Welcome to Litsy!

This time around, making the collage for my most beloved nonfic reads in 2024 meant adding a title that wasn‘t a *true* favorite. 🙈 Otherwise, the sizing got weird! And I can‘t have that!!!

So, congrats, Wolfish, you‘ve been granted Honorable Mention amongst the Best of the Best.

I've always found marine life fascinating but I've never considered it before as a metaphor and vehicle for examining queer, mixed-race love, identity, and self-knowledge. The result is beautiful and insightful, affirming and moving. I'd heard nothing but absolutely glowing reviews before reading it, and I think it lived up to the hype. I'm glad I read it.

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The second half of the year has begun; time to share my favorite reads (so far)!

In my mind, I “almost always” consume nonfic via audiobook…but I actually read 3/4 of these in print! While I don‘t mean to denigrate audiobooks (they‘re both valid and equal to other formats), I can‘t help but feel like I‘ve leveled up…if only because I see it as proof that my reading experiencing is opening & becoming more fluid.

I highly recommend this book! 5 stars from me! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

In each essay, queer author Sabrina Imbler explores themes of adaptation, survival, sexuality, and care, and weaves the wonders of marine biology with stories of their own family, relationships, and coming of age. Imbler writes beautifully, honestly, and with unabashed vulnerability. #rainbowbookmonth #pridemonth #Pride #lgbtq

Enjoying the perfect setting for reading this book. Mother Earth truly is magical. 🌎✨️ I love her with all my heart!

I read this last year and loved it. Just did a re-read for book club and it‘s even better than I remembered. Fascinating nature writing combined with personal memoir. She draws such brilliant parallels between the sea animals‘ lives and her own. An incredible book.

I‘ve read some truly phenomenal books this year. The tagged by Sabrina Imbler & Ann Patchett‘s Tom Lake are April‘s winners. 🪼🌸🍒

For those (like me) who sometimes struggle to see:

January: Turtle Diary
Feb: The Book of Speculation
March: Greta & Valdin
April: How Far the Light Reaches

Bonus 1: Tom Lake
Bonus 2: The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion (Volume 6)

#ReadingBracket2024 #2024ReadingBracket

I read Imbler‘s blend of memoir & science journalism slowly, & I think that‘s exactly right. Their essays are beautiful, aching, & hopeful; informative, uncomfortable, & probing. They write through their questions & don‘t settle for easy answers or metaphors.

Favorite essays: “Pure Life”, “Beware the Sand Striker”, & “We Swarm.” They‘re about: the yeti crab, queer joy, & safe spaces; sexual abuse & predation; salps & being buoyed by community.

The penultimate essay in Samantha Imbler‘s connection opens, “Imagine you are something like a snail.”

…I don‘t have to imagine. 😅 I like to live life in the slow lane.

“I didn‘t want to be at the party, but I couldn‘t bear to be alone, so I turned on Blue Planet.”

In ten essays, Imbler writes about ten different sea creatures and relates them to their own life experiences. They explore their own identity as well as their relationships with others and has a gentle way of connecting the natural world to the human experience that was so earnest and insightful.
Book 7 for the #TransRightsReadathon

January wrap-up 📚 I finished 11 books and had a great kickoff to the reading year!
🥇How Far the Light Reaches
🥈Into Thin Air
🥉Check & Mate

I wasn‘t expecting so much memoir in this one. It‘s part science, talking about sea creatures and intertwines the animal‘s lives around the author‘s life; relationships, queerness, mixed race, fitting in etc. The author is very truthful about their experiences growing up and defining who they are as they mature and experience life. The book is cleverly articulated. The science part reminded me of An Immense World.

Powerful writing, spellbinding ability to weave factual apects of marine life with pivotal moments in their own life through beautiful prose. Such a delicate balance between fascinating and heartbreaking insights into sea life, especially as humans have affected/interacted with them, and deeply personal reflections that include some dark and upsetting subject matter. 1/2

New year doesn't HAVE to mean a whole new you.

Have I mentioned how much I love the word 'creature' used as a verb? 😁

❤️

😌🪩🌌

Evidently, the word of the day is 'how'. 🤷🏼‍♂️

This was so interesting! The interplay between her life and experiences and the deeply researched and detailed ocean creatures lives was very deftly done

A scientist tells stories about fish, and about her life at the same time. It was poetic and meditative, diving into hard stories of generational war trauma, sexual assault, and being queer and trans. It was good, but I was expecting more Fun Science Times with Fish and felt a bit knocked over by this one. I listened - maybe would have been better in print, I found myself drifting during the more meditative essays.

This is a brilliant blend of science and memoir. The essays consist of gorgeous nature writing about various sea creatures while threading through related illustrations from Imbler‘s own life. The nonbinary author shares personal stories about their gender, their biracial and queer identities, and family. They also write about finding community in unlikely and hostile surroundings. Imbler draws the most incredible connections. Highly recommend.

I love the way the author used sea creatures to capture feelings, episodes, and concepts from their life. I‘m deeply fascinated by sea creatures which are particularly unique in their appearance & behavior, some of which remains a mystery to scientists. The way Imbler weaves these creatures into her experiences and builds connections is masterful. They write about queer spaces, familial relationships, and being mixed race alongside sea creatures.

The book starts out strong but it gets more poetic in the last third and that‘s not really my reading preference. But it‘s not bad and I‘m sure it would be great for the right readers. So I‘ll give it a pick instead of a so-so.

I loved this blend of nature writing and memoir! The author discusses many forms of aquatic life and weaves in stories of their past from childhood to adulthood, including bits about racial identity and gender identity. Narrated very well by the author too.

Ed Yong calls Sabrina Imbler‘s memoir “transcendental.” I agree. I love the way this nonbinary Chinese American science journalist filters fascinating aspects of sea creatures through a personal lens. They are full of wonder for the natural world, and can also make correlations to their own issues relating to such things as body image, autonomy, adaptability, racism, street safety, and a sense of community. #queer #LGBTQ

Friday Reads February 10: nonbinary authors; Indigenous authors; horror; poetry; kidlit & berries
https://youtu.be/moSPzkLCvDM

We both had been expected to be daughters but turned out to be something else. We had shed our skins, not like snakes but like insects—each of us a nymph outgrowing exoskeleton after exoskeleton, and morphing as we did. We didn‘t know which molt would be our last, only that we might not be there yet, both of us rivers moving towards the sea.

Imagine having the power to become resilient to all that is hostile to us. Confinement, solitude, our own toxic waste. Imagine the freedom of encountering space for the first time & taking it up. A dumped goldfish has no model for what a different & better life might look like, but it finds it anyway. I want to know what it feels like to be unthinkable too, to invent a future that no one expected of you.

This was my first book of the year and I‘m still thinking about it. It‘s so good, and I‘m glad it exists and that I will carry it around inside me from now on.

My expectations for this book of hybrid memoir / essays were a bit too high, so I ended up being disappointed. Although I enjoyed both aspects of Imbler's writing -- science journalism about interesting sea creatures and personal stories about their queer identity / experiences -- the essays felt like two alternating threads that weren't well integrated and didn't transition smoothly.That said, I learned a lot of cool stuff about ocean creatures!

My expectations for this book of hybrid memoir / essays were too high. Although I enjoyed both aspects of Imbler's writing -- science journalism about interesting sea creatures and personal stories about their queer identity -- the essays felt like two threads that weren't well integrated. Thematically the connections between the sea creatures and Imbler's life didn't quite resonate. That said, I learned cool stuff about ocean creatures!

This utterly absorbing collection of essays merges marine biology and memoir, diving into such subjects as disordered eating via a starving mother octopus, the power of queer spaces through the science and survival of deep sea wildlife, gendered violence and the Sandstriker (formerly named after Lorena Bobbit), being mixed-race and rainbow fish hybridity, & more. A book about sea creatures has never been more beautifully, joyfully, achingly human.

Of all the animal-involved memoirs I‘ve read, this is the most unique. Their descriptions and research were so impeccable I thought they were a scientist themselves (not a journalist). They use ten creatures to describe important parts of their life from a mother octopus starving to protect her eggs to a mantis shrimp that changes gender expression. Their science and narrative were equally enthralling.

Thanks for the rec @britt_brooke 💜

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Not like anything I‘ve ever read! Part science writing, part memoir. Conservation journalist, Sabrina Imbler, relates their pivotal life experiences to that of ten sea creatures. Each essay profiles a creature that thrives in especially challenging environments, not unlike human beings. It‘s about survival and adaptation. Absolutely brilliant concept and flawless execution.

In this mashup of a book, Imbler explores a different sea creature in each chapter while using aspects of that creature to explore their own life. I liked both parts, but as a science nerd, I wanted a bit more of the critters, but that‘s me, not the book. I suspect this book will be quite satisfying for many, especially those who prefer science in small bites.

Ok, didn't realize this wasn't a strictly #science book so I was slightly blindsided by the #memoir sections. Still, I ended up really enjoying everything, I think the author does a great job of weaving together their #queer and #trans journey through the interesting animals they have studied ⚠️TW for graphic SA and substance abuse #nonfiction

An enjoyable exploration of growing into one‘s (still changing & growing) queer identity through extensive analogies to various aquatic creatures. Anyone who took the long way round to figuring out who they are will find something to enjoy - but it feels written to and for a queer audience, particularly those with genderqueer/fluid identity & the BIPOC members of the queer community. #ALC

I‘m really enjoying this book so far - queer memoir meets aquatic science essays - but it‘s the second audiobook book in a row that delves into fat phobia and into past black-out drinking. The second section has a LOT of disordered eating/starving oneself. And the section I‘m in now is a consideration of all the sex they had that they didn‘t want - & often can‘t remember & couldn‘t consent to as a young person. ⬇️ #ALC