Reading List: Chlorine Gardens

December 9, 2019

I don’t have much time today (it was bound to happen) but I can still throw something out there as part of the reading list. We’re almost there. Tomorrow is Human Rights Day.

Chlorine Gardens
by Keiler Roberts

Dealing with pregnancy, child-rearing, art-making, mental illness, and an MS diagnosis, the parts of Chlorine Gardens’ sum sound heavy, but Keiler Roberts’ gift is the deft drollness in which she presents life’s darker moments. She doesn’t whistle past graveyards, but rather finds the punch line in the pitiful.

“If the Good Lord made me bipolar on purpose, it must be because he’s (she’s? they’re?) bipolar. That’s the only way to explain how consistently great and terrible His creations are. Now that I’ve figured that out, maybe I do believe in God. I can imagine creating cancer on my darkest day, and then the Grand Canyon to make up for it.”

technology

On Mandatory Tutoring in the Office

A while ago, I was discussing with a good friend of mine, and we were talking about mandatory tutoring. You know? That situation when the company decides a group of people needs a certain skill, pays for a consultant to deliver the training, and then

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books and literature

Tracy Chevalier’s Remarkable Creatures

You might say that this is a historical novel about two pioneer women hunting for fossils on the famed beach of Lyme, one of them being paleontology legend Mary Anning and the other being the less famous fossil hunter and collector Elizabeth Philpot.You’d be wrong,

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books and literature

Cixin Liu’s Hold Up the Sky

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