Finished reading: How to Tell When We Will Die by Johanna Hedva πŸ“š

This book challenged me. I don’t know the last time I had to look up several new-to-me words in a book, but we’re talking decades. This book was full of essays that resonated deeply with my own experiences and others that were like a window into a completely different world. I’m so glad I read it.


πŸ“šπŸ’¬ “I want a life capacious enough to contain what I choose to be true about myself and that which I did not but have nevertheless learned to work with, to use, to wield.” Johanna Hedva, How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom


πŸ“šπŸ’¬ “…kindness is a form of magic we can choose to know how to do. What matters is attending to suffering, no matter why it’s there.” Johanna Hedva, How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom


Finished reading: Let the Children March by Monica Clark-Robinson πŸ“š

A great picture book about the Children’s Crusade in Birmingham in 1963, perfect model of how kids can make a difference.


Finished reading: The Undefeated by Kwame Alexander πŸ“š

A gorgeous picture book poem.


Finished reading: Since the Surrender by Julie Anne Long πŸ“š

Julie Anne Long is really good at the job. Lots of yearning in this one, in the best way.


πŸ“šπŸ’¬ “In illness, the now feels like punishment.” Johanna Hedva, How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom


πŸ“šπŸ’¬ “Maybe the blast radius of disability destroys everything and also makes new worlds. Maybe these are worlds of paradox: both the radical limitation of what you used to be able to do and an explosion of the horizon around what you thought would ever be possible.” Johanna Hedva, How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom


πŸ“šπŸ’¬ “The most anti-capitalist protest is to care for another and to care for yourself. To take on the historically feminized and therefore invisible practice of nursing, nurturing, caring. To take seriously each other’s vulnerability and fragility and precarity, and to support it, honor it, empower it. To protect each other, to enact and practice a community of support. A radical kinship, an interdependent sociality, a politics of care.” Johanna Hedva, How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom


Finished reading: How to Steal a Galaxy by Beth Revis πŸ“š

Super fun but also upsetting because of the social commentary middle book in a space heist romance trilogy.


πŸ“šπŸ’¬ “…this is the conundrum all sick and disabled people live with. To be pathologized is to be allowed to survive.” Johanna Hedva, How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom


πŸ“šπŸ’¬ “When you have chronic illness, life is reduced to a relentless rationing of energy.” Johanna Hedva, How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom


Finished reading: Swim Team by Johnnie Christmas πŸ“š

A great graphic novel!


πŸ“šπŸ’¬ “How can you throw a brick through the window of a bank if you can’t get out of bed?” Johanna Hedva, How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom


πŸ“šπŸ’¬ “How many of us have already met our doom and then had to get out of bed and go on?” Johanna Hedva, How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom


πŸ“šπŸ’¬ “Disability describes a condition that is both more othered from and profoundly closer to one’s body than any other political condition that I can think of.” Johanna Hedva, How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom


πŸ“šπŸ’¬ " All the ways we cannot do something, all the ways we won’t be able to do somethingβ€”what sort of political dreams can come from this as a starting place?" Johanna Hedva, How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom


πŸ“šπŸ’¬ " What about stories that are enlivened, vivified, not despite illness and disability but because of them?" Johanna Hedva, How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom


Finished reading: Like No Other Lover by Julie Anne Long πŸ“š

So great. Julie Anne Long is excellent both at the plot level and at the prose level.


Finished reading: Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman πŸ“š

As great as everyone says. It’s striking how much chronic illness and grad school prepped me for accepting rather than struggling with the ideas here. This is a perfect book to read when you’re in your 40s.


πŸ“šπŸ’¬ “…having large amounts of time but no opportunity to use it collaboratively isn’t just useless but actively unpleasant…” Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals


πŸ“šπŸ’¬ “…the presence of problems in your life… isn’t an impediment to a meaningful existence, but the very substance of one.” Oliver Burkeman, Forty Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals


πŸ“šπŸ’¬ “…reading Is the sort of activity that largely operates according to its own schedule.” Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals


Finished reading: The Perils of Pleasure by Julie Anne Long πŸ“š

A book with an awesome heroine and a delightful hero. Julie Anne Long is new to me and seems bound to become one of my favorite historic romance authors.


πŸ“šπŸ’¬ “Results aren’t everything. Indeed, they better not be, because results always come laterβ€”and later is always too late.” Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals