Adventures with Words, January 2023 – from CK Combs, Author I used to do New Year’s Resolutions, back when I was younger and hadn’t learned to choose my battles well. I piled up goals and ambitions, listed anything I could think of that I believed would improve my life. And every year there would come…
In this bonus edition of Adventures with Words, I will share what I’ve been reading. I set a goal to read 50 books in 2022. On December 31st, I finished number 81. I use Goodreads to track my booklist. Goodreads (like many other platforms) creates a year in review and from it I have my…
Hello! I’m going to try this newsletter thing. All the cool kids are doing it and I want to be cool. Also, I want to build systems to connect with readers that aren’t dependent on fascist billionaires. I’m planning a monthly schedule, with occasional short announcements if they are time sensitive. Making space for creativity is…
After a friend reminded me that HBO had created a series based on Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, I picked up my copy of the book. When I first read it, close to its publishing date of 2014, I was reminded of The Stand. The idea of a flu killing most of the…
Last year I read 33 books. This is well shy of my goal of 50, though I am pleased with the quality of what I read. I’ll share my list and some of my impressions. I’d love to hear what your favorite reads of 2020 were. Sandman Vol. 8, Neil Gaiman, et al. On Earth…
I took the Goodreads reading challenge last year and put my goal at 50 books. I got to 41. A mix of fiction and non-fiction. Fiction was mostly speculative, fantasy and scifi genres. Much of my non-fiction reading was motivated by a desire to learn about whiteness and systemic racism and included works of history,…
In the spirit of full disclosure, I have a crush on the author of Autonomous, Annalee Newitz. It’s a nerdy crush full of admiration for Newitz’s humor, intelligence and artistic talent. And if that isn’t enough, she’s queer, which is a total bonus on my score sheet. My crush began when I became a devoted…