#my favorite is persepolis. i read it as a 15 year old and it openned my eyes

[aldereign]

hi! for the past few weeks, women in iran have been protesting the murder of mahsa jina amini by police, who brutally beat her for not wearing a hijab. mass protests have erupted, with a death toll in the upward three hundreds and growing each day. the government has resorted to internet outages and silencing any & all attempts for media coverage. it’s critical that those with the means donate, and those that can spread information to use every platform available to them to amplify iranian voices. 

urge your government to do something about this. british mutuals, here’s a link to a template of what you can send to your MPs to urge their support.  us mutuals, use the same language & call your elected officials. urge them for support. 

follow people on social media. here are the usernames of reputable sources boosting voices: @IranRights_org / @Omid_M on twitter or @middleeastmatters & @humanrightswatch on instagram + so many more. track the hashtags. be active about looking for information every day.  #mahsaamini, #iranprotests, #iranprotests2022, #zhinaamini are just a few. 

go to protests. sign every petition you see. each major city is having one, reach out to your local community and find yours! it makes a difference. 

learn. these books have been listed as great ways to learn the history of women’s rights in iran : the complete persepolis by marjane satrapi; reading lolita in tehran: a memoir in books by azar nafisi; daughters of smoke and fire by ava homa; and things i’ve been silent about: memories of a prodigal daughter by azar nafisi. ( sourced )

#lastly these protests are not against islam. it is against the right to choose. forced hijab is not a tenant of islam. #so donnt use this as an example to be islamophobic. #violence tw #death tw #angels. rest in peace #heartbreaking. these women i think of you every day. #my favorite is persepolis. i read it as a 15 year old and it openned my eyes #i urge everyoe to read it. truly #tbt. #ask to tag /

[mercerislandbooks]

Summer Book Bingo Reflection

Summer is officially at an end, which means our Seattle Arts & Lectures Book Bingo has wrapped up. Lori and I have enjoyed sharing our adventures in reading with you all summer, so we would have a conversation about what we read and we found challenging.

Lori and I both attempted to complete a black out on our cards. She was successful; I was not... I may have been a little too distracted by other books sometimes. This happens! What was wonderful is that I still read outside of my usual genres and was introduced to many new authors.

Together, we enjoyed taking pictures of books when we finished them and nudging each other to keep reading books we weren’t so fond of. Read below for more insight into how we fared...

Lori’s very beautiful and fully filled out SAL Book Bingo Card.

Kelleen: So I think the best way to start this reflection is to discuss our favorite reading experience during this summer from the book bingo. What was yours?

Lori: That’s a great question Kelleen! Doing the book bingo pushed me in many different reading directions this summer. Elin Hilderbrand’s The Summer of ‘69 was one of my favorite reading experiences. As I wrote in my blog, I had never read one of her books before, and I loved going into the experience expecting nothing except to be totally entertained. It was the perfect summer book.

For something a little different, I also enjoyed having a deadline to read through Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat. I had watched the Netflix series and skimmed through the cookbook after I received for a Christmas present. To sit down and really read through all the different techniques and tips, to study the different flavor matrices, and get excited about new recipes was so fun. Thanks to an unexpected gift of fresh tomatoes, I got to try the “Pasta alla Pomarola” sauce, delicious. And the other day I made a “Buttermilk Chicken” that turned out perfectly.

What about you?

K: Along the same vein, I loved reading Kate McDermott’s Home Cooking. The anecdotes she includes connected me to the recipes on an emotional level. I had a lot more fun making them when I had a background on why the recipe was made. I think my ultimate favorite part, though, was beginning to listen to audiobooks. I hadn’t ever really immersed myself into that world before. With the amount of books I had to read, and the books I wanted to read, within my schedule I felt like I needed to be using every second of time! So, for example, I loved hearing Station Eleven in audiobook format because I couldn’t skip ahead to read what happened, and I couldn’t always gauge how far I was into the story. I loved the total immersion, especially in a novel that is so unique (and recommended by you!).

My wrinkly, cat-bitten, and unfinished Book Bingo card.

L: I love that you did audiobooks! That isn’t something that I incorporated into my Book Bingo this summer, but I’m looking forward to trying some this fall.

What was the hardest book for you to get through? Mine was Underland by Robert Macfarlane. I had read his book The Old Ways years ago, and really enjoyed his style. And while I found the premise of this book fascinating, exploring a variety of underground places, from caverns, to the catacombs, hidden rivers, and mining beds that stretch under the sea, I realized that this was going to be the kind of vicarious reading experience that happened because there was no way I would ever want to do anything like this myself.

K: I didn’t have any books like that, but I think the most difficult book to read for me was No One Here Gets Out Alive, the biography of Jim Morrison by Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugarman. I had had it on my shelf for over ten years and used this opportunity to fill the music square with it. I thought it would be a simple read because of it’s smaller size. But no matter how much I read, I never felt like I was making a dent. The book took me much longer to get through than the others. The writing was decent, and the subject matter was interesting to me, but I still stopped and started for multiple weeks at a time. Perhaps it was the nonfiction? I don’t tend to read a lot of it... This was definitely the book that had been on my To Be Read List the longest. Did you have a book you finally got to?

Some of Lori’s reads from this summer.

L: Yes. I feel like I am the last person to read A Gentleman in Moscow. I was nervous because it’s been beloved by so many people, and I find that often too much hype kills a book for me. I’d also read Rules of Civility quite a while ago, and it hadn’t been my favorite, so those two factors kept me putting off picking it up. But we had it in the house, and it would fit the SAL speaker box, so one afternoon I opened it up. I think I put it down 200 pages later. It ended up being a quick read for me, and I was relieved that I really enjoyed it. Also now I know why everyone is talking about it. 

Of the books you read, were any the first time you read that particular author? I counted, and of the 23 boxes, 15 of them were first time reads for me. I think across the board I’m glad I tried each of the books that I did. And there are definitely a few authors that I will keep watching out for, like Lori Gottlieb (Maybe You Should Talk to Somebody), Linda Homes (Evvie Drake Starts Over), and of course, Elin Hilderbrand.

Some of my favorite picks from the summer.

K: Yes! Actually every single one of the books I read were from an author I had not read before. Sometimes I read another book by the author right afterwards because I loved it so much. For example, I read 99% Mine by Sally Thorne for my “set in summer” square. I thought it was so cute that I read her first novel The Hating Game as soon as I found a copy of it. (Thank you, Little Free Library!) I also read Pachinko and it was my first Min Jin Lee book. It was beautiful and perspective-changing. I am so excited to see her present at SAL this season. I have Free Food for Millionaires on my library hold list!

What was a book that opened you up to a new genre?

L: Space Boy by Stephen McCranie was the book I chose for my comics square - a genre I haven’t read in years. I read Maus and Persepolis a long time ago, but nothing really since then. I see how popular graphic novels are among our younger readers, and have watched as The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui was the Seattle Reads selection for 2019 as well as a Bill Gates summer book pick for 2017. Reading Space Boy, I was drawn right into the life of the characters and the mystery that surrounds Oliver. Book One ends without a resolution, so I’m making my way through the other books in the series. I’ve also been skimming through some of the other graphic novels we have in our teen section, enjoying the way a nuanced and complicated story might be told in this different form. Show don’t tell indeed.

What about you?

K: Definitely the non-fiction books. Reading Conscious, How To Do Nothing, and Morrison biography all made me realize that maybe I should expand my palate past strictly fiction. All of these books had an intriguing enough subject matter to encourage me to pick up the next book outside of my reading comfort zone. Which reminds me that I read Soulless by Gail Carriger, and it was so much fun! It’s a hybrid mysterty-fantasy novel set in Victorian England AND a series! I hardly read any mystery, so this was a great way to break into a genre I have been wanting to read.

Lori, I am so thankful you went on this Book Bingo adventure with me this summer. I definitely wouldn’t have made it as far without your support. And though you win because you did a complete black out and I did not, I congratulate you on a successful summer of boundary pushing!

L: And you as well :)

...

Check back in next week when Lori talks about her relationship with books, knitting, and knitting while reading said books.

- Kelleen

#sal book bingo #seattle arts and lectures #lori robinson #lori #kelleen #kelleen cummings