all books all the time

Chorus of Mushrooms - Hiromi Goto. ( Read more... )

Song of the Exile - Kiana Davenport. ( Read more... )

Trumpet - Jackie Kay. ( Read more... )

(that was also my 50th book for the 50books_poc challenge, hooray!)

The Chalupa Rules: A Latino Guide to Gringolandia - Mario Bosquez. ( Read more... )

Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand - Carrie Vaughn. ( Read more... )

Kitty Raises Hell - Carrie Vaughn. ( Read more... )

One Foot in the Grave - Jeaniene Frost. ( Read more... )

Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide - Andrea Smith. ( Read more... )

The Other Side of Paradise - Staceyann Chin. ( Read more... )

The Renaissance Soul: Life Design for People with Too Many Passions to Pick Just One - Margaret Lobenstine. ( Read more... )

San Francisco's International Hotel: Mobilizing the Filipino American Community in the Anti-Eviction Movement - Estella Habal. ( Read more... )

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian - Sherman Alexie. ( Read more... )

Silver Phoenix - Cindy Pon. ( Read more... )

The Darker Mask: Heroes from the Shadows - Edited by Gary Phillips and Christopher Chambers. ( Read more... )

Not Without Laughter - Langston Hughes. ( Read more... )

Buxton Spice - Oonya Kempadoo. ( Read more... )

A Century of Migration (Bristol's Asian Communities) - Munawar Hussain. ( Read more... )

Chinatown Beat - Henry Chang. ( Read more... )

Once Upon a Time in the North - Phillip Pullman. ( Read more... )

The Summoning - Kelley Armstrong. ( Read more... )

Club Dead - Charlaine Harris. ( Read more... )

Definitely Dead - Charlaine Harris. ( Read more... )

Air - Geoff Ryman. ( Read more... )

Making Waves: An Anthology of Writings By and About Asian American Women - Edited by Asian Women United of California. ( Read more... )

Succubus on Top - Richelle Mead. ( Read more... )

Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live - Martha Beck. ( Read more... )

Days of Disquiet, Nights of Rage: The First Quarter Storm and Related Events - Jose F. Lacaba. ( Read more... )

Romancing the Dead - Tate Hallaway. ( Read more... )

Wolf Tales - Kate Douglas. ( Read more... )

Topography of War: Asian American Essays - Edited by Andrea Louie & Johnny Lew. ( Read more... )

Asian American X: An Intersection of 21st Century Asian American Voices - Edited by Arar Han and John Hsu. Disappointing. The editors of this anthology admit that the book has a class bias, being mostly of pieces by middle-class (or higher, I'd say!) college students (most of them seemingly at elite universities). They circulated the call for submissions to undergraduate Asian American student organizations at over 60 universities. Well, there you go. How hard would it have been to locate, say, youth organizations that were for non-middle-class kids off-campus & send them the call for submissions too?

Of the essays they did get, many are suffused w/unexamined class privilege. One talks about how, if you are confident in your own identity, nothing, not even money, can bring you down. Er. Another one cites the morals that wouldn't let her mother leave her w/a babysitter as a child. Uh, how about the class status that allowed her mother to do that?

Even aside from this, most of the essays seemed fairly trite, & not particularly well-written for the most part. Some of them veered into the "why can't we all be colorblind"/"I'm not Asian, I'm just me" territory that makes me want to scream. The editors say that this book was not intended to be definitive, & it clearly isn't. But I don't think that's an excuse for the narrowness of its scope. I can't recommend this one, sorry.

Take Back Your Time: Fighting Overwork and Time Poverty in America - Edited by John de Graaf. Did you know that Americans, on average, work nine more weeks a year than Europeans? And the US is apparently the only developed nation w/o a minimum paid leave law? And 25 percent of Americans got no vacation at all last year? Not to mention those of us working longer & longer hours (particularly salaried employees, who are not entitled to overtime pay), sometimes even on our supposed vacations, because we're afraid of getting laid off or otherwise punished if we don't do it.

Take Back Your Time Day (on October 24, which marks the point nine weeks before the end of the year, the difference between the hours Europeans & Americans work) seeks to change all this. This anthology talks about why. And there's a lot of reasons why: aside from the health issues, & the impact on family cohesiveness, the time crunch even affects how environmentally friendly a person's lifestyle is likely to be, as well as how happy (or even how non-abused) their companion animals will be!

The essays are short but don't usually feel like they're too short, & cover a wide range of topics & perspectives. Something probably most people wouldn't have known is that W. K. Kellogg--of cereal fame--instituted a six-hour day in his factories in 1930, in the middle of the Depression. Productivity increased, & families & neighborhoods benefited from the extra two hours daily that workers had. Cutting back long work hours can actually be good for business!