Category: Read This Book

The premise of this book is that we need boredom in order to foster creativity while at the same time, boredom is increasingly hard to come by, especially with our current level of access to technology. I want to make it very clear that Bored & Brilliant is not anti-technology. I love technology! You’re reading this right now using technology. Some of my reading is done with the help of technology. The author is also a fan and user of technology, but wants readers to be engaged with technology in a more deliberate way rather than the mindless filling in the silences or gaps in stimulation that happen in elevators, on transit, and so forth.

Zomorodi created the Bored & Brilliant project in 2015 to try to find out, “If we changed our relationship to our gadgets, could we generate bigger and better ideas? Would there be a ripple effect of changes to the way we work, the way we parent, the way we relate to one another? Could this change the way we see the world?” It is a seven-step project that this book goes through, along with research about boredom and how technology affects our brains. The project is presented in a way that allows for readers to do it on our own.

One of the sections that really stuck with me was when the author begins discussing how technology has affected people’s ability to do deep reading. The internet has changed how we read, not only via language but scrolling and hyperlinks. It’s no longer the linear activity it often was. Zomorodi learns that people are losing the ability to “deep read,” that is, to sit with a book or novel that is involved and to focus and retain the information. As a reader, a writer, a librarian, a book enthusiast and professional, this is terrifying to me.

Another section that really stuck with me is about how tech professionals and visionaries, like Steve Jobs, limited or denied their own children access to tech. This alone is so telling and chilling to say the least.

Each time I read this book, it resets my relationship to my mobile phone and I’m grateful for it.

Rachel DeLoache Williams first met Anna Sorokin, who was going by Anna Delvey, in New York City. They traveled in the same social groups and eventually found their paths crossing and a friendship sprang up between them. Williams details how she and Anna became close: Going out to eat together, working out together, enjoying spa treatments…all of which Anna almost always footed the bill for. Rachel was impressed by Anna and her ambitions to open up an arts center, and was dazzled by her wealth. She was a junior employee at Vanity Fair, so while she had a nice job and was in proximity to wealth and fame, she didn’t have the kind of money that Anna threw around, and she enjoyed her friend’s generosity. She would occasionally get drawn into Anna’s personal drama, but that was nothing compared to what would eventually be the demise of their friendship: Anna invited her to a luxurious resort in Morocco, then left her footing the $60,000 credit card bill. When Anna ghosted Rachel without repaying her, Rachel went to the New York State Attorney’s office.

This is a fascinating memoir that definitely reads like fiction, so it’s no surprise to me that Netflix has a miniseries in the works (produced by Shonda Rimes, no less!). My big takeaway from this book is that you can know the major highlights of this story and think, “How can anyone be so gullible as to put tens of thousands of dollars on their own credit card for a friend who was clearly so sketchy?” But Rachel walks you through her story, and her friendship, and she doesn’t ask you to feel sorry for her, but she does want to show how easy it is to trust a friend, and how easy it is to want to help out that friend in a pinch. Not all of us would make the same choices that Rachel did, but I couldn’t help but feel compassion for the extremely awkward position she was put in, and the way that Anna so deftly manipulated the people around her to get what she wanted. As far as con artists go, Anna is certainly an interesting one, and I felt like this story just showed how much benefit of the doubt is given to wealthy people, or people presumed wealthy, which allows them to get away with so much. This is a good book if you want a stranger-than-fiction tale, and it dives into the messy landscape of friendship and betrayal.

Full-disclosure: I am not a yoga practitioner. Historically, I am very yoga-averse. Specifically I have a strong aversion to American yoga from the cultural appropriation to the connection to the wellness industry. It’s been really hard to imagine a place for someone like me in a yoga practice; however, after reading this book, which was both an informative and cathartic experience, I was inspired to give yoga another try. That is how remarkable this book is.

According to Stanley, Yoga means “to yoke,” as in to join together. Lightness and darkness, good and bad. She says, “to yoke is to marry breath, though, and movement, to connect the body, mind, and spirit.” It’s about balance. She makes this connection in writing about her imposter syndrome and the necessity of embracing those fears. As is often said, you can’t have lightness without darkness. She talks about giving herself permission to take up space and giving herself permission to not know everything.

The way Jessamyn Stanley writes about poses and breathwork really connected with me in a way it hasn’t in the past. She talks about the yoga of everyday life. Yoga as a thing that you don’t only do in a studio or on a mat. Yoga as the daily project of living. The author’s teachings in this book are connected to stories of her own learning. It is both educational and memoir. I want to mention that she talks about fasting so if that is a trigger for you, know that it is discussed in this book.

My favorite parts of this book are her examinations of the American yoga industrial complex, the whiteness of American yoga, and the cultural appropriation which is so prevalent in American yoga. She gets very real about her own participation in capitalism and cultural appropriation and I think that’s finally what convinced me to take down some of my walls I had up that were keeping yoga at bay.

I enjoyed this book way more than I expected and as I mentioned, it has compelled me to integrate yoga into my own life.

I have been a fan of the UFYH site for years, before it was even a site and was a Tumblr. It is not about minimalism. It is not about keeping a perfectly clean home. It’s about doing what you can with what you have and not only what you have physically at your disposal, but with what sort of physical and emotional bandwidth you have. This book is about each and every one of us deserving to live in a space that we are glad to be in or at least, doesn’t stress us the hell out because of cleanliness.

My habitat, like that of many others, takes a nosedive when my mental health isn’t its best. Some people have never learned basic housekeeping activities. Some people have disabilities that limit the amount they can clean. Some people live in small spaces or share a space with others or have children or dependents to clean after on top of cleaning up after themselves. UFYH is about doing something, anything, instead of nothing. No matter how small, regardless of your gender (no gender roles here, folks).

Just starting the sometimes massive undertaking of cleaning can be enough to turn anyone off from doing it at all. The author has tips on where to start and is a big fan of what she calls 20/10s, that is, cleaning for 20 minutes then having a rest for 10 minutes. Repeat that as much as needed. It helps mitigate the cleaning burnout that can happen from marathon cleaning, that is, cleaning for multiple hours at a time without breaks. Sure, you can get it done that way but then you’re also burned out on cleaning so you avoid it for the next three months and you’re back to square one.

There are many cleaning basics because not everyone knows how to clean, like an outline of how to clean a bathroom. There are also some excellent checklists, like things to do in the evening to make the next morning go more smoothly. There are also some really valuable talking points for talking to a person you share a space with, how to ask for help, and questions to ask if you’re helping someone else clean their space.

Most importantly, the tone is full of kindness and empathy. It’s been such a valuable resource.

In this contemporary retelling of Persuasion, Reyna has grown up at her family’s resort, the Plumeria, in Tobago. It’s been tough, though, since her mom died. Her dad doesn’t seem to be really invested in running the resort, the new manager wants to change everything, and all her friends seem ready to leave the island while Reyna’s own future is uncertain. Then, she gets the worst possible news: Aiden, her childhood best friend and one-time love, is returning to the island. Only instead of being the boy down the street, he’s coming back as a VIP guest, one-third of the hottest band making headlines.

As Reyna tries to ignore her feelings for Aiden, she dutifully shows his group around the island. But despite the time that’s passed, she can’t deny there’s a spark still there. Is it too late for something to happen between them?

There’s so much to love about this novel: the lush descriptions, Reyna’s emotional journey, the fact that it’s a beautiful retelling of an Austen novel that doesn’t often get its due. Reyna is averse to change thanks to her mother’s death, but she also struggles with the idea that she needs to be in control in all things. This results in her not always making the best choices, but throughout it all, Dass writes her in such a sympathetic way that the reader is always in her corner. She also balances the romantic tension that lingers between Reyna and Aiden brilliantly, adding in little snippets of flashbacks to help readers understand the depth of their one-time connection. I enjoyed the large group dynamics that are portrayed, as well. Aside from Aiden’s bandmates, they’re also accompanied by the sisters of Reyna’s brother-in-law, making for a large group that sometimes clashes in interesting ways.

I highly recommend this book for fans of Austen retellings, but also for anyone looking for a nice little vacation in book form! Bonus: The audiobook, narrated by Antonevia Ocho-Coultes is excellent!

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl aka Doreen Green is a hero who has both the powers of squirrel and girl. I’m going to say something that may be controversial: Squirrel Girl is the best and brightest star in the Marvel Universe. This comic reminds me on every page about why I love comics so much. While the character debuted in 1991, I recommend starting with the 2015 run and specifically Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Volume 1: Squirrel Power.

Doreen Green is a first-year computer science student. She lives in the dorms with a roommate, Nancy Whitehead. Nancy doesn’t technically have any superpowers but she certainly has the power of sass and a cat about whom she writes fanfiction. This volume is really about getting to know Squirrel Girl and her friends (as well as her sidekick, a squirrel named Tippy-Toe). Squirrel Girl is super strong and likes to eat nuts and kick butts but rarely if ever does she defeat villains by using only physical force. She’s incredibly clever and often either defeats villains by using her smarts or she just uses the power of friendship. Yes these are all-ages comics and yes, a superhero using the power of friendship might not really sound appealing but I promise you, it is so fabulously excellent. Warning: these comics are full of puns and I am endlessly impressed with the number of puns they are able to squeeze into these pages.

The wonderful and maybe sad news is that this run of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl is complete. There are twelve volumes of trades available as well as some accompanying books and a graphic novel titled The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Beats Up the Marvel Universe. If you’re the kind of person that doesn’t like to read comics until they’re all available, then this is great! But I warn you, you’re going to fall in love with Doreen and all her friends and you’ll never want it to end.

When Ellie was a child, her mother took her out onto a frozen fjord in their home in Norway, and whistled at the northern lights before getting swept away. No one believes Ellie when she recounts this story, and now she’s a teen living in Cape Cod with her dad. When the northern lights appear in the sky one winter, Ellie whistles at them…and they return her mother to her. But Ellie’s mother isn’t as she remembered, and as more strange and magical events occur, Ellie becomes convinced that the only way to get to the truth about what happened all those years ago is to return to her first home in Svalbard and face the past.

This is a beautifully written novel about loss and longing, infused with magic on every page. Ellie relies on the stories her mother told her in order to maintain a connection to her, but as the novel unfolds and she looks more closely at these fairy tales and sees them come to life in surprising and frightening ways, she gets to see her mother from another perspective. I loved the fairy tale elements in this book (and when I say fairy tales, think more of the traditional, grim stories rather than Disney) and the beautiful settings. As someone who has grown up in parts of the world that sees serious winter, I think there’s wonder in winter and it’s not often that books reflect that beauty and the harshness in equal measure. I also really enjoyed Ellie’s relationship with her family—beyond her mom, she has a wonderful and caring father, and she also has a very complicated relationship with her maternal grandmother that develops beautifully over the course of this book.

This book will pull at your heartstrings, but I think it will also have readers wanting to believe in magic as well. There’s truly nothing else like it in YA at the moment, and that alone makes it worth picking up! Bonus: The audiobook narrated by Brittany Pressley was quite excellent!

Hannah works at the magical supply shop—not a shop of magic tricks but supplies for use in witchcraft. Hannah just finished her junior year of high school and recently broke up with her ex, Veronica, a graduating senior. Both Hannah and Veronica are witches. Specifically, they are Elemental witches who can both manipulate and draw power from the elements: earth, fire, air, and water. There are two other types of witches as well, Caster witches (who cast spells) and Blood witches. Blood witches are rare. They are also frowned upon and even feared by the other types of witches.

We learn right away that Hannah absolutely despises Veronica. It’s not super clear why they broke up but it all centers around a past terrifying experience during a trip. There was a Blood witch involved, so they’re both hyper-sensitive and paranoid about a Blood witch being around, but there haven’t been Blood witches in Salem in forever.

Hannah’s best friend is Gemma, who is a reg which is short for regular which is what the witches in this universe call non-witches. Gemma does not know that Hannah is a witch nor even that magic exists. As you can expect, Hannah would get in huge trouble with the council if that secret were let out. The person in charge of the coven is Lady Ariana, who is not someone to be reckoned with.

This book begins around the end of the school year but before graduation. There’s a celebratory bonfire that the incoming seniors and graduating seniors attend. This is where the excitement starts. There’s a scream and not far from the bonfire someone had started a different fire and by the looks of it, they were attempting and maybe even succeeding at some kind of magic. There’s blood. Was it a blood witch, even though there aren’t supposed to be any around for many decades? Was it some witch who isn’t part of their coven? Was it a reg trying their hand at magic?

This book is mystery and teen messiness and magic and really bad relationship decisions and I love mess! At the end of the book, it’s very clear that the story continues into the second book, This Coven Won’t Break (which is already available for purchase).

Every year, Mae and her family head to a cabin in Utah for the Christmas holidays, where they spend the week with her parents’ college friends/chosen family and their two sons. It’s been a really rough year for Mae, who has always had a crush on Andrew, but after a drunken Christmas night, it’s not Andrew she sleeps with—it’s his younger brother Theo! Mae wakes up the next day feeling absolutely miserable at how she’s messed things up, and then she gets even worse news: The cabin is being sold, and this was their last Christmas there. Desperate, she wishes for the universe to show her how to be happy…and she wakes up on her flight to Utah, at the start of the holiday she’s just lived through.

At first, Mae thinks she knows just the perfect way to steer her holiday break to a happier conclusion, but things don’t go as planned, and when she starts having to repeat her holiday again and again, she has to learn to let go of her expectations and try and do what’s right for everyone, even if it means giving up things she values most.

This was my first Christina Lauren book, but I liked it so well I’ll definitely seek out others. Mae is a down on her luck heroine who you definitely feel for—a year’s worth of sad events and frustrating turns have left her in a funk, and she makes some choices she’s not proud of. But I also really liked that her chance at a holiday do over didn’t start to turn around until she took control of the things in her life that were causing her unhappiness rather than try and steer others to actions she thought would make everyone happy. I also loved the cast of characters and how her parents’ friend group fought for their holidays together, even when divorce and major life changes changed their relationships with each other, and how they modeled that kind of enduring friendship to their kids. The relationship between Mae and Benny, her parents’ bachelor friend who serves as an uncle to Mae, was also really sweet and provided some unexpected magic to some of Mae’s problems.

Overall, this book is grounded enough in real-life relatable issues that I was able to click with it and really sympathize with Mae, but it was also just magical enough to whisk me away, which is the perfect balance for Christmas books and movies, in my opinion. I loved the tension between Mae and Andrew, and how the moments she least expected were the ones that ultimately brought them together.

Bonus: It’s a great audiobook listen, narrated by Patti Murin!

Blair Imani is a Black, bisexual, and Muslim educator, historian, and internet influencer who makes great videos under the series name Smarter in Seconds. These videos are often under a minute long and will give concise explanations of anything from online harassment to how to apologize to gaslighting to bisexuality. This book is almost like a bunch of those little videos all together in book form. She tackles a lot of big subjects and supplies readers with enough information that we can walk away knowing basic definitions and also ideas about where we need to dive deeper. A single chapter in a book is in no way enough to tackle something like gender but it’s maybe enough to give an overview to a relative who has perhaps not thought deeply about it.

The author starts with the self and focuses on identity from name pronunciation to gender and deadnames and last names and pronouns and more. Then she moves on to relationships like family structures, intimate partnerships, abusive relationships, boundaries, and things like how to be accountable to your circles and how to apologize.

One of my favorite sections is about class where she answers questions like “What is capitalism? and “What is socialism?” We already have socialist programs, like the postal service and the library! “What do people mean when they talk about wealth hoarding?” There are also great sections on race and racism and disability and so much more.

This book is a really phenomenal resource for folks who are new to thinking about all of these topics. I see it as not only a good personal read, but also a good gift for anyone from a young adult to an older relative who has not done any deliberate learning since they were in high school. You know the ones. The ones that respond to everything remotely new with, “Well, that’s not what I was taught.” What I like most about this book is that the subjects felt bite-sized. It was clear and concise and laid a lot of basic groundwork for further learning.