February Reading Recap
In January 2024, I decided to be more intentional about documenting and sharing my reading on a regular basis, and posted my first monthly reading recap as an article on LinkedIn. My blog seems like a better home for this from now on, though, so here is what I read in February 2024. No spoilers; no ratings; just sharing what I read.
NB: life is too short to finish books you don’t love or aren’t learning anything from, so don’t believe the hype about never bailing on a book. It’s safe to assume that everything on my list was valuable enough in some way for me to stick with. Reading should be a pleasure or a tool for learning (or both), so if you’re reading something that’s a drag, set it aside and move on.
Nonfiction
Cybercrime: The Psychology of Online Offenders, Grainne Kirwan & Andrew Power
My book count was low in February, not just because it’s a short month but because I was crawling across the home stretch of my master’s program. My final course was Forensic Cyberpsychology, and this was the textbook. I am a big fan of Dr. Kirwan’s work in general, having first come across her writing in The Oxford Handbook of Cyberpsychology earlier in the program. This book is a bit dated; it came out in 2013, which is a century ago in internet time. For example, the term “ransomware” doesn’t even appear in the text. However, the writing is very accessible, and the material is straightforward, making it a great introductory text for the topic.
UFO: The Inside Story of the US Government's Search for Alien Life Here―and Out There, Garrett M. Graff
I know, I know, it sounds conspiracy theory-ish. But just because it is doesn’t mean it’s not true. This book will appeal to fans of Project Blue Book and Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The X-Files (I want to believe!). But rest assured, Graff has solid journalistic cred; among other things, he’s the director of the Aspen Institute’s Cyber Initiatives. He covers it all – Roswell, USS Nimitz, Skinwalker Ranch - and has all the usual suspects, like Luis Elizondo and Christopher Mellon, and it reads much more like Annie Jacobsen’s Area 51 than like a Ray Bradbury novel. No outlandish claims and no bombshell revelations, but a great read nonetheless.
Body of Work: Finding the Thread That Ties Your Story Together, Pamela Slim
It would not be an exaggeration to say that this book was life-changing for me. Which is odd, because it wasn’t particularly good and was at times tone-deaf in its privilege (disgruntled in your career? Take a year off to travel the world and start a nonprofit!). But I am a firm believer in book karma – the book you need finds you when you need it; it’s an inexorable force – and this book found me at a crossroads in my career and life. I am not an entrepreneurial person at all – too risk-averse – but I had been longing for some time to do some creative projects but never acted on the ideas. One line in the book jumped out at me: The enemy of a new entrepreneur is endless planning and perfection. It was a coup de foudre moment that shook something loose in me. What if I gave up on perfectionism and did a mediocre job of something instead of waiting around and doing nothing because the stars hadn’t aligned for guaranteed instant success? Slim also includes a passage from Anne Lamott’s Hallelujah Anyway, which I had coincidentally finished reading just weeks before. Lamott’s quote deals with overcoming procrastination, and it’s essentially, do the thing, even if you do it badly. Keep doing it, and eventually it will probably be less bad. Hallelujah.
Fiction
The Golden Spoon, Jessa Maxwell
This book was like a scrumptious dessert I indulged in as a reward for studying hard. It is so much fun and you can absolutely blow through it in a weekend. Great for fans of The Great British Bakeoff, but with more murder! Six amateur bakers come together for an annual baking competition TV show on the grounds of a luxurious country estate in Vermont. The estate is home to Betsy Martin, the host of the competition and a beloved baker affectionately known as “American’s grandmother.” But the country setting soon goes from sylvan to sinister when sabotage hits the tent, and more than one contestant is keeping secrets dating back decades.
The City We Became, NK Jemisin
I LOVE THIS BOOK. I don’t have good enough words or big enough fonts to say how much I love this book and this author. I’ll be totally honest, I’ve seen NK Jemisin’s name around for years, but I tend to be a little snobby about sci-fi/fantasy and I never took the time to investigate. That is, until I was watching an old episode of W. Kamau Bell’s show The United Shades of America and learned that a. NK Jemisin is a woman, b. she is a Black woman, and c. she and Kamau are cousins. Shame on me for assuming a prolific fantasy author had to be a white man, but I’m glad I learned my lesson because this book is EVERYTHING. It is, as much as anything else, a love letter to New York City – the energy, the grit, the diversity, the history, the architecture, the ambition, and yes, even the rudeness. It is a clever social commentary and includes brilliantly developed characters from a variety of marginalized identities. It celebrates and amplifies the voices of queer, Indigenous, immigrant, and not-totally-human characters. But most of all, it is a wildly entertaining read! I also checked out the audiobook version and the narrator is spectacular, covering a whole host of voices and accents. I’m already halfway through the second book, The World We Make. (Sadly, the series is only a “duology,” not a trilogy). This is an instant favorite for me. It also made me realize I should dig a little deeper into other Black women writers in the sci-fi and fantasy genres. Here are a few good lists I found:
https://electricliterature.com/10-science-fiction-books-by-black-women-writers/
https://bookshop.org/lists/sci-fi-fantasy-by-black-women