“An unfinished book, left unattended, turns feral.” — from “A Tale for the Time Being” by Ruth Ozeki

For April, I decided to theme my reading: books by people I know in real life …

The book stack for March — apparently all I did in my free time last month was read.

Sometimes you need to break your heart and put it back together again in the same reading session.

Publishers, I am begging you to include a description of the plot on the cover somewhere — not a full page of blurbs that tell me nothing.

THIS. Trauma by its very nature means it might take decades for you to get to the point where you can finally voice it. And it might not get to the voice-it point. Just because someone has not proclaimed their trauma doesn’t mean they didn’t experience it.

Hitting desalination plants is so bad. Not just evil but strategically incomprehensible. Without desalination 75% of the entire population of the Middle East will be refugees. Israel and Kuwait depend on desalination for 90% of their water and other Middle East states aren’t far behind.

The February book stack.

The January book stack. (With a little glimpse of my new calathea rattlesnake plant — I’ll put some photos of her in the comments. What are you reading heading into February? My current read is “The French Lieutenant’s Woman,” for class.

UPDATE: @dropsitenews.com has obtained the very graphic video from the lady in the pink coat, which shows ICE executing yet another person in broad daylight:

Reading and bleeding! (Platelets donation. All is well.) Book is “Written on the Body” for the class I’m taking this spring.

The December book stack — not pictured: “Mama T’s Storm Food: Cooking Without Power, Patience or a Trip to the Store,” which I read on ebook.

What a lovely read to close the year with. 🍜🤖💜 @annaleen.bsky.social — thank you for writing this!

November book stack — the top three for my “disability representation in sci-fi” class and the bottom one for book club.

The way I just froze for five full seconds as my brain processed that the in-flight opera in “The Fifth Element” was a literal take on the sci-fi subgenre of space opera … 🤯 Bravo, Luc Besson. Yet another reason I love this movie.

The October book stack. My favorite read of the month is in the second photo. Vampires and werewolves in space? Generational trauma? Not one but two slow-burn romances? Adorably enthusiastic spider bots? What’s not to love?

How you store your sunglasses on your person when not in use really puts you into a specific category. Like, forget a sorting hat or being dauntless — my future postapocalyptic story will be organized by: tucked into collar, pushed to the top of head, worn backwards over the neck, stored in a case.

The September book stack — delayed until I could get the physical copy of “This Inevitable Ruin” from the library. (I read the ebook last month but wanted to show off how huge that book is in the photo.)

This organ piece — the slowest and longest music piece ever — is being performed for 639 years in Halberstadt, Germany. (It began in 2001.) It is a real thing, and yet I am absolutely convinced it's something from a @jasperfforde.bsky.social novel. universes.art/en/specials/...

August book stack! Not many titles this month, but so many pages — 812 in that top book alone.

I clicked on one cold-brew-tea ad on Instagram and am now getting a bunch of different tea companies in my feed. Not mad about it.

The July book stack. See photos 2 and 3 for my favorites.

How you can tell it’s still summer break/summer session: You go to the Panda Express on the edge of ASU’s Tempe campus in the noon hour and there are only two people in line in front of you.

My latest piece is out! “Badland,” in the inaugural issue of Sine Qua Non. It is under 300 words — lit for the time-pressed. Would appreciate it if you gave it a read. CW: Sexual assault. (My story is on page 96, or 119/129 in the little flipper bar.) sqtest.paperturn-view.com?pid=ODg88907...

June book stack. Still really, really enjoying Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl series. Only two more to go!

You're reading this on a digital device. Lots of people — way more than you might think — don't have that ability. They might lack the internet, a computer, the know-how to utilize it, or all three. This @arizonastateuni.bsky.social project is working to change that. news.asu.edu/20250620-loc...

The May book stack.

Hey, worldbuilders: @arizonastateuni.bsky.social researchers have put together a guidebook that blends biology with fantasy to help creators build more believable fictional worlds and answer questions like: Just how much food would a 5,000-pound dragon need to survive? news.asu.edu/20250528-sci...

Stepped away from the doomscrolling to juice the last of the oranges from our tree. (There’s more in the fridge.) You know spring in the desert is at its end when the oranges are all gone.

The April book stack — all read in the final two weeks of the month. (Three cheers for breaking the reading slump!)

Sometimes day-old pho is exactly what the doctor ordered.

If you've got "from left" in your caption, I promise you don't need "to right." There's nowhere else to go.

Dracula sure had a nice view. (Though of course, he would’ve only had the night view.)

A rather tricky bowl to deal with after not having slept in 27 hours. (I managed to get only the tiniest bit of that sauce on the pale tablecloth, though!)

February book stack — smaller this month as I find my pace slowing down. My favorite from the month? The one on the top of the stack: “More Enduring for Having Been Broken” by Gwendolyn Paradice, one of the titles in last month’s subscription box from @blacklawrence.bsky.social.

"How I view it is that every dollar spent on development and diplomacy is $10 we don’t have to spend on defense." — Glen Goodman, interim executive director of ASU’s International Development Initiative. via @sbordow.bsky.social news.asu.edu/20250305-loc...

Congratulations, NAU! news.nau.edu/r1-research-...

The apropos January book stack. They dealt with oppression and resistance, the lies/manipulation that the greedy and power-hungry will wreak to grab a few more bucks, the cost of our actions on the Earth and on the marginalized, and how we shouldn’t believe everything we’re told by those in charge.

The audacity of at-channeling on every single post.

In the last two weeks, the group has built 1,150 air filters using $30,000 in supplies and 1,000 MERV13 furnace filters donated by 3M, and raised almost $10,000 from the public through a campaign on its website. news.asu.edu/20250127-hea...

Half of our house flooded while we were out of town in December, and the contents of those rooms are in storage while the (still underway) repairs happen. I stumbled across this photo today while looking for something else — the library was one of the affected rooms, and sigh, how I miss it.

The December book stack — another month of enjoyable reads. (Not sure where I found the time — it’s our busiest month at work, I was finishing two graduate classes, it was the holidays with endless shopping and prep, and our house flooded while we were out of town, leading to much chaos.)

Found this gem at the hardware store. (No, I did not buy it.) I have never seen those acronyms in the wild. Apparently NALOPKT.

I’ve seen award eligibility posts by others for years … and now I get to do one! “From Dist,” my cli-fi-meets-folklore short story, appeared in @ninthletter.bsky.social earlier this year. It sparked my interest in writing more stories about the Sonoran Desert. ninthletter.com/2024/02/01/p...

I always forget the endless time commitment of wrapping gifts …

I highly recommend NOT having half your house flood (including the guest room) while you’re out of town, one week before hosting a houseguest … and less than three weeks before hosting the family Christmas.

Birthday trip to smell the sea air.

November book stack — really enjoyed all of my reads last month.