Archive for December, 2022

some books i loved this year and why you might want to read them

America is Not the Heart and How to Read Now
Have you ever really thought about Fremont? No? Why not?

An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873
Learn your blood-drenched history and mourn your courageous dead

Another Day in the Colony
Know that history is in no way done with us yet

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands
Comics aren’t supposed to make me cry (are they?)

Homage to Catalonia
Reread old novels now that you’re big enough to understand them

Nona the Ninth
Meet the soul of the earth

Outrageous Conduct: Art, Ego, and the Twilight Zone Case
Understand how power corrupts

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
Consider alternatives

The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred and The End of Everything: (Astrophysically Speaking)
Drive from San Francisco to Joshua Tree thinking about deep space and social justice

The Years
…so that when Annie Ernaux wins the Nobel Prize you can say “oh yeah Annie, I call her Annie, she’s great”

becoming story, by greg sarris

In that brief moment before the clouds shielded the sun again, I felt what it was like to be held. I was standing in the earth’s enormous hand.

claire dewitt and the bohemian highway, by sara gran

The drive over the Golden Gate Bridge never stops being beautiful. In every kind of weather on every kind of day it’s a different kind of beautiful.

inciting joy, by ross gay

Whoever saved the seed loved us before they knew us. And some of them loved us as their world was ending. Our gardens archive that love.

gold fame citrus, by claire vaye watkins

camel, horse, mammoth, saber-tooth cat, dire wolf, short-faced bear, coyote, flamingo, pelican, eagle, swan, goose, mallard duck, ruddy duck, canvasback duck, double-crested cormorant, grebe, crane, seagull, stork…