Sporadically addressing good books, vegetarian/vegan food and cooking, equity and justice, public policy and a touch of politics, family, work, movies, words, life, coffee, chocolate, and social media in no particular order. More bikey blogging (also sporadic) at BikeStyleLife.com
I started my reruns in August 2023, taking trips down memory lane to reread old posts and find the ones that hold up when I read them years after first writing them. This gives me some nostalgia bumps, like reflecting back on a great bike touring trip I took with my sweetie in 2018 and reading posts I wrote after moving to Seattle in 2012.
Going back to my older posts also reminds me how much I was thinking, reading, and writing about transportation well before working professionally in that realm. Starting to bike commute, creating Spokane Bikes, and participating in local transportation work groups really laid a foundation for the career path I'm now on.
June keeps rolling from National Bike Month in May to provide plenty of inspiration for riding, if not always writing. The 2018 bike tour links below pick up where the ones in May's reruns left off.
I'm walking different trails and routes these days, thanks to a temporary relocation while our house is undergoing a deep remodel. Or rather, I'm walking the same places but from a different direction. I'm still in close proximity to Squaxin Park but I approach it from East Bay Drive. Something as simple as starting from a different place has taken me into parts of the park I had visited less frequently and into new sections. I see with new eyes and it's delightful.
One of the wonderful differences is that I'm closer to the water so I get down to the Budd Bay inlet within about five minutes. I get to see birds, boats, and the occasional hardy stand-up paddler along with people walking their dogs and enjoying the park's beauty.
Last month and again this month I traveled to national conferences. I was in Indianapolis this month, in a hotel room that let me look down at a river that was tantalizingly close, and yet blocked off by many roadways curving around and seeming to isolate the river and landlock the hotel and nearby convention center. I mentally compared that with Spokane, where you can walk out of the convention center straight onto the Centennial Trail along the Spokane River and reach a number of hotels within an easy walk, along with great downtown restaurants and shopping. (Still love my former hometown!)
The streets around the hotel were wide and intimidating—most of them were six and even seven lane one-way streets. Many of those lanes might be empty but that much width makes for a very long crossing and a hostile environment, with the sidewalk right next to the vehicle lanes that felt like acres and acres of pavement.
At least there were sidewalks, though. Busing in from the airport I had noted the almost complete lack of sidewalks along a road served by transit. Where were people expected to walk? Apparently through gas stations, parking lots, and rough patches of grass and gravel, from what I could see.
The last day of the conference, with a sore throat and cough I figured had been created by a lot of loud reception conversations (and possibly some group karaoke a couple of nights before...), I set off to find a pharmacy and get some cough drops and throat spray. It was about a mile to the closest one and I looked forward to the chance to stretch my legs and see a bit of the city. But Google Maps routed me on a curving arterial where no one but me was walking and through what felt like a vast spread of big buildings and parking lots. I chose a different route back that was at least slightly more interesting, but it still felt fairly empty of pedestrian traffic.
Later that day I finally got out on the Indianapolis Cultural Trail, which ran right past the corner of the hotel property. I loved the beautiful sunny fall weather with golden leaves rustling above and the art installations along the wide, brick-paved trail. And I finally got to that river! Walking back I saw happy folks on bicycles of all types, helmet-free and pedaling comfortably along the trail that gives them a safe, separated and dedicated space to roll.
I bused back to the airport along that same stretch of road with a design that only invites driving. My companions on the trip were airport workers and others accessing destinations along the route. It was a reasonably full bus and I wish those regular riders had more infrastructure to meet their needs as transit riders. The Cultural Trail is a showpiece Indianapolis can rightly be proud of; what a city does in the places that aren't right around the convention center tells me something about the improvements that still need to be made.
Alas, on the plane ride home I started realizing it wasn't karaoke and conversation that made my throat raspy. I got off the plane sick and grew sicker. My souvenirs from the trip: pictures of the Cultural Trail and a whopping case of Influenza A that has lasted for two weeks and isn't done with me yet. Good thing I got my flu shot or it would have been even worse. I ventured out for a short walk yesterday and it taxed me pretty completely. Can't wait to be back up to my normal walking pace and frequency!
Another multimodal trip, this time to Kansas City, Missouri, for a transportation conference.
The multimodalism started on Sunday when my sweetie dropped me at the Amtrak station in Olympia. Train to Tukwila, King County Metro Rapid Ride bus to downtown Burien, walked a few blocks with my baggage to the wonderfully tasty Centro Neighborhood Kitchen. I settled in with chips, a trio of tasty salsas, and a fig margarita to wait for my sister-in-law. She was stuck in traffic driving back over Snoqualmie Pass and hindered by a wreck, fortunately not hers. She doesn't text and drive so she called (hands-free) to check that I was there and waiting. We had a wonderful dinner and then she drove me to her place where I spent the night.
Early the next morning she dropped me off at SeaTac and I boarded the plane for Kansas City. On the other end I had planned to take the free KC Transit bus from the airport to downtown. A colleague was taking an Uber so I opted to join that as a good chance to catch up on our plans for the sessions we were involved in.
Each day at the conference I did a lot of sitting, then I found a group that wanted to walk to dinner somewhere. This was a transportation safety conference so of course we made note of intersections where the walk button didn't work (we know that as the beg button) and volunteered comments on the infrastructure design, signal timing, all the usual tourist attractions.
One evening there weren't any walking takers; I wasn't going to walk either because it was about four miles to the restaurant we had decided to go to but again, bus ride was free! Caught the bus, misread the app and got off one stop early but that was actually a fortuitous mistake on my part. I got to walk on a wonderfully resilient rubberized path surface through a linear park. The trail and park lay alongside a hospital and along the way there were stops with rehab equipment so I'm guessing this is essentially a therapeutic trail. At the end of the park, a fountain shot streams of water up into the twilight. This sort of serendipitous discovery is one of my favorite things about walking.
The final morning in Kansas City brought yet more multimodal travel. I walked to a nearby coffee shop, then just had to see the giant books before I left. Painted on the outside of the library's parking garage, this is known as the community bookshelf. Such a cool thing to do if you have to have a big block building. Why not make it into art?
From there I walked to the bus stop and caught the #229 for the hour ride to the airport. Time on the bus is always productive and relaxing. I can read, do email, catch up on things generally, and look at my surroundings.
The catch in all of this: It was supposed to be my baseline week of data collection for a study I signed up to participate in. But I wasn't getting the emails. I finally found them lurking in my spam folder and got started in the airport. Walking there led me to the discovery of a set of medallions set into the floor that I wouldn't have seen if I had stayed seated at the gate waiting for departure.
At the other end of my flight, it was light rail to Rapid Ride to Amtrak Cascades to my sweetheart picking me up at the Olympia station. So much more pleasant and productive than fighting traffic, so much cheaper than paying to park a car for several days.
About that study—it examines the benefits of mild activity engaged in over the course of the day. I learned of it thanks to NPR's "Body Electric" series with Manoush Zomorodi and of course was immediately in for the Columbia University study of how movement can make a difference. And by "make a difference" I mean everything from lowering your blood glucose levels dramatically to lowering your blood pressure to improving your mood, fatigue level, and productivity. Your brain works better with these breaks so it isn't losing time you should be working; it's improving the quality of the time you work.
And so little movement, relatively speaking! Five minutes every half-hour. Not five minutes of high-intensity intervals or five minutes of jumping jacks or five minutes of running in place. Could be five minutes of strolling back and forth in the living room or a lap around the block. The key is to have that light movement five minutes out of every half-hour.
That's the catch. Every half-hour? But what about meetings scheduled for 55 or 60 minutes? What about really getting into the flow of something and concentrating? What about binge-watching Star Trek: Strange New Worlds? AKA binge sitting.
Hence the timer. I set it for 25 minutes, then for 5 minutes to move, then for 25. Sometimes I bypass the five-minute movement break for a variety of reasons, like being in the middle of presenting a webinar. Many of my meetings can be handled using a headset so I can walk up and down the length of my living space or take a quick turn outside for some fresh air. I have yet to make it through a day in which I take every five-minute movement break but I'm moving more often than I did.
The study sends a survey each night asking how many movement breaks I took, average length, what motivated me to move, what interfered, and how I feel in terms of fatigue and productivity. The time zone shift from my travels skewed that a bit in the earlier days, but I definitely feel more energized on days I move more.
I also observe more of the natural world, like the brightly colored (poisonous) mushrooms that sprang up almost overnight along the sidewalk. There was only one when I walked a couple of days ago and now there are dozens.
I'm in extra need of prompts to move right now. I don't have my usual sit-stand desk—packed away while our house has some renovation. When I used it, I know I often found myself locked in place standing rather than being locked in place sitting. I might take a quick three laps around the block mid-morning, maybe a longer walk at lunch, maybe another mid-afternoon set of laps. But even with those chunks of movement I spent hours in between essentially leading a very sedentary life.
How about it—are you up for getting up and moving around? Just a little, every half-hour. No biggie.
Over the years my work has given me the opportunity to get to Washington, DC, every so often. These trips started with a "DC Fly-In" sponsored by Greater Spokane Incorporated for congressional office meetings back when I led communications and public affairs at WSU Spokane, through attendance at the National Bike Summit as executive director at Washington Bikes, and now I go for events like the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting and participation on research oversight panels for the National Cooperative Highway Research Program.
Given the distance, time zone differences and flight schedules, even a one-day meeting in DC involves three days: one to get there, one to be there, one to get back. And so it was that on a Sunday I started my multimodal trip for an NCHRP panel I'm chairing.
Multimodal went like this:
Leave at 9:30 a.m. Pacific time to ride as passenger in car to the Olympia Amtrak Centennial Station (thanks for the ride, Sweetie!).
Train to Tukwila.
King County Metro Rapid Ride F to Tukwila light rail (insert commentary here about how nicely logical it would have been to have Amtrak and light rail connect directly the way DC Metro and Amtrak do at Union Station in DC, but also yay for my Orca card working seamlessly for bus and light rail trips).
Light rail to SeaTac Airport.
Walk-walk-walk because the light rail station is a ways from the terminals (insert more commentary here about the time and labor cost imposed on nondrivers in order to provide storage for personal belongings close to the terminal, and also a bit of gritching about how the TSA Pre-Check security is always clear at the far end, hence a bunch more walking).
Fly to DC.
Catch DC Metro to a stop about 15 minutes from my hotel, feeling grateful for transit frequency so I didn't have a long wait to leave the airport. I could have transferred to get a tiny bit closer but the time difference was minimal and by this time I really needed to move my legs!
Walk to hotel. Arrive at last around 11 p.m. Eastern time. Sure, that's only 8 p.m. home time, but that's a loooong day.
Monday held a bit of walking to and from the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine building where we met, and a walk at lunch to pick up takeout from Shouk, my absolute favorite DC restaurant for both its outstandingly delicious 100% plant-based food and its sense of purpose and mission. Thanks to the time zone difference I worked into the evening for meetings that were in the afternoon for folks back home and took a whack at the email undergrowth. I took myself out to dinner at the nearby Busboys and Poets (a Langston Hughes reference), got a couple of books of poetry by Rita Dove and Nikki Giovanni, and enjoyed a delicious vegan red curry risotto.
Tuesday—ah, Tuesday! More email whackage to start the day. My plane didn't leave until 5:35 p.m. Eastern and I'd be getting home around 9:30 p.m. Pacific. I didn't have meetings so part of Tuesday became my Sunday as a form of schedule adjustment. I left my heavier backpack at my hotel and started racking up the steps.
When I have time in DC I try to get to one place I haven't visited before and get back to a favorite. I visited:
The new-to-me Art Museum of the Americas, housed in the original residence of the Organization of American States Secretary General. Not too far from the White House, this includes a stunning tiled wall influenced by Aztec art and displays of work by artists from Latin America and the Caribbean.
From there I headed to the Lincoln Memorial. Packed with people reading the words of the Gettysburg Address and his Second Inaugural Speech carved on the side walls, it never fails to move me as I wonder how things could have gone differently in Reconstruction.
Next stop, the memorial for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A giant rock cleaved in half leads to a statue and several of his powerful statements carved on walls at a location alongside the Tidal Basin. The water sparkled in the sunshine, tourists thronged the walkways and wobbled past on bikeshare and rental bikes, a light breeze moved the leaves on the trees. Peak cherry blossom season had passed, but petals still drifted about.
April is #30DaysOfBiking month and I had thought I might make use of a bikeshare bike to get in some pedaling, but it kept being easier to just keep walking rather than find a bike, install the app, and ride a relatively short bike distance to places I wanted to stop. As I trudged along to my next planned stop, the National Museum of the American Indian, I regretted this decision but that was at a point with no bikes nearby, so hoof it I did.
Which was fine! Beautiful sparkling day, after all. Along the way I stopped at the National Museum of Asian Art (the Freer and Sackler galleries) and spent time with the gorgeous Peacock Room, the metalworking of Iran, Chinese and Korean porcelain, and more.
I love looking and learning. And yet, all museums now make me think of the theft and exploitation that underpins the acquisition of items on display (even more so since recently watching What Was Ours, about Shoshone and Arapaho people seeking to reclaim sacred artifacts from museums). The scene in "Black Panther" when Eric Killmonger talks to the museum curator about the theft of the items in those cases comes to mind. I simultaneously mourn the way these beautiful items came to be in those cases, and appreciate what I learn about their cultures, uses, and peoples.
Thinking about this, I also recognized that some of the people I saw visiting the exhibits were discussing how their own cultural history and the works of their ancestors were in these rooms. We weren't all going to take a trip around the world to experience these cultures and places directly; a bit of the world comes to us in museums.
The day was warm and I had long since stuffed my jacket and scarf into my small backpack. Arriving at the American Indian museum, I paused outside to appreciate the running water cascading down, just as people coming upon water in a dry landscape have done for eons.
I've been to this museum on a past trip and the clock was ticking toward my departure time so I wasn't there to look at exhibits. This time I had my heart set on having lunch in the Mitsitam Native Foods Cafe, rated one of the best museum cafes by more than one reviewer. I wish I'd grabbed a photo of the display that showed how many foods native to North and South America have made their way around the globe. I had no idea peanuts originated in Peru, for example.
After a delicious lunch—wild rice with cranberries, a Brussels sprout salad, and of course fry bread with honey and cinnamon—I headed back to my hotel. At this point I really would have switched to a bikeshare bike, but the Capital Bikeshare kiosk I stopped at was having some kind of problem with the app. I watched others try to grab a bike and shake their heads in failure, and kept walking. When all other modes have issues, if you're able to walk you count on your feet.
Back at my hotel I wondered briefly why I had gone to museums that were about as far away as I could have chosen. I did a bit more email, swung my heavy pack onto my back, and headed to that closer Metro station. This time I was more than willing to make a transfer to spare myself a few steps! Metro to the airport, long walk through the terminal to my gate, and then hours of sitting before the final steps from gate to baggage claim to the car my sweetie brought to pick me up since there are no feasible late-night transit options from SeaTac to Olympia.
Total steps for the day: 19,035, or 8.48 miles as calculated by my phone app. For comparison my Sunday and Monday steps hit a bit over 7,800, and a typical Saturday walk downtown with a bus trip back gets me around 10,000-11,000. As the saying goes, my dogs were barkin'.
February 2023 brought the opportunity for a weekend getaway to Lake Quinault Lodge in Olympic National Park to celebrate a friend's birthday. Some of the group drove to Montesano with their tandem and solo bicycles and rode the 50 miles from there to the lodge. Others, like those of us healing from a broken wrist who can't cover that much ground by bike right now, drove to the lodge.
As I drove out Friday afternoon, accompanied by the Eagles Live double album, the rain came and went and came again, reminding me with the watery blur and the slapping of my windshield wipers that I was heading into a temperate rain forest. (And, not incidentally, reminding me that I wasn't totally sorry I had to miss the bike ride in the cold grey wetness—cold makes my wrist ache even more.)
Friday dinner and Saturday breakfast meant pleasant socializing with some new acquaintances. We were going to gather again for Saturday dinner, and meanwhile the agenda was wide open for whatever activities appealed. For me, this meant a walk in the woods.
I headed first up the narrow, shoulderless road past the lodge to visit the World's Biggest Sitka Spruce. At 191 feet it's a neck-craning forest giant standing in a spot that felt sad, surrounded by the encroachment of spaces designed for tourists exactly like me.
I tried to imagine it standing as one among many in a lush, unbroken tree canopy, birds and animals rustling in the brush that no longer grows around its feet, no signage prompting us to go visit other giant trees in the park, no people posing for a picture to put on Facebook.
From there, following the simple paper map available at the lodge, I headed back to the road and across, following the trail to Gatton Creek Falls.
I walked alone on the soft paths, surrounded by so much green! Mosses, mosses everywhere, reminding me of listening to the audiobook of Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer with its rich description of their complex lives, structures, and functions.
Every so often I passed a gigantic stump, quite possibly a mother tree cut down to build the lodge I had slept in the night before. I could not help but say softly, "I'm sorry, Mother." Saplings sprang from each stump to fill the space left behind, fed by their mother's body and watered by the rain falling all around.
I heard a creek chuckling off to one side. A small wooden footbridge provided a place to stop and listen to the water rushing downhill before continuing cautiously across on the slippery wet wood, then on up the hill.
This wasn't a hike to cover lots of ground quickly or get somewhere by a certain time. This was a walk simply to be in the woods. I gazed up, down, around and along the trail. Every minute gave me something to look at.
The very small: Delicate traceries of mosses and baby ferns.
The very big: Those mother trees, downed logs, and tall trees soaring up, draped in long grey-green beards of Spanish moss.
The pale: The underside of a patch of lichen, fallen from a trunk or limb above. Perhaps all that sogginess was too much to hold onto? It's so moist, like walking on thick sponges. Weblike masses of another moss shrouding a tree as if I were in Shelob's lair.
The bright: Rusty red maple leaves decaying into the soil, the contrast of a log's interior below the dark bark, pale orange dead ferns.
Life, life everywhere. The full circle, with green springing up from brown, climbing, growing, falling back to become soil again. Walking in woods and water reminding me that this world doesn't require me, or humans, to be whole and beautiful.
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
My Copenhagen adventures have begun. @Fly_Norwegian left Seattle a bit late, mad dash to catch connecting flight at Gatwick. One more leg and I'm there. Hope that checked bag makes this plane too.... pic.twitter.com/Xat8i8AHWT
I'm officially on vacation now but I can't help taking pictures of and looking at transportation connections. Modes so far today: walking, train to the airport, flight from Copenhagen to London complete with sight of wind turbines in the sea, more walking, more modes to come. pic.twitter.com/g2q7lqJno0
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.
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.
Let's talk about peeing in space.
Several people, in response to my NY Times essay, have said that women couldn't go into space because we lacked the technology for them to pee in space.
— Mary Robinette Kowal (@MaryRobinette) July 19, 2019
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.
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.
