Books

Book 977: Don’t Think of an Elephant! – George Lakoff

Book cover of "Don't Think of an Elephant!" with Amazon Affiliate linkI had to read this for a communications course earlier this fall and when I read it I blazed through it very quickly and knew I wanted to revisit it as soon as the semester was done. So I left it as “reading” in my Goodreads for over a month and finally got around to re-reading it and genuinely absorbing it.

I’m glad I re-read it, some of it was pretty obvious and some of it clearly explained things like why “climate change” is the predominant word of choice instead of “global warming.” My professor said that many of his students said they can’t watch the news anymore after reading this, and while I can still watch it I’m much more aware of the framing and terminology newscasters/journalists use than before.

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Books

Book 937: Burn Rate – Andy Dunn

Book cover of "Burn Rate" with Amazon Affiliate linkWhen someone in the marketing department at the publisher reached out about this because I’d positively reviewed David Chang’s Eat a Peach, I had to take a few minutes to really think if I wanted to go back into this world.*

In Chang’s book, his mental health struggles are peripheral, but in Dunn’s Burn Rate, he centers them. I spent quite a bit of time reading about bipolar disorder, alcoholism, and other mental health issues before my mom died a few years ago to try and understand what she was going through and what my sister and I were experiencing. And that REALLY hit home when the first quote Dunn uses in his book is a quote from Kay Redfield Jamison who wrote THE book (An Unquiet Mind) about brains and bipolar/manic depression/brains in general.

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Books

Book 928: Going Public (Jade Capital #2) – Hudson Lin

Book cover of "Going Public" with Amazon Affiliate linkI requested an ARC of this one from the publisher after I saw it in their upcoming titles email that I get monthly.* The fact that there was not just one non-white man on the cover of this MM Romance novel, but TWO of them was a definite ‘okay let’s give this Hudson Lin person a try.’

Totally on me, but I also thought it was written by a man (damn you pseudonyms!), but that didn’t change my opinion or reading of the novel, I was just excited that there were BIPOC protagonists AND they were on the cover. Add in that I don’t think I’ve read many with Asian protagonists and it caught my attention.

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Books

Book 919: Dessert Can Save the World – Christina Tosi

Book cover of "Dessert Can Save the World" with Amazon Affiliate linkLate last year, someone from Harmony Books reached out about Dessert can Save the World by Christina Tosi having seen I read David Chang’s memoir Eat a Peach.* Knowing that Tosi’s Milk Bar (which is freakin’ delicious and I had to resist trekking over to Harvard Square multiple times while reading this) started as an offshoot of one of Chang’s restaurants I thought why not! I’m glad I didn’t start reading it earlier because I devoured it (pun 100% intended).

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Books

Book 913: Word Nerd – John D. Williams, Jr.

Book Cover of "Word Nerds" with Amazon Affiliate linkI have no idea where I stumbled across this book. At first, I thought it was The Allusionist or 99% Invisible podcasts, but can’t find any mention of it on their sites and there’s nothing on NPR, aside from a review which I usually avoid, points to where it came from. I also didn’t purchase it from Amazon or any other online book retailer, so I must’ve randomly picked it up in a physical store and not tracked the purchase.

I’m glad I picked it up though! Not because I play SCRABBLE, because I’m not great at it, but because it just had a great title and subtitle and I figured it’d be an interesting read and it truly was.

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