What are you reading?

[dark_crystal]

With eyes:

THE MISEDUCATION OF CAMERON POST, a coming-of-age teen novel by Emily M. Danforth published in 2012. The novel's protagonist is Cameron Post, a 12-year-old Montana girl who is discovering her own homosexuality. After her parents die in a car crash, she is sent to live with her conservative aunt. She develops a relationship with her best friend and is sent to a conversion camp.

According to author Emily Danforth, the novel was influenced by the 2005 Zach Stark controversy, where teenager Zach Stark was sent to a de-gaying camp run by Love In Action after coming out to his parents.

With ears:

WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION is a 2016 American book about the societal impact of algorithms, written by Cathy O'Neil. It explores the how some big data algorithms are increasingly used in ways that reinforces preexisting inequality. It was longlisted for the 2016 National Book Award for Nonfiction.

[Kätzchen]

Originally Posted by dark_crystal

With eyes:

THE MISEDUCATION OF CAMERON POST, a coming-of-age teen novel by Emily M. Danforth published in 2012. The novel's protagonist is Cameron Post, a 12-year-old Montana girl who is discovering her own homosexuality. After her parents die in a car crash, she is sent to live with her conservative aunt. She develops a relationship with her best friend and is sent to a conversion camp.

According to author Emily Danforth, the novel was influenced by the 2005 Zach Stark controversy, where teenager Zach Stark was sent to a de-gaying camp run by Love In Action after coming out to his parents.

With ears:

WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION is a 2016 American book about the societal impact of algorithms, written by Cathy O'Neil. It explores the how some big data algorithms are increasingly used in ways that reinforces preexisting inequality. It was longlisted for the 2016 National Book Award for Nonfiction.

Oh mY, the Weapons of Math Destruction (2016) looks like an interesting read, d_c. I'm not surprised though, that the book was Long Listed. We can't have people learning about how inequality is perpetuated via technology (Sarcasm).

I bet the other book is enlightening too. I'd certainly be interested in your take concerning both books.

Cheers,
~K.

[jools66]

The 7 year old police dog, from the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire dog unit, was stabbed with a 30cm (12in) hunting knife in the head and chest and underwent four hours of emergency surgery to save his life.
Here is his story and his owners story too, and how it it has changed the law in England.
Please note, you will need tissues for this book.
A must read for any dog lover

[homoe]

Tell It To The Bees by Fiona Shaw

I finally got my hands on a copy of this!

A secret love which has a whole town talking... and a 10 year old boy very worried.
Lydia Weekes is distraught at the break-up of her marriage. When her young son, Charlie, makes friends with the local doctor, Jean Markham, her life is turned upside down. Charlie tells his secrets to no one but the bees!

I'm about a 100 pages in and it's not moving as fast as I hoped it would.

Sidebar: Tell It to the Bees is an upcoming British drama film as well directed by Annabel Jankel. The screenplay, written by Henrietta Ashworth and Jessica Ashworth, is based on the 2009 novel of the same name. It stars Anna Paquin and Holliday Grainger.

[girl_dee]

*The Cases that Haunt Us* by John Douglas - ( Who wrote Mindhunter, the book that generated the Mindhunter series)

Its so good!

[Reach *BANNED*]

Title: Healing Teas- A Practical Guide To The Medicinal Teas of the World- From Chamomile to Garlic, From Essiac to Kombucha

Author: Marie Nadine Antol

I am teaching myself all about tea. From the history, to the types and different ways to prepare it. Along with planting it and harvesting as well. Not only for healing purposes but for the pure enjoyment of tea.


Title: Mama Tried- Traditional Italian Cooking for the Screwed, Crude, Vegan & Tattooed

Author: Cecilia Granata

This book is basically any Italian dish you can think of converted into a vegan dish. I am not Vegan. However, I am all about eating better. So, I thought I would give it a look and see if there is anything I would try.

[Esme nha Maire]

Ignition! by John D. Clark

If you ever thought that the hard part of rocketry was the mathematics required to calculate trajectories (it really isn't!), then reading this wry, interesting and amusing book (originally published in 1972 and long out of print until recently) should disabuse you of the notion fairly quickly. Clark gives a fun and very readable history of the development of rocket fuels in his book, and an insight into the personalties involved.

Describing a substance that is highly toxic, highly corrosive, unstable and with such a godawful smell that it could still be detected on-site decades after it was test-fired as having the virtue that it was a reliable quick hypergolic (burns on contact with its oxidiser) may give you some idea of just how insane (as well as highly intelligent!) the early rocket fuel engineers and chemists were.

Reccomended for anyone that likes reading about science in general, and rocketry-related things in particular. A classic!

I'll never look at bran-flakes and alcohol the same way again...

[dark_crystal]

Originally Posted by Kätzchen

Oh mY, the Weapons of Math Destruction (2016) looks like an interesting read, d_c. I'm not surprised though, that the book was Long Listed. We can't have people learning about how inequality is perpetuated via technology (Sarcasm).

I bet the other book is enlightening too. I'd certainly be interested in your take concerning both books.

Cheers,
~K.

Weapons of Math Destruction was highly informative and went fast. The most immediately shocking thing i learned is how often your zip code stands in for your race, health, criminality, or creditworthiness.

Companies will substitute your zip code anywhere it is illegal to use race, health, criminality, or creditworthiness and use it drive decisions about jobs, housing, insurance, or finance-- essentially assuming that your history and habits will be the same as the average of all of your neighbors.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post made a good start at lifting the curtain on the make-you-straight camps but i think it could have hit harder. It was written for YA though.

[dark_crystal]

With eyes:

Homegoing is the debut historical fiction novel by Yaa Gyasi, published in 2016. Each chapter in the novel follows a different descendant of an Asante woman named Maame, starting with her two daughters, separated by circumstance: Effia marries James Collins, the British governor in charge of Cape Coast Castle, while her half-sister Esi is held captive in the dungeons below. Subsequent chapters follow their children and following generations.

With Ears:

Reconstructing the Gospel: Finding Freedom from Slaveholder Religion. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove grew up in the Bible Belt in the American South as a faithful church-going Christian. But he gradually came to realize that the gospel his Christianity proclaimed was not good news for everybody. The same Christianity that sang "Amazing Grace" also perpetuated racial injustice and white supremacy in the name of Jesus. His Christianity, he discovered, was the religion of the slaveholder. Just as Reconstruction after the Civil War worked to repair a desperately broken society, our compromised Christianity requires a spiritual reconstruction that undoes the injustices of the past.

[homoe]

You can bet your bottom dollar I'm NOT reading The Briefing....

[Tommi]

An Echo in the Bone
by Diana Gabaldon

7th, final book in the Outlander series.

[homoe]

I'm waiting for The News Sorority: Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric, Christiane Amanpour—and the (Ongoing, Imperfect, Complicated) Triumph of Women in TV News to arrive and then I'll be reading that.

[dark_crystal]

Originally Posted by dark_crystal

With eyes:

Homegoing is the debut historical fiction novel by Yaa Gyasi, published in 2016. Each chapter in the novel follows a different descendant of an Asante woman named Maame, starting with her two daughters, separated by circumstance: Effia marries James Collins, the British governor in charge of Cape Coast Castle, while her half-sister Esi is held captive in the dungeons below. Subsequent chapters follow their children and following generations.

With Ears:

Reconstructing the Gospel: Finding Freedom from Slaveholder Religion. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove grew up in the Bible Belt in the American South as a faithful church-going Christian. But he gradually came to realize that the gospel his Christianity proclaimed was not good news for everybody. The same Christianity that sang "Amazing Grace" also perpetuated racial injustice and white supremacy in the name of Jesus. His Christianity, he discovered, was the religion of the slaveholder. Just as Reconstruction after the Civil War worked to repair a desperately broken society, our compromised Christianity requires a spiritual reconstruction that undoes the injustices of the past.

HOMEGOING was great. An interesting theme is the lingering inter-tribe shaming among West African nations who cooperated with the Britsh slavers. Also the horror those nations felt at how the slaves they sold were treated in America-- these nations practiced slavery, but did not brutalize or dehumanize their slaves, who were usually the spoils of battle. They assumed that the white men they sold their slaves to would treat them with the same dignity.

RECONSTRUCTING THE GOSPEL did not have much in it that was new to me, or that would be new to anyone who has read UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. I did learn about Thornton Stringfellow, the minister who wrote SCRIPTURAL AND STATISTICAL VIEWS IN FAVOR OF SLAVERY, and the Colfax Massacre, "the bloodiest single instance of racial carnage in the Reconstruction era."

[dark_crystal]

With eyes:

STATION ELEVEN, by Emily St. John Mandel

An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse, Station Eleven tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.
With ears

UNDIVIDED: COMING OUT, BECOMING WHOLE, AND LIVING FREE FROM SHAME, by Vicki Beeching

Vicky Beeching, called “arguably the most influential Christian of her generation” in The Guardian, began writing songs for the church in her teens. By the time she reached her early thirties, Vicky was a household name in churches on both sides of the pond. Recording multiple albums and singing in America’s largest megachurches, her music was used weekly around the globe and translated into numerous languages. But this poster girl for evangelical Christianity lived with a debilitating inner battle: she was gay.

[Kobi]

In this gimlet-eyed look at current political trends, Eurasia Group president Bremmer, succinctly explains why people all over the world are turning against their neighbors: they feel powerless, angry, and left behind by globalization.

He identifies various reasons for such strife, from increases in industrial automation and the influx of migrants to wealthier countries to a general sense that politicians do not know how to make struggling citizens' lives better.

He analyzes the situations of a dozen countries (Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Venezuela, Russia, India, and China among them) in depth and finds common risk factors for the "us versus them" mentality: large youth populations, lack of employment opportunities, and charismatic authoritarian leaders with a knack for pitting groups against one another.

These countries, he predicts, will erect physical and technological "walls" to keep people in line, and Europe and the United States will follow suit, becoming more protectionist as the developing world struggles.

The author closes with a philosophical chapter on the social contract between governments and their subjects, concluding that the politics of "us versus them" will only get worse before governments change their ways. This astute but not optimistic analysis may be difficult reading for those overwhelmed by the current political climate.
----------------

Well written. Much food for thought.