As well as doing fun posts on peach pie and cherry turnovers or ice cream cones, I also discuss a lot of less-comfortable topics like human trafficking, abuse, mental illness, and so on. This is one of the less pleasant topics — chronic pain.
Reading for Pain Awareness Month Read More »
I have been fascinated with reading Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson. It is full of amazing and heartbreaking stories of injustice, with lots of history about the changes in the law over the decades, statistics , and how these changes to the justice system have worked or not worked to the advantage of the poor, marginalized, and disadvantaged.
Bryan Stevenson’s quest for change in Just Mercy Read More »
May is Celiac Disease Awareness month. You may have heard of Celiac Disease and not know what it means. It has also been called Celiac Sprue and a couple of other names. While those with Celiac Disease react to the glutens (proteins) in grains, it is not an allergy like a peanut allergy.
One of the things that I have had people ask me is which is worse, allergies or intolerance (Celiac Disease is an intolerance to glutens.) But it is very individual. Either one can be mild or severe. And with an intolerance like Celiac Disease, you may not realize that you have it, may not have any recognizable symptoms, but it can still cause damage that can result in serious illness such as colon cancer or the inability to absorb nutrients.
Reading for Celiac Disease Awareness Read More »
I was asking an autistic friend for his thoughts on topics of importance to autists in 2021, and his suggestion was to look at intersectionality. So now I have about thirty tabs open as I have been researching and digging up some resources for you. I hope you’re ready for this!
Autism Acceptance: Reading about Intersectionality Read More »
I have recently finished reading A Long Way Gone, by Ishmael Beah. It is a sad reality that around the world children are recruited to fight in wars or serve the soldiers who are fighting. Children as young as nine may be trained to kill.
Read about life as a child soldier in A Long Way Gone Read More »
I recently read Ronan Farrow’s Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators, an account of his investigation into and exposure of Harvey Weinstein’s long history of sexual abuse in Hollywood, of the cover-ups that took place over decades by not only Hollywood, but by police departments, prosecutors, and the media.
Real-life intrigue in Ronan Farrow’s Catch and Kill Read More »
I hadn’t heard of Jeannette Walls or The Glass Castle before, but I’m glad I picked it up. It is a memoir of the author’s childhood of poverty and neglect and she has some very interesting stories to tell. Her parents preferred to live an itinerant lifestyle, so she lived a lot of different places and did a lot of different things.
Excerpt from The Glass Castle Read More »
I am partway into a true crime book about the Golden State Killer, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara.
Despite the author’s obsession with unmasking the Golden State Killer, all of the hours and years she put into it, she passed away before the book was completed and published. Her husband and editor (?) put it together and wrote what they could from her notes. Michelle McNamara did not live to see the Golden State Killer caught using DNA evidence. It looks like there is an afterword in the book to cover that.
Excerpt from I’ll Be Gone in the Dark Read More »
I’ve just started reading Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, by Caroline Criado Perez. As you might guess by the title, this one is not a thriller! But I am finding it very interesting. Not as a “feminist” book, but as a book about data, the way the world has been engineered, how what data we gather affects the results, and how to become more aware of these built-in biases. It is a fascinating subject.
Excerpt from Invisible Women Read More »
I don’t usually post from the same book two weeks in a row, but this past week has been crazy and I haven’t had much time for reading, so I am bringing you a second teaser from Elizabeth Smart’s My Story.
Excerpt 2 from My Story by Elizabeth Smart Read More »
