This is a long prose poem, a tribute to space and the people who go there. It nominally has characters--four astronauts and two cosmonauts, two women, four men--inhabiting a space station as it goes around the world sixteen times. Nothing happens, there is no real plot. This is either up your alley or not. The writing is lovely and evocative, the “this is what space is like” stuff felt true. There’s talk of space euphoria, of clogged sinuses, of who has to clean the bathroom. I kept waiting for it to “get going,” there was talk of a parental death, a destructive typhoon visible from their station, and it never really did. Not really what I was looking for, but a good book.

Been meaning to read this book for a long time. Erica Hall owns Mule Design, a design company notable for keeping it real and really good design. This book talks about just how much research you need to do when you are working on a design project, which kinds are good, which kinds are bad, and which kinds (surveys) can be good but are also tricksy. It’s very readable, often funny, and will teach you some things. This was the “shitty pulp edition” and I love it, the only downside to this edition is that some of the images in it are sort of blurry like a newspaper photo, not a big deal.

A compelling story about menopausal-age women who are... somewhat witchy. They don’t want to walk the path the world has made for them. They live in an island community off the coast of New York where billionaires vacation and are also (surprise!) acting like total privileged assholes. Bit of a content warning on this one since the story has to do with a lot of abused teenage girls (though there isn’t graphic abuse in the story) and the bulk of the story is about trying to make things right. There are a lot of terrible men in this book but they tend to get their comeuppance.