This year I signed up for a challenge to read more books about the environment (hosted by Gum Trees and Galaxies). I haven’t read too many yet this year, but I read these two in June and July and it made sense to write about them together. Both books are pretty impossible to “review” in…
I’ve been interested in this book about introverts for a long time. Cain’s premise is that U.S. culture, from workplace to politics, prizes the qualities of extroverts over introverts. And as someone who’s pretty far on the introverted spectrum, that makes a lot of sense to me. It’s easy to oversimplify when you’re talking about…
This will seem an odd choice to some readers – read about doing laundry? I’d heard rave reviews of this book, especially from Modern Mrs. Darcy, so I picked it up. Not only is this a surprisingly fun read but it’s incredibly practical. I found myself highlighting, bookmarking, and re-reading. Then I made a shopping list, went…
On the last day of the year, I’m thinking about reading challenges and my reading this year. I haven’t decided what challenges I’ll do in 2022, whether I’ll continue the ones below or start something new. 2020 and 2021 have given me reason to pause and think about why I participate in reading challenges. As…
There was a lot of interest in this book from my Nonfiction November post about books on habits and productivity, and since I’m finding this book quite useful, I thought I’d share a little more about it. Brewer is a neuroscientist and psychiatrist who studies habit formation and mindfulness. His website says he is “passionate…
I’m reading Reichl’s life backwards. Last year I read the excellent Save Me the Plums, so this year I decided to go back to her previous book, about her work as the restaurant critic for the New York Times. And while I enjoyed this one a bit less, Reichl is still an engaging and thoughtful…
It’s Nonfiction November, a five-week event of discussions on everything related to nonfiction. This week’s prompt, hosted by What’s Nonfiction, is about looking back at our year of reading nonfiction. What was our favorite read, what did we recommend most often, and which topics were we drawn to? I’ve read 15 nonfiction books so far this…
This book is Pan’s memoir of a year when she decided to challenge herself to live like an extrovert. She explains that there’s nothing wrong with being an introvert, only she’s an excessively shy one (a “shintrovert” as she calls herself), which means she’s probably missing out on friendships and career opportunities by not engaging…
This summer I read several powerful books about race that I’d encourage everyone to read, particularly if you’re interested in U.S. history and racism. In my last post, I wrote about Caste by Isabel Wilkerson. After Caste, I read Gilbert King’s Devil in the Grove, a Pulitzer Prize winner that describes racism and the justice…
This summer I read two powerful books about race that I’d encourage everyone to read, particularly those interested in U.S. history and racial issues. This is a discussion of the first of those two books. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson, is a book you’ve probably already heard much about. I found it…
In the last month or two, I seem to have gravitated towards books about mental health issues, both fiction and nonfiction. This seems fitting, since May is Mental Health Awareness Month. In nonfiction, I read David Chang’s memoir Eat a Peach, Jenny Lawson’s fantastic Broken (In the Best Possible Way), and I’m currently reading Bessel…
Your first reaction to reading a book about the history of infectious diseases might be “why would I want to read that right now?” But this book was fascinating. It was published in 2017, well before COVID, yet it has so much to say about people react to the threat of infectious disease, and how we should…
The Book Stop 