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Finished reading: Mythos l by Stephen Fry 📚🎧

It’s just delightful to hear Stephen Fry read this aloud.

📚 For my birthday, stop the Federal Government gaining control of your local school libraries.

Hi there! It’s been a few days since my birthday, but if you want to give me a belated present and you’re in the US, you could contact your legislators and ask them to oppose H.R. 7661.

This bill ties federal funding to excluding material from schools that “includes sexually oriented material.” It provides no exceptions for education outside of standard science classes, meaning classes about human growth and development would not be able to include this material. Further, it defines “sexually oriented material” to include any material that addresses “gender dysphoria or transgenderism,” which will broadly limit both some young people’s ability to see themselves reflected in materials and others’ ability to learn about experiences different from their own.

This bill, if passed, will likely lead to self-censorship, with librarians and educators complying in advance on works that may not even fall under this definition.

The organization EveryLibrary has made it incredibly easy to contact your legislators. You can use their tools to:

Thank you for taking the time to contact your legislators about this. Standing up for my public school colleagues and the students they serve is the best gift you could give me.

Thanks for the kind birthday wishes, everybody!

I was born 45 years ago today. I’m still here. I’m doing a pretty good job sticking around.

Finished reading: Her Night with the Duke by Diana Quincy 📚

There’s so much to love here. Leela is an amazing heroine fighting to build a writing career in a society that tries to block her at every turn. Her interactions with her Arab family made me curious about my own Levantine relatives, who came to the US in 1902.