all books all the time

Low Midnight - Carrie Vaughn. ( Read more... )

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

Go vegan!: Warum wir ohne tierische Produkte glücklicher und besser leben - edited by Marlene Halser. ( Read more... )

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe - Benjamin Alire Sáenz. ( Read more... )

... I always start these entries meekly. Gosh, it's been a long time since I updated, ugh.

I've spent a lot of the last few months rereading Carrie Vaughn's Kitty Norville books, serious comfort reads for me; you can check the tag for my previous thoughts, as I don't have the spoons to write up reread thoughts right now (& thinking I should is part of why I haven't updated in ages). Someday I will write a big post about why I love these books so much, & what Kitty says to me about power & activism & choices & family, but... this is not that day.

Kitty Rocks the House - Carrie Vaughn. This one is new since I last updated! ( Read more... )

Shaping Europe: France, Germany, and Embedded Bilateralism from the Elysée Treaty to Twenty-First Century Politics - Ulrich Krotz & Joachim Schild. ( Read more... )

Half World - Hiromi Goto. Another comfort re-read. This book says so many things that I need to hear over & over.

Darkest Light - Hiromi Goto. This is the sequel to Half World. I had to special-order this from Canada, but it was so worth it. ( Read more... )

Talking to the Moon - Noel Alumit. ( Read more... )

Teaching Asian America: Diversity & the Problem of Community - Edited by Lane Ryo Hirabayashi. ( Read more... )

Flygirl - Sherri L. Smith. ( Read more... )

Small Island - Andrea Levy. ( Read more... )

The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness. ( Read more... )

Almost Dead - Charlie Huston. ( Read more... )

Popco - Scarlett Thomas. Re-read. Nothing else to say that I haven't said before: I still adore this book & find it immensely comforting & inspiring.

Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers - Lois-Ann Yamanaka. ( Read more... )

Short Girls - Bich Minh Nguyen. ( Read more... )

"Lesbians" in East Asia: Diversity, Identities, and Resistance - Edited by Diana Khor and Saori Kamano. ( Read more... )

Wind Follower - Carole McDonnell. ( Read more... )

Bone Crossed - Patricia Briggs. ( Read more... )

White Witch, Black Curse - Kim Harrison. ( Read more... )

River's Daughter - Tasha Campbell. ( Read more... )

Lesbians Talk: Making Black Waves - Valerie Mason-John & Ann Khambatta. ( Read more... )

Spared Angola: Memories from a Cuban-American Childhood - Virgil Suarez. Rather patchy collection of essays & poetry about Suarez's life being moved from Cuba to the US as a child to be “spared Angola”--a conflict described succinctly multiple times only as “Cuba's Vietnam.” Now, I realize that my historical ignorance of this is totally my fault. At the same time, if Angola was important enough to spur his family's move from Cuba, & thus to lend itself to the title of this book, I expected a bit more detail on how it was affecting other Cuban families or what might've been going on.

Rethinking Tourism and Ecotravel - Deborah McLaren. This is the kind of academic book that spawns a “no duh” reaction from me, as the arguments against tourism as a beneficial mechanism of development are ones that seem patently obvious to me. At first I felt like McLaren was making statements about the harms of tourism without enough examples to back them up, but once she finally decided to get specific, the book got more compelling. This would probably be a good text for someone who'd never really thought about these issues before, though I still found it a bit timid at times in terms of its condemnation of tourism & its willingness (or lack of, I guess) to even entertain the cessation of tourism as a potential option.

At Grave's End - Jeaniene Frost. This third book in the Night Huntress (ugh, what a name) series about half-vampire vampire hunter Cat Crawfield was much better than the second. I disliked immensely the graphic torture bits, though, & find it disturbing that, as in many vampire novels, the vamps have a violent retribution-based code of justice that seems to be aimed at simultaneously raising the disgust & the grudging admiration of the reader. Also, I thought Frost was going to be much bolder in terms of killing off a major character, but she wimps out, & the book is less interesting for it.

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... )