Then and Now #55 (2/10/23 - 8/10/23)
Last Week
This week I had a two-day teaching workshop, which is part of a teaching certificate I'm doing at the University. While it was an intensive two days of kind of non-stop discussion, and reflection, and learning, it was also really rewarding. I already have some new ideas about what to do with my modules in the upcoming semester and I'm also looking forward to the next parts of the certificate, which means having one of the other participants observing me, me observing them, and taking part in what is called "Praxisberatung", which are basically sessions in which we each can present something we're struggling with, which we then discuss as a group. It is quite time-consuming, so I don't know how I'm going to fit it in along with everything else I need to do, but I think I will definitely benefit from it.
The week before was so intensive work-wise that I didn't really get around to posting much and this week was the same. I did manage to force myself into finally getting two podcast episodes up, after skipping it all last week, but that was only because Tuesday was a national holiday xD I also used the national holiday to finally finish Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (which I loved) and found a copy of House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski, which I've been dying to read for ages. This week I'm heading off to Oslo, where I'm meeting my sister for a few days of sister-time, so it'll be another quiet blogging week, but hopefully after that, with the start of the semester, I will get back into a blogging groove as well! Apparently I have already read 90 books this year, though, don't know how that happened...
Posted this week:
- Review: City of Bones by Martha Wells
- Book Central - What We Read #3
- Book Central - 'The Yellow Wallpaper' by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Recommendation
Weirdly enough, I've had this song stuck in my head this week? Don't know where I picked it up again, but I loved it when it came out and I still love it now. Solid Virgo energy to this track.
Mailbox Monday
Two exciting books came in on NetGalley this week!
Fiona and Violet Seng were just children when their family’s Cessna crash-landed in the Washington wilderness, claiming the lives of their parents. For twelve harrowing weeks, the girls fended for themselves before being rescued.
Twenty-five years later, they’re still trying to move on from the trauma. Fiona repurposes it into controversial works of art. Violet has battled addiction and failed relationships to finally progress toward normalcy as a writer. The estranged sisters never speak about what they call their Alone Time in the wild. They wouldn’t dare—until they become the subject of a documentary that renews public fascination with the “girl survivors” and questions their version of the events.
When disturbing details about the Seng family are exposed, a strange woman claims to know the crash was deliberate. Fiona and Violet must come together to face the horrifying truth of what happened out there and what they learned about their parents and themselves. Before any other secrets emerge from the woods.
I enjoyed Elle Marr's previous book The Family Bones, so I jumped at the chance to line up another read by her. I also loved the intrigue behind these two sisters having been lost and found, but now having to face what happened then. I also feel this book might address, in part, my own true crime obsession, which I definitely need to work on a little.
A sweeping inquiry into how the night sky has shaped human history
For as long as humans have lived, we have lived beneath the stars. But under the glow of today’s artificial lighting, we have lost the intimacy our ancestors once shared with the cosmos.
In Starborn, cosmologist Roberto Trotta reveals how stargazing has shaped the course of human civilization. The stars have served as our timekeepers, our navigators, our muses—they were once even our gods. How radically different would we be, Trotta also asks, if our ancestors had looked up to the night sky and seen… nothing? He pairs the history of our starstruck species with a dramatic alternate version, a world without stars where our understanding of science, art, and ourselves would have been radically altered.
Revealing the hidden connections between astronomy and civilization, Starborn summons us to the marvelous sight that awaits us on a dark, clear night—to lose ourselves in the immeasurable vastness above.
I'm not much of a scientist in the technical sense, but I'm obsessed with looking at stars. While some of my family members are actually astrophysicists and know something about what's going on in space, I'm just so happy to live somewhere without too much light pollution so I can finally gaze at the stars again and feel like a small part of something beautiful. Anyway, it's with that sentiment that I'm looking forward to Trotta's book.
And this one, I bought myself!
A young family moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.
Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story—of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.
I've honestly heard so much of this book and then a friend got a copy for Christmas and I had a chance to peek inside at its absolute madness and I just knew I had to get my hands on a physical copy. It took almost a year, but here we are and I can't wait to dive in and be confused. While I'll admit the blurb itself doesn't sound super fascinating, perhaps, this novel is just a meta construction of found manuscripts, faux-editors, and more. I'm just very excited to read it xD
And that's it for me this week! What are you reading? And what have you been up to?
Have a great trip to Oslo! The Alone Time sounds like a fun read.
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