This is a very good, short, easy to read intro to zero waste, full of tips on ways to reduce the garbage you produce in your home. Its practical and realistic. Almost all of the easier items- carrying reusable water bottles and grocery bags, packing lunches at home in reusable containers, buying vegetables, fruits and grains instead of processed food- are all things we've been doing in my house for years. But here are the three most useful new things I learned: 1) If you would like to stop getting junk mail letting you know you are pre-approved for various credit card offers, you can opt-out of them for life at the website https://www.optoutprescreen.com/. 2) Bamboo toothbrushes are a made of about 95% compostable material (the wooden handle)- only the bristles have to be thrown away. I just bought a pack from Brush With Bamboo and the packaging is also 100% compostable. 3) Apparently you can make single-serving amounts of coconut or almond milk out of coconut butter and almond butter. The recipe in the book says "Whisk 4 teaspoons of nut butter into 1 cup of hot water, or else mix with a blender into 1 cup cold water." I have not tried this yet, but I plan to. There are also recipes for things I am much less likely to do, such as make my own shampoo, toothpaste, deodorant and laundry detergent. Maybe someday.

A soft spooky love story between a gardener and a ghost.

Miryem's family is the only Jewish family in their small village in Lithvas, a fantasy version of Lithuania, in what feels like the mid 1700s. Miryem's father is a moneylender, but her family is very poor because her father is too much of a pushover to collect any of the debts or interest which is owed to them. Eventually Miryem decides to take matters into her own hands and begins collecting the debts herself. It turns out she's very good at it, because she's very stubborn and won't take no for an answer. She starts using the money to buy goods in Vysnia, the nearest city, to resell in the village. People begin whispering that she can “spin silver into gold”. In the forests surrounding the village a silvery fairy-road sometimes appears, and everyone knows to stay away from the pure white animals who live there. This is because they are owned by the Staryk, the winter people, who sometimes raid human towns for gold, though no one knows exactly why. When the rumors about Miryem start going around, one of the Staryk lords leaves a purse of silver on her doorstep and threatens to turn her into ice if she doesn't change it into gold for him. Wanda is a poor farmer girl who has two younger brothers and an abusive father. The father can't pay his debts, so Wanda starts working for Miryem's family to pay them off, and they develop a relationship. Irina is the daughter of the Duke of Vysnia; her father has ambitions to marry her off to the young tsar. She doesn't want to marry him, because she meet him when they were both children and he was already developing a sadistic streak. Her and Miryem meet when Miryem brings pieces of jewelry made of the Staryk silver to sell to the Duke- and so both of their fates are woven together and both end up tied to cruel, ancient powers whom they must outwit or be consumed by. This is the fifth Naomi Novik book I've read so far this year and I really enjoyed it. She has such a talent for taking a story farther than I would ever have expected. She writes with such exuberance; I get the feeling that writing is not a struggle for her, that stories just well up and spill over her hands.

This book is so smart and so human. Told from a sequence of different character's points of view, the world of the Silo slowly unfolds around the reader. The first narrator is Sheriff Holston, one of the peacekeepers of a society living entirely in a self-sufficient underground bunker. This is the Silo: 150 stories deep into the earth, containing hospitals, schools, apartments, high-efficiency farms lite by grow lamps, factories, generators, mines and more. Holston has been a good and fair lawman, but his faith in the world was shattered when his wife discovered some secret that drove her insane. She was sent to cleaning- the highest punishment available to a citizen of the Silo. She was put in a toxin-proof suit and sent up out of the Silo into the ruined wasteland above the surface. Now Holston feels his own grip on sanity wavering as his desire to follow his wife to her doom grows stronger and stronger. The second of the book's narrators is Major Jahns, who sets out on a journey from level 1 all the way to the deepest levels of the Silo. The third narrator is Juliette, a mechanic from the deep down, pulled unwillingly into a new job she never trained for. Each of these three makes choices that will effect the very survival of the Silo and every citizen living in it's fragile shelter. I strongly recommend this to everyone who loves good sci-fi.

I listened to this as an audiobook because it is referenced so often in my very favorite podcast Secret Feminist Agenda. Host Hannah McGregor did a wonderful interview the author, Sara Ahmed, in the final episode of season 3. Ahmed grew up in Australia with a white mother and a Pakistani father as one of few POC students in her elementary schools. She is a lesbian, a PhD scholar, a professor, and long-time writer of the Feminist Killjoys blog. Her feminism is queer, intersectional and trans-inclusive. This is a scholarly book but it was a pretty easy listen as the writing itself leans more poetic and then dense. Much of it is about reactions to feminists speaking up in private or public spaces, and how words (such as "killjoy") are used against feminists and how they can be retaken. Ahmed references work she has done in previous books including the themes of willful subjects, sweaty concepts and walls. The middle portion of the book includes interviews with people doing diversity work at universities, followed by reflections on several films. The final portion includes Ahmed's Killjoy Survival Kit and Feminist Manifesto. This was a very thought-provoking text to listen to while I was drawing, but I am also aware than my comprehension is much higher when I read than when I listen, so hopefully I will have time to get a copy of this book in print to underline and highlight.