all books all the time

If You Come Softly - Jacqueline Woodson. ( Read more... )

Fruit of the Lemon - Andrea Levy. ( Read more... )

(That was my 50th book for the 50books_poc challenge, btw! I've been doing the challenge running from IBARW to IBARW, which puts me way ahead of the game this year, heh.)

High Wizardry - Diane Duane. ( Read more... )

A Wizard Abroad - Diane Duane. ( Read more... )

Window-box Allotment: A beginner's guide to container gardening - Penelope Bennett. ( Read more... )

The Wizard's Dilemma - Diane Duane. ( Read more... )

Twenty Wagging Tales: Our Year of Rehoming Orphan Dogs - Barrie Hawkins. ( Read more... )

The Taste of Sweet: Our Complicated Love Affair with Our Favorite Treats - Joanne Chen. ( Read more... )

Where the Blind Horse Sings: Love and Healing at an Animal Sanctuary - Kathy Stevens. ( Read more... )

Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships - Tristan Taormino. ( Read more... )

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity - David Allen. ( Read more... )

The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad - Minister Faust. ( Read more... )

Asian Americans: Oral Histories of First to Fourth Generation Americans from China, the Philippines, Japan, India, the Pacific Islands, Vietnam and Cambodia - Joann Faung Jean Lee. ( Read more... )

Cat Culture: The Social World of a Cat Shelter - Janet M. Alger and Steven F. Alger. ( Read more... )

Please Do Feed the Cat - Marian Babson. ( Read more... )

The Little Guide to Beating Procrastination, Perfectionism, and Blocks: A Manual for Artists, Activists, Entrepreneurs, Academics and Other Ambitious Dreamers - Hillary Rettig. ( Read more... )

Terrorists or Freedom Fighters? Reflections on the Liberation of Animals - Edited by Steven Best, Ph.D and Anthony J. Nocella II. ( Read more... )

Kitty and the Silver Bullet - Carrie Vaughn. ( Read more... )

GenXpat: The Young Professional's Guide to Making a Successful Life Abroad - Margaret Malewski. ( Read more... )

Smoky Mountain Tracks - Donna Ball. ( Read more... )

Capers in the Churchyard: Animal Rights Advocacy in the Age of Terror - Lee Hall. ( Read more... )

Breathless in Bombay - Murzban F. Shroff. This collection of short stories was, as they say, easier to admire than to like. It took me weeks to get through this book. I can see that Shroff is a good writer, in that he has some good turns of phrase & evocative descriptions & all that. But I found it really hard to empathize with, or care much about, any of his characters.

Holidays Are Hell - Kim Harrison, Lynsay Sands, Marjorie M. Liu, and Vicki Petersson. ( Read more... )

The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee: Observations on Not Fitting In - Paisley Rekdal. ( Read more... )

Ask Me No Questions - Marina Budhos. ( Read more... )

I See Red in a Circle - Ceres S. C. Alabado. ( Read more... )

Dogs I Have Met: And the People They Found - Ken Foster. ( Read more... )

The Professor's Daughter - Emily Raboteau. ( Read more... )

The Unwanted: A Memoir of Childhood - Kien Nguyen. ( Read more... )

Crystal Rain - Tobias Buckell. I almost didn't read this, because for some reason I thought it was a lot more science fiction-y than I normally go for (I skew towards fantasy, big time). But I saw a glowing review on the 50books_poc community (here, & here's one about Ragamuffin, the sequel) & thought I'd give it a try. I'm so glad I did! There were a few times where I had to do things like poke my partner on the subway & squee ("Airship battle!!!!1").

Ahem. Anyway. John deBrun remembers only the past 27 years of his life, when he washed up on the beach in Nanagada, where the Caribbean descendants of "old-fathers" (who came to the planet via a worm-hole) live. Aside from the frustration of his missing memories, he's pretty content: wife, son, etc. etc. A constant threat to Nanagada from the south are the Azteca; their invasion of Nanagada comes pretty early on in the book, & John gets caught up in a quest for an old-father artifact that is probably the Nanagadans' last hope. Reading the book made me realize that any sort of invasion in a plot scares the crap out of me. I spent a lot of the time, when I wasn't squeeing (did I mention airships?), in dread.

The book runs really fast; there's so much fun adventure-y stuff, but w/o being fluff (not that I don't enjoy fluff, btw). Anyway--I thought the handling of dialect/accents/whatever (I'm no linguist) was well done; I didn't find it hard to read @ all, but scanning reviews online, apparently not having Standard English is, like, zomg scary! And, this goes w/o saying, but YAY for science fiction that feature POCs all over the place. I am psyched to read the sequel.

Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog? - Gary L. Francione. Francione systematically eliminates common arguments for why animals should be treated as property (as, in fact, they are legally now). His writing is succinct & clear, which is nice given how much stuff written by lawyers I've seen be totally head-wrecking before. I found the book really upsetting @ times b/c he is graphic about what animals slaughtered for food & tortured in research labs experience. But, y'know, some folks need a wake-up call.

I learned a lot about how jacked up the legal system is about animals: for example, if you treat your factory-farmed animals cruelly, but it is common practice in the industry or it is seen as necessary to make the animal more useful to humans, then it magically doesn't count as cruelty in the legal world. Also, some guys broke into an animal shelter & beat something like 16 cats w/baseball bats. They only got charged w/a misdemeanor, not a felony, b/c, as they successfully argued, the cats were in the shelter b/c no one wanted them, hence they must be almost worthless. I was also shocked @ how many philosophers have tried to argue that animals have no interest in their own lives continuing, or in avoiding pain. Eh?

Francione placed the appendix of the book online; it features the answers to 20 questions he gets asked most frequently about animal rights. It's a good summation of some of the issues in the book.