Diverse Stacks, Diverse Lives Reading Challenge.

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Beth and I have done a lot of talking about the kinds of things that reading can do for a person. It really is a magical thing. It can transport you to different worlds. It can imagine new history. It can see potential futures. Studies have even shown that reading literary fiction can help you relate better to other people. So, with this in mind, we’ve put together our first reading challenge. Inspired by #weneedmorediversebooks, we’ve come up with a challenge to make us think about who we are reading and what we are reading about. Our challenge has three sub-challenges: one related to characters, one related to authors, and one related to books themselves. Each sub-challenge is only ten books long, so you can do any of the sub-challenges without changing how you read for the whole year. As a reader, you can tackle the whole challenge or one or more of the sub-challenges.

I will be maintaining a page here on this blog full of possible books to fulfill the challenge that I find in my reading travels. Of course, any suggestions will be helpfully added to the list. Part of what makes diversifying your reading difficult is that you don’t always know something is diverse going in. We are going to endeavor to make that easy by keeping a separate page of suggestions.

Since this challenge is only 30 books, we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of diversity in literature and in life, but we hope that this list and the books that are read because of it will create interesting and thoughtful discussions. We hope that you will consider taking the challenge and reading along with us in 2016!

Series I said Goodbye to in 2015

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For my last Series You Should Check Out post of the year I thought I would do something different. In the spirit of Award Shows In Memoriam segments.  I thought I would take the time to highlight and say goodbye to the series that I loved that came to their conclusion this year.  It was only 4 and I know that I have highlighted them once (or many times) before but all good things need a proper send off.  So without much further ado.  Here are the Series that I said Goodbye to in 2015.

  1. The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer
    What can I say about this series that I haven’t already said? I am truly going to miss this it.  The mix of fairy tales and sci fi was perfect. It never felt forced.  How Miss Meyer was able to incorporate this familiar stories into her own new world and combine them with such ease was truly impressive.  It all came off naturally and fun.  It was full of romance, action, wonderful heroines and even a little social commentary on how we treat those who are different and the difference between tyranny and freedom and the lengths one goes to lead.  Next year Meyer will release a collection of short stories that revolve around reverse perspectives of important scenes and even a wedding for one of our couples but it had the perfect ending for a fairy tale.  They all lived happily ever after.
  2. Penryn and the End of the Days by Susan Ee
    This series was very different in it’s look at Angels.  As they are not all that angelic like at all or at least how we have come to think of Angels to be like.  It touched on two major trends in YA of late with both it’s dystopian and fantasy elements and they blended nicely.  It also had a strong lady protagonist in Penryn.  She was brave, smart and fierce.  She had flaws though.  She had to get over her own fears and even prejudice to truly win the fight.  It was an uneven trilogy as the second book wasn’t as strong as the first but it was still a great read.  I’m curious to see what Susan Ee does next now that Penryn has come to a very satisfying ending.
  3. The Goddess War by Kendare Blake
    Greek Gods and Goddesses living in the modern world is not a new idea. We all know of Rick Riordan’s work but this was a little different.  Instead of Gods and Goddesses that live on top of the Empire State Building overseeing what is going on in the world.  These Gods and Goddesses actually live in it though barely does anyone know who they really are.  It was a twist on the Greek Champions.  Instead of them being the children of the Gods, they are the original Champions, reborn.  Once again, we are introduced to Odysseues, Hector, Achilles, Cassandra and more.  Instead of reliving the Trojan War they make their own paths to save the Gods and Goddess of Olympus.  It was fun, a little romantic, action packed and a new take on everything we have grown to love about Greek Mythology.
  4. Finishing School by Gail Carriger                                                                      In this steampunk version of England there is a girls finishing school that not only teaches girls to be the finest women in all of England but also the deadliest.  Sophronia is the best student at Madame Geraldine’s.  Through four books she has drove every teacher banners with her constant curiosity and always in the thick of things.  She knows every square inch of the ship that is her school and every secret there is to know in England.  From the inter-workings of vampire hives and werewolves clans to evil secret society of the Picklemen.  She has thwarted evil plans and made friends with those all over the class spectrum.  From the charming Soap who is black and one of the sooties who works on the ship to the devilishly handsome Felix who is a Duke’s son.  She may be a women in Victorian England but she is anything but helpless.  More then once she uses her own skills and intelligence to save the realm from treasonous acts.  It’s funny so funny and filled with action and excitement that I’m sorry it’s ending but good news is that Gail Carriger has other series set in this world.

So those are series that ended that year that I love.  What series did you love that ended this year?

 

Review: Live it! by Jairek Robbins

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I don’t want to be a soda can. Metaphorically speaking, whether or not that can is full or empty, I don’t want to be it.

I have to stop buying self-help books. There was nothing new or interesting in this book. There was a lot of dialectal behavior therapy stuff and with some magical thinking thrown in. But, you know, DBT without any of the psychological support that you’d get from doing DBT with a therapist. But, if you don’t need the support and you think you can get by on 30 day challenges from an author alone, then do it. This book might be for you! Get in there! Or, something

It wasn’t for me. I picked this up in a BOGO sale from audible and I’m happy to report that I actually liked the other book I picked up with it so this wasn’t a total waste. This book, however, is dull and unoriginal. I even managed to doze off while listening to the part where the author describes his own personal brush with death. I don’t know if that makes me an exceptionally callus human being or if it makes him a bad storyteller?

Plus, Robbins reads the book as if Every. Sentence. Is. The. Most. Important. Sentence. In. The. Book. It irritated me. And, it made it hard to focus on what actually have been important.

I’d give this book a 2/10. I wouldn’t recommend it but if you read it and loved it I wouldn’t ruin your gushy good mood by telling you how much I hated it.

This Year in Reality 2015

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When Beth and I decided we were really going to get on this thing and use this space and do some writing, we decided that we both needed a recurring series. Beth has been doing the Series You Should Check Out. These have been enjoyable to read (and have definitely put books into my TBR pile) and they’ve even gotten us a couple of author retweets. (Which, I have to say, was super exciting for both of us!) I decided to go in a different direction and review at least one non-fiction book a month. I flippantly titled this recurring series This Month in Reality. And, while not getting us any retweets, it has at least gotten me the personal satisfaction of engaging in some topics that I’ve had an interest in but have maybe not have made time for. The books that I read this year can probably be divided into three categories: Self help (dating advice,exercise, etc, New Years resolutions and Mesoamerican History! *only self-help for me because I study Mesoamerica*. ) Pop Culture Interest (the life and times of Kim Gordon, Piper Kerman and Orange is the New Black,Pop Physics,Travel as a metaphor for personal growth, Oscar winners ) meditation (Meditation and Science, meditation and practice, meditation AND pop culture). I’m so proud of my accidental consistency. I plan to continue this column in the coming year and I will also endeavor to be consistent, although more intentionally so. I’ve spent a lot of time in the past year considering who holds space and who is asking for it in our society, so expect to see books that help me meditate on and answer that question in 2016. But, before we get to 2016, I’d like to say goodbye to 2015 to revisiting my favorite reads/listens in reality this year! So, in no particular order:

 

 

<a href=https://stacksexceedlifeexpectancy.com/2015/07/31/this-month-in-reality-love-and-revolution/> Revolution by Russell Brand</a>.

 

This book hit me right in the feels. In a moment of synchronicity, I listened to this book at the exact right time for me because the messages of his book, that love is important and should be cherished and cultivated and that if something isn’t working we have to try something new and endeavor to make it better, were both things I needed to hear. It feels a little trite to say that a celebrity known for being a dirty hippie who once did a lot of drugs said the things that I needed to hear (especially when those things are stuff like, “your reality is the result of your attention and intention” and “sometimes you have to realize that the only power you have in a situation is the power to make it worse”) but it’s true so I might as well own it. I think Brand is a funny dude and I think the ideas he discusses are worthy ideas. So, if you’re feeling despairing and fed up with what the world looks like, take a break and hang out with this squirrelly English dude. Maybe he’ll say what you need to hear, too. (Or, maybe you’ll hate it and it’ll be one of those hate reads which is also cathartic. I don’t know.  You do you.)

 

<a href=https://stacksexceedlifeexpectancy.com/2015/04/02/this-month-in-reality-travel-as-a-metaphor-for-personal-growth/>Eat, Pray, Love</a>

 

I wanted so badly to hate this book. No, really. I wanted to hate this book because knowing barely anything about Elizabeth Gilbert (except the general plot of this story) I had decided that Gilbert was a selfish person who does what she likes and (mis)uses foreign cultures to justify her self-serving decisions. Now, maybe my original judgments about her are true and maybe they aren’t. But, try as I might to hate this book, I just couldn’t.  I found this book to be tremendously enjoyable. In the book someone suggests to her that every person and every city has a word that sums them up. When you find the city that you match, you’ve found your home. This is a clue to her that it is time to move on. I really liked this idea and I spent a long time considering what my word is. I just went back through a bunch of text messages with a friend who loved the book to see if I had come to a decision about my word. I think it might be “chameleon”. But, I’m still not sure. This book was a beautiful, painful, wonderful read. I’m so happy I picked it up!

 

<a href=https://stacksexceedlifeexpectancy.com/2015/10/31/this-month-in-reality-mesoamerican-history/>Maya to Aztec: Ancient Mesoamerica Revealed by Professor  Edwin Barnhart</a>

I picked up this lecture series from audible because I thought, “What the hell? You know practically nothing about the historical context that gave birth to this language context you study, what could it hurt?” Nothing, I decided. And, I’m so glad that I picked it up. It covers the Toltecs, Olmecs, Zapotecs, Mixtecs, Tarascans, Aztecs, and Mayans: all of whom had empires in Mesoamerica prior to the arrival of Columbus. Did you know that? Prior to reading this audio book, these were names I knew, but I didn’t realize the the history that these names conveyed. These were huge empires that had sweeping impact on the culture, the people, and the land. How cool is that? Audible has an entire series of lectures, so if you’re interested in learning a little about anything, you might find something that will capture your interest! I, of course, recommend starting in Mesoamerica.

 

 

I hope that you have enjoyed learning a little this year along with me and that 2016 will bring us more knowledge about this cool and exciting world we live in!

 

This Month in Reality: Scroogenomics

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I saw this book on Eleventh Stack earlier this month and decided that it might be the perfect read for the holiday season. We’ve been reading A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens on Periscope, so this seemed to be the perfect foil to the original story. I still feel that way now that I’ve listened to it. This book is written by Joel Waldfogel, an economist whose specialty seems to be investigating something called dead weight loss. Or, more generally, the efficiency with which resources are put to use. In the book he lays out an argument for more efficient gift giving (or not giving).

The argument goes like this: I give you a sweater worth 50 bucks but you only get 20 bucks worth of enjoyment out of it. My gift of that sweater destroyed 30 bucks worth of value. Or, worse: I give you a sweater worth 50 bucks but you enjoy it 20 bucks worth. However, you would have bought yourself a different $50 sweater that would have given you $80 worth of enjoyment, so now the $50 sweater gift destroyed $60 worth of value (what you would have enjoyed minus what you are enjoying). Waldfogel walks us through all different ways that value can be measured and how economist collect and analyze that data. He also discusses what that means, not just for gift giving, but also for giving to charity and government spending (which he used as examples).

The book was really heavy on data, so be warned. More than a few reviews on goodreads panned it because it had too many numbers in it. (Personally, I would have been disappointed with fewer numbers. The book was written by an economist and published by Princeton University Press. Knowing those two facts, I expect to see a lot of data.) But, Waldfogel made some really great arguments for being thoughtful about what you give to whom, and I liked that. He also made some great suggestions for how to give more efficiently. One of the suggestions that he made was using the holiday season to give through people instead of to people. Which is to say: giving a gift in the name of someone to a charity or an organization. One of the things that we can do is give people money to give to charity. He hypothesized a charity gift card scheme that I haven’t seen but I do hope to eventually see. The idea would be that you’d give someone this charity gift card that they could then log into a website and give to the charity of their choosing. What a beautiful idea.

To bring this back to Scrooge and A Christmas Carol, what this book kept making me think about was the value and usefulness of something. And, this is a message that also keeps coming up for Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. Twice now in the story so far (if you’re keeping up with us on periscope or katch), Scrooge has been confronted with something from his past or his present that made him rethink the value of something or someone in his life. Remembering what it is like to be alone at the holiday season makes Scrooge wish he’d been kinder to a caroler. Seeing exactly who the ‘surplus population’ is makes him regret his callous statements about the poor. Gift-giving is wonderful and provides us an opportunity to let people we care about know that we appreciate them. And, as Waldfogel points out, in many instances it is mandatory. You can’t not give a gift to your mother-in-law just because you don’t know her very well and you think anything you’d give her would just be wasted. So, since you have to give, strategies for how to give better can only be a good thing. We can be thoughtful about how we give when we give so that, in general, some good comes from our giving. The goal isn’t to hoard, but rather not to waste.

I enjoyed this book immensely, and if you’re interested in the economics of giving, you might want to give it a spin.

I got this book from audible.com

Quick Review: Manners and Mutiny by Gail Carriger

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manners mutinyThere is so many things to love about this book and this series in general.  It’s beyond funny.  Sophornia is in finishing school but it’s not just any Victorian age finishing school.  Yes, Miss Geraldine’s teaches her girls how to behave like a lady and how to land a good husband but also how to kill them too.  Miss Geraldine’s develops the best lady intelligencer’s in the majesty’s realm.  Sophronia and her friends may still be students but they are all that stands in the way from the evil Picklemen taking over the realm and  keeping peace with the vampires and werewolves.  So don’t take these girls lightly.  They may have all the charm and manners of a lady of quality but that only makes them more deadly.  If there was one downside to this and that it needs more Soap.  Soap is Sophronia’s one true love.  In a world where social class is important, they are a forbidden match.  Sophronia doesn’t come from most wealthiest of families but she is expected to marry a certain class of gentlemen and  a black sootie is not that class.  At the end of the last book he is turned werewolf to save his life.  In this Steampunk London, supernaturals are granted equal footing with the upper class but he’s still the wrong race and well now the wrong species.  His role is a little lesser then in past books since he is no longer at the floating school.  He is not really given much to do but he does make the most of the time he does have.  All and all it was a good ending to a great series.  I’m going to have to read Gail’s other series that take place in the same world because if these are any indication, they will be a hoot.

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens: The Ghost of Christmas Present!

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Tuesday we continued with our favorite Christmas ghost story. We met the Ghost of Christmas Present! Scrooge was shamed by having his own words spit back to him by a ghost!

If you missed Tuesday’s installment, you can find it here. And, you can catch the next installment tonight around 9pm Eastern time on Periscope’s website or the periscope app on your phone!

Rereading Winter by Marissa Meyer

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This is it.  I don’t want to say that this will be the last time I read Winter or The Lunar Chronicles but I am ready to move on.  This was a very lovely series that was just fun to read.  So here we go. My last few observations Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, Winter, Kai, Throne, Wolf and Jacin.

  1.  I liked all the romances but Scarlet and Wolf’s is the best.  Wolf is torn from his family, forced into the army, his body physically altered and none of this he wanted.  He spent the entire series fighting what was done to him so he could have his own choice.  That he wasn’t just a monster he was made to be and Scarlet saw him.  Maybe from the very beginning when he was just sitting in the tavern, maybe in the fight pit or maybe on the train but she saw HIM and even after everything, that’s all she ever saw.  That’s love.
  2. I do love Throne’s devious plan to prove he’s worthy of Cress’ love.  That my friend is a criminal mastermind.
  3. Winter is adorable.  I’m not sure what I think of Jacin.  He’s still a jerk but he does have his reasons.  If I was raised in the Lunar court I would probably be like that too.  I saw that they both truly cared for each other but I wasn’t quite connected with them as a couple as the others.  Maybe since I only really got one book with them and they spent most of the book apart from each other.
  4. Cinder is amazing.  After everything that she has been through.  She still finds away to be fair to Adri and  Peony when they had never been fair to her.  A lesson we all can learn.  She will make a great leader.  I think that best leaders are the ones who don’t want to but do when needed.
  5. I do hope that she and Kai do stay together
  6. I’ve said this before but I do love the friendship between Cinder and Throne.  He was the first to follow her and to go along with what she wanted and needed.  True at first he thought their would be money involved but he was game for everything.  I think that is what made he final battle that much more powerful.
  7. Levana is a terrible person but she also had a terrible upbringing.  I read Fairest, the prequel, and we find out that she was never shown love from her parents.  Her sister was cruel to her and was responsible for her own burn injuries.  She had always felt inferior and really just wanted to be loved.  She was the second daughter.  The second woman in his husbands life.  Well really the third after Winter.  She was never anyone’s first until she ascended to the throne and only because she manipulated everyone.  I’m not saying any of this excuses her behavior but terrible people are not created in a vacuum.
  8. Whatever Marissa Meyer will write next. I’m totally going to read it.

What did you all love about The Lunar Chronicles?