Song of a Blackbird by Maria van Lieshout
To be honest, I have a lot of books that get misplaced. I put them in safe places and well, they are so safe even I can’t find them. But there is always a way to find them. And with Song of a Blackbird by Maria van Lieshout that way was the library and interlibrary loan. A powerful and beautifully done story of family and the horrors of war unfolds across the pages. As it is told via a blackbird, things at times become almost […]
Cosmoknights, Volume 1 by Hannah Templer
I have been poking around reading Cosmoknights, Volume 1 for ages now. I have had and lost multiple online copies. I thought about ordering a copy, decided against it and then one day I found another online edition. I waited and waited to read until one day I was cleaning up the links I had and found it again. Okay, okay. I get it! The book is from 2019 and still I have an active link? Guess I better read it! With Hannah Templer’s graphic […]
All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler by Rebecca Donner
Those who have followed my reviews for a while know that I’m no fan of Donald Trump. At the same time, one large online annoyance during his presidency was the constant intonation of “resistance” on social media. Resistance by posting hashtags and memes. Resistance by someone who worked in his office, proud of themselves for not carrying out his more convoluted orders but still doing enough to hurt the body politic. I blame this fascination with Resistance! on our understand of World War II. Yes, […]
Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey
I wanted so much more from this little dusty sketch of the dystopian west. It had a helluva hook – outlaw lesbians! Gun-slinging sisters-in-resistance! Non-binary action heroes! Unfortunately, it ground to a halt far short of its potential destination. It begins as all westerns do: someone hanging taut at the end of a rope. There are western tropes a-plenty; rough-riding, chaw-spitting, howdy pardnering, thankya kindly ma’ams litter the landscape. This wild west is wild for a different reason, though: we’re in a thinly plotted dystopia. […]
How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell
This book sat on my bedside table for six months. I looked at it every day, tucked it into my work bag on multiple occasions, and brought it with me on several trips but I was unable to open the cover. I was paralyzed by the guilt of being wrapped into the attention economy, and I did not feel like I was ready or able to give my meager time to “nothing” quite yet. I was wrong. I wish I had cracked it open the […]
The United States has never lived up to it’s stated ideals of equality and freedom. It hasn’t even always struggled towards those ideals. Right now, there is a strong push to move backwards. The resistance to moving towards a white supremacist, patriarchal land of the wealthy is also strong. Rose Learner, Courtney Milan, and Alyssa Cole have fired their own shots in the beautiful short story collection, Hamilton’s Battalion: A Trio of Romances. We make a lot of arguments about diversity and representation, but it […]
