Just bought this #cookbook and am so excited to read all of Chetna‘s recipes! (I had preordered it; picked it up this afternoon from my local store 😍) Any Brits want to weigh in since it‘s been out in the UK for a while?

Whew those early Poirot stories are r a c i s t as f. Ugh. The Parker Pyne ones are interesting, and I had quite forgotten him. The Marple one remains decent. Overall, meh.

Havin a mini Christie fest over here while the like 50:books I had plans to read sort of ... drift. 😂😂😂😳🕵🏻‍♂️🕵🏼‍♀️🏹🔪🧨🗡🚬⚰️🧪💉

I mean it‘s Miss Marple. Luckily most of these short stories don‘t show off the worst of Christie - the racism, xenophobia, homophobia, though a little of it creeps in now and then. But Miss Marple! I only wish there had been more of her and less of Poirot. I needed a little break, and these short stories served, as Christie might write, admirably.

... It is a very favourite place, that. There by the jasmine hedge. That is where the milkman asked Annie if he could put up the banns.”
“Dash it all, Aunt Jane,” said Raymond, “ don‘t spoil all the romance. Joyce and I aren‘t like the milkman and Annie.”
“That is where you make a mistake, dear,” said Miss Marple. “Everybody is very much alike, really. But fortunately, perhaps, they don‘t realize it.”

😂😂😂

“Hey.” The jowlboy leaned in, his vinegar mouth on the side of my cheek. “Don‘t you ever say nothin‘? Don‘t you speak English?” He grabbed my shoulder and spun me to face him. “Look at me when I‘m talking to you.”
He was only nine but had already mastered the dialect of damaged American fathers.

HOLY SHIZZLE, I‘m one chapter in, and I‘m already fascinated as heck. DID YOU KNOW THE MALE PLATYPUS HAD A TON OF VENOM IN HIS ANKLE SPURS???? I did not! I love my #science books. 😍😮(🇦🇺 is very yikes, btw!)

What a fascinating and enjoyable - and maddening! Why did so many scientists miss so many other scientists‘ work? How does the Nobel Prize work? Etc. - she addresses all of this and much more. - book. I listened to podcasts of author interviews as well, very useful. 4.5⭐️ #science #astrophysics #cosmology

“When I refer to the shape of space, I mean not the local potholes in the otherwise taut fabric of space-time, but rather the overall shape of the universe on the largest scales, where it appears more or less homogenous.”

Often I have no real idea what this book is talking about, but it‘s fascinating and rulllll purty with its writing anyway. 😂 👀🌌🎆🌠👀 #astrophysics cosmology

Also about to start this book (image from a Russell short story - Orange World, as a matter of fact- in the New Yorker). Can I finish it, Nickel Boys, and two nonfiction books before August 1? Well, that‘s the plan. 😂👀

Just got the email that this came in at the library (well, into my phone as an ebook, anyway), so it‘s time to read it (and Libby tells me “11 people are waiting” - no pressure, Libs!!).

My GOODNESS, I enjoyed this book, which is partly about the persistence of memory and partly about environmental disaster and partly about a wide sweep of history. I am going to give it 5 stars because even with occasional wild rivers of language - not that I object to that; I actually love it, even though this book is also very story-driven - it‘s a love letter to Bangkok, humans, irony, and beauty in the wreckage. Ahhh!

Getting started! The first short story/chapter was fascinating and alarming.

A nearly operatic début, if opera focuses on the intimacies of one family in one Shia Indian community in California - and I think it could. The personal connections, betrayals, memories, everything built from tenuous moments and the constant interrogation of what really happened and the layers of who did what, not to mention the various losses each person in the five-person family sustains - it's a good one, veering toward great.

Nice to know everyone makes their mistakes: “Einstein‘s resistance [to the theory that the universe was expanding], however, had deep roots. New evidence demonstrates the extent of his reluctance to give up on the notion of a steady, nonevolving universe has recently come to light. Although he publicly accepted the idea of the expanding universe, a previously unknown manuscript, discovered among his papers in the archives of Hebrew University ...

Been trying to get ahold of this one for a while. Starting it on the bus to Portland for a Portland Thorns game. 🙂😍🌹⚽️ #audiobook #hoopladigital 🎧 #YA

For about half of the book, I wanted to smack the protagonist. What was she doing? Why was she making such terrible choices? I was frustrated with the author for letting her character screw up over and over again. Then I realized the author did such a great job of putting me in the world that I was treating the character like a real person, and I thought about how unreasonable it was to ask a 16-year-old to make perfect professional decisions...

The latest #ownvoices YA book to land in my library inbox! Fingers crossed for this hyped and well supported work!

We sat down on the rubber floor, joining a group of young white women staring raptly at a petite holistic nutritionist, who advised us to engage in resistance training twice a week and to consider going vegetarian if grass-fed beef was outside our budget. “Eighty to ninety percent of what you eat should have a point,” she said. I pictured the sausage-egg-and cheese bagel sandwich I‘d eaten on the train to Boston. (cont)

I sure wish I could count all of the New Yorker magazine reading I do for Litsy. 😂 Anyway, this is from Jia Tolentino‘s March 18, 2019, article called “Athleisure Time,” mostly about the brand Outdoor Voices.

“‘Doing things is better than not doing things, I told my boyfriend, who was still in bed after a week of thirteen-hour workdays at an architecture firm. ‘You look like a mommy blogger dressed as the Easter Bunny,‘ he said.”

I sure wish I could count all of the New Yorker magazine reading I do for Litsy. 😂 Anyway, this is from Jia Tolentino‘s March 18, 2019, article called “Athleisure Time,” mostly about the brand Outdoor Voices.

“‘Doing things is better than not doing things, I told my boyfriend, who was still in bed after a week of thirteen-hour workdays at an architecture firm. ‘You look like a mommy blogger dressed as the Easter Bunny,‘ he said.”

Fun read with Maud and Arland and a lot of Very Serious VAMPIRR WARRRR IN SPAAAAACE plots, with some aliens involved. Ends on a cliffhanger you just KNEW would come someday. I‘ll give it a 4⭐️ for being very much what it is, and for Helen. #fantasy

Lest you all think I only read Extremely Serious Nonfiction ...😂

Back on my #science bullshit after giving up even trying to listen while we were on our trip to 🇩🇪🇫🇷⚽️🏆. It‘s so good! Just listening to the portion about Kepler. #planets #astronomy

Bought this in January at Eagle Harbor Books on Bainbridge Island, near Seattle, and I‘ve had it on my TBR plan ever since. It‘s appropriate as I am currently furious with a host of people and topics that boil down to racism, sexism, homophobia, and patriarchal control over women‘s bodies via fatphobia. Soooo yep. 🧐🤬

I used pens, bought highlighters in Cologne, and had scraps of paper everywhere as I read this fascinating and rather depressing book. In short: There wasn‘t a lot of interracial activism, & many white women withdrew from the work they had been doing after Brown v. Topeka Board of Ed in 1954. 👀
I learned a lot about Septima Clark, Modjeska Simkins, & Alice Norwood Spearman, & I‘ll be tracking down more info. 4⭐️ to this dissertation turned book.

Still my least fave of the trilogy, but it got better and more real for a few chapters before veering back into “this seems highly unlikely” territory. I guess The Proposal will remains my fave, partly because of the friend group interactions and family relationships therein, but this one is totally acceptable, if it swerves around a semi-ridiculous plot more than I expected. 3.5⭐️ #romsntsy

“She watched him make the slowest coffee in all of California.
“‘I can‘t believe I slept with someone who boils water every damn morning to make their coffee.‘
“He looked up from boiling the water.
“‘Actually, it‘s not boiled; I heat the water to exactly two hundred five degrees in order to get the best—‘“

Theo is me. I really really get him. 😂☕️

About 40 percent in, and so far it‘s my least fave of the trilogy, but that might be because I thought The Proposal was so strong. We‘ll see if I end up liking Maddie & Theo or if I‘m just rather done with str8 ppl romance at the moment. 😂 #romantsy

Well I got so frustrated with my slow French brain (while we were in France) that I decided to take another French class this summer, and then I decided to up my out-of-class French game with not just Duolingo but also Pimsleur. It‘s kind of basic right now, but that‘s fine. I can sit here saying “Voudriez-vous déjeuner avec moi à trois heures?” because summer. ???????? (cow is from a restaurant in Annecy)

And due at the library on the 24th ... this novel!

One hell of a book to read in conjunction with A Woman of No Importance (I super wonder how these two researchers got on, ahem). So much in here about everything from Britain‘s anti-Semitism at the beginning of the war (thinking Jewish refugees might be Vichy spies?!?!!!) to Charles de Gaulle‘s post-war anti-British mythmaking ... and a lot more. Masterful literary nonfiction touches, built on excellent archival research. 5⭐️. #history #WWII

At our cookbook dinner last night, we picked this for next. Got my eye on some spicy bean and barley stew with green harissa! Mmmmm yes.

1. Tagged
2. Crunchy! But whew it‘s been a while since I had Cheetos.
3. Sunset
4. 1/3 into CDs that mature in 6 months, 1/3 in a year, 1/3 in 18 months. #boringadultanswer
5. 🤔 Hunh. Maybe third?

#friyayintro @howjessreads

Having a cookbook dinner based on Ottolenghi books with friends tonight! 😋😋😋

Sweet YA that gets at deep issues around parental torture and weight (yes, it‘s child abuse), the feelings of being a player and wanting to change that, Friend Squad goals, and much more. Nice coming of age tale that‘s s great companion to When Dimple Met Rishi! #youngadult #romance

The time to do what‘s right is always now. Always. And in Flight Portfolio, we also see the many people - US State Department officials certainly among them - who make the opposite choice. Let‘s not be those people. Vale, Varian Fry, and Julie Orringer for writing a thinly fictionalized account of his time at the beginning of the war.

Just starting this one, hope it‘s good. #WWII

Started this book during a jet-lagged early morning yesterday, but it's so full of dread that I don't know that I can continue. YIKES. I might have to read a plot summary, the way I did before I went to see the movie Us, in order to keep reading! YIKES.

WOW, this book broke me a few times and made me ache for the protagonist, who blames herself for a terrible accident in the aftermath of which she also almost died. Written by a local-to-me author, the book is concerned with both what happens, plotwise, before, during, and after a canoeing trip, and more with grief, loss, shame, learning how to be an adult, needing attention and love and care, and a lot more. Beautifully written. 4.5⭐️ 🛶🏕💔

Welllllll this was a fun read at the end of June - fun both for the F/F romance AND the sense of finding one‘s true work and valuing it - and best is the strong, clear message about women in science. 4.5⭐️ for a lovely fun read that has many layers and cuts to the heart of how the Victorian women of science did so much more than we now know.

What a wonderful, heartbreaking, intense middle-grade story about the pain of history and the weight that Black communities and families bear of the lynchings and other violence done to them in the past. The story of young science-nerd Sarah, her younger brother Ellis, and their cousin Janie from the big city, and the summer when they disturb the site where the KKK burnt down a Black church in a small town in Georgia, it‘s got real power. 4.5⭐️

Another ✈️📖. This is a quarter-life crisis novel disguised as an M/F romance, from the POV of the young woman involved, who can‘t find a good date while all of her friends couple up. It‘s a good look at the 💩 replies women get on dating sites, and also a look at how being either too picky or too interested in material goods can go wrong. Pleasant enough, and some truly amusing scenes at the medical copywriting workplace. 3.5, maybe 4 ⭐️.

Speed read on the plane from Germany to Oregon - F/F romance where one woman is trapped in a loveless, emotionally abusive marriage and the other is trying to figure out how to make her work goals come to life. I didn‘t like that it started with cheating and that the one woman never quite dealt with the recovery from abuse; it‘s a romance, so a HEA, but ... I just have so many questions. Also, the characters were both WOC, but only on the surface.

@Jennifer3 MORE?!?!! #summerbookswap love!!! Thank you *ever* so much! 😍🥰😍🥰😍🥰😍📚📚 #mysteries #mystery

O M G @Jennifer3!!! I just got home from our trip to the Women's World Cup, and SO MUCH #summerbookswap LOVE!!!!! THANK YOU FOREVER!!!! @rather_be_reading 😍

Also just starting this one, more #WWII #history of women spies. (This is nonfiction; one wonders if The Alice Network is based on the same people?)

Starting this novel that my partner brought and wants me to read so we can give it to a friend who lives in Germany. In the background, part of the AirBnB in Annecy, France.

Absolutely inspiring and devastating. We went to the Centre d‘Histoire de la Résistance et de la déportation in Lyon just after I started reading this book, which was only appropriate. Ended the book with tears and so many other emotions. There are always people ready to resist oppression; the key is to find each other and work together. 5 ⭐️ all the way. #history #WWII

Appropriate to read in Lyon, I suspect. #history #WWII