@gaylagal2 @Endowarrior21 on its way, estimated delivery Wednesday this week!! #springathogwartsswap

"Still in the library, in the small arena of translation, I remember sitting for a long time with the found poem, the book hinged between summer and autumn, looking around at all the quiet readers (finger still in my mouth), not yet quite ready to make up my mind."

@Wonderwoman89 I got the #springathogwartsswap package yesterday!! Thank you!!! Sorry for the absence, Imy life has been insane recently.

@Endowarrior21 My package will be going out soon!

Kicking off #24b4Monday. @Andrew65 @TheReadingMermaid

I'm sorry, I can't, this voice is driving me crazy!!

Next up: Midnight's Children. Taking my third crack at this book, nearly a decade after my second bail. In the intervening years, I finally branched out from reading nothing but Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. 🤪 Hopefully I now have a broad enough literary perspective to appreciate what Rushdie brings to the table.

*proceeds to rush out and find every book Amos Oz has ever written*

🤯

(PSA: This technologically-illiterate millennial can't figure out how to get two focus bars on one image, so you get a clumsy finger-painted blackout instead.)

I went to the library and I may have gone a bit nuts. #NoSpendingNoRegrets #ICanTotallyReadThisManyBooksIn4Weeks #yolo #readaoc #readwoc #readdiversebooks

This whole book is written with metaphors like this. They're everywhere. And Oz has somehow written them in such a way that I am delighted to find yet another one, instead of rolling my eyes at their excessive use. 🤯

AAAAHHHHHH!!!!! @tdrosebud your #HappilyEverAfterSwap box is mind-bogglingly amazing!! The goodies, the Moroccan Folktales book I've wanted for EVER, AND a new-to-me author?? You've outdone yourself! (And yes, the coffee smells super amazing!) Thank you so much!!

@Chrissyreadit thanks for organizing this swap!

I'm sorry, but I HATE deckled edges. "Why yes, I love interrupting the flow of my reading by having to futz with five gradated page edges at the same time!" ?

Guys. What started as a hilarious commentary on academic culture has since spiraled into one of the bleakest books I have ever read. What this book is ABOUT is the unsolved mystery of a mass femicide happening in a region of Mexico. I'm a third of the way through the book, slogging through part 3 at the moment. And it's an important book, I won't deny it; but it is SO hard to read. I don't know how much more I can stomach.

The author built his career on becoming an expert of dinosaur "genealogy," so he probably has one of the clearest ideas of current paleontologists about how they evolved and thrived. Plus he uses plainspeak, so it's like a readable documentary.

TL;DR: If my kids like dinosaurs, (and they better) this will be their bedtime story for a month.

??????

#nonfiction2019 (something with science) @Riveted_Reader_Melissa

Behold...the brain of Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Ah-ha! I always wondered how the dinosaurs survived the extinction events. This makes a lot of sense! 🤔

I dont think I know enough about Yuri Herrera's Mexico to understand what he was doing here. Embarrassing, but I suppose it just means I need to get educated on immigration and all the socio psychological elements that go along with it. Any recommendations to help me get started? #readdiversebooks

Guys, why in the heck am I only apparently interested in reading books that are 800+ pages long??! 😭🤦‍♀️😅 #doorstoppers

@Riveted_Reader_Melissa finished my second book for the #nonfiction2019 challenge! An excellent discussion of what goes into comics and how to make the most use of them, based on the history of communication through visual media, from cave paintings and codexes to engravings and comic books.

I have been waiting for this book since it came out in early 2018, and it was never at the library, BUT it was half off at Barnes and Noble yesterday, yaaaasss! SO excited to dig into this one! (Pun absolutely intended 😜)

Gosh hecking darnit!! #oregontrail #AtLeastItWasntDysentery

YOU GUYS THEY MADE THE OREGON TRAIL COMPUTER GAME INTO A CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE SET OF BOOKS I AM LOSING MY MIND AND I FEEL SO OLD BECAUSE IT'S CALLED CHILDRENS FICTION BUT I DONT CARE THIS IS EVERYTHING

#booked2019 @Cinfhen @4thhouseontheleft @BarbaraTheBibliophage finished this book, my "reminds you of your happy place" choice because it occurs in Milwaukee, where I grew up.

I didn't feel the book really knew what it was trying to be. Mystery? Family study? Commentary on adoption, racism, and mental illness? And I felt the ending fit poorly with the story. But that might just be me.

I wish I could say I snorted with laughter, or cheered, but what I really did was let loose a grunt like a rhinoceros, from a diaphragm spasm, at the shock of insight this afforded me. #superattractive #readwoc #booked2019

Well this is going to end well. #booked2019 #readwoc

First book for @Riveted_Reader_Melissa 's #nonfiction2019 challenge is complete!

Very mixed feelings TBH. Important simply because it describes U.S History without the typical "All Hail Old Glory!" that you find in other U.S. histories; but it obviously lacked the sort of journalistic precision with facts and consequences that I feel are necessary in history books...and the revising & editing were just plain awful, sloppy, and careless.

#24b42019 will not be completed for me, but my #readathon did result in me FINALLY finishing Gravity's Rainbow!!!

Definitely an amazing work of literature...but I don't know that I could recommend it to people generally. Long, difficult, straight-up disgusting, and very very dense. But what Pynchon has to say, he says very well, and I am glad to have read it.

@Andrew65 @TheReadingMermaid

First day of #24b42019, and what a #readathon it was! Got through 210 pages of Gravity's Rainbow...have another 300 to finish the book. 😭

@Andrew65 @TheReadingMermaid

I'm 100% positive that it is no accident that the premise of the book--Slothrop being the legendary "Rocketman"--occurs with formal introductory fanfare almost exactly halfway through the book.

#24b42019 starting this morning, and nothing else is planned for the rest of the day!! Hoping to make serious dents in these two beasts. #readathon @Andrew65 @TheReadingMermaid

I have been picking and picking and picking away at this book, since July. Do you think #24B42019 is sufficient for me to finish? 😬🤯

First crack at the #nonfiction2019 challenge with @Riveted_Reader_Melissa is going to be Howard Zinn's "People's History of the United States." Tells the history of the US, from the beginning, from a Laborer's perspective, instead of a capitalist/governmental perspective. I hear it's a real mind-bender...can't wait!

wanted to get down a list of my completed 2018 reads 😊 My focus was on trying to read diverse authors, since historically I've been pretty entrenched in literature written in the 1800s by white European men. The result: two immigrants, two first-gen authors, five AOCs, one LGBT author, two female authors, and authors from the US, New Zealand, Britain, Iran, and Japan.

Next year's goal: more of the same, hopefully with more nonfiction, too!