There was a Little Free Library just outside tonight’s restaurant, so kiddo’s working through a new book while we wait for food.

I have Ward’s Anarchism in Action waiting for me on my nightstand while I work through a Jimmy Carter biography, so I thought I’d listen to this on hoopla in the meantime (since I regularly do an ebook, an audiobook, and a print book in parallel). It’s an interesting and helpful overview of a political philosophy that I’m still trying to understand. Lots more to be read, but this gives some context.

One of my favorite perks of academia is finding a personally interesting book through the university library.

Kiddo has reached the “I want to read while you buy a few groceries, please steer me so I don’t walk into anyone” stage of bookwormdom.

Kiddo picked up a new library card over the weekend (lots of Kentucky counties do reciprocity agreements, so we collect them), and she’s incensed that there’s a 25-book limit at this system (we regularly check out 50 books each from two different counties).

A friend of mine recently asked whether I had a list of books “that have been particularly impactful or interesting,” especially in the realm of spirituality and religion—and suggested that if I didn’t already have such a list, I could put one together for one of my next blog posts. It took me a while to actually put the list together, but it’s ended up being a really interesting exercise. Of the forty books that I’ve picked, some have been more influential than others.

Steven Peck’s “A Short Stay in Hell” gets better each time I read it.

This weekend, I read Kate Beaton’s new graphic novel memoir, “Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands” in a single sitting. It was excellent and really got me thinking.

Our family does NOT have a ’too many books’ problem. We may, however, have a ’not enough bookshelves’ problem.

I bought a French novel at a used bookstore last week, but I’ve felt burned out on reading lately, so it’s gone to the pile of books I keep meaning to read but keep skipping in favor of Minecraft or something else.

Looking at the haul of new library books in our living room today, I realized that we’re both a family that buys a lot of books and a family that saves huge amounts of money thanks to the library.

This afternoon, kiddo tried to walk out of the library to the car without stopping her book, which makes me optimistic about her development as a reader.

I read Feed in high school and found it interesting, but when I read it again in 2019, it was amazing. This review gets at why the book is so good—and important. Maybe it’s time for me to visit it again.

I feel like I should love Catch-22, but even though I got a lot more out of it this time than the first time I read it over a decade ago, I just don’t think it’s as funny as it’s famed to be. 📚

One of the most prominent joys in recent parenting has been discovering that the same Jon Agee who was writing palindrome and wordplay books when I was a kid is still at it—and watching kiddo enjoy them even more.

It’s a testament to Apple TV+’s adaptation of Slow Horses that I am now reading the whole book series and that I can only imagine the characters as the show’s actors.

I am about a decade late to Joanna Brooks’s beautiful memoir, and I know I wouldn’t have appreciated it fully in 2012, but I am so, so glad to be reading it now.

Thanks largely to traveling, I powered through my first Franco-Ontarian novel over the past few days, and it was delightful. Some of the best Francophone books I’ve read have been purchased used for about $5, so hooray for used bookstores.

Currently reading Hervé Le Tellier’s « L’Anomalie », and it is so dang good. An English translation (The Anomaly) is coming later this year, so I’m going to go ahead and recommend this book to everyone.

Very interesting speculative fiction.

If there is a better way to end the first week of classes than Ted Lasso and Marcel Pagnol, I don’t know what it is.

Adding this to my to-read list.

I have twice bought a Francophone book based on the title, and both were winners. « Vers Saint-Gétorix » was as enjoyable as the pun, and « Kiffe kiffe demain » delivered on its promise of a story from la banlieue.

This passage about the anti-Semitic Dreyfus Affair (from a book I’m reading on the French Third Republic) is coming to mind today: Long before the end of the Affaire, as the French called it, the question of the guilt of Dreyfus became almost lost in the melee, giving way to a fundamental conflict over the very moral concepts of French society which cast its shadow over the Third Republic from then on to the end.

Just minutes after complaining that Harry Turtledove works so many recaps into each book of the series I’m reading, I discovered that I’d actually skipped a much earlier book. I hadn’t noticed because the recaps were so helpful in catching me up.

I recently ordered a book directly from a French publisher, and thanks to COVID, watching the FedEx tracking updates is the closest thing I’ve had (or will have) to vacation travel for a long time.

Victoire du jour : apprendre que la FNAC fera livrer des livres jusqu’au Kentucky. 🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻

Currently reading Superman Smashes the Klan, and it is the epitome of what a Superman comic should be. Can’t recommend enough.

One of my favorite things about university libraries and ILL is that they’re officially there for research, but no one will stop you from reading the books just because you want to.

I just finished rereading Philip Roth’s 2004 novel “The Plot Against America.” It is really good—in ways I didn’t appreciate when I first read it in high school and that I couldn’t begin to articulate now.

Sapiens is a challenging book, but that’s also why it’s a must-read. As much as its focus is on science & technology, I ultimately read it as a reminder that we need to ask ?s from the humanities to safely navigate our present and future.

Reading Cory Doctorow’s “radicalized,” and it’s great so far. Funny how a story like “Unauthorized Bread” can make me angry in a way that reading news stories and blog posts on the same subject just can’t compete with.