Books I am Reading, or Finished Reading Recently

I've been doing a lot of reading lately. It feels like more than I had been doing in recent years... although that's not necessarily true.

One of the things I have read, is that leaders should be readers, and should read everything. Fiction, non-fiction, literature. That fiction helps people to understand other perspectives, it helps one person understand another. Meanwhile, nonfiction teaches about the world - past, present, the potentials for the future.

Non-Fiction:

• Rhea Seddon's, "Go For Orbit" An excellent book, and highly recommended particularly for women interested in the space industry. It's made me even more interested in Marianne Dyson's biography.
• We Could Not Fail . Again, highly recommend, particularly for those in Alabama. While it touches on KSC and JSC, there seem to be more Huntsville / MSFC stories. The historians also tie in the actions of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and some further insight into Wernher Von Braun. 
• Digital Apollo. This was loaned to me, and is now on my list of books to buy.
• Lies My Teacher Told Me. I have an older edition. This is one book that I've been slowly working on for about a year, part of my #WhiteFolkWork.
• The Challenger Launch Decision, Diane Vaughan's classic work, I think I've finished chapter 3. This had been recommended to me more than a decade ago, but I'm just getting to it. It goes along well with a Great Course I listened to in the car, "Peoples and Culture."
• Pushback, which discusses integrative negotiation, particularly for women. This is an excellent companion for "Getting to Yes" and "Getting Past No". Everybody at the SWE conference seemed to be talking about this book a few years ago. I'm pretty far in, but not quite done with it, and I am learning from it.
• Headstrong, by Rachel Swaby. Some of the accounts of the 52 women who changed science and the world are so short that I might read 2 stories in a week, but for the most part I am trying to keep this to my once-a-week inspiration. That means I'm just getting out of the Medicine group and into Biology and Ecology. There are several accounts further into the book that I am eager to read, but trying to pace myself.
• Welcome To Mars, by Buzz Aldrin and Marianne Dyson. This is more of a science book for kids. I hope I can plan to do some of these activities with him while I'm home.

Fiction:

• A.C. Crispin, Starbridge volumes 6 and 7. I didn't even know these existed until we went to Con*Stellation one of our first years in Alabama. I saw them at a vendor, but wasn't in a position to buy them yet. Now I have, and for the most part I enjoyed them.
• S.M. Stirling, "The Desert and the Blade", from the library. I've been reading the Change series for several years now, and still enjoy every novel.
• Mercedes Lackey, "Blood Red," another library book from her Elemental Masters series.
• Mercedes Lackey, "From A High Tower," another library book in her Elemental Masters series. I really enjoyed this novel. The first phase of this series was largely set in England, but with these books she changes location to Germany and Eastern Europe, and I'm fascinated by the new settings.
• Harper Lee's "Go Set a Watchman." Another library book, I read it the Saturday after she passed away. It's... a complicated novel, about the complicated South. There are aspects of Scout's struggles, coming home, that I can identify with from my own move to Alabama. And there are aspects that I don't know if I could ever understand.
• Octavia Butler, "Blood Child."  I saw her work featured at the library during Black History Month a few weeks ago, and I had been hearing a lot about her on Tumblr and sometimes Twitter. So this past weekend I checked out some of her books, and just finished this collection of short stories and essays this evening. It has been a long time since I've specifically read books about the art of writing, but I think I want to take notes from this.
• Marianne Dyson, "Fly Me to the Moon," another collection of short stories that I thoroughly enjoyed.
• "Eat My Martian Dust," a collection of short stories about God and science from a Christian (primarily Protestant) perspective. I enjoyed Marianne Dyson's two or three stories in the collection (especially her "Kuk Sool on the moon" one). There were two stories I did not like (neither one by Dyson): one argued for young-Earth Creationism, and the other attempts to justify Colonialist evangelism. Most of the other stories are well-written and thought-provoking, and yet I also found the collection leaned more preachy. For examining religious themes within a science fiction context, I like Sacred Visions better.

Taking Time

Two weekends ago, we kicked off the 23rd Season of the Huntsville Feminist Chorus with our annual retreat at Sacred Heart Monastery in Cullman, AL.

The mission of the Chorus is to open hearts and minds through song.

This begins my sixth season with these wonderful women. The songs we sing bring me strength, not only to get through my own day / week / phase, but also fuels my activism, reviewing the literature and promoting women in STEM, women in leadership, GLBT rights, intersectional representation in general.

Holiday Reading, End of Year reflections, and a Preview of things to come

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it, and Happy Holidays to the rest.

Finals are over, and I've been picking up many of the things I let drop over the semester.  Catching up on reading, catching up on news, holiday obligations, and this blog.  In the weeks between classes, I hope once again to set up a series of posts ready to go throughout the spring semester.  I have two drafts saved that I haven't been ready to share yet.

We made a library run at the beginning of the break, so I was able to catch up on some of the series I've been reading.  When I first encountered the Anne & Todd McCaffrey collaborations for the world of Pern, I read the books out of order and got rather confused.  But sometime earlier this year I was able to re-read them IN order, and they make a lot more sense now.  So, from this library run I was able to re-read Dragon's Time, with less confusion.  Followed immediately by Sky Dragons.  I really enjoyed both books.  They've made me think some more about the Pernese society, particularly the dragonriders.  Subtle things that I didn't pick up on as a teenager in the '90's, but recognized in more recent years.  I may well make a blog post or three out of those reflections, later.

I've checked out Tamora Pierce's Mastiff, but I'm not very far into that book yet.

Last year, for Christmas, I bought a Nook, knowing that I would be traveling several times this year, and hoping to save my back from the heaviness of my "to-read" list.  I have used it, both more and less frequently than I thought I would.  It has been great for airplane rides, but I haven't spent as much time reading in hotel rooms as I thought I would.  At home, my use waxes and wanes.  Many of the books and poems that I would like to read are now available as free ePub downloads from sources like Project Gutenberg.  A lot of classics.  So I've nearly filled the Nook's memory, but haven't read them as often or regularly as I would have thought.

I can remember, as a child, wanting to know EVERYTHING.  One of the items on my bucket list, is to spend a week in Washington D.C., just at the Library of Congress.  The beauty of the internet is, I'm not sure I need to do that anymore.  So many of the books I longed to read, are now available to me right at home, over the internet.  (Not always for free, of course.)

Naturally, the first books I bought for my Nook were the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and The Hobbit.  I first read The Hobbit in 3rd grade, when I was about 8 or 9 years old, and moved on to the ring trilogy soon after.  Growing up, I usually read those four books about once per year.  I can even remember searching the Offutt Air Force Base library for some books called "Edda," the Elder and Younger.  A long time ago.

My reading pace slowed as we moved around and I started college, much like my TV watching habits.  However, Peter Jackson's "Fellowship of the Ring" reawoke my love for Tolkien.  I couldn't get into The Silmarillion before Peter Jackson, nor most of the other Christopher Tolkien collections of J.R.R.'s writings.  Jackson's "Fellowship" changed all that.  I saw the movie 12 times in theaters and read most of the collections.  So definitely expect a post about "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" at some point.

I started re-reading The Hobbit on my Nook perhaps two months ago.  When I picked it up again over the holidays, (SPOILER ALERT)

the eagles had just set the party down.

I also have a list of about 7 or 8 non-fiction books, available through some online services, that I'm trying to finish by the end of January.  I'm not sure how much I'll write about those.

I may or may not write more posts about Glee here.

I have been thinking for quite some time about writing a post about cinematography (why, as a big Transformer's fan, I did NOT like Michael Bay's movie adaptations, how the advertisements for G.I. Joe actually made me decide not to watch it, either... and how they relate to my reasons for only watching The Hunger Games once).

I've also been thinking about the choices I make, as a parent, in screening my son's media exposure.  How my choices differ from what my parents chose. 

My hit count suggests I don't have a very large audience, so for now I mostly write as I please, but please feel free to leave a comment.  Is there any topic you're interested in hearing more of my thoughts about?  (I can not guarantee an answer.)