Cook Korean!
Fun to look at and easy to use, this unique combination of cookbook and graphic novel is the ideal introduction to cooking Korean cuisine at home. Robin Ha’s colorful and humorous one-to three-page comics fully illustrate the steps and ingredients needed to bring more than sixty traditional (and some not-so-traditional) dishes to life.
In these playful but exact recipes, you’ll learn how to create everything from easy kimchi (mak kimchi) and soy garlic beef over rice (bulgogi dupbap) to seaweed rice rolls (gimbap) and beyond. Friendly and inviting, Cook Korean! is perfect for beginners and seasoned cooks alike.
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An illustrated/comic book approach to a cookbook, filled with great Korean recipes from the author’s family and her own stories and memories of the meals. I loved this one and bought it for my husband for Christmas.
Rating: Pretty Darn Good
Belonging
Nora Krug was born decades after the fall of the Nazi regime, but the Second World War cast a long shadow throughout her childhood and youth in the city of Karlsruhe, Germany. For Nora, the simple fact of her German citizenship bound her to the Holocaust and its unspeakable atrocities and left her without a sense of cultural belonging. Yet Nora knew little about her own family’s involvement in the war: though all four grandparents lived through the war, they never spoke of it.
In her late thirties, after twelve years in the US, Krug realizes that living abroad has only intensified her need to ask the questions she didn’t dare to as a child and young adult. Returning to Germany, she visits archives, conducts research, and interviews family members, uncovering in the process the stories of her maternal grandfather, a driving teacher in Karlsruhe during the war, and her father’s brother Franz-Karl, who died as a teenage SS soldier in Italy. Her quest, spanning continents and generations, pieces together her family’s troubling story and reflects on what it means to be a German of her generation.
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Intense and powerful, beautiful and tragic. This book about a German’s attempts to discover and come to grips with her own country and family’s past has implications for our own country as we face our own past mistakes and horrors. I still think about this memoir often.
Rating: Re-read Worthy
Ask Baba Yaga
Dear Baba Yaga,
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I think I must crave male attention too much. I fear that, without it, I would feel invisible.
BABA YAGA:
When you seek others this way, you are invisible nonetheless. Yr shawl is covered in mirrors in which others admire themselves; this is why they greet you so passionately. It is good to be seen, but it is better to see. Find a being to look hard into, & you will see yrself and what is more than you.
In age-old Slavic fairy tales, the witch Baba Yaga is sought out by those with a burning need for guidance. In contemporary life, Baba Yaga—a dangerous, slippery oracle—answered earnest questions on The Hairpin for years. These pages collect her most poignant, surreal, and humorous exchanges along with all-new questions and answers for those seeking her mystical advice.
Lovely, dark, woodsy advice from Baba Yaga. I am a huge Baba Yaga fan, and this advice column-style book was beautiful and magical.
Rating: Good but Forgettable
They Called Us Enemy
Long before George Takei braved new frontiers in Star Trek, he woke up as a four-year-old boy to find his own birth country at war with his father’s — and their entire family forced from their home into an uncertain future.
In 1942, at the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, every person of Japanese descent on the west coast was rounded up and shipped to one of ten “relocation centers,” hundreds or thousands of miles from home, where they would be held for years under armed guard.
They Called Us Enemy is Takei’s firsthand account of those years behind barbed wire, the joys and terrors of growing up under legalized racism, his mother’s hard choices, his father’s faith in democracy, and the way those experiences planted the seeds for his astonishing future.
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An enlightening, powerful look at George Takei’s actual experiences in a Japanese internment camp in the 40s. It is heartbreaking the things he and his family went through, and I am saddened by how few of the details I already knew. As with much of our country’s history, I wish I had learned about this in school, and I hope that today’s high schoolers are learning more about this than I did at their age.
Rating: Pretty Darn Good
The Orchid Thief
The Orchid Thief is Susan Orlean’s tale of an amazing obsession. Determined to clone an endangered flower—the rare ghost orchid Polyrrhiza lindenii—a deeply eccentric and oddly attractive man named John Laroche leads Orlean on an unforgettable tour of America’s strange flower-selling subculture, through Florida’s swamps and beyond, along with the Seminoles who help him and the forces of justice who fight him. In the end, Orlean—and the reader—will have more respect for underdog determination and a powerful new definition of passion.
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A fascinating story of orchid lovers and Florida history and culture. I loved learning more about the area where I live and the obsession about orchids. Almost a year after reading this, I still think about it frequently.
Rating: Pretty Darn Good
“All the Real Indians Died Off“
In this enlightening book, scholars and activists Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker tackle a wide range of myths about Native American culture and history that have misinformed generations. Tracing how these ideas evolved, and drawing from history, the authors disrupt long-held and enduring myths such as:
“Columbus Discovered America”
“Thanksgiving Proves the Indians Welcomed Pilgrims”
“Indians Were Savage and Warlike”
“Europeans Brought Civilization to Backward Indians”
“The United States Did Not Have a Policy of Genocide”
“Sports Mascots Honor Native Americans”
“Most Indians Are on Government Welfare”
“Indian Casinos Make Them All Rich”
“Indians Are Naturally Predisposed to Alcohol”Each chapter deftly shows how these myths are rooted in the fears and prejudice of European settlers and in the larger political agendas of a settler state aimed at acquiring Indigenous land and tied to narratives of erasure and disappearance. Accessibly written and revelatory, “All the Real Indians Died Off” challenges readers to rethink what they have been taught about Native Americans and history.
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This is an informative, uncomfortable read about the US history of colonization and oppression and genocide. I learned a lot about the truth versus the cultural myths of both the past and present lives of Indigenous people in America.
Rating: Pretty Darn Good
Educated
Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty and of the grief that comes with severing the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one’s life through new eyes and the will to change it.
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A powerful, gruesome, fascinating memoir in the vein of The Glass Castle, with abusive and cultish family members. I really enjoyed reading the author’s story, even though it was really difficult to get through at times.
Rating: Pretty Darn Good
The Sacred Enneagram
The Sacred Enneagram is a trustworthy, richly insightful guide to finding yourself in the enneagram’s 9-type profiles, and applying this practical wisdom for a life transformed. Far more than a personality test, author Chris Heuertz writes, the enneagram is a sacred map to the soul. Lies about who we think we are keep us trapped in loops of self-defeat. But the enneagram offers a bright path to cutting through the internal clutter and finding our way back to God and to our true identity as God created us.
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Filled with enneagram jargon that can be offputting, but also filled with insights on your enneagram type and what contemplative prayer and spirituality can do to help heal your wounds. I haven’t read a lot of books about the enneagram— I’m glad this was one of them.
Rating: Good but Jargony
Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come
What would happen if a shy introvert lived like a gregarious extrovert for one year? If she knowingly and willingly put herself in perilous social situations that she’d normally avoid at all costs? Jessica Pan is going to find out.
When she found herself jobless and friendless, sitting in the familiar Jess-shaped crease on her sofa, she couldn’t help but wonder what life might have looked like if she had been a little more open to new experiences and new people, a little less attached to going home instead of going to the pub.
So, she made a vow: to push herself to live the life of an extrovert for a year. She wrote a list: improv, a solo holiday and… talking to strangers on the tube. She regretted it instantly.
Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come follows Jess’s hilarious and painful year of misadventures in extroverting, reporting back from the frontlines for all the introverts out there.
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An introvert does improv, stand up comedy, talking to strangers, public speaking, and more. Fun and relatable, as well as offering scary ideas for introverts to broaden their horizons, make more friends, and maybe even be happier.
Rating: Good but Forgettable
Funny, You Don’t Look Autistic
Slaying autism stereotypes with stand-up, one joke at a time. Like many others on the autism spectrum, 20-something stand-up comic Michael McCreary has been told by more than a few well-meaning folks that he doesn’t “look” autistic. But, as he’s quick to point out in this memoir, autism “looks” different for just about everyone with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Diagnosed with ASD at age five, McCreary got hit with the performance bug not much later. During a difficult time in junior high, he started journaling, eventually turning his pain e into something empowering–and funny. He scored his first stand-up gig at age 14, and hasn’t looked back. An #OwnVoices memoir breaks down what it’s like to live with autism for readers on and off the spectrum.
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A comedian with autism talks about how ASD has affected his life and how he started his comedy career. He’s only 22, so I’m interested to see what else he does. Insightful and occasionally hilarious.
Rating: Good but Forgettable
Fun Home
In this graphic memoir, Alison Bechdel charts her fraught relationship with her late father.
Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which Alison and her family referred to as the Fun Home. It was not until college that Alison, who had recently come out as a lesbian, discovered that her father was also gay. A few weeks after this revelation, he was dead, leaving a legacy of mystery for his daughter to resolve.
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This graphic memoir covers the intense, sad, strange relationship the author has with her closeted father as she herself comes out. It’s uncomfortable how little she seems to care that her father carried on relationships with teenagers. I see why this has become a cult classic, but parts of it made me very uncomfortable.
Rating: Good but Forgettable
All Things Reconsidered
In All Things Reconsidered, popular podcaster Knox McCoy uses a unique blend of humor, pop culture references, and personal stories to show how a willingness to reconsider ideas can actually help us grow ourselves, our lives, and our beliefs.
In this laugh-out-loud defense of reconsideration, Knox dives into topics like:
Are participation trophies truly the worst?
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Is it really worth it to be a ride-or-die sports fan?
Do we believe in God because of the promise of heaven—or the threat of hell?
Does prayer work? Is anyone even there?
This book is the catalyst we need to courageously ask the questions that will lead to a deeper understanding of ourselves—and God. It’s time to start reconsidering.
This book contains some hilarious sections (mispronounced words) and some very serious sections (LGBTQ people in the church), all focused on topics that Knox has reconsidered. I found it both fun and thought provoking. It was great on audio because it’s read by the author, a very popular podcaster.
Rating: Pretty Darn Good
Inspired
If the Bible isn’t a science book or an instruction manual, then what is it? What do people mean when they say the Bible is inspired? When Rachel Held Evans found herself asking these questions, she began a quest to better understand what the Bible is and how it is meant to be read. What she discovered changed her—and it will change you too.
Drawing on the best in recent scholarship and using her well-honed literary expertise, Evans examines some of our favorite Bible stories and possible interpretations, retelling them through memoir, original poetry, short stories, soliloquies, and even a short screenplay. Undaunted by the Bible’s most difficult passages, Evans wrestles through the process of doubting, imagining, and debating Scripture’s mysteries. The Bible, she discovers, is not a static work but is a living, breathing, captivating, and confounding book that is able to equip us to join God’s loving and redemptive work in the world.
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A powerful, heartfelt look at the most troubling passages of the Bible by an author that I respect greatly–Rachel Held Evans. If you have ever struggled with what the Bible is really about, this book needs to be on your shelf.
Rating: Re-read Worthy
We Are Never Meeting in Real Life
Sometimes you just have to laugh, even when life is a dumpster fire. With We Are Never Meeting in Real Life., “bitches gotta eat” blogger and comedian Samantha Irby turns the serio-comic essay into an art form. Whether talking about how her difficult childhood has led to a problem in making “adult” budgets, explaining why she should be the new Bachelorette–she’s “35-ish, but could easily pass for 60-something”–detailing a disastrous pilgrimage-slash-romantic-vacation to Nashville to scatter her estranged father’s ashes, sharing awkward sexual encounters, or dispensing advice on how to navigate friendships with former drinking buddies who are now suburban moms–hang in there for the Costco loot–she’s as deft at poking fun at the ghosts of her past self as she is at capturing powerful emotional truths.
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Hilarious and heartbreaking, filled with essays about what it’s like to be a Black, depressed, queer woman with Crohn’s and arthritis living in Chicago. Samantha Irby is one of the funniest authors I know.
Rating: Pretty Darn Good
Me and White Supremacy
Me and White Supremacy teaches readers how to dismantle the privilege within themselves so that they can stop (often unconsciously) inflicting damage on people of colour, and in turn, help other white people do better, too.
The updated and expanded Me and White Supremacy takes the work deeper by adding more historical and cultural contexts, sharing moving stories and anecdotes, and including expanded definitions, examples, and further resources.
Awareness leads to action, and action leads to change. The numbers show that readers are ready to do this work – let’s give it to them.
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This is a powerful guided workbook to help you discover your own complicity in white supremacy, uncovering your unconscious biases and understanding how to start to change yourself and your culture. It’s a challenging read (obviously!), but well worth the time and effort you will put in to work through it.
Rating: Pretty Darn Good
Born a Crime
The memoir of one man’s coming-of-age, set during the twilight of apartheid and the tumultuous days of freedom that followed.
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Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle.
Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.
Hilarious sometimes, outrageously frustrating at others, and heartbreaking still other times. Trevor Noah recounts his childhood in South Africa and the funny and horrifying moments he went through. I read this on audio, which was wonderful as it is narrated by Trevor Noah himself.
Rating: Pretty Darn Good
You Are an Artist
A few years ago curator Sarah Urist Green left her office in the basement of an art museum to travel and visit a diverse range of artists, asking them to share prompts that relate to their own ways of working. The result is You Are an Artist, a journey of creation through which you’ll invent imaginary friends, sort books, declare a cause, construct a landscape, find your band, and become someone else (or at least try). Your challenge is to filter these assignments through the lens of your own experience and make art that reflects the world as you see it.
You don’t have to know how to draw well, stretch a canvas, or mix a paint colour that perfectly matches that of a mountain stream. This book is for anyone who wants to make art, regardless of experience level. The only materials you’ll need are what you already have on hand or can source for free.
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Fascinating, fun, creative art prompts. I’m not an artist, but this book made me want to try out some creative ideas. It’s a book that I’d like to own so I can come back for inspiration again and again.
Rating: Re-read Worthy
I’m Still Here
Austin Channing Brown’s first encounter with a racialized America came at age 7, when she discovered her parents named her Austin to deceive future employers into thinking she was a white man. Growing up in majority-white schools, organizations, and churches, Austin writes, “I had to learn what it means to love blackness,” a journey that led to a lifetime spent navigating America’s racial divide as a writer, speaker and expert who helps organizations practice genuine inclusion.
In a time when nearly all institutions (schools, churches, universities, businesses) claim to value “diversity” in their mission statements, I’m Still Here is a powerful account of how and why our actions so often fall short of our words. Austin writes in breathtaking detail about her journey to self-worth and the pitfalls that kill our attempts at racial justice, in stories that bear witness to the complexity of America’s social fabric–from Black Cleveland neighborhoods to private schools in the middle-class suburbs, from prison walls to the boardrooms at majority-white organizations.
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A powerful look at racism in America in general and the church in particular. Brown’s short essays describe the racism she has faced throughout her life, frequently from white Christians, even those working in anti racist organizations or progressive churches.
Rating: Re-read Worthy
Politics is for Power
Who is to blame for our broken politics? The uncomfortable answer to this question starts with ordinary citizens with good intentions. We vote (sometimes) and occasionally sign a petition or attend a rally. But we mainly “engage” by consuming politics as if it’s a sport or a hobby. We soak in daily political gossip and eat up statistics about who’s up and who’s down. We tweet and post and share. We crave outrage. The hours we spend on politics are used mainly as pastime.
Instead, we should be spending the same number of hours building political organizations, implementing a long-term vision for our city or town, and getting to know our neighbors, whose votes will be needed for solving hard problems. We could be accumulating power so that when there are opportunities to make a difference—to lobby, to advocate, to mobilize—we will be ready. But most of us who are spending time on politics today are focused inward, choosing roles and activities designed for our short-term pleasure. We are repelled by the slow-and-steady activities that characterize service to the common good.
In Politics Is for Power, pioneering and brilliant data analyst Eitan Hersh shows us a way toward more effective political participation. Aided by political theory, history, cutting-edge social science, as well as remarkable stories of ordinary citizens who got off their couches and took political power seriously, this book shows us how to channel our energy away from political hobbyism and toward empowering our values.
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I almost gave this 2 stars, because the utilitarian views of the author rubbed me the wrong way. He wants politically active people to control the votes of others, which I don’t love, and seems to say that the only things that move the political needle are deep canvassing and joining your local party committee that may or may not be active. I did like the focus in the last two chapters on community service. I read this two years ago, and though I still wouldn’t say that I like it, I am still thinking about and talking about the topics it brought up. I think that’s a sign that it was worth the read.
Rating: Pretty Darn Good
Kachka
Delicious sounding recipes for dishes across the former Soviet Union, plus tons of cultural notes on Russian food culture. I loved it and learned a lot.
Rating: Re-read Worthy
How to Be an Antiracist
Ibram X. Kendi’s concept of antiracism reenergizes and reshapes the conversation about racial justice in America–but even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. In How to be an Antiracist, Kendi asks us to think about what an antiracist society might look like, and how we can play an active role in building it.
In this book, Kendi weaves together an electrifying combination of ethics, history, law, and science, bringing it all together with an engaging personal narrative of his own awakening to antiracism. How to Be an Antiracist is an essential work for anyone who wants to go beyond an awareness of racism to the next step: contributing to the formation of a truly just and equitable society.
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Powerful and fascinating. I learned so much about racism in the US, as well as clarifying what racism and antiracism actually are. I finished the book already prepared to reread it, since I know there’s so much in this book that I couldn’t absorb everything on the first read. I can’t recommend this book enough (although I know everyone else has already done so!).
Rating: Re-read Worthy
Because Internet
Language is humanity’s most spectacular open-source project, and the internet is making our language change faster and in more interesting ways than ever before. Internet conversations are structured by the shape of our apps and platforms, from the grammar of status updates to the protocols of comments and @replies. Linguistically inventive online communities spread new slang and jargon with dizzying speed. What’s more, social media is a vast laboratory of unedited, unfiltered words where we can watch language evolve in real time.
Even the most absurd-looking slang has genuine patterns behind it. Internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch explores the deep forces that shape human language and influence the way we communicate with one another. She explains how your first social internet experience influences whether you prefer “LOL” or “lol,” why ~sparkly tildes~ succeeded where centuries of proposals for irony punctuation had failed, what emoji have in common with physical gestures, and how the artfully disarrayed language of animal memes like lolcats and doggo made them more likely to spread.
Because Internet is essential reading for anyone who’s ever puzzled over how to punctuate a text message or wondered where memes come from. It’s the perfect book for understanding how the internet is changing the English language, why that’s a good thing, and what our online interactions reveal about who we are.
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There are some fascinating tidbits here, although the book itself gets a bit boring at times. McCulloch talks about the development of language and how it has changed and continues changing on the internet. If you’ve been active on the internet since the 90s, you will recognize most of the trends she discusses, and probably learn some things about why and how the internet facilitates creativity in language.
Rating: Pretty Darn Good
Islands of Decolonial Love
In her debut collection of short stories, Islands of Decolonial Love, renowned writer and activist Leanne Simpson vividly explores the lives of contemporary Indigenous Peoples and communities, especially those of her own Nishnaabeg nation.
Found on reserves, in cities and small towns, in bars and curling rinks, canoes and community centres, doctors offices and pickup trucks, Simpson’s characters confront the often heartbreaking challenge of pairing the desire to live loving and observant lives with a constant struggle to simply survive the historical and ongoing injustices of racism and colonialism. Told with voices that are rarely recorded but need to be heard, and incorporating the language and history of her people, Leanne Simpson’s Islands of Decolonial Love is a profound, important, and beautiful book of fiction.
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Beautiful stories, songs, and memories about the life of an Anishinaabe woman and her culture. It is poetic and funny, sad and powerful. I don’t typically enjoy poetry, but this was really lovely.
Rating: Pretty Darn Good
Can’t Even
Do you feel like your life is an endless to-do list? Do you find yourself mindlessly scrolling through Instagram because you’re too exhausted to pick up a book? Are you mired in debt, or feel like you work all the time, or feel pressure to take whatever gives you joy and turn it into a monetizable hustle? Welcome to burnout culture.
While burnout may seem like the default setting for the modern era, in Can’t Even, BuzzFeed culture writer and former academic Anne Helen Petersen argues that burnout is a definitional condition for the millennial generation, born out of distrust in the institutions that have failed us, the unrealistic expectations of the modern workplace, and a sharp uptick in anxiety and hopelessness exacerbated by the constant pressure to “perform” our lives online. The genesis for the book is Petersen’s viral BuzzFeed article on the topic, which has amassed over eight million reads since its publication in January 2019.
Can’t Even goes beyond the original article, as Petersen examines how millennials have arrived at this point of burnout (think: unchecked capitalism and changing labor laws) and examines the phenomenon through a variety of lenses—including how burnout affects the way we work, parent, and socialize—describing its resonance in alarming familiarity. Utilizing a combination of sociohistorical framework, original interviews, and detailed analysis, Can’t Even offers a galvanizing, intimate, and ultimately redemptive look at the lives of this much-maligned generation, and will be required reading for both millennials and the parents and employers trying to understand them.
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A depressing but insightful look into what has made the millennial generation the “burnout generation.” This is a must read if you want to understand the millennial generation–whether you consider yourself a millennial or not. Anne Helen Petersen has become a voice for the millennial experience, both in the workplace and in personal relationships, and she has some fascinating thoughts to bring to the table.
Rating: Pretty Darn Good
Solutions and Other Problems
Allie Brosh returns with a new collection of comedic, autobiographical, and illustrated essays.
Solutions and Other Problems includes humorous stories from Allie Brosh’s childhood; the adventures of her very bad animals; merciless dissection of her own character flaws; incisive essays on grief, loneliness, and powerlessness; as well as reflections on the absurdity of modern life.
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Laugh out loud funny, but also quite sad in places. I love Allie Brosh’s writing and art style, and I’ll read anything that she writes.
Rating: Reread Worthy
Newbery and Beyond 