2023 reading list and commentary

a book opened to a page with the date 1853 visible

Here was the Mastodon thread of what I read last year. This is the thread of the books I am reading this year. My plan was to read LESS this year than last year and I did a good job. One hundred and fourteen books. I was busier, happier. I think I stubbornly finished every book I started in 2023 although some of them maybe I shouldn’t have. I did lower my “books by men” percentage an amount that felt good. I’ve been actively seeking out non-binary authors and trying to read print a little more.

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2022 reading list and commentary

s shelf with MAD paperback books of various titles

Here was the twitter thread of what I read last year. I’ll be posting on Mastodon this year instead.Find me there at https://glammr.us/@jessamyn. I read a lot of books this year but in many ways it wasn’t a great year for me (it’s improving) so I have mixed feelings about the sheer length of this list and am hoping to read LESS this year. I started to read 144 books and finished 142 but kept up with a few I maybe shouldn’t have. Here are stats for the books that I finished. Of note is that I’m lumping female and non-binary authors together only because I’m trying to read fewer books by men. I’m also retiring my “people of color/non-Western” category only because it relies too much on surface impressions/names. Continue reading “2022 reading list and commentary”

2021 reading list and commentary

picture of me in big glasses opening a large book and inside it is paper towels and pressed leaves

Here was the twitter thread of what I read last year but I should note, it has two 46es on it. I read about the same this year. I started and finished 115 books. Not bad. One more book got added to my best in show category: The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson, though I felt like I read a lot of good books this year.

Here are stats for the books that I finished. Continue reading “2021 reading list and commentary”

Preparing NOW for expected challenges

White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre speaking to reporters at the White House
White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre speaks to reporters.

 

An email I wrote to our state library association about the concerning things happening in Texas.

Hello all — I am writing this kind of in my role as VT Chapter Councilor and somewhat as someone in the Intellectual Freedom Committee. I wanted to make you aware of an issue concerning book challenges.

As you are probably aware, Texas is one of the states where there are coordinated groups of “concerned parents” and others who have been challenging books with GLBTQ content as well as books about what they call “critical race theory” but which are really just books about… American history usually, with a focus on the Black (and sometimes Native American) experience and the effects of racism. Here’s an article from CNN. I draw your attention to the quote from ALA.

https://www.cbs58.com/news/texas-governor-calls-books-pornography-in-latest-effort-to-remove-lgbtq-titles-from-school-libraries Continue reading “Preparing NOW for expected challenges”

The fungibility of books

two shots of a woman reading books in a library stacks aisle with her mask on, In oe of the shots she is looking at the book, in another she is looking at the camera
COVID-19 safety with mask, gloves by Michael Neubert. Public domain.

I’m on a mailing list where we discuss book issues. There are authors, publishers, industry people, and librarians on this list. Recently we’ve been discussing the Internet Archive’s ongoing legal dispute with the AAP (Association of American Publishers). If you recall the Archive made many copyrighted books available on their website via the National Emergency Library (NEL) during COVID. Publishers did not appreciate this and sued them. There has been a lot of paperwork and blog posts going back and forth. Most recently the Archive requested “comps” or sales data for not only the 127 books that the Archive made available that are the core of this suit, but also similar books to get an idea of what sort of market effect the NEL had on these publishers. The publishers pushed back on this claiming “… since books are not fungible widgets [the request] rests on a false premise…. There is no such thing as a ‘comparable book’—even if ‘comparable’ is defined as some undefined period of sales data. Should Catcher in the Rye have similar sales to a bestselling cookbook, no one could plausibly contend the two works were ‘comparable.” I decided to push back a little on this idea, from a librarian perspective and talk about whether books are fungible….

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