It’s fall y’all! Although, in New England it’s rapidly approaching winter with how fast the leaves are changing. We made what has apparently become our annual trip up to Northern(ish) Maine to spend a quite weekend getting ready for all the holiday travel and to of course see the leaves changing colors. It was well worth the drive even if the house we rented was just past the peak leaf-peeping line. We stayed in Rangeley, Maine in the lakes region and visited UMaine Farmington on one of the days we were up there.
Tag: Massachusetts
Book 658: The Children of Harvey Milk – Andrew Reynolds
I’m not sure how I stumbled across this one, but when I did back in May I requested a copy from the publisher and they kindly obliged.* I was interested because of the subject matter, but also because Reynolds is based at UNC Chapel Hill (my undergrad) and his name rang a bell because he’d chaired the Sexuality Studies program there at some point in the recent past. And then with my master’s degree focusing on the Civil Partnership Act (2014) in the UK, of course I was going to want to read this book and see what he had to say.
Continue reading “Book 658: The Children of Harvey Milk – Andrew Reynolds”
September Recap 2019
Kicked off the end of August and beginning of September with a long weekend up in Acadia National Park, Maine so thought I’d include a beautiful sunrise photo to wrap up the month.
Work has moved into full speed for the season, so I’m surprised I read as much as I did. I’ve also spent time reading longer articles on my to be read list (aka my Instapaper app), some of which have been there since January! I’m reading plenty of longer pieces (45-90 minutes reading time) and the good part about it is that I’ve read a wide range of articles from (closeted) gay neo-Nazis to millennials as the burn out generation, and weirdly this puts less stress on my goal of reading a nonfiction book every month.
Book 648: Honestly Ben – Bill Konigsberg
This one was pretty forgettable for me, which is sad because it’s actually a good book. I think the problem is that I read Openly Straight, basically the first half of this book/story a little over five years ago. If I would’ve read these back to back I would’ve probably had much stronger feelings about this one.
Let’s start with what didn’t work: the swimming analogy. The book opens with Ben, the protagonist, going to swimming lessons for the first time and sinking to the bottom of the pool. Konigsberg uses this as a very clunky metaphor for Ben’s life and thoughts at the start of the book. I was honestly hoping it wouldn’t resurface at the end of the book—which isn’t totally fair because I would’ve been more pissed if he didn’t complete the metaphor—but it did and it just made me sigh and shake my head.
August Recap 2019
I think I’ve had a quintessential New England August, all that’s really missing was the Cape and/or the beach. Knowing how many people would be going that direction as summer winds down we went to the opposite direction to western Massachusetts and north to Maine. I’ll get to all of this at the end of the post, because we also saw “BODY WORLDS & The Cycle of Life” at the Museum of Science – Boston, “Gender Bending Fashion” at the Museum of Fine Arts, and John Williams night at Tanglewood. SO MUCH CULTURE.