Hello, friends!
Biggest update in my life from the past weeks is that I got a half-sleeve tattoo, which has been exciting and disconcerting to see every day when I look down. Happy to share pictures if you want, just reply with a request 🙂
During that process, I did get a chance to listen to a good chuck of two audiobooks, which is always a plus! Also read a decent amount while travelling to New York. Now, settling back into the routine, and finding times to pick up some real paper books again.
How’s the reading for y’all going? Any fun times in the weeks of January?
Cheers,
Maya
Internet things that garnered a reaction
- More games and fun stuff (help us discover the new Wordle!)
- https://minimator.app → Draw some random lines and watch it be drawn back to you, then send it to a friend!
- https://www.youdontknowafrica.com/1/ → The game-maker claims, probably very accurately, that you don’t know Africa. Change that here, and compete to identify 20 countries on the continent as fast as possible.
- https://wikitrivia.tomjwatson.com → This one’s tricky! Try to place literally the most unrelated, random events in chronological order. My streak is 12, and I haven’t gotten close to that recently. How good are you?
- More on why Wordle is the best game out there.
- Things I think are important to know about, now that I know about them
- These Portland kids protesting highway expansion are living by the principles of Wendell Berry. Inspiring and saddening and frightening that this needs to happen.
- A long but fascinating read on how climate change is spurring tree growth in the Arctic, and challenging the way of life of reindeer herders— and the lives of reindeer.
- Self-improvement sorta ideas
- The relevance of the Rest Principle in multiple domains of life. Always a good reminder.
- Celebrating your rejections with your peers → “What would I chase after if I weren’t afraid of rejection?”
- Ten beautiful prayers/love letters to Mother Earth by the late Thich Nhat Hanh. Read one, read them all, I felt my mind shift each time.
- Random link for the end: this has been my go-to fun fact since the second grade, so I’m glad it’s finally been proven…
Musings
- Much on the significance and meaning of nature, gardens, and flowers in particular, in the writings of Rebecca Solnit (and her quotes of George Orwell) and Wendell Berry (included in next month’s update… it’s a long one), that were particularly lovely to contemplate— the proposal of gardens as the opposite of war, for example, and the idea of an ancient redwood’s saeculum, or living memory— even the memory of the topsoil.
- Also: two mentions of the idea that the earth “inhaled” slowwwwwly long ago, creating stores of oil, gas and coal, and we are now prompting a much quicker (and thus harmful) exhale in releasing that breath (in Orwell’s Roses and Desert Notebooks, which will be in next month’s udpate)
January 2020 books
- What is a Dog? — Chloe Shaw
- A memoir of a woman who loses— and then finds— herself through her dogs. I’m glad I took a chance listening to this— it was heartwarming, relatable, and simply real, in how the author described the span of emotions life brings without going overboard. The abundance of dog didn’t hurt. :)
- The Life of the Mind — Christine Smallwood
- This was presented as a new kind of campus novel, but I don’t quite see it. Hard to get into, and the main character, Dorothy, is hard for me to relate to.
- Work — James Suzman
- Far more an archaeological and economic history book than the cultural critique and analysis of “work” that I was expecting, and much of the book contradicts the new presentation of prehistory I read about in [The Dawn of Everything](https://mayasheth.github.io/2021/12/03/the-dawn-of-everything) (particularly in the emphasis on how important the adoption of farming was on transforming societies), which makes me quite skeptical of the credibility of this book.
-
Nervous System — Lina Meruane, transl. by Megan McDowell
Sunlight exploded on her eyelashes…
Itching… is pain’s little sister.
- Beautiful metaphors of physics and anatomy… as always, I’m curious what the experience of translating this work was like— I imagine, a joy.
- New words I learned… 1) Preterite: of the present moment; 2) Oneiric: of or relating to dreams; 3) Bric-a-brac: ornamenents
- Stone Arabia — Dana Spiotta
- A calming listen, but I was altogether disengaged from the narrative. A fine background story, but I didn’t appreciate it for more than that.
- Lights Out in Lincolnwood — Geoff Rodkey
- First few chapters, very relatable! The mom even uses the same weather app as me! (Weather Underground, if you’re curious. Highly recommend.)
- Got slightly absurd and satirical, but was overall funny and light-ish (well, technically light-less) read.
- When We Cease to Understand the World — BenjamĂn Labatut, transl. by Adrian Nathan West
- An intriguing premise: fictional biographies of the lives and minds of real scientists, mathematicians, and the like. Labatut, through the translation of West, gives these figures complex, full, and intricately detailed personalities that at least I never thought to consider about the men who crafted the foundations of math and physics. A long time ago, I read an actual history of the revolution of quantum physics, and it’s interesting to read this one in parallel to the “truth.”
In the deepest substrate of all things, physics had not found the solid, unassailable reality Schrödinger and Einstein had dreamt of, ruled over by a rational God pulling the threads of the world, but a domain of wonders and rarities, borne of the whims of a many-armed goddess toying with chance.
- The First Cell — Azra Raza
- An oncologist’s polemic regarding cancer research and treatment, bolstered by personal accounts of her patients, friends, and family who have suffered through the disease. Raza does not hold back in critiquing the current trajectory of cancer therapies, arguing convincingly that we should shift our focus from the slash, poison, burn approach of surgery, chemo, and radiation to prevention and detection of the very first cancer cells.
- Orwell’s Roses — Rebecca Solnit
- Solnit’s writing sings at the intersection of natural history and biography, sociology and memoir— this time, all anchored, whether near or far, to the rose bushes George Orwell planted by his cottage in England. I enjoyed reading this thoroughly, for both the factual insights and poetic language— for both the bread and the roses, one might say.
- In the Country of Others — Leila Slimani
- One of those novels that opens a window into an entire world of existence I’d never imagined: in this case, 1950s Morocco for a French woman and her “native” husband. Grappling directly with issues of race, class, and sex, Slimani nonetheless crafts an engaging and tangible world that I quickly became intrigued with.
- Heavy Light — Horatio Clare
- Horatio Clare’s memoir, in Part I recounting his time in a manic state and resulting stay in a mental hospital, is achingly, disturbingly authentic and familiar. One line about his time in the hospital that particularly resonated: “In here, you cling so hard to hope that you create it.” I know that feeling too well.
- Clare’s narration of his personal account of events, punctuated by outside anecdotes of his family and friends, paces the speed of the memoir subtly and skillfully, making for a unique reading experience.
- And this: “For crimes against normality, we get a label and a chemical life sentence.”
- The second part takes us behind the scenes of the mental health care industry in the UK, from the medical providers to lawmakers, with a skeptical but honest gaze. I’d be interested (and frightened) to know what a similar portrait of the US landscape looks like.