Books I Read in 2018

1. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
2. Cat Pictures, Please by Naomi Kritzer
3. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
4. Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich
5. Authority by Jeff Vandermeer
6. Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
7. Satan is Real by Charlie Louvin
8. Stiff by Mary Roach
9. The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean
10. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
11. Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
12. The Periodic Table by Primo Levi
13. Merle Haggard, the Running Kind by David Cantwell
14. Good Company by Douglas A. Harper
15. Rednecks, Queers, and Country Music by Nadine Hubbard
16. Ada's Algorithm by James Essinger
17. The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan
18. Molly's Game by Molly Bloom
19. Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
20. Spook by Mary Roach
21. Slouching Toward Fargo by Neal Karlen
22. Who Really Feeds the World by Vandana Shiva
23. Borne by Jeff Vandermeer
24. Black Mad Wheel by Josh Malerman
25. A Primate's Memoir by Robert Sapolsky
26. Sabrina by Nick Drnaso
27. Reason for Hope by Jane Goodall
28. Obscura by Joe Hart
29. Palestine by Joe Sacco
30. Headstrong by Rachel Swaby
31. Heartland by Sarah Smarsh
32. Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein

Book Report: Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein

I would say that I've always appreciated Sleater-Kinney more than I've enjoyed their music. And I guess the couple of times that I've watched Portlandia, I've felt similarly. Carrie Brownstein is a tremendously talented artist, but one whose work I've never really felt a deep personal connection to. So, I really liked her memoir, Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl, but I enjoyed it at a remove.

Brownstein started with a pretty standard suburban upbringing, but her mother struggled with anorexia and left the family, and her father came out of the closet a couple of years after his daughter did. And then she moved to Olympia and Sleater-Kinney happened. She gives a realistic-sounding description of what it's like being in a band whose fame and cred vastly outpaced any kind of actual real money coming their way. She struggles throughout the book, but seems in a better place by the end.

Book Report: Heartland by Sarah Smarsh

I'd read a couple of excerpts from Heartland on different websites earlier last year, and my appetite was whetted as I waited several months for my turn to come on the library waiting list. If you like Barbara Ehrenreich's working class slice-of-life tales, you'll enjoy this memoir of a hardscrabble Kansas upbringing. Smarsh is the daughter of a many-times-married mother, and she managed to avoid getting pregnant at a young age (and hoo boy does she beat that drum a lot). She was therefore able to stay in school and get an advanced degree that allowed her to claw her way up to middle class.

I spent most of the book comparing my own upbringing to Smarsh's - we were probably on equal footing economically, but her parents divorced at a young age, and she had a lot more familial instability and mental illness on both sides of her family that I had to deal with. On the other hand, she grew up in and near Wichita, while I was a lot more isolated geographically. For those who have no idea what it's like to grow up semi-rural and poor, this book will be quite enlightening, but it was a little too heavy on the precise documentation of who-moved-where-when-and-divorced-who than was necessary.

Book Report: Headstrong by Rachel Swaby

Rachel Swaby undertook a fantastically ambitious project with Headstrong - she spent 4-6 pages each on 52 different women scientists throughout history, no more than a handful of which I'd ever heard of before. There are certainly compelling stories here, and I greatly admire the hustle, but I will confess that all the stories start to run together after a while. Some of the stories deserved to have a longer treatment, and some were stretched to fill a few pages. Hedy Lamarr was probably the most compelling story, but she was also the one that I already knew a little bit about. I'd like to report that there were some hidden gems that were unearthed here, but while there was tremendous scientific work which Swaby shines a light on, there weren't any must-read narratives that came along with them. I appreciated that Swaby told the stories in a straightforward way without overselling, but that meant that the hooks were few and far between.

Book Report: Palestine by Joe Sacco

Did you know that Boneshaker Books (conveniently located just off Franklin Avenue in the Seward Neighborhood) has an extensive collection of extremely well-executed, overwhelmingly bleak graphic novels? It's true, and many titles by the eminent Joe Sacco are among them. Sacco excels at showing up in war-torn places and just kind of embedding himself in the daily lives of ordinary folks who have suffered through all sorts of unthinkable shit. I read most if not all of his volume on the former Yugoslav countries a couple of years ago, and it was of a piece with this one.

On this one, Sacco takes taxicabs around Gaza and drinks tea with all sorts of locals whom he genuinely empathizes with and also feels guilty about exploiting for their stories. I read this one over the course of a month on my shift, which was probably the way to do it. I think any larger chunks closer together would have been too overwhelming and sad. As it was, the stories started running together anyway. I want to have a larger capacity for empathy. Sacco is a brilliant chronicler (is that a word) of oppression, and I can appreciate his work even if I can't enjoy it much.

American Printing House for the Blind: Louisville

Molly and I visited the American Printing House for the Blind in Louisville on December 3, and it was very interesting. We saw how they printed Braille books and observed them recording an audiobook. 

Book Report: Obscura by Joe Hart

I've been reading more sci-fi and post-apocalyptic fiction both because I enjoy it and also because Molly enjoys it, which gives us something that we can read together. My friend Elliot read this one over the course of a couple of days and lent it to me before it was due back to the library. Molly described it as having a lot of soap-opera plot elements, which is legit, but it's also imaginative and entertaining in ways that harder sci-fi isn't. There's opioid addiction, teleportation, a race to find a cure for a strange neurological disease (which killed the protagonist's husband and may kill her daughter if she doesn't hurry!), and so much more. It's fun, and it is just classy enough to avoid a guilty-pleasure label.