A note on this blog's organization

Since I first started this blog, I've read well over 600 books. I decided to organize them by sections, so to navigate to specific blog entries, review the sections below. To look for a specific book, try typing the book title or author's name in the search bar at the top left of this blog.

Book Bingo #1 - Summer 2019

Hello, dear blobbists! As promised, I have finally gotten around to blobbing on the book bingos that have occasionally distracted me from my original 'classics' lists. I'm going to build out a page for each book bingo, and I'll share my own (rather tattered) copy that hangs on my wall, as well as more specifics and more readable versions of the titles.

I first started these in 2019, when my friend Dan put me on to the Seattle Arts & Lectures/Seattle Public Library summer book bingos. They make a list each year (and in more recent years, a version for younger readers) and there are categories you match to each title. Most people try to just get 'BINGO', but I got rather addicted and for each one, went for 'blackout', which is to say reading all the titles on the bingo board. For the SAL bingos in particular, they have a prize you can try for if you get blackout. 

Book Bingo #1 - Seattle Arts & Lectures & Seattle Public Library - Adult Summer Reading 2019 (30 books in total, 1 crossover with '101 and Beyond' list - overlap indicated with an asterisk)


If you like this concept, and/or if you want this specific board, you can download it via the Seattle Arts & Lectures website here (just navigate to Summer 2019 for this card specifically, or explore their various past summer cards).

As you can see, I occasionally struggled to fit all the books I wanted to read onto the card, so sometimes there are some 'write-in' categories. šŸ¤£You'll also notice that sometimes I incorporated books from the blog list into the book bingos. 

In case you can't read my handwriting, here's the list of books and titles (top down, left to right). The blurbs are from the author's websites or bookstores. When possible, I've linked to the author's page to purchase a copy from them directly or an independent seller. Or use the library! Or buy local! As you wish. ;)

Category: A SAL speaker (past or upcoming)
    • Everything's Trash, But It's Okay is a candid perspective for a generation that has had the rug pulled out from under it too many times to count, as well as an intimate conversation with a new best friend. 
Category: A subject you wish you had studied in school
    • First published in 1973, Vine Deloria, Jr.'s God Is Red remains the seminal work on Native American religious views, asking the reader to think about our species and our ultimate fate in novel ways. 
Category: Challenges your world view
    • At least one-third of the people we know are introverts. They are the ones who prefer listening to speaking; who innovate and create but dislike self-promotion; who favor working on their own over working in teams. It is to introverts—Rosa Parks, Chopin, Dr. Seuss, Steve Wozniak—that we owe many of the great contributions to society.
Category: DIY (gardening, cooking, crafting, etc.)
    • The New Bohemians Handbook guides readers in beautifully simple techniques for adding good vibes and style to living spaces.
Category: Made into a movie (to be fair, the movie's still in development)
    • Trevor Noah’s memoir about growing up mixed-race during and after apartheid. Born to a black Xhosa mother and white Swiss father, his existence was illegal. The book follows his mischievous childhood, his mother's fierce dedication to raising him, and his search for identity in a deeply divided nation.
Category: You couldn't put it down 
    • An addictive psychological thriller about a group of women whose lives become unexpectedly connected when one of their newborns goes missing. 
Category: Published when author was under 35
    • Charles Dickens's satirical masterpiece recounts the rollicking adventures of the members of the Pickwick Club as they travel about England getting into all sorts of mischief. Laugh-out-loud funny and endlessly entertaining, the book also reveals Dickens's burgeoning interest in the parliamentary system, lawyers, the Poor Laws, and the ills of debtors' prisons.
Category: About music or musicians
    • An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse—the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity. 
Category: Poetry or play
    • One Flea Spare is set in plague-ravaged 17th-century London, where a wealthy couple is preparing to flee their home when a mysterious sailor and a young girl appear sneaking into their boarded up house. 
Category: Suggested by an elder (in this case, my mother)
    • Virgil's Aeneid is a tale of thrilling adventure, extreme adversity, doomed romance, fateful battles, and profound loss. Through its stirring account of human struggle, meddling gods, and conflicting destinies, the poem brings to life the triumphs and trials that led to one of the most powerful societies the world has ever known.
Category: Science
    • Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases.
Category: Set in the Northwest
    • Unfolding over the course of a single day, Alexis M. Smith’s shimmering debut finds Isabel looking into her past—remembering her parents’ separation, a meeting with an astrologer, and a life-changing encounter with a glacier—and shows us how fleeting, everyday moments can reveal an entire life. In classic movies, in old photographs and unsent postcards, rare books, and thrifted gems, Glaciers tells the story of a young woman’s love of the past and a hope to make something new and all her own.
Category: Free Space
    • Referring to the defensive moves that white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and by behaviors including argumentation and silence. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent any meaningful cross-racial dialogue. In this in-depth exploration, DiAngelo examines how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what we can do to engage more constructively.
Category: Suggested by a young person
    • This is the way the world ends. Again. In this Hugo-Award-winning series, there will be war all across the Stillness: a battle royale of nations for the resources necessary to get through the long dark night. Essun does not care if the world falls apart around her. She’ll break it herself, if she must, to save her daughter.
Category: Recommended by a librarian or an independent bookseller
  • Seven Day Magic - Edward Eager (I did not realize this was the 7th in a series! It was a lovely stand-alone also)
    • All books are magic, but some are more magical than others. When Susan opens a strange library book, she discovers it is about her and her friends, leading up to the moment when she opened the book. Beyond that, the pages are blank . . . waiting for the children to wish the book full of adventures.
Category: Fiction
    • A groomsman and his last-minute guest are about to discover if a fake date can go the distance in a fun and flirty debut novel. 
Category: Comics
    • In an alternate America, a murder mystery evolves into an ominous, planet-wide conspiracy in a world where superheroes shifted the course of history as we know it. [Click here to see my blog on this one]
Category: Book about disability
    • Criptionary: Disability Humor & Satire is a humorous book by poet, activist, and disability educator Maria R. Palacios that uses wit and satire to address the daily challenges faced by people with disabilities. The book reclaims the politically incorrect word "crip," turning it into a tool for disability power, pride, and activism.
Category: One-word title
    • Borges sends us on a journey into a compelling, bizarre, and profoundly resonant realm; we enter the fearful sphere of Pascal's abyss, the surreal and literal labyrinth of books, and the iconography of eternal return. 
Category: By an author from Mexico or Canada
    • The story of a woman who returns to the landscape of her childhood to regain her innocence, knowing that in order for her to discover her identity, she must overcome the fear that held her captive as a little girl. This unique exploration of the path to womanhood and innocence lost won Mexico’s most prestigious literary prize.
Category: By an author of color
    • A novel following a feisty heroine’s quest to reclaim her past through the power of literature—even as she navigates the murkier mystery of love. 
Category: True crime or crime fiction
    • When Harriet Westaway receives an unexpected letter telling her she’s inherited a substantial bequest from her Cornish grandmother, it seems like the answer to her prayers. She owes money to a loan shark and the threats are getting increasingly aggressive: she needs to get her hands on some cash fast. There’s just one problem – Hal’s real grandparents died more than twenty years ago. But Hal knows that the cold-reading techniques she’s honed as a seaside fortune teller could help her con her way to getting the money. 
Category: Use these two squares to read one BIG book (you decide what BIG means to you!) [I decided to take it literally ;)]
    • Nahri has never believed in magic. Certainly, she has power; on the streets of 18th century Cairo, she’s a con woman of unsurpassed talent. But she knows better than anyone that the trade she uses to get by—palm readings, zars and a mysterious gift for healing—are all tricks; both the means to the delightful end of swindling unwitting Ottoman nobles and a reliable way to survive.
Category: Set in summer
    • The summer of 1928 was a vintage season for a growing boy. A summer of green apple trees, mowed lawns, and new sneakers. Of half-burnt firecrackers, of gathering dandelions, of Grandma's belly-busting dinner. It was a summer of sorrows and marvels and gold-fuzzed bees. A magical, timeless summer in the life of a twelve-year-old boy named Douglas Spaulding—remembered forever in moving, interconnected vignettes, by the incomparable Ray Bradbury.
Write-Ins
    • Hair Story is a historical and anecdotal exploration of Black Americans' tangled hair roots. A chronological look at the culture and politics behind the ever-changing state of Black hair from fifteenth-century Africa to the present-day United States, it ties the personal to the political and the popular.
      • I really enjoyed this and I learned a ton. I wanted to know more about Black hair both for my own edification and as the aunt of a biracial child who is developing their own beautiful Black hair.
    • Six children play together in a garden by the sea. They grow up, and their lives crash upon different shores, but their inner voices weave a shared tapestry of experience. With the death of their cherished friend Percival, the six friends, now adults, are bound together in grief.
      • I love Virginia Woolf. I think I added this because I had a copy and had been meaning to read it for some time. To the Lighthouse is still my favorite Woolf.
    • A raw and redemptive debut memoir about coming of age and reckoning with desire as a queer, biracial teenager amidst the fierce contradictions of Boca Raton, Florida, a place where Madden found cult-like privilege, shocking racial disparities, rampant white-collar crime, and powerfully destructive standards of beauty hiding in plain sight.
      • I was at an event with the writer, which was so cool! She's a colleague and friend of my friend, who is also a writer (her books come up later!) I loved the title and the read.
    • After a day of being taunted by classmates about her unruly hair, Mackenzie can't take any more and she seeks guidance from her wise and comforting neighbor, Miss Tillie. Using the beautiful garden in the backyard as a metaphor, Miss Tillie shows Mackenzie that maintaining healthy hair is not a chore nor is it something to fear. Most importantly, Mackenzie learns that natural black hair is beautiful.
      • Similar reasons to above. A beautiful children's book.
My Reflections on this Book Bingo

I won't blog separately on each of these books, as it has been a long time since I read many of these, and I wouldn't want to give them short shrift. What I will do instead is share passages I liked and/or general reflections from this bingo board. 

From what I can tell, I didn't start consistently saving passages I liked until about 2020, so I don't have as many from this batch. Which isn't to say it wasn't a wonderful collection of books! That said, here are some I remember particularly enjoying:
  • God is Red: A Native View on Religion - this brought me a lot of perspective and understanding in a new area. I have outlines all over my copy, but I won't add them all here. Read it!
  • Quiet - as an introvert, this was a fun read!
  • The Aeneid - I really enjoyed this, and wish I could find my notes. It definitely merits a whole blob. Perhaps I'll revisit!
  • Born a Crime - a fascinating read, I unfortunately don't seem to have my notes.
  • Enlightenment Now - I really liked this, even though I don't tend to read much non-fiction.
    • News is about things that happen, not things that don't happen. Lorelai jokes in Gilmore Girls that she's going to make the 'good news daily', but this is so true! 
    • A quantitative mindset, despite its nerdy aura, is in fact the morally enlightened one, because it treats every human life as having equal value rather than privileging the people who are closest to us or most photogenic. As a quantitative thinker, I love this!
    • As we care about more of humanity, we're apt to mistake the harms around us for signs of how the world has sunk rather than how high our standards have risen. 
    • Progress is an outcome of magic not of problem-solving.
    • Wealth is created primarily by knowledge and cooperation. 
    • From the point of view of morality, it is not important everyone should have the same. What is morally important is that each should have enough. This is intriguing. Reminds me of trying to define equity vs. equality.
  • White Fragility - I had read this before, but I still find it an interesting read, though I know it's critical to read works on racism by POC authors as well. You'll see many throughout these lists.
    • Like the rest of race, whiteness is a fiction. The first time I read about race as a construct, my mind was blown. I've read a lot more on these topics since, but it still makes my brain bounce back a little every time I read it.
    • Race will influence whether we survive our birth. Ooph. So true. 
    • Racism is a structure, not an event. 
    • A romanticized past is a white construct. I love Ta-Nehisi Coates and his idea of debunking the myths of apple pie and cotton candy Americana in Between the World and Me.
    • When white women cry, Black men die. THIS.
    • White progressives cause the most daily damage to people of color. AND THIS.
    • I was allowed to melt into the melting pot. 
  • Broken Earth - I loved the first one, and the series was really engrossing! I remember a very cool storytelling twist. Again, don't have notes.
  • Seven Day Magic - I remember enjoying this, though I didn't know it was the last in a series! Whoops!
  • The Wedding Date - this was a lovely read! My friend knows the author's sister, I think? 
  • Call Me Zebra
    • We are convinced that ink runs through our veins instead of blood. What a fantastic line.
    • Autodidacts, anarchists, atheists. 
    • Do not be caught unawares. Spit the lie right back out. Aim for their heads. I love this line so much.
    • I was born in the heart of the oasis of Books. Oh, to be born here!
    • Love nothing except literature.
    • Literature is so self-aware that it knows hoe to perpetuate itself like a disease. Every text is a mutant and a doppelgƤnger. 
    • I felt as though I had been admitted into a world of sublime parallels and auspicious coincidences. 
    • Reading was my only remedy. God, this line is lovely. 
    • A terrible silence spread its wings between us.
    • We are all the very thing we rebel against.
  • Before, Criptionary  - can't remember specifics, but really remember enjoying these. 
  • City of Brass
    • Magic is unpredictable.
    • Tonight is not a night for Stories.
    • I'm asking you to make a friend. Surely that is not beyond your skill set? lolol.
    • We deserve better than you.
  • Glaciers - excerpts I liked listed below. 
'Bell, he says. 
Hm? 
You owe me a story. 
When? 
Whenever.

  • It might as well be Amsterdam.  

  • I'm the host, so I will tell you what kind of story to tell. I love this.  

  • It has always been more than an aesthetic choice holding on to the past; it's a kind of mourning for the things that do not last.  God, I love this line.

  • Dandelion Wine - I loved this book.
    • Ugliness is a concept that we happen on later and become self-conscious about. 
    • Some days were good for all the senses at once. 
    • The words were summer on the tongue. 
    • The magic was always in the new pair of shoes.
    • Was there, then, no strength in growing up? 
    • It was a day as perfect as the flame of a candle. 
    • The food was self-explanatory, wasn't it? It was its own philosophy, it asked and answered its own questions."

Hopefully I have more notes for the later bingos! In any case, I wanted to make a record. 

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