Finished reading: Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado 📚

A bunch of excellent and chilling stories. Horror and make it literary. Uncertainty that is maddening but then that’s kind of the point.

Want to read: Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found by Frances Larson 📚

Want to read: Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places by Colin Dickey 📚

Want to read: Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner by Judy Melinek 📚

Want to read: Wish You Were Here: Adventures in Cemetery Travel by Loren Rhoads 📚

Want to read: Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin by Megan Rosenbloom 📚

Want to read: The Victorian Book of the Dead by Chris Woodyard 📚

Want to read: A is for Arsenic: An ABC of Victorian Death by Chris Woodyard 📚

Want to read: Good Grief: Loving Pets, Here and Hereafter by E.B. Bartels 📚

Want to read: The Anatomical Venus by Joanna Ebenstein 📚

Want to read: The Morbid Anatomy Anthology by Joanna Ebenstein 📚

Want to read: Cabarets of Death: Death, Dance and Dining in Early Twentieth-Century Paris by Mel Gordon 📚

🔖📚🎭 Read Why We Should Celebrate the 400th Anniversary of Shakespeare’s First Folio (Literary Hub).

Finished reading: Future Tense: Why Anxiety Is Good for You (Even Though It Feels Bad) by Tracy Dennis-Tiwary 📚

A helpful framing of normal, baseline anxiety as a source of information that can spur us to creativity and action.

Finished reading: The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish 📚

A 17th Century bit of philosophical fantastical adventure.

📚💬 “I endeavour to be as singular as I can.” Margaret Cavendish, The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World

🔖📚 Read A Pennsylvania Public Library Had Funding Cut Because of LGBTQ+ Books. Then, An Olympian Stepped In..

An important reminder from Kelly Jensen about how libraries are on the ballot today in many places.

Collection Management for Youth: Equity, Inclusion, and Learning

Here’s the publisher’s summary of this book:

With a renewed emphasis on facilitating learning, supporting multiple literacies, and advancing equity and inclusion, the thoroughly updated and revised second edition of this trusted text provides models and tools that will enable library staff who serve youth to create and maintain collections that provide equitable access to all youth. And as Hughes-Hassell demonstrates, the only way to do this is for collection managers to be learner-centered, confidently acting as information guides, change agents, and leaders.

I’m reading an ebook so quotes won’t have page numbers.

⭐ systemic inequalities ⭐

“Advancing equity must be our goal.”

⭐ “Equity means that everyone gets what they need to thrive no matter their identity or zip code. When we focus on equity, our ultimate goal becomes justice.” ⭐ GREAT DEFINITION OF EQUITY

demographic data = useful for trends, not getting to know individual youth & communities

opportunity gap: marginalized youth disproportionately experience it

EVEN IN HIGH-RESOURCE ENVIRONMENTS:

• special ed
• discipline
• school climate

“Libraries are not immune to perpetuating inequities.”

disconnection & exclusion

outsider in the library

behavior control → denied access

LIBRARY MAY BE ONLY SOURCE OF INTERNET ACCESS

< ½ LGBT YOUTH CAN FIND INFO @ SCHOOL

in/accessibility

chilling effect of book challenges

LIBRARY STAFF MUST FACE SYSTEMIC INEQUITIES

GORSKI equity literacy framework

“BE A THREAT TO THE EXISTENCE OF INEQUITY”

1. RECOGNIZE
2. RESPOND → immediate term
3. REDRESS → long-term
4. CREATE & SUSTAIN bias-free & equitable environments & cultures

STRUCTURAL IDEOLOGY MODEL

it challenges:

• deficit view → asset
• paradigm → abundance

DEVELOP COLLECTION POLICIES THAT DON’T REPRODUCE INEQUITIES

Focus on what you CAN DO

MOVE BEYOND MAKING SPACE → YOUTH MUST BE ACTIVE PARTICIPANTS & LEADERS

Other reading notes for this book: Introduction

I think between reading a few Gothics (The Fall of the House of Usher, The Turn of the Screw, The Haunting of Hill House, The Hacienda) and watching Mike Flanagan shows, I’ve scratched my Gothic itch and it’s now time for me to turn to cozy reading. And because I’m me, that means cozy fantasy.

I first learned about Cozy Fantasy when I heard about Wyngraf Magazine, which I think I learned about in the Signal Boost section of Alasdair Stuart’s The Full Lid, which I learned about because it was a Hugo nominee for best fanzine. And I was looking at the Hugo nominees because those are the awards from the World Science Fiction Convention aka Worldcon, which is mentioned on Wikipedia’s page on fandom as an early and ongoing convention. (Yes, this is an example of how my web wanderings work and how much I love to live the dream of the 1990s.)

The note about Wyngraf talked about fantasy in the vein of The Hobbit and Redwall and I thought it sounded good and like exactly what I needed in a world that has been both personally and globally terrifying for years.

Cozy fantasy is exactly what it sounds like: a cozy mystery with magic instead of murder. (Some cozy fantasy is also cozy mystery.)

Here are some cozy fantasy titles I’ve read in the past few years:

• Redwall
• The Hobbit (audiobook version narrated by Andy Serkis, highly recommend)
• Howl’s Moving Castle
• Smith of Wootton Major
• Farmer Giles of Ham
• The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches
• Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries (this is included on a lot of cozy fantasy lists but it’s a bit high-stakes for me to think it’s super cozy)
• The House in the Cerulean Sea

I’ve read the first issue of Wyngraf and am a little ways into the second. I believe I’ve read all the flash fiction on their website. I have the other issues, as well as their book of cozy poetry and a book compiling their flash fiction. I own the ebook of Bard City Blues. I’m currently debating whether to also buy the paperback. (Leaning toward yes.)

Cozy is a vibe: good food, good friends, low stakes. Things like opening a coffee shop or hunting for the tavern cat who’s gone missing (he’s fine, just stuck somewhere). It’s the fantasy version of a Hallmark holiday movie.

Want to join me in reading some?

Photo by Pavan Trikutam on Unsplash

Finished reading: The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas 📚

Great all the way through but extra compelling for the last third. Like Mexican Gothic, it uses Gothic tropes of a spooky house and a mysterious husband to interrogate colonialism in Mexico. Highly recommend.

Want to read: The Brain that Loves to Play by Jacqueline Harding 📚

Want to read: The Brain that Loves to Play by Jacqueline Harding 📚

Tonight I’m very obsessed with the idea of reading The Secret Garden as a child as a gateway to a love of Gothic literature. 📚

Finished reading: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson 📚

Keeping this Gothic train rolling. This one is excellent, of course.

📚💬 “When I am afraid, I can see perfectly the sensible, beautiful not-afraid side of the world, I can see chairs and tables and windows staying the same, not affected in the least, and I can see things like the careful woven texture of the carpet, not even moving. But when I am afraid, I no longer exist in any relation to these things.” Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

Substitute depressed or anxious for afraid here and it’s exactly how I feel.