📚 This week and last’s library selections:

• Radium Girls (comic version)
• Seen and Unseen
• Age of Revolutions
• Ghosts, Monsters, and Demons of India
• Where We Meet the World
• The Smart Girl’s Guide to Privacy
• The Crumrin Chronicles Vol 1

📚 Today’s library run:

• CCCP Underground by Frank Herfort - this caught my eye from a staff display
• A Shining Beacon by James Albon
• Dear Sophie, Love Sophie by Sophie Lucido Johnson
• Ways of Seeing by John Berger - oh dear, this is set in bold type 😒

Requested too many books from the library again 📚😅

I was telling my buddy he needs to read Maus but commented I read it too young and would understand it better now, and he suggested I reread it. I read it in 1994, so a 30 year revisit 😄 Wish it weren’t on my mind though.

My printer ran out of toner so I had to make a run to the library sooner than usual, but at least some holds came in!

• Entropy
  
• The Strategic Designer
• The Bauhaus Ideal: Then and Now
• Floral Fantasy
• Counter Space: Design and the Modern Kitchen

Alas, the pruning book I really wanted wasn’t there yet.

📚 Library grab bag because I forgot to re-pause some holds 😄

• Sohla’s cookbook! Start Here
• The Lantern and the Night Moths, a poetry collection recommended by my fav author Courtney Milan re: her latest
• Shikake: the Japanese art of shaping behavior through design
• Navigational Entanglements

📚 Library haul!

• Advocate
• Washington’s Gay General
• Aquicorn Cove
• The Garden Against Time
• Adventures in Space
• The Way of the House Husband 2
• Carmilla: The First Vampire

A couple of the Chinese Hugo shortlisted stories are in this collection so I want to check them out.

More graphic novels in this week’s library haul! 📚 I’ve been enjoying them as light summer reading 👍

• West End Earl
• Natural Palettes
• Women and Power
• Be Prepared
• The Pale Queen
• The Midwinter Witch
• Paying the Land

📚 Heavy on the comics and art books this library run!

• Decolonizing Design
• How to Be Ace
• The Story Cure
• Dear Sophie, Love Sophie
• The Hidden Witch
• The Infinity Particle
• Sagmeister & Walsh: Beauty
• Machine Embroidered Woodlands
• Cucina Povera
• A Life in Pattern

Had fun browsing for books with friends at the library today! 📚 Went in to pick up Doppelganger, which I had on hold, then we poked through the fiction section and ridiculed their poor labeling system. I was the only one who found stuff – I’m willing to try random stuff as long as it’s short 🤷‍♀️

📚 Today’s library haul:

• Goblin Girl by Moa Romanova
• Strikethrough by Silas Munro
• Dumb by Georgia Webber
• Heartstopper 5 by Alice Oseman
• Linghun by AI Jiang

Linghun was suggested by my librarian and was a Nebula nominee last year. Hopefully it’s not too horror for me!

I blazed through my last library haul so today’s is bigger 😎 A couple cookbooks, some art books, and some comics. Still going for lighter (mental) fare – but had to bring my husband to carry these for me since I still have lifting restrictions from the surgery 😹

I’m pretty low mental energy right now so I requested a bunch of comics and art books from the library. The Artist’s Way snuck in because I failed to re-pause my hold in time 😂 (I tried while I was waiting for my surgery but must’ve forgotten to hit save 🤷‍♀️)

I recently blogged about why leaning on LLMs to do the work of reading and researching for us is a mistake:

Using LLMs to prepare summaries presumes that you will be interested in the same aspects of a piece of writing as anyone else, when what we take away from anything we read is specific to us — to our current knowledge, understanding, framework, and purpose for reading.

As someone who’s deindexed my main blog from Google to avoid turning up in their generated summaries / results, imagining people using some other LLM to summarize that essay makes me feel icky and sad 🤷‍♀️

Today’s library haul was pleasingly slender, making this a more realistic venture than many 😂 * Design for the Mind * This Country (graphic novel) * The Tea Master and the Detective * Steering the Craft * Ways of Curating

I was lucky to escape the library parking lot intact though! Never go at closing 😂

Apparently I was so excited about this book about dust I preordered it twice 🤦‍♀️😂

(I read the email series it grew out of years ago and did find it seriously fascinating 🤷‍♀️)

Borrowed Greenfeast: autumn, winter from the library and looks like I’ll be buying a copy – I flagged nearly every recipe in the first half so I’m preserving my post-its 😂 Lots of slow cooked, roasted, hearty vegetarian comfort foods. Some look a bit simple for dinner but I’ll put an egg on it 😉

Today’s library haul has more “intense” books than I prefer to get at once – I had the holds paused but didn’t notice they all became active again till they were already en route 😂

📖 Panel from “What It Is” by Lynda Barry:

There is another part of my mind which seems to not know what year it is at all. I find myself arguing in my head with people I haven’t seen in 15 years… it’s like there is a place in me where it is all alive.

I avoided reading Barry for years because I didn’t like how her character Marlee looked, then I learned that was the point 😅 The collage pages are a little overwhelming but I’m digging the comic parts.

📖 Panel from “What It Is” by Lynda Barry: > There is another part of my mind which seems to not know what year it is at all. I find myself arguing in my head with people I haven’t seen in 15 years… it’s like there is a place in me where it is all alive.

I avoided reading Barry for years because I didn’t like how her character Marlee looked, then I learned that was the point 😅 The collage pages are a little overwhelming but I’m digging the comic parts.

I realized my Kindle Unlimited subscription was ending tonight and decided to gamble on reading the final book of a trilogy before Amazon took it away. Raced the clock and finished the book exactly at midnight 🦾

I LOVED Odell’s How to Do Nothing so I am super excited for Saving Time! 📕 I’ve been reading and thinking a fair bit about human time vs mechanical time in recent months and intrigued to get her take.

I changed things up for this year’s reading review, and looked at different stats. A new one was what year the books I read were published – nearly half are from the past three years. 📚

📚 My 20 favorite books I read in 2022 – including 9 SFF and romance novels, 5 graphic novels, and 6 non-fiction books.

Usually I just make a bulleted list, but this year I wrote mini blurbs for each. I’ve never come up with readalike suggestions before, it was tough! 😂

📚 Failed to consider how big and heavy this haul would be when I requested so many art books – I barely staggered out of the library! 😂

📚 Library haul! Tried to get a lot of stuff that will have pictures. Accidentally had a mini Russian theme with Soviet Seasons, Soviet Space Graphics and Putin’s Russia.

Thinking about how cool my little hometown library was. They gave me carte blanche to write graphic novel reviews for their website after college. (I did work there in HS.) My huge library system now is great but would never be game. One neat part of a town of 13k vs city of 90k.

Big library haul today because my branch is closing for a month for repairs! Goal was lighthearted reads, nothing expressly political, so I got a bunch of comics and picture books. I keep getting books that are too dense or anxiety-inducing for the evening wind-down.

Today’s library haul 📚 Hey, I got a rainbow! 🌈 Psyched for Dr. Janega’s graphic medieval history 👏

📚 Rest of my library requests came in, mostly comics and social justice. Seeing this together, probably should have gotten a few more comics and light reads 😉

📚 Today’s library haul is a bit random. Reading a lot of heavy stuff so tried to balance that with some lighthearted reads. Some comics on the way too but I was out running errands anyway 🤷‍♀️

Reading The Wake Up 📚

30% in and liking it a lot - but feel white supremacy is an incomplete explanation. As a non-religious person, I’d say it’s not just a white supremacist culture we live in, but a white Christian supremacist culture.

Skimming through this beautiful book as a design object this morning 😍 “WA: the essence of Japanese design” I’m a sucker for red anyway but the spot gloss on the cover is *chef’s kiss*📚

I may have gotten a little excited with the library requests 😅 But most are art books and comics so they’re quicker reads 😉 Apropos that the book on top is called “So many books: reading and publishing in an age of abundance” 📚

📚 Started reading Acquired Tastes: Stories about the Origins of Modern Food

I doubt I’ll make it all the way through before it’s due back but it’s interesting so far! Also depressing as it’s largely a story of colonialism 😔

Finished reading Odd Apples, a photography book by William Mullan. 🍏🍎 Very much enjoyed! Heirloom fruit is interesting in appearance and variety. 📚

Currently reading Pastoral Song by James Rebanks 📚

Really enjoyed The Shepherd’s Life so I’m looking forward to this! Going to try to take my time with it. Seems made for dipping in and out, with lots of section breaks.

Starting Good Trouble: Lessons from the Civil Rights Playbook by Christopher Noxon 📚 I really like this handwritten / illustrated style for nonfiction.

Feeling low about current events so hoping this will help my mindset🤞

📚 Really excited to read Out of Office! Before the pandemic I hated working from home but I’m fully a convert now. Hoping to find some arguments to convince my director to only make me go in once a week instead of twice a week when I have to go back. 🤞

Two fun new inspiration books in the mail this week! 📦📚

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig (pretty cover!)

tat* by Andy Altmann (chunky boi, lots to look at!)

Been on the library wait list for this beast for months! Weighs like ten pounds. Not sure how to physically read this thing 😂

The Food Lab by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt 📚

More comics and books on paper to help me follow through on getting off screens at 10pm 📚

Today’s library haul! Four comics, a cookbook and a photography art book 🥰📚

Second library comics haul post-vax! A couple I’ve been looking forward to (They Called Us Enemy and A Bride’s Story) and a few random ones that sounded interesting (Money Shot, House of Women and Chasing the Bird) or I’ve heard good things about (Ice Cream Man). 📚

First library haul in a year! Been waiting till I was vaxxed. So excited for comics 📚 I prefer them on paper.

Started reading Discovering Dahlias by Erin Benzakein 📚 I pre-ordered and they included dahlia seeds! Totally gorgeous flower photography. Maybe I’ll give dahlias another shot, last time I tried deer ate them 🤷‍♀️