What I'm Reading: July-August 2019

How I spent my summer (including some vacation)--Well, for one thing July absolutely whizzed past. So did August.

That's in no small part because in early August I headed to a fantabulous weeklong study tour in Copenhagen that I could participate in thanks to a scholarship from the Scan Design Foundation.

Followed immediately by vacation days in London with family.

Followed quasi-immediately by the better part of a week at the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals conference and an FHWA meeting in Portland. (I got one day at home to sleep 15 hours straight and do laundry, then back on the train.)

That last bit accompanied by a vicious head cold that started tickling my throat on the plane home from London. Still sick, in fact, and tired of blowing my brain matter out my sinuses, but you can't have everything.

I spent July cramming in all the work I could get done (and still not enough) to hit deadlines that would come up while I was on the road in one of the premier bicycling cities on the planet, plus doing the homework to prep since the "study" part was quite serious. Our agenda ran a solid 11-12 hours most days since we had dinners on the agenda and spent that time processing what we saw and heard each day.

For more on the study trip, vacation time, and conference you can check out my tweet threads:

Copenhagen masterclass


London vacation


#APBP2019
I got a surprising amount of reading done despite all of this. All those hours on the planes and trains, for one thing, and then being sick enough that I couldn't think or work but not so sick I couldn't lie on the sofa with my Kindle and power through. I read really, really fast too. Books in these two months represent a mix of working on the backlog waiting on my Kindle and making some impulse buys along the way.

With appreciation for the authors and those who recommend good books, here's what I read in July.
  • Starless by Jacqueline Carey (@JCareyAuthor). Really wonderful story of a strong young person who fights, protects and loves. Gender identity and the strictures placed around women's behavior by their culture are dominant themes in this quest and love story.
  • Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity, Kim Scott (@KimballScott). Recommended by friend and colleague Ida van Schalkwyk, @RoadSafetyPhD on Twitter. Great advice for being a boss -- being clear is not unkind. Scott does write from the perspective of someone who has had large teams to manage and from her tech sector experience. Those of us with a tiny staff in a public agency can nonetheless apply her principles.
  • Rick Steves London 2019 (@RickSteves): Had to read this to prepare for my tourist time in London after the Copenhagen study tour. Lots of great detailed advice, some of which I even took.
  • The Magic of Unkindness, The Grave Raven, and The Halls of Midnight (Books of Conjury trilogy), Kevan Dale (@DaleKevan). First in his trilogy The Books of Conjury. Really enjoyed his tough, resilient one-eyed heroine in this alternate history. She's a witch and Salem's witches died long ago in the battle against demons. Now she has to learn how to use her magic in time to stop the demons from rising again.
  • Sorcery of the Stony Heart by Kevan Dale. A prequel to The Books of Conjury.
  • The Plastic Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg (@CNHolmberg): Another in her series in which magical practice means the ability to use a particular material, whether that's paper or stone or this new-fangled stuff "plastic", to embed and carry out spells.
  • The Green Man's Heir, Juliet E. McKenna (@JulietEMcKenna): As a child I loved works grounded in Celtic myths such as Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising series. This work shares that background but puts its central character, a woodworker and laborer whose mom isn't human, into the list of suspects for the murder of young women.
  • Native Tongue trilogy: Native Tongue by Suzette Haden Elgin and Susan Squier; The Judas Rose and Earthsong by Suzette Haden Elgin and Julie Vedder. How on earth did I miss these when they first came out! Native Tongue was published in 1984, the year I graduated from WSU with degrees in English and Linguistics. These are works of feminist science fiction with linguistics at the very heart of their plot. If you enjoyed Arrival (based on the short story "Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang) and its grounding in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (very roughly, the idea that the language we uses shapes our perceptions and understanding of the world around us and the world is genuinely different if you use a different language) then you should check these out. The editions I read had extended scholarly essays at the back to place these in context and point to other novels and resources.
What I read in August:
  • Storywalker, David Bridger (@DavidBridger): You're a best-selling author with a well-beloved central character in your fantasy series. Come to find out he's your twin and you're living in parallel worlds and now those worlds have touched.
  • Sing, Unburied, Sing, Jesmyn Ward (@JesMimi): Her writing is so strong, unflinching, beautiful, stark. A story of ghosts, pain, imperfect humans, racism, the brutality of incarceration, love.
  • The Mermaid's Sister, by Carrie Anne Noble (@NobleBat): I enjoyed The Gold-Son by Noble (leprechauns are not so cute after all) so when this one popped up as a suggestion for Kindle Unlimited I grabbed it. A wonderful story of the love of sisters grounded in fairy tales without feeling like a retelling.
  • Wanderlust: A History of Walking, Rebecca Solnit: Didn't actually finish this. I started it on the plane to Copenhagen, knowing that if I actually should be sleeping to reset my body clock to the new time zone then nonfiction is better than fiction. A dense and well-researched work, this, and deeply philosophical about the places walking holds in our societies, cultures, literature, and more. Once I was in the heart of Copenhagen walking everywhere, though, and being pretty continuously lectured at about everything we saw, if I read anything it needed to be some fiction.
  • True Places: A Novel, Sonja Yoerg (@SonjaYoerg): I used to read more books like this, in which a woman stifled by an unfulfilling life has a breakthrough and finds herself. This one has more to recommend it than many with the character of Iris, a young girl raised in the forest by parents who wanted to keep her away from the contaminations of modern society, and what she endures in losing them and entering "civilization" with all its shallowness. If you like Ann Patchett, for example, you'll like this.
  • Storm of Locusts, Rebecca Roanhorse (@RoanhorseBex): Preordered because I so enjoyed her Trail of Lightning, with a kick-ass young Native woman, Maggie Hoskie, as the central character and the grounding in Indian traditions. Another great read in which Maggie wrestles with what her clan powers make her, and what they don't.
  • The Book of Flora, by Meg Elison (@MegElison): Another preorder because the first two works in this series, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife and The Book of Etta, were gripping, amazing, terrifying. Post-apocalyptic dystopian worlds are absolute shit for women and those are gay, lesbian, nonbinary, boundary-breaking in any way. Although not a major plot element, living in the Seattle area as I do I enjoy the way the action in this one ends up at "Settle" (post-apocalypse Seattle) and "Bambritch Island" (Bainbridge Island).
  • Gabriel's Road, by Laura Anne Gilman (@LAGilman): I love Gilman's Devil's West series. This is another in that -- I'll keep getting these as long as she keeps writing them. This work gives us insights into Gabriel both before and after he mentors Isobel.
  • Rosewater and Rosewater Insurrection, by Tade Thompson (@TadeThompson): Found thanks to Twitter recommendations (which I generally supplement by looking at reviews -- a good way to find out you're picking up an award-winning book). Put together a science fiction premise (weird alien thing growing in Nigeria that generates free electricity, heals humans, endows some people with a mindreading capability, may have an agenda....) with the politics of a breakaway city, secretive government agencies, imperfect people who do what they can as things fall apart. Can't wait to see where Thompson takes the story in Rosewater Redemption -- preordered. Read these. 
  • The Rewind Files, by Claire Willett (@ClaireWillett): Popped up as a recommendation and that algorithm knows me. Time traveler who works for the government agency tasked with keeping the "real" timeline intact isn't a brand-new concept but this is fast-paced with enjoyable characters. Playwright Willett, who lives in Portland, plans two sequels -- yay!
  • The Sisters of the Winter Wood, Rena Rossner (@RenaRossner): A beautiful work of fairytale retelling grounded in Jewish traditions that brings together several stories including the shapeshifter who puts on and takes off a cloak of fur or feathers. If you're a girl growing into womanhood do you really want to become a bear?
  • Torn and its sequel Fray, Rowenna Miller (@RowennaM): I used to sew quite a bit (made my own clothes and matching dresses for Eldest Daughter and Second Daughter every Christmas when they were little), so I liked the premise of magic stitchery in this. It's much more than that, with a class struggle between the nobility and the working class and international politics and trade agreements. Hmmm, now I wonder if someone has a list of science fiction and fantasy works that do a good job of highlighting the implications of political structures and philosophies. 
  • The Calculating Stars, Mary Robinette Kowal (@MaryRobinette): I loved her novella The Lady Astronaut of Mars; that led me to this and now I'm starting on the sequel The Fated Sky. I stayed up until after 2 a.m. to tear through this on the very last day of August. Evolving understanding of racism, the double family losses of the Holocaust and then a terrible meteorite strike endangering survival of the human species, the greenhouse effect creating urgency to get off this rock and colonize space, homage to the women who worked as "computers" and made space flight possible that you may have learned of from Hidden Figures, true, passionate love between two people who make each other laugh and admire each other's intellectual brilliance -- so much here! No wonder it just won the Hugo Award. This also led to a NY Times article and quite the Twitter thread on peeing in space.


I'm going to skip this month's additions to my TBR (to be read) list and instead will publish an updated long list of everything waiting to be read eventually as an update to the list from February.

The importance of online reviews for the author: The numbers matter as much as the content of your review so don't stress out over your writing ability -- just praise what you like about theirs.

A note on local economies and these links: You should shop at a local, independently owned bookstore. Or check these out through your local library -- did you know they can do that with e-books too, if that's how you read? Links on this page are Amazon Affiliate links unless otherwise noted. I've never made a penny from Amazon but these links give you access to more information and reader reviews. If I ever do make anything I'll donate it to a local nonprofit that helps people who need it most.

Writers on Twitter: I have a Writers list on Twitter. It isn't everyone I read/enjoy but it's a good starting place if you find your tastes and mine overlap. I so appreciate the chances I get to interact with people directly to tell them I enjoy their work.

Related Reading on Reading

Did you spot the Easter egg? Yes, "things fall apart" was a deliberate reference to the work by Chinua Achebe. Not that the works are directly parallel, simply couldn't resist.
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