February Reading Wrap Up
While writing this, I’m looking out my window at a tree in full bloom with lots of pink blossom. Spring is definitely on its way! And the number of days warm enough to take a book to the park are increasing – yay!
February ended on a high for me when I put on an LGBT+ History Month event at the library. Families came along and learnt about LGBT+ scientists and innovators and then joined in with a Storytime featuring LGBT+ characters and celebrating differences. There were a lot of wholesome moments and teaching moments, and I hope to put on a similar event next year!
Overall, I’m feeling really positive about the LGBT+ inclusion I’ve helped to build in the library I work at… and also that I better know my own reading tastes and continue to pick up some fabulous books.
There is one book from this month that my mind keeps wandering back to: Around the World in 80 Games. And one particular concept that has stuck with me from reading this book is the human invention of infinite games. That we purposely invent games that we can never complete, or that we are constantly changing the rules for, so that the game never ends. Whilst reading this section on the book, I remember thinking about how me and my partner are attempting to walk all the waterways in London – so many of our dates are about reaching this goal. Now, as walks by canals and rivers is something we enjoy, and enjoy doing together, I highly suspect we will expand this goal to other areas if/when we get close to finishing the challenge. But in the weeks since then, I have also been thinking a lot about identity, and how, in a way, exploring who you are - both fundamentally and how you change over time - is a never-ending endeavour. It is a puzzle that I enjoy figuring out and have benefited a lot from.
This past month has also led me to two five-star books: Deaf Utopia – a non-fiction memoir about Deafness by Nyle Dimarco, and Song of the Huntress – a Historical Fantasy tale by Lucy Holland that I read for ace book club. I feel that overtime I have become better at choosing books that I go onto enjoy. These two were my favourites this month, but I have also read a couple of Becky Chambers books recently which were also winners (as always from this author!).
January was slow, but February felt jam-packed! Now I’m ready to go into March.
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A Prayer for the Crown-Shy (Monk and Robot Book Two) by Becky Chambers ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Out of the wilderness, this tale is about Dex now guiding Mosscap around the human societies to help it answer its question: what do humans need?
Chambers lays out plentiful ideas of how to create a society more in tune with our planet - the use of biomaterials over man-made ones, solar and wind power being part of every building design, land divided (and tended to) by communities not individuals - and her writing evokes the emotions to make me want to make that happen. I felt hopeful reading this book.
It's not as meaningful as Book One for me, but this story still made me happy, and I kept looking forward to the moments in my day when I could return to these pages.
"Crown shyness is so striking, don't you think?"
Around the World in 80 Games by Marcus du Sautoy ⭐️⭐️⭐️
I picked this book up for the pun title alone while shelf tidying in the library one day and it ended up being quite an interesting and enjoyable read.
The book uses the structure of Phileas Fogg's fictional adventure of circumnavigating the globe to explore 80 games Marcus du Sautoy has come across in his own travels. It also discusses what makes a great game and why we choose to play games as a species.
"Games resemble stories by conjuring up a fictional world, transporting the players into a different temporal dimension whose artificial barriers we enjoy striving to overcome. Yet games are also stories that we can explore with friends. As shared experiences [...] a novel can move you to tears, but a game can make you guilty for your actions."
I learned about The Royal Game of Ur - aka the Game of Dogs - an ancient racing board game from Mesopotamia that I now want to see in the British Museum. I also discovered that two of my favourite games as a child, Ludo and Hopscotch, both originate in India.
But the book also extends to more modern games and ideas, too, including computer games, the gamification of tasks, and nongames such as Mornington Crescent.
Sautoy is a mathematician and is particularly enthusiastic about this aspect of games. There are some deep dives into mathematical concepts throughout the book, but these are marked out and you can skip over them, like I did.
Deaf Utopia: A Memoir - and a Love Letter to a Way of Life by Nyle Dimarco with Robert Siebert ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
This was the perfect book to pick up as I start to delve into Deaf culture and history! Nyle Dimarco tells his own story including the impact of historical events - the Milan conference and Deaf President Now protests, for example - on his lived experience, as well as recalling Deaf history as it was told to him.
But, primarily, this is a memoir, and Dimarco talks us through what it was like being Deaf and growing up in a Deaf family, attending Deaf (and, briefly, hearing) schools, and the access to communication he received (or not) during his time on reality TV shows America's Next Top Model and Dancing with the Stars.
I, ironically, listened to this as an audiobook. The almost eleven hours flew by - I highly recommend this experience.
Dimarco is a fantastic storyteller and his love of Deaf culture and being Deaf shines through. His story also gave so much insight into sign language - specifically ASL - as every quote from someone signing was written out in ASL syntax which demonstrates the grammar of ASL, how different signs - or repeated signs - can add emphasis and emotion, and some of the many ASL-specific signs that have a world of greater meaning behind them.
I am only just beginning my journey into learning about Deaf experiences and embracing being hard of hearing myself. This was a fantastic book to have found at this point in my journey!
Song of the Huntress by Lucy Holland ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
This was a book for my asexual book club that took me by surprise, but I loved it and it ended up sparking engaging, varied conversations including how far ace literature has come and what we want to see from this field next.
I found the first 50 odd pages quite cryptic which slowed me down and originally gave up on the story. But I shouldn't have doubted, as when I did pick it up again a few days before book club, I became hooked! (Add a sapphic romance sub-plot to a story and you will catch my interest!)
The story is told from three perspectives: the King and Queen (Ine and Æthelburg) who have been married for ten years, and the woman who catches Æthel's eye whilst the two of them are having marital issues (Herla). The dynamics between these three are human and nuanced and heavily bleed into the politics and plot.
And that plot is that the kingdom of Wessex find themselves threatened by otherworld forces which are converging against them, and Ine and Æthel need to uncover the truth - despite this going against the Church and prejudices of their people - and wield powers of the Land to defeat these forces.
The book explores themes very relevant to today: fearing people's differences and looking down on those with different cultures - "magic" - or who come from "foreign lands."
There are two ace-coded characters in this story, with the focus on Ine. The asexual representation is really good! In ten years of marriage, Ine has never explained his relationship to sexual attraction and desire to his wife and their relationship suffers because of it. Hearing from both perspectives, readers can clearly see they are a brilliant couple. But years without sexual intimacy has left Æthel feeling unloved and unattractive. Neither of them are communicating very well throughout most of the book, but when the discussion does happen, it is wonderfully done.
Lucy Holland's passion for the historical period, and the myths alongside, is clear, and I'm so glad they went all-in on research and inclusion of culture in the text to immerse us in this world.
Don’t burn anyone at the stake today (and other lessons from history about living through an information crisis) by Naomi Alderman ⭐️⭐️⭐️
This is a short book - under 150 pages - and I read it over a couple of days. To me, it felt like reading the transcript of a podcast episode in that a lot of ideas are touched on without going super in-depth, and there are conversational segways between the points. And all of this makes sense as the book was developed from a radio essay series on BBC Radio 4.
Alderman compares our current era of smartphones and the Internet to previous "information crises": the invention of writing, and the invention of the printing press. In each era, much more information was suddenly available to the average person, causing social and psychological changes, which, Alderman argues, we can look back on and learn from.
'Don't burn people at the stake' becomes the author's phrase for 'don't do bad things to other people', something that unfortunately comes out of these major changes whether through fear of unknown or dehumanising of others.
I enjoyed the section about needing organisations and systems that encourage truth seeking and balanced views - the author and I are both big fans of the BBC - and those that slow down our consumption, such as libraries. And I found it interesting about how having access to information leads to us relying on other people and oral storied less - as seen by cultures moving away from respecting elders and sharing resources among communities, including knowledge.
It was an intriguing read, but also, even a few days on, I know I've forgotten quite a lot of it. Overall, it's interesting, but not amazing.