Books Reread
Disability Visibility edited by Alice Wong***
CW: the individual essays in the collection have content warnings.
I reread this book because I’m thinking about teaching a few of the essays from it in my class next quarter, whose theme is imagining accessible futures, and I wanted to remind myself which essays I liked. So many good ones in this book. See here for my original review.
5/5 cute canes
Time is a Mother by Ocean Vuong***
**Book Hangover Alert
When I woke up on November 6th, I didn’t know what to do, so I read poetry. I remembered one line from the last time I read this book and it felt like exactly what I was feeling after the election, so I reread the collection. The line was:
“I know. I know the room you’ve been crying in is called America.
I know the door is not invented yet.”
So if that doesn’t hit idk what does. See my original review here.
4/5 Americas
The Tower of Nero by Rick Riordan
**Book Hangover Alert
The Trials of Apollo book 5 of 5
I didn’t remember this one very clearly, but it was a delight to reread. Riordan does a great job writing climaxes. We spent 5 books building up to the battle with Python and Nero, and it’s worth the wait. I’m also a big fan of Robbie Daymond who reads the audiobooks. See my original review here.
4/5 self-sacrificing arrows
New Books Read
Against Technoableism by Ashley Shew***
I read this one for my class next quarter as well. It’s excellent. Very accessible, and not to theory heavy, but I still learned a lot from it. I think it will be perfect for my students to both ground them in disability studies and help them imagine accessible futures.
4/5 prosthetic legs
Still Life by Louise Penny
Chief Inspector Gamache book 1 of 19 (so far)
CW: death, homophobia
My best friend gave me this book for my birthday. I very much enjoyed it. When a woman is found dead in a small Quebecois town, everyone is a suspect, but could the key to her murder be in the art she never showed anyone? I was impressed by Penny’s use of omniscient POV which I feel like is hard to use when writing mysteries. I loved the way this mystery unfolded and how the stories of everyone in town wove together and the art themes. I am also interested in seeing Agent Nichol develop in future books, as I’m sure she will.
4/5 controversial paintings
Mutual Aid by Dean Spade***
I spent most of November 6th (after I read Time is a Mother) reading this and trying to figure out a better future for this country. If you don’t know, mutual aid is a way of organizing aid in a community so that everyone gives what they can and receives what they need. This book addresses a lot of the problems with charity and capitalism more generally.
3.5/5 community networks
The Care Manifesto by The Care Collective***
This is another one that made me feel better after the election. What if we all cared about each other? What about that?? The Care Manifesto imagines what different aspects of society would look like based on care instead of money.
3.5/5 care workers
The Neil Gaiman Reader: Selected Fiction by Neil Gaiman
I’ve never read this collection, but I had read almost all the pieces in it. It was nice to revisit some of his shorter pieces. He reads these himself, and he’s quite good at it.
4/5 wholesale assassins
The Future is Disabled by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha***
CW: grief, death
Yet another for my class and for making me feel better about the election. Piepzna-Samarasinha imagines a disabled and accessible future in this follow up to her book Care Work in light of Covid-19. It is very good.
3.5/5 accessible spaces
Pet by Awaeke Emezi***
CW: child abuse
I’ve been meaning to read this for ages. It was worth the wait. When Jam accidentally invites an angel out of the world of one of her mother’s paintings, she’ll learn that the monsters are not as gone as her community would like to believe. Beautiful prose, a simple and important story
4/5 biblically correct angels
Books I did not finish
The Chaos of Empire: The British Raj and the Conquest of India by J. Wilson-Wilson
Another book I was reading for research for a project. I thought maybe I’d write a character who was a soldier in the British army in India. But so far I’ve found the story of British Imperialism in India so boring I can’t do any research on it. So I’ll just have to change the character.
1/5 soldiers
**Book Hangover Alert indicates the kind of book that will leave you full up on love. Satisfied, but wishing the book never had to end. You’ll be laying on the floor with no idea what to do with yourself (other friends have called this feeling Good Book Depression or say that certain books necessitate Floor Time). This is the kind of book that gets its teeth in you and won’t let go easily. After the last page you’ll be thinking about this book for a long time. You’ll bother all your friends trying to get them to read it so that you won’t be alone in your Hangover.
***This book is part of my Books for a Social Conscience series! Read Disability Visibility to learn more about intersectional disabled experiences. Read Time is a Mother for queer immigrant perspectives. Read Against Technoableism to learn more about disability and imagine the future. Read Mutual Aid and The Care Manifesto for what we should all be doing. Read The Future is Disabled for visions of an accessible future. Read Pet to remember we have to choose to be better.
Reads marked as part of the Books for a Social Conscience series will regularly address topics like race and racism, colonialism and post-colonialism, LGBTQ+ experience, feminism, BIPOC experience, social and political issues, history, identity, class, disability experience, immigration, gun violence, poverty, colorism, environmentalism, and more! The goal of these books is to diversify the stories we’re reading, grow our empathy for those who are different from us, and amplify voices who are often silenced.
