[I've been
reading]
« May, 2018 »
Black Widow

No art restoration in this one! This book was a long treatise on how people get recruited to do stuff for ISIS and includes the recruitment of a woman from Israel to get recruited by ISIS. New character! But also a lot of terrorism stuff which is a little... not my thing. I enjoyed this book enough but I also felt more like I was paging through it more than hanging on every plot point.

Blind Rage: Letters to Helen Keller

Mixed feelings about this book. I would like to read more by the author. This was a collection of letters the author had written, or had imagined writing, to Helen Keller. The original conceit was that it’s been tough to grow up in the US as a visually or auditorially disabled person and NOT feel that you are somehow under the shadow of wunderkind Helen Keller, always smiling, always sharp and never complaining. I liked that idea. However, the book winds up also getting us way into the weeds about Keller’s life which also included a lot of really annoying explication of just how controlling and difficult Sullivan was which was not my cup of tea. This book was the strongest when Kleege was talking about her own life vis a vis Keller or telling us little stuff that the average person might not know about Keller. But it was a lot of time spent with unpleasant people (Sullivan) and a lot of historical re-creationism which didn’t always sit well with me.

The English Spy

This one is a re-read because it’s the first one of the series I read and now I’ve caught up to it when starting from the beginning. I was pretty sure I didn’t remember most of it and I was right. Still one of the better ones of the series, I think.

The Sisters Are Alright: Changing the Broken Narrative of Black Women in America

I really liked how this book was a combination of facts, anecdotes and general groupings of narratives to talk about the ways black women as a group are treated and mistreated in American society. I read it with interest and learned some things.

The Victorian Internet

This has been on my “to read” list basically since it came out. It’s a pop culture account of what the world was like when telegraphy hit, and hit big, drawing obvious parallels with humanity’s feelings and interactions with the internet. It’s full of good trivia, nice stories and a lot of maybe overly heavy metaphor about how a lot of the cultural trappings of this new technology were dealt with the same way as we’re dealing with the internet. There were a few topics I wanted to know a lot more about but overall this was a fun read from start to finish.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

A space exploration novel written by a woman and featuring a TRULY diverse cast of characters. Loved it.