Recent content in Blog on Ana Ulin
Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki Read Apr 4, 2022 - Apr 10, 2022 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ This is a lovely book, filled with lovable characters and feeling. It is a novel about food, music, and love, which are perhaps different expressions of the same thing. I would call this more magical realism than sci-fi, with much humor and a lot of humanity. It is a book filled with women, in the best possible way. At…
A kitty prepares to taste some fresh grass Iterating on my system for growing kitty grass at home (which I summarized here ), I decided to reduce the mess the kitties make when eating/playing with the grass by not using soil. D dubbed this “napkinponics”, which is a great name, except it is not accurate – I used a paper towel, not a napkin. The process is quite simple: take a…
I hadn’t done any embroidery since my early childhood, when I dabbled in cross-stitch, and this year I decided to sign up for the Year of Stitch series of tutorials and samplers from Badass Cross Stitch . It’s been a great way to get gently back into embroidery, and I’ve been having great fun messing around with thread and stabbing fabric. This is my first fully finished…
Perhaps the Stars by Ada Palmer Read Feb 16, 2022 - Apr 2, 2022 ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Perhaps the Stars is the fourth and final volume of the Terra Ignota series 1 . As with the previous volumes, I was excited by the richness of the ideas that it presents, and its vision of a world organized very differently from our own. At the same time, this book is fading quickly from my memory. This is a very ambitious, very…
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler Read Apr 27, 2022 - May 18, 2022 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I’m surprised to see that in my previous read I gave this 4 stars, and not 5. It is such an excellent book, on several levels. I last read this in 2017, and I am surprised it was only 5 years ago. It feels longer. In this re-read, I felt like I had a better understanding of the California geography the story…
Fierce Fairytales by Nikita Gill Read Feb 4, 2022 - Feb 18, 2022 ⭐⭐ Fierce Fairytales is a collection of poems by Nikita Gill in which she retells well-known stories from a contemporary feminist perspective. Sometimes she also takes the point of view of characters traditionally depicted as evil. In The Stempother’s Tale, for example, she tells us about the cruel woman that “She…
Leviathan Falls by James S.A. Corey Read Jan 19, 2022 - Feb 2, 2022 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Leviathan Falls is a satisfying ending to the epic Expanse saga. The story comes full circle and the protomolecule chapter of human history comes to an end. The characters stay true to themselves until the end (and some of them even past it! spoilers!). Holden engages in self-sacrificing heroics, breaking Naomi’s heart…
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer Read Dec 23, 2021 - Jan 18, 2022 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ For the sake of the peoples and the land, the urgent work of the Second Man may be to set aside the ways of the colonist and become indigenous to place. But can Americans, as a nation of immigrants, learn to live here as if we were staying? With both feet on the shore? Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass This…
I’ve been getting back into knitting over the last months. A few years back I stopped watching TV almost entirely, and with that went the knitting. Or maybe it was the other way around, it’s hard to tell. Late last year I picked up an old kit I still had from the Miss Babs Knitting Tour 2014. I always fall behind with this kind of “yarn club”. I’m never able to knit…
The Selected Works Of Audre Lorde by Audre Lorde Read Feb 3, 2022 - Apr 18, 2022 ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Book Highlights The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. Kept around as unavoidable adjuncts or pleasant…
Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia Read Dec 11, 2021 - Dec 15, 2021 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Of Women and Salt tells the intertwined stories of women from different generations of the same family – first Cuban, then Cuban-American. Their stories tangle with those of other women, like their Salvadorean immigrant neighbor and her daughter. The book is beautifully crafted. The stories are evocative and…
Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor Read Dec 1, 2021 - Dec 5, 2021 ⭐⭐⭐ Remote Control is a novella with similar themes to those in Okorafor’s other work (Binti, Akata Witch, Who Fears Death ). The setting is a sci-fi West Africa where technology mixes with tradition in a way that borders on magical realism. The protagonist is a young woman with a special ability that separates her from others…
Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle Read Dec 8, 2021 - Dec 10, 2021 ⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Ballad of Black Tom mixes Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythology with the racism of 1920s Harlem. Although the plot doesn’t feel particularly novel, it is elevated by the depth of the main character, Tom. We see his relationship with his father, his community, and how the violence of the world twists him into rage…
Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom Read Nov 30, 2021 - Dec 5, 2021 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Thick is a collection of essays previously published elsewhere. The topics are varied and sketch out a broad analysis of the ongoing fuck-ups in our society. McMillan Cottom writes about racism, beauty, class, whiteness, productivity culture, and more. Her writing is sharp and witty, wise and readable, and…
Somebody's Daughter: A Memoir by Ashley C. Ford Read Nov 25, 2021 - Nov 29, 2021 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ For half a minute, I knew I had it in me to tell the truth, and be loved anyway. Ashley Ford’s memoir Somebody’s Daughter revolves around her relationship with her father, who was incarcerated for all of her childhood and part of her youth. Despite the many struggles in the book (a single mother…
Open Borders by Bryan Caplan and Zach Weinersmith Read Dec 12, 2021 - Dec 12, 2021 ⭐⭐⭐ Open Borders is a book in comic form advocating for unrestricted migration. The book is illustrated by Zach Weinersmith of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal in his usual simple and vibrant style. The main author of the book is Bryan Caplan, an economics professor at George Mason University. Although Caplan…
Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber Read Oct 9, 2021 - Nov 25, 2021 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Bullshit Jobs illuminates the baffling amounts of unnecessary make-work in modern workplaces. It helped me get a better view on managerial bureaucracies, and especially the category of work that Graeber calls “box-ticking” (the primary form of bullshit work I’ve encountered in my mostly-not-bullshit occupation).…
A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers Read Nov 23, 2021 - Nov 25, 2021 ⭐⭐⭐⭐ A Psalm for the Wild-Built opens with the epigraph “For anybody who could use a break” and it delivers on that promise. It is a sweet respite from our daily doom and grind. The book is a novella, quickly readable in a few hours. The main characters are a non-binary monk and the wild-built sentient robot…
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen Read Nov 2, 2021 - Nov 17, 2021 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Nothing I write can do justice to this novel. Nothing I write can adequately convey the heftiness of the subject. The Sympathizer tells the story of a Viet Cong spy embedded as a captain in the South Korean army. The action starts during the last days of the war and takes us through his exile to the US, as part of the…
Citizen by Claudia Rankine Read Oct 30, 2021 - Dec 7, 2021 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Painful and beautiful words, mainly about racism, about being Black in America. Hurts so good. That time and that time and that time the outside blistered the inside of you, words outmaneuvered years, had you in a chokehold, every part roughed up, the eyes dripping. That’s the bruise the ice in the heard was meant to ice.…