that's pretty neat

Well clearly 2024 hasn't been a great year for blogging so far, but now it's time to catch up! Here's a quick overview of what else I've read this year so far.

2 “Social Engagement” by Avery Carpenter Forrey Fiction, 2023 3/5 stars (or lower in parts) I had higher hopes for this book, despite the low rating and reviews on GoodReads. I was pretty interested in the beginning but it didn't met up to the initial intrigue I had and there was a lot around eating disorders.

“The formal language and stilted conversations in the book made me realize the truth that should've been obvious: the human tendency to obfuscate and edit went back much further than social media. The feed just gave us a tool to commit misrepresentation at a larger scale.”

3 “Finding Me” by Viola Davis Autobiography, 2022 4.75/5 stars Great audiobook read by Viola Davis. I knew almost nothing about her life, man is she talented.

4 “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot Nonfiction, 2010 4.25/5 stars Fascinating story and history that everyone should be aware of. In a nutshell, Henrietta's cancer cells grew at very rapid speeds and survived long after being removed from her body, which was an anomaly. This made them great for scientific research and helped achieve many discoveries. But does her family have any right to the money generated from companies and institutions selling cells that are technically Henrietta's even after she's been dead for decades? This was before patients had to elect to be part of scientific research and black patients were especially taken advantage of.

Surprisingly, it was the parts near the end focused on Henrietta's family and Rebecca building relationships with them that I started to lose some interested. Normally I love that kind of stuff.

5 “Boom Town” by Sam Anderson Nonfiction, 2018 4.25/5 stars Another topic I knew nothing about, the founding/establishment of Oklahoma City and the more recent history about the OKC Thunder NBA team. Chapters alternated between the 2 (very different) time periods/topics but it did a pretty good job tying them all together. Most fascinating to me – when OKC was established, it was basically a land grab. The date of the land run was set ahead of time and people came from all over to stake their (free) claim.

6 “Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore” by Robin Sloan Fiction, 2012 3.25/5 stars Another interesting premise (basically an old secret society that is trying to solve puzzles through various books) that had me at the beginning. But some of the characters and the ending fell flat for me. This was clearly written during the tech boom and the company Google was put on a pedestal throughout the book.

7 “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” by JK Rowling Fiction, 2004 The Harry Potter audiobooks continue to be great. I hadn't finished reading this book when I was a kid so glad to have done it now. The earlier books are still my favorite though, maybe because I'm more familiar with those storylines.

8 “The Immortalists” by Chloe Benjamin Fiction, 2018 3/5 stars I feel like this book was totally different from what I expected reading the summary. Basically 4 siblings visit a fortune teller when they were very young and she tells them each the year that they're going to die. Sure enough, all predictions come true and ¾ die in very tragic ways.

9 “Baracoon: The Story of the Last 'Black Cargo'” by Zora Neale Hurston Nonfiction, publish 2018 but written in the 1920's 4/5 stars This terrible, but I don't remember much about this as it was a very short audiobook and parts were a little hard to follow. But the gist African villages were raided for the slave trade and the boat rides over to America were terrible (a surprise to no one).

10 “She Said” by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey Nonfiction, 2019 4.75/5 stars Overall really good! The book is focused on their reporting on Harvey Weinstein's misdeeds and all the reporters had to go through to get the story out there. It's amazing to hear all the women they were in contact with, some famous some not, and understand what the women went through to make the decisions to make their stories public. And the craziness coming from Weinstein's camp.

My only qualm with this book is the portion at the end about Christine Blasey Ford and speaking up on being sexually harassed by (now judge) Brett Kavanaugh. Obviously a very important story to tell (and she was so brave to do this), but book structure-wise, I don't think it needed to take up such a large chunk of the book at the end.

11 “Seveneves” by Neal Stephensen Science fiction, 2015 4.25/5 stars What to say about a nearly 900 pg book that took me 8 months to read... The overall premise was really interesting and could probably be a cool movie or series. The moon breaks apart and will start a “white rain” about 2 years later, which will rain depris on the Earth for thousands of years. Only a couple thousand people are sent into space to try to save the human race. After many trials and tribulations in space, only 8 women survive and land on a meteor (I think?). They kinda gloss over the science to make this happen, but they decide that the 7 women of child-bearing age should start popping out kids to keep the race going. With science, the women can choose if they want to alter the DNA in any way before the embryo is implanted in them. Jump forward another few thousand years and a huge civilization in space is established and there are different “races” that come from the seven eves (ah get the title?). The characters we follow in this section eventually go down to earth and find that some people have been living underground since the white rain and now are starting to emerge and reestablish Earth.

There is SO MUCH world building here, which is probably awesome for some people and takes a lot of talent to write, but seemed unnecessary and sometimes uninteresting to me. I kept going because the general plot was interesting and I wanted to see how it turned out, but I would have liked it to be much shorter :)

12 “Robin” by Dave Itzkoff Biography, 2018 5/5 stars Really interesting biography of Robin Williams (and a great audio book, the narrator did good character work throughout the book). While he was a huge name, I really didn't know a lot about his early work and the full extent of his struggles, especially when he was getting started. I also didn't realize he was so sick when he died and that there were strange underlying health issues at play too.

13 “The Luminaries” by Susan Dennard YA Fantasy, 2022 4/5 stars My first foray into YA fantasy (at least in recent years)! The premise had me interested throughout – there are monsters that come out at night in the forests in Hemlock Falls and there are hunters to keep them contained. Winnie, the main character, wants desperately to be a hunter but her family is shunned after her father (allegedly) betrayed the hunters. She does the hunter trials anyway and makes it through. But some weird things are happening in the forest that no one fully listens to her about. There are a few loose ends that I would have loved to have wrapped up at the end, like what is this new monster and what actually happened with her day, but it's a series so those must go into the next book. More to come so I can be more fluent in the genre when Megan's book comes out!