Book #12 of 2024: Through the Groves by Anne Hull In this memoir, author Anne Hull paints an evocative picture of her childhood in central Florida — one I found poignantly familiar to my own, despite growing up three decades later and about 100 miles east of her. The orange groves already giving way to …
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Book #5 of 2024: The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet by Jeff Goodell A harrowing look at the impact of climate change on human and non-human existence, really contextualizing how innocuous-sounding figures like a few degrees of global average temperature increase are in fact catastrophic for us. Author …
Book #134 of 2023: Two Truths and a Lie: A Murder, a Private Investigator, and Her Search for Justice by Ellen McGarrahan In 1990, reporter Ellen McGarrahan witnessed the state of Florida’s botched execution of death-row inmate Jesse Tafero. (The electric chair sparked and caught fire, ultimately taking seven minutes and three separate jolts to …
Book #132 of 2023: 100 Places to See After You Die: A Travel Guide to the Afterlife by Ken Jennings A breezy survey of different ideas about the hereafter: both those of various world religions and the ones dreamed up for particular works of fiction, from Riverworld to Dead Like Me to San Junipero to …
Book #128 of 2023: Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer This 2023 title is an expansion of author Claire Dederer’s viral 2017 article, “What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?” She’s no closer to coming up with a definitive prescriptive answer to that question of how one should treat Woody Allen …
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Book #123 of 2023: MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios by Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzales, and Gavin Edwards A lengthy and informative behind-the-scenes account of the movie and TV juggernaut known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with plenty of in-depth production details that I didn’t previously know, despite my being a pretty big fan of …
Book #113 of 2023: Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English by Valerie Fridland I taught a few undergraduate sociolinguistics courses when I was in grad school, and if this book had been available back then, I could see myself including a few of its chapters as assigned reading. It’s an engaging …
Book #108 of 2023: Jews Don’t Count by David Baddiel A short but scathing call-out of author David Baddiel’s fellow progressive-leaning individuals for too often ignoring the problem of antisemitism: either not noticing it at all or downplaying its impact and the importance of challenging it compared to other bigotries. If you are a non-Jewish …
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Book #92 of 2023: Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood by Maureen Ryan A scathing account of the abuse that runs rampant in the TV and film industry, drawing on hundreds of interviews across more than a decade of author Maureen Ryan’s investigative journalism career. Some sources have gone …
Book #76 of 2023: How to Keep House While Drowning: A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organizing by KC Davis, LPC Probably the best self-help book I’ve ever read, and all the more so for its short length, with author KC Davis evincing none of that genre’s usual need to belabor her points ad nauseum …
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