicious and super simple to make. I'm including the recipe below, but, honestly, you should check it out on the Smitten Kitchen website. Deb Perelman is my food goddess—I've never made a recipe of hers I didn't like—and she's a fantastic writer to boot.

Perfect Blueberry Muffins
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen, adapted from Cook's Illustrated
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg
3/4 cup sour cream or plain yogurt (I used full-fat Greek)
1/2 teaspoon grated lemon zest
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (I swapped half for whole wheat)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup blueberries, fresh or frozen (frozen don't have to be defrosted)

The recipe yields between 8 and 10 muffins.

Preheat your oven to 375F. Using an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugar together until creamy. Beat in egg, then lemon zest and yogurt. Add flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt to a sifter and sift half of the dry ingredients over the wet. Stir until combined. Add the rest of the dry ingredients and stir until combined. Gently fold in your blueberries. Fill your muffin tins 3/4 of the way (or make giant muffins, like I did) and bake until golden brown on top and a toothpick comes out clean. This took 20 minutes for me, but SK recommends 25-30.

Weekend Cooking is a weekly feature hosted over at Beth Fish Reads, and this is my first time linking up for it. Go check out her blog for more information and to see all the other delicacies whipped up by bloggers this weekend!

When I first decided to host my own Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend read-a-thon, I knew I wanted to make an effort to immerse myself in books that would make me think. Though only one other person joined me for this RAT (hi, Karsyn!), I still enjoyed myself and managed to finish two books that had been making me think an awful lot.

I read other things, too—check out my announcement post for my closing stats—but I want to talk about one of those first two here: The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan, by Jenny Nordberg.

But before we get to that, a little aside about thinking. Dr. King himself was (unsurprisingly) a major advocate for critical thinking. Disillusioned by the current quality of education, then 18-year-old King, already a skillful writer, wrote an impassioned piece for his alma mater's college newspaper:

"To think incisively and to think for one's self is very difficult. We are prone to let our mental life become invaded by legions of half truths, prejudices, and propaganda. At this point, I often wonder whether or not education is fulfilling its purpose. ... Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction." - The Maroon Tiger, Morehouse College student paper, 1947

I've mentioned before that I'm a scientist by training and trade (OK, more like a scientist's assistant, but close enough for our purposes). While I'm a big fan of consuming information, I try my best to be skeptical of what I take in, both the facts themselves and from whom and/or where I'm getting them. Accumulating knowledge is a worthy goal, but even more meaningful is being able to extend that knowledge to other topics and to be able to pick apart the sensationalism in our chosen media and uncover the kernels of truth (or untruth) beneath. I very much try to keep this in mind when I'm reading, and particularly when I'm reading non-fiction or historically-based fiction.

Like Dr. King said, this is hard. Really hard. It becomes even harder when you're reading mainly for pleasure—it's way too easy to be lazy and nod along with whatever the author is saying. It's tough to know whether you're getting the reality of the thing, rather than just another convenient story or flawed way of thinking. This may not be out of malice or a specific agenda on the author's part—everyone has a different worldview, shaped by their communities and their experiences, and that gets reflected in their writing, for better and for worse. But, above all, it's important to be aware of this.

So, TL;DR: Try your best not to be a lazy consumer. Read whatever you like, but be mindful while doing so and definitely don't discount those times when you think to yourself, "Hmm, something isn't quite right here."

Now, on to this book, which happens to be non-fiction. I'll be getting up a review for the other—Growin' Up White by Dwight Ritter—on another day.


The Underground Girls of Kabul tells the story of reporter Jenny Nordberg's five-year attempt to report on the phenomenon of Afghanistan's bacha posh—literally translated as "dressed like a boy." As she discovers, dozens of Afghan girls are brought up as boys under the premise that, eventually (perhaps when their mothers bear "real" sons, as bacha posh are supposed to ensure), they will "change back." In addition to being used as fertility charms, these girls and young women help their family businesses and act as chaperones for female family members. They are also free to move around outside their homes, play with other children and make their voices heard, all unthinkable activities for girls. The stories of these women are interwoven with Afghan history and tradition, including Soviet and American attempts to modernize the country, the rise and fall of the Taliban, and the function of women in a largely patriarchal society.

The women—some of whom have "returned" to being women, while others struggle against it—lead inspiring and heartbreaking lives. I think particularly of teenager Zahra's refusal to relinquish her boy-turning-manhood, much to the chagrin of her parents and teachers.  At one point, Nordberg asks her if she would wear feminine dress if she lived in the West:

She shakes her head at me in disbelief. "Don't you understand? I am not a girl."

 A big takeaway here is that not all bacha posh are created equal: some exist for family honor, aware (and accepting) of the fact that they will one day change back. Others, like Zahra, resolutely cling to their male status. Nordberg briefly veers into discussion of gender identity and trans issues, though not enough for my liking. An interesting, if fraught, question she raises is the role of nature and nurture when it comes to gender identity in Afghanistan:

What also makes Zahra distinctly different from other children or young adults in the Western world with a possible gender identity disorder is that she was picked at random to be a boy. As with other bacha posh, the choice was made for her. For that reason, it would be hard to argue that she was born with a gender identity issue. Instead, it seems as though she has developed one.

Zahra's mother mentioned that her daughter expressed interest in wearing boys' clothes. She did not object, as she was hoping it would encourage a male pregnancy. I'm not sure that I would agree with Nordberg's assessment of "at random" in this case, but her point could certainly hold weight for other bacha posh.

A somewhat critical review of this book touched on the fact that Nordberg seemed to struggle with how to handle Islam's role in perpetuating Afghanistan's male-dominated society. Another laments that the academics and experts she spoke to were almost exclusively foreign-born. (I don't buy into the latter one as much, since the rampant oppression of Afghan women and sexuality doesn't seem to leave much room for female or gender studies scholars.) I know next to nothing about Islam or Afghan scholars and would have to learn more before I could consider whether she presented a balanced account. Does anyone have any recommendations for where to begin?

More than anything else, this book was a discussion of women's liberties (or, more accurately, the lack thereof) in Afghanistan. Privileges women in Western countries take for granted are only possible for Afghan women who are willing to run the risk of impersonating men. It was also a thoughtful meditation on what it means to be a woman—biologically, socially and personally. It serves as a reminder that many of the supposed "differences" between men and women are ones that humans constructed for themselves. I would recommend it for anyone interested in learning more about Afghan society and history and taking a critical look at gender roles and politics.

Source: serialpodcast.org

Before I start fangirling, thanks to Julianne for persuading me it would be a good idea to write this post (or, at least, that she would read it if I did). So happy to have met you through Bout of Books 12!