
“If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.”
--Audre Lorde

*Or maybe that should be Animals being (Moby) Dicks?... Now somebody's gotta make a GIF...
"To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, through many there be who have tried it."*
(you couldn't tell our tale on a flea either--working on chapter XVIII)
Official reaching-the-limits day. Read things, can't remember what.

I didn't meet my goal for increasing the overall number of books in 2011. I'd set it high, at 65. But I did read one more book than I had in the last two years--52 instead of 51--and this year was also a LARGE book year: the number of pages that goodreads tells me I read in 2011 vastly outnumbers any previous year in which I kept track.
Most of the books on the list that aren't novels are because of grad school. There were also a number of books I am still half way through (a lot of cyberculture and ebook-related things) that I suspect I'll finish in 2012, and two huge novels I just started (Moby Dick and 1Q84).
Anyhow, here's the list! Especially recommended books are starred as usual. Happy 2012!
![]()
Junot Diaz: “Eventually everything I have gets read. But naturally I buy more than I can read, so there is always at least a hundred-book margin between what I own and what I’ve read. What’s cool is that I’ve caught up a couple of times, and this year I intend to catch up again. But then I’ll buy too much and the race starts again.”
Literacy, like communication, is a matter of access, a matter of opportunity, a matter of economic security--a total matter...

The People's Library is now mobile!

Images in support of Aaron Swartz, from Derecho a Leer.
HAPPY INTERNATIONAL ZINE LIBRARY DAY 2011!*
I want to build spaces where...
I can't believe this is the last day of June.
ACRL prep has utterly taken over my life. Here's what I can remember reading in the last few days:
I was really tired today--rest for the eyes with podcasts:


Interesting to read both of the above on the same day: "Gutenberg made everyone a reader. Xerox makes everyone a publisher."
Snow Day!
“It turns out that America is peopled chiefly by folks trying to figure out what’s happening in America.” --Noel Peattie, Sipapu 1:2
I'm pleased with myself today; I woke up early. I did yoga. I worked on my crazily looming project. And I read:
Happy 2011! Today also marks the first anniversary of this Reading Log. I didn't make a post each and every day, but I did read a lot. The list only includes monographs, and not all kinds of things I started and didn't finish...
In 2010, I read more books than I ever have before! I credit Octavia Butler for the high count. Here's the list, with highly recommended books starred.
Further down the rabbit hole:


Just tiny bits of:
What can I say; I was on vacation.
So,
so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell,
blue skies from pain.
(I took the day off for a significant anniversary, and to re-install a horrible operating system)
Yesterday the only thing I read was Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day, a present from my secret santa, in an effort to teach myself to make a good sandwich loaf.
Made a few upgrades to the site (with help) today, one of which was a space on the side here to record what I'm reading. I'm hoping to make this a daily update; it's one of my goals along with other resolutions of 2010 pertaining to schedules, productivity and health/happiness. You can read all of the reading-related posts now at: http://alycia.brokenja.ws/readinglog
To kick off the new module, here's what I read in 2009. 34 books. Helped along greatly by a longer commute. Recommended reads are starred.
Just finished reading Victoria Law's Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles Of Incarcerated Women and wanted to recommend it. Vikki's book is an inspiring read, a great work of activism, and a eye-opening archive of the life of women in prison.
Confronting one another across differences means that we must change ideas about the way we learn; rather than fearing conflict we have find ways to use it as a catalyst for new thinking, for growth.
Just finished reading Teaching to Transgress by bell hooks late this evening, and now listening to a talk hooks gave at the Women of Color Conference. A few random thoughts follow.
As per 2 requests on a social networking site by friends, here are 15 favorite books, a list made "without thinking too hard." What are your 15 books?

*Or maybe that should be Animals being (Moby) Dicks?... Now somebody's gotta make a GIF...
"To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, through many there be who have tried it."*
(you couldn't tell our tale on a flea either--working on chapter XVIII)
Official reaching-the-limits day. Read things, can't remember what.