Took me a long time to read partially because the Libby wait was long (but so glad others are reading this!) and because my partner and I listened to this together. I ended up buying the paperback, and I hope to look back on it often as a reminder to build the community and neighborhood I want.

The examples used in this book were easy to see in my own life: I am stressed when I walk on loud roads with lots of traffic and happier and calmer when I’m on pedestrian-only streets, I felt safer and more connected when I lived in smaller apartment complexes where I knew my neighbors than I did in large buildings where no one used common areas or even ran into each other often in the halls, when I move I look for quiet streets with trees and with groceries and other necessities in walking distance. 

The stories of people who shaped their neighborhoods and cities through community building and activism were inspiring. 

My only big complaint was that the narrator used bizarre accents when reading quotes from people from Copenhagen to Bogota, and that was distracting and annoying. The book itself was easy to read and well argued.

Scary when a book like this has so many overlaps in my own life.

Constantly in awe at how Ta-Nehisi Coates can make the most horrible, heartbreaking, and/or infuriating policies clear in such beautiful writing. As many others have said, a must-read. I especially appreciated his reading the audiobook himself as he told so many personal stories, and it added even more emotion as a letter to his son.

This book covers a lot, but is not difficult to get through! The tying together of both indigenous histories and colonizer behavior to the current day was incredibly done. Hearing more personal stories from the DAPL protests was also amazing.

Absolutely stunning. I had a hard time putting it down, but I also didn’t want my time with these characters to end.

I especially loved the look at intergenerational trauma and how each character handled it differently, still finding support and healing

It was still so jarring to read about the “2020s,” especially in reference to the plague and forest fires. Even more prescient political commentary, giving the increased book banning and attacks on libraries these days: “It seems inevitable that people who can’t read are going to lean more toward judging candidates on the way they look and sound than on what they claim they stand for. Even people who can read and are educated are apt to pay more attention to good looks and seductive lies than they should. And no doubt the new picture ballots on the nets will give Jarret an even greater advantage.”

I still hated the Earthseed "religion," despite loving the mutual aid work at its core. Especially in the epilogue, seeing that multiple spaceships actually took off felt ridiculous. Earthseed could have had a stronger environmental and community message - all the farming and land care they did at Acorn and all the environmental destruction that tipped the dystopia into what it was seems washed away with the sudden emissions of these new space homes that were only previously mentioned in lieu of a Heaven and never actually seen in the story.

 “Do you think our world is coming to an end?” Dad asked, and with no warning at all, I almost started crying. I had all I could do to hold it back. What I thought was, “No, I think your world is coming to an end, and maybe you with it.” That was terrible. I hadn’t thought about it in such a personal way before. I turned and looked out a window until I felt calmer. When I faced him again, I said. “Yes. Don’t you?”

I can't believe it took me this long to read Parable of the Sower, but any time since it's publication has been the perfect time to read. On Instagram, @bookishcrimson pointed out how Zarah recommended sucking on a plum or apricot pits to stave off thirst while Palestinian mothers are giving their babies dates to suck on because of the lack of milk and all other foods in the genocide on Gaza. 
Every time the political race came up in the book, it felt so much like the USA race today. Describing one of the candidates as "a symbol of the past for us to hold on to as we’re pushed into the future. He’s nothing. No substance. But having him there, the latest in a two-and-a-half-century-long line of American Presidents make people feel that the country, the culture that they grew up with is still here — that we’ll get through these bad times and back to normal.” That exactly explains the current candidates to me.
The disease and environmental collapse is so obviously on-point that it hardly feels worth mentioning. COVID-19 has been on constant high waves, disabling and killing people in horrifying numbers? Ignore it. Every season is warmer than ever and every marker for irreversible damage is being met? "'These things frighten people. It’s best not to talk about them.” “ But, Dad, that’s like… like ignoring a fire in the living room because we’re all in the kitchen, and, besides, house fires are too scary to talk about.'"

The only thing I didn't like about this book was Earthseed. While I understand Laura wanting to have a clear mantra to help her through societal collapse, the "belief" in Earthseed seemed less religious to everyone around her and more a unifying idea. By which I mean, her friends and fellow travelers were happy to hear about it and agreed with some basic points, but no one gave up worshiping a different God or fully believed in the space travel promise of Earthseed. I was annoyed that Lauren wanted to make a religious cult rather than a commune, but as her main focus was survival, it didn't take up too much of the book.

Wow I regret reading this. Read as an audiobook on a roadtrip at the request of the driver, but still. By the end, both of us agreed that if he'd dedicated the book to Jordan Peterson at the beginning rather than thanking him in the acknowledgements at the end, we could have saved our ears from a lot. 

“No one was hurt, hardly anyone was in the room at the time. He found it funny. Perhaps this is the essence of my country, what I miss most. Those everyday miracles, the poise between normality and chaos. The awe and the breathtaking gratitude for simple things. A place where people say, ‘Allah alone is eternal.’”

These short stories made me even more eager to read a novel by Aboulela. This was the first copy available from my library, and while I struggled a bit with the format, the writing was beautiful and I felt totally immersed in each setting. As someone who lives abroad, the emotions of homesickness and being out of place really hit hard. Maybe I’m too much of a romantic, but after a few chapters of unhappy couples, reading each new sad relationship became tiring.  

“Cinnamon tea, sweet in chipped glasses. Roasted watermelon seeds, the salt dissolving in our mouths, the empty shells falling around like leaves.”

Just wasn’t clicking with the world.