Hey there!
It’s been awhile, friends, and many things have been astir. I’ve missed my biweekly (Can we agree this is a terrible word? Obviously here referring to every two weeks, but how are you supposed to know that!?) brain dump into the void. Anyway! For y’all today, I have some brief personal updates, a bunch of links I found few months ago that might still be relevant/interesting, and a confessional reading update.
What’s been happening in your lives this summer?
Cheers,
Maya
1. Real life
- I moved to California! My life has become decidedly more sunny and science-y, and I love it.
- Started grad school (hence the science), and also loving it. Recently this has involved chopping off parts of worms and figuring out how exactly they regenerate. Not my long-term interest, but fascinating nonetheless.
- Goal for the summer: learning to surf! Any tips greatly appreciated. I’m excited to get back in the water after a many-year hiatus from my high school swimming days.
2. Internet life
- An interstellar exploration of a dynamic font design
- Another disastrous effect of climate change— the destruction of our cultural history— and how communities are coming together in ethical preservation efforts
- An absolutely incredible, detailed, interactive; and sleek explanation of the marvel that is the mechanical watch.
- Slick trick to get around procrastination on writing a first draft
- Cool art exploring barely illegible text… and the past/present possibilities of Indigenous history
- On the power of quiet places
- How RNA in test tubes can evolve into ecosystems
- Making (a little more) sense of misinformation, and why it’s so easy to believe in
- An atlas of emotions— would be cool to create a personalized, expanded version of this
- The staggering scale of COVID deaths
- A more nuanced take on the Meyer’s Briggs Type Indicator (in this notation, I am an intJ— what are you?)
- What a clever and transparent design to display the ingredients in this drink…
- Why you should pretend every time may be the last time
- Find the books set closest to you
- A font created by carving letters into living trees
- On rethinking the concept of lawns… and the places where lawns are actually illegal (I 100% support this idea)
- What we’ve learned about deep sea divers from themselves, turned oceanographers
- You don’t have to build a habit— just do it once
- How a community used a board game to spark serious discussion about addressing flood risks
- A User Manual for Your New Home Alarm System, D.O.G.
- Reusable versus disposable cups for your coffee— which is really better for the environment?
- This question may have been asked by a seven-year-old, but I am intrigued, too— why does the moon seem closer on some nights and further away on others?
- A visual explainer of the insanity of the English language… and spelling bees
- How the Amazon’s dynamic rivers drive biodiversity
3. Literary life
Way, way, way too many rom-coms to list without suffering from severe embarrassment, but I’ll call out some of my favorites below:
- Happiness for Beginners — Katherine Center
- The Road Trip — Beth O’Leary
- Love at First — Kate Clayborn
- Nora Goes Off Script — Annabel Monoghan
Other recommended reads…
- To Paradise — Hanya Yanagihara
- I had high hopes for this after recalling my very emotional reaction to Yanagihara’s last book, A Little Life, and it held up. A triptych of sorts, To Paradise tells stories set in alternate past, present, and future instances of people living on Washington Square, intertwined with themes of family, love, loss, betrayal, and Hawaii (not a theme, but…). I listened to all 29 parts in four days, if that tells you anything.
- The Year of Magical Thinking — Joan Didion
- A quiet, direct and heartbreaking account of the year after her husband’s death. Made me want to cry, then read everything else Didion has written.
- The Girl Who Smiled Beads — Clemantine Wamariya
- A memoir of a girl growing up a refugee of the Rwandan genocide and finding her way in the world. Honest, raw, and unafraid.
A collection of other books from while I was still keeping track (mostly April-May)…
- Our Country Friends — Gary Shteyngart
- A pandemic novel I struggled to get through, with a cast of characters all having the potential for intrigue, but non garnering my sympathy.
- Projections — Karl Deisseroth
- The story of human emotions, told by psychiatrist and pioneer of optogenetics along the axes of technology, science, and humanity.
- Very much resonate with Deisseroth’s perspective of analyzing the smallest elements of a system— in this case, individual cells— to understand large-scale phenomena— the function of the brain, psychiatric disorders
- Constant tension between patient safety and autonomy… too close to home.
- Chapter on eating disorders as challenging the notion on self was fascinating.
- The author is a Stanford BioE professor, and I’d love to meet him and have a conversation someday.
- Memory of Departure — Abdulrazak Gurnah
- Honestly, just not very noteworthy. Was my Tanzania book, but might try to find another that I enjoy more.
- Flights — Olga Tokarczuk, transl. by Jennifer Croft
- My Poland book
- A novel, and also a series of essays on strange intricacies of travel
- “The earth is round; let us not be too attached, then, to directions.”
- Oligarchy — Scarlett Thomas
- My UK book
- A boarding school novel, too disturbing for me personally to read closely, mirroring reality with distortion but with remnants of recognizability
- Next Year in Havana — Chanel Cleeton
- My Cuba book
- A love story with a dose of history and culture that only added to the drama
- If An Egyptian Cannot Speak English — Noor Naga
- Egypt book, obviously
- Hard to get into, hard to stay engaged…
- Dark Horses — Susan Mihalic
- Dark, set in the world of three-day evening, and captivating (hence the title)
- Magma — Thora Hjörleifsdóttir, transl. by Meg Matich
- Iceland book
- Don’t remember much from this after two days, so… that about says it
- Fourth Child — Jessica Winters
- “There was what happened, and then there was the story of what happened. The story was what was more important, because the story would keep itself alive in the retelling of it, long after what happened was dead.”
- A very weird family drama… not my favorite, but it was certainly intriguing
- Book Lovers — Emily Henry
- People We Meet on Vacation — Emily Henry
- Beach reads, both light and fun
- The Love Hypothesis — Ali Hazelwood
- I was so into this because of the similarities of the setting with my future life, and enjoyed it probably a little too much.
- You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty — Akwaeke Emezi
- A different sort of love story centered more on the growth of the protagonist than a relationship, which left me unsatisfied only because she didn’t end up with the guy I wanted her to
- All We Ever Wanted — Emily Griffin
- Can’t tell you a single word as to what this is about after a week.
- The Soulmate Equation — Christina Lauren
- Science/genetics + a cute kid = great read for me
- Something Wilder — Christina Lauren
- Meh.
- She Regrets Nothing — Andrea Dunlop
- This one had different tone than most of these, revealing the darkness among the ultra-wealthy in New York City.
- The Unhoneymooners — Christina Lauren
- Meh.
- We Came Here to Forget — Andrea Dunlop
- Not so much a love story, but a beautiful, character-driven, suspenseful drama about an Olympic skier who tries to escape the public and dark decline of her family and career.
- Here Comes the Sun — Nicole Dennis-Benn
- Gives me some vibes of the new Apple TV show, Acalpulco, with all the dynamics of hotel management, but set against the culture of Jamaica rather than Mexico (my Jamaica book)
- Basically all of Mariana Zapata’s novels, mostly sports-based romances… My favorite would have to be Kulti, because soccer.
- Land of Big Numbers — Te-Ping Chen
- Short stories set in China, revealing the normalcy of a surveillance state and humanizing a population that is often glossed over in a single tone