Jessamyn West Profile picture
Jul 2, 2019 26 tweets 10 min read Read on X
Book 65: The Quantum Astrologer's Handbook. I learned a lot about Jerome Cardano and quantum physics. However the central conceit of the book was, though clever, ultimately distracting. (Prev 6 mos of 2019 booklist here, this list was too long: ) cover of the quantum astrologer's handbook by Michael Brooks featuring some cool looking astrology/astronomy diagrams
Book 66: Exhalation by Ted Chiang. A really great assortment of "What if things were the same but a little bit different? How are people?" stories. Great moods. Thought provoking. Came with my favorite short story feature: blurbs at the end "Why I wrote this" for each one. Exhalation by Ted Chiang Kindle cover showing the title evaporating into little dots
Book 67: The Awkward Thoughts of W Kamau Bell. A great read, and a great summer read. It was great to get to know more about Bell's life and all the things that influence his (terrific, masterful) comedy, and some of the backstory about the media stuff he's done. Cover of the book the awkward thoughts of W Kamau Bell featuring the top of his head and his eyes looking sideways.
Book 68: Bandwidth. Was expecting a John Grisham type book only about tech/political consultants instead of lawyers and that's basically what I got. Moved quickly, a few good things to think on. I'll read the next one. Kindle cover of Bandwidth by Eliot Peper
Book 69: Al Jaffee's Mad Life. Oddly coincidental read for current events. MAD was a hugely formative part of my life. This is an "as told to" book w/ new illustrations. Jaffee had a rocky childhood, mother probably murdered by Nazis. Cover from GR b/c my copy had no dust jacket. cover of Al Jaffee's Mad Life with four illustrations of Jaffee at various points in his life.
Book 70: This Body's Not Big Enough for Both of Us. Intriguing idea (genetic chimeral human private eye) decently executed but completely wrong for me. Too self-aware, too digressive, not funny enough. Should not have finished this book but kept rooting for it to improve. paperback cover of this book featuring a janus-like illustration with two faces that are distinctly different sharing one detective hat.
Book 71: All the Names They Used for God. A terrific book full of evocative "what if" stories that are as lovely as they are thinky. Book cover featuring a mermaid's tail on a background of a glittering dark blue that could be water or could be stars
Book 72: Ascension. I was 80% very into this book & 20% very not into it. Great story about a WOC spaceship engineer managing chronic pain, a complex family & her own anxiety. She's also venturing into a poly romance w/ the crew, the nuances of which were a little less my jam. kindle cover of ascension by Jacqueline Koyanagi
Book 73: Family Trees, A History of Genealogy in America. I may have subtweeted about this book earlier. Overall, though academicky, I learned a lot. Author is from France and was unafraid to call White American genealogical obsessions "racist" (with footnotes). Appreciated that. Cover of the  Family Trees: A History of Genealogy in America by François Weil<br />
 which features a close up of an embroidered family tree.
Book 74: The Lost Words. This was a gift, and I put off reading it for a while because I didn't want to be done with it. A lovely combination of words for nature things (birds! ivy! otters!), some clever poetry and rich, glorious illustrations. cover of Lost words which has a few illustrations of birds in flight and shiny gold lettering.
Book 75: Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? Got an advanced copy of this from NetGalley. So fun. Caitlin Doughty answers kids' questions about death and corpses. I learned some stuff and really enjoyed the illustrations. kindle cover of Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs
Book 76: Sisters. The local library here has a terrible graphic novel collection but I did manage to find one book I hadn't read. Enjoyed this but found it less relateable than her other books (A lot of conflict with no resolution… Some stylistic devices that didn't work for me) cover of raina t's book Sisters
Book 77: The Dazzle of Day. I was captivated by the last Molly Gloss book I read (Wild Life) and I liked this gentle spacer about Quakers in space, but had a hard time finding a through story with it. Lots of great interpersonal negotiation and "how we find a way through" Kindle cover of The Dazzle of Day
Book 78: The New Kid. The other new graphic novel at my tiny summer library. Great look at the micro (and macro) aggressions one kid has to deal with when he leaves his neighborhood to go to a "better" private school. Lots of subtle and not-so-subtle racism, well-explicated Cover of The New Kid by Jerry Craft
Book 79: The Lost Gutenberg. I thought this would be a story of mystery and intrigue and stolen books. It was not, but it was a nice history of one of the Gutenberg bibles with a lot of good Gutenberg trivia along the way. Cover of The Lost Gutenberg by Margaret Leslie Davis showing a page from the Gutenberg bible.
Book 80: Paper Machines. A history of card indexes and card catalogs written by a PhD researcher from Vienna quoting Walter Benjamin. I learned stuff. Good subtle jokes. Cover of paper machines which includes an original index card prototype sold by Library bureauquotation from the book
Book 81: The New Girl. Spoiler alert: this is a dead kid story. I've been reading this series since the beginning and this had some good character development plus a lot of that "All choices are bad in global politics" aspect to it. Not enough art, not too much terror. Cover of The New Girl by Daniel Silva
Book 82: Fetch, How a Bad Dog Brought Me Home. Spoiler alert: this is a dead pet story, but maybe everyone could see that coming but me. A great graphic novel about how someone's life can change a lot over 15 years but some things (the dog!) stay the same. Cover of Fetch showing an odd looking dog, drawn in graphic novel style, with an Elizabethan collar
Book 83: No Way Home, a Memoir of Life on the Run. Slightly different book than its title implies but in some ways a better book. Wetherall spent the bulk of her childhood with her dad a fugitive or (spoiler) imprisoned. What does that do to a kid? Cover of No Way Home showing a mom looking like she's from the 70s or 80s holding a young infant with another kid standing behind her, sort of a faded Polaroid look. Also a library sticker on the cover.
Book 84: Fish Girl. Part of what will be a very long series of graphic novels. Lovely and not your usual mermaid story. Amazing illustrations, especially if you like octopi. cover of the graphic novel fish girl featuring a young woman seemingly underwater with a bunch of fish swimming around her.
Book 85: Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death. I am sorry now seems like a good time to be reading books like these. This is more a poetic reflection than a memoir per se. Chilling recollections of being in the "family camp" the stunt camp the Nazis showed to the Red Cross. Cover of Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death showing a very blue and gloomy set of railroad tracks receding into the distance
Book 86: Lint Boy. While it had a cute cover and, ultimately, a happy ending, this graphic novel about... an evil woman who abuses toys kinda bummed me out. Great illustration but a long time before anything good happened. Sorta dark. cover of Lint Boy which has a smiling toy with button eyes looking like it's doing a little dance.
Book 87: Ichiro. This graphic novel about a two-culture kid is two stories in one. One about a kid from Brooklyn trying to make sense of growing up with an absent (dead) soldier father, and one about the mythological history of Japan. Not quite enough Tenuki, but is there ever? cover of the graphic novel Ichiro with a wide-eyed kid staring with sort of rising sun ray lines coming out of his head and a shadow of a Japanese warrior figure behind him.
Book 88: Unforeseen. This was the Molly Gloss book I think I was after when I read through Dazzle of Day. A lot of short stories, all gripping and interesting in their own way. One even about birdwatching. Loved it. Kindle cover of Unforeseen by Molly Gloss showing a silhouette of a downward facing horse above the book title in fancy odd-seeming disco letters.
Book 89: Best American Comics 2008. I like most of these, this one wasn't quite my jam. A lot of partial comics so you got an idea of the author's skills but not as much for their storytelling. It's always hit or miss with these and happy to read more comics in any case. cover of Best American Comics of 2008 Lynda Barry editor, a weird frenzied comics illustration on the cover.
Book 90: The Selected works of T. S. Spivet. Book was always teetering on the edge of "too precious by half" but it wound up working for me. I read reviews which haaaated the ending but I thought it was apt. Great illustrations, unusual for a novel. Book w/in a book not my fave. cover of The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet which has a compass for drawing circles, a drawing of a bird skeleton and the title card all arranged in a sort of specimen box.

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More from @jessamyn

Oct 13, 2022
Not every drop-in time is a romp. Today I had an older man trying to get into his email account, the one he'd been using to apply for jobs. He'd left his job at the post office and was looking for work and it was slow going. He had no computer, just a phone, his wife's phone.
His landlord had set up his email account (he & his wife lived in a refurbished carriage shed) but he couldn't get into it. His password was one of those that was written down with some upper and some lower case letters, but he said "Nope, it's all lowercase but the first letter"
He didn't want to bother his landlord b/c they're snowbirds preparing to head south. I tried every password permutation (on my laptop, I type fast) no luck. No recovery phone. Just a recovery email that he didn't recognize. He had a SECOND email but job stuff went to the 1st one.
Read 10 tweets
Jul 8, 2022
Will return to drop-in time tweets soon. Here's my experience w/ a gig job for one of those geek-named sites. During early-COVID I signed up with a few tech gig sites figuring why not. I get regular emails with "jobs" mostly hours away from me. Weds a guy texted me w/a job nearby
Job was Mac support. Guy clicked something, Mac flipped out, couldn't get online, needed anti-virus run &c. I said I was busy Weds but could do it Fri. They said okay, sent me to gig website to confirm. Gig paid $45/hour. Not great but nearly 3x what library pays for same work.
Gig REQUIRES you (supposedly) to bring a spare drive, MacOS, non-bootleg software, a zillion other rules. Once I accept gig, I notice they are billing $129/hour. I ask for gas $. They agree. Drove over a mountain, met a nice older couple, sat down with their Macbook Air
Read 9 tweets
Jan 3, 2022
2022 Booklist. Book 1: Rosewater. Another winner by Thompson about a strange alien... thing that crops up in Nigeria and the people who try to make sense of it. A bit herky-jerky in the chronology, but not a major issue. Last year's list Kindle cover of Rosewater b...
Book 2. While Justice Sleeps. This was a fun political thriller even though it laid out who the bad and good guys were pretty early on and didn't vary much from that course. Good legal intrigue. If you wished Grisham were better, or had decent female characters, read Abrams book. Kindle cover of While Justi...
Book 3. Rosewater Insurrection. This was the sequel to Rosewater. Took a path kind of like The Outside where the 1st book sets up the human vs. alien struggle (interesting!) and the 2nd book is a lot of All Out War. Not bad, quite good really, but an awful lot of trauma. Kindle cover of The Rosewat...
Read 80 tweets
Jan 3, 2021
I wrote 143 Wikipedia articles last year. Mostly bios or library-related stubs, usu. part of a @WikiWomenInRed or @NewsWiki1 project. Here's where I'll keep my list for this year. First up: Delaware suffragist, clubwoman and educator Nellie B. Nicholson. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellie_B.…
Last year I tried to make sure every state library association and every state library had a page. Many of them already did. But now? They all do. 🎉

Stub for comics writer Kevin Panetta. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Pan…

(srsly, mute this now if this is not your jam)
San Diego Padres' stadium organist Bobby Cressey (a friend of a friend) had no Wikipedia page. Now he does. The funny thing about most stadium organists is how they get these jobs, there are rarely want ads for these gigs. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Cre…
Read 46 tweets
Jan 5, 2020
2020 Booklist. Book 1: Acceptance. Excellent wrap-up (tho with no closure and wasn't expecting much) to the Southern Reach trilogy. A little more understanding on what was going on and a lot more time tromping around Weird Florida. 2019 list is here: Kindle cover of Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer featuring a drawing of an owl flapping and losing some feathers
Book 2: The Green Mountain Boys of Summer. A comprehensive lovingly-researched book about every Major League baseball player who was born in VT (and a few others who made their homes here). Mostly early baseballers, so a lot of old VT history as well. Cover of Green Mountain Boys of Summer, edited by Tom Simon featuring a painting showing Larry Gardner (I think) sliding into a base.
Book 3: The Pixel Eye. A gift from a library book sale. Figured it was published by Tor so it would be good. Was not that good. Was about implanting bombs & surveillance devices in the brains of squirrels. And kind of ended in the middle? Liked reading it but would not recommend. Cover of the pixel eye by Paul Levinson which features a close-up of an eyeball with some sort of explosion reflected in it and a high-rise building in the background
Read 28 tweets
Jan 9, 2018
Drop-in Time 2018! Six folks plus E who got to teach someone how to cut and paste today! Here he is helping Judy sign up for Twitter. Depending how you sign up for Twitter it may or may not require a cell #. Judy didn't have one, I lent her mine. a woman sitting at her laptop with a young boy helping her out.
E doesn't really know what Twitter is but he knows the President acts up on it, and he is a quick study. My other students chimed in "I don't care what other people had for breakfast!" and I was like "How do you even know that is a thing?"
Sandy is going to Peru in a week. She was having trouble locating some files so she called Apple Support and they set her up with her Documents AND her Desktop in iCloud Drive. Seemed odd. image of mac laptop
Read 12 tweets

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