what I’ve been reading lately:
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If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal
(by Justin Gregg) In this book, whose subtitle is “What Animal Intelligence Reveals About Human Stupidity,” Justin Gregg uses a Nietzsche quotation about cattle as a jumping-off point to explore the differences between animal intelligence/cognition and human intelligence/cognition, and the question of whether we can say that human intelligence is better. (Spoiler alert: Gregg thinks…
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Bird Life
(by Anna Smaill) When I read The Chimes by Anna Smaill in 2017, it was a 5-star read for me, and while the details of the plot didn’t stick with me, I remembered loving Smaill’s writing. So when I saw Bird Life at the library I immediately grabbed it. The magical realism of this one…
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All the Feels
(by Olivia Dade) I’d been a little curious about Olivia Dade’s writing since I read Jenny’s post on Reading the End about Spoiler Alert back in 2020, but I never got around to actually reading anything by her until now. I’ve never really been into fan fic (though I guess I did read a few…
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Crossings
(by Ben Goldfarb) Another month, another really interesting read thanks to nonfiction book club. I didn’t know anything about road ecology before reading this, but Goldfarb does a great job of introducing the topic and walking readers through the effects of roads on different kinds of animals in different places, chapter by chapter. There are…
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Treacle Walker
(by Alan Garner) Treacle Walker is the first book by Alan Garner that I’ve read, but it’s unlikely to be my last. I’ve been meaning to read something by him for years, and was reminded of that fact when I saw the UK edition of this one at the excellent Shakespeare & Sons bookstore in…
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What Fresh Hell Is This?
(by Heather Corinna) I am not really a fan of surprises. So when I realized that I felt like I was missing some basic info about what to expect in the coming years in terms of perimenopause and menopause, I figured I should probably try to learn some things. Hence this book, whose subtitle is…
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Get a Life, Chloe Brown
(by Talia Hibbert) I’ve been meaning to read this one since it came out in 2019, so I’m glad it was the February pick for the romance book club I’m in. This one’s sweet but also steamy, and I liked it a bunch—aside from the third act conflict, which I found too stressful, even though…
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Kitchen Confidential
(by Anthony Bourdain) I’m grateful to nonfiction book club for choosing this as our February read: although I definitely like food (by which I mean: I like cooking and baking; I like going out to eat; I like trying new-to-me restaurants and new-to-me dishes), I haven’t read many food-related memoirs, and this one was definitely…
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OKPsyche
(by Anya Johanna DeNiro) If you need a mythology refresher (which I did, before I started reading this): per Apuleius’s Metamorphoses, Psyche was a) the goddess of the soul, b) Cupid’s wife and c) a great beauty who was transformed from being a mortal woman to being immortal after a series of trials. This all…
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The Rediscovery of America
(by Ned Blackhawk) This book (whose subtitle is “Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History”) covers a lot of ground chronologically and geographically, and sometimes jumps around a bit rather than proceeding solely by chronology. It’s written in an academic but readable style (by which I mean: this is not a pop history kind…