Lani Cox's Blog, page 3
April 1, 2023
March 2023 Reading Roundup
This month let’s give thanks to our reading brain! I needed a nonfiction fix, so I perused my Kindle library and found Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain by Maryann Wolf. “WE WERE NEVER BORN TO READ. Human beings invented reading only a few thousand years ago. And with…
March 5, 2023
The weird thing about being vegan
The weird thing about being vegan is everyone else’s reaction. After three years of veganism in Thailand, it’s been an interesting journey into a subculture that I’d otherwise be pretty ignorant about. Prior to our decision, we considered ourselves fairly balanced and healthy, but afterwards, we see ourselves as lifelong students always expanding our knowledge…
March 1, 2023
February 2023 Reading Roundup
Apparently, I’m the only person who didn’t read Station Eleven during the pandemic… Published in 2014, Emily St. John Mandel’s post-pandemic world was ahead of its time. And it was rediscovered during Covid-19 as not only brilliant, but thank-god-ours-isn’t-as-bad-as-this-one. Yeahhh, I don’t think I’d have read it exactly that way. I did become even more…
January 30, 2023
January 2023 Reading Roundup
This year I’m going to try something different. Besides books, I’d like to share essays I’ve read from around the web, as well as any novels I stopped reading. When I joined StoryGraph, I found that to be an interesting option, so why not include them as well? The Rook by Australian author, Daniel O’…
January 2, 2023
December & Yearly 2022 Reading Roundup
I read 19 books in 2022, my least amount in years, but that’s okay, I was busy teaching third graders. Ha! But before we look back at this reading year, I wanted to share my December read, The Waxing Moon: Volume 1 of The Areekyan Chronicles Trilogy by my friend Barry S. Marwick. First of…
December 27, 2022
22 things I’m grateful for in 2022
1 // MUSIC This year I returned to bluegrass, a genre that I fell in love with post-undergrad years while living in the American Southwest. It’s been a beautiful reunion, and I happily discovered what my old favorites were up to now: Chris Thile in Punch Brothers and Sara Watkins in I’m With Her. This…
December 3, 2022
November 2022 Reading Roundup
Do you consider yourself a slow or fast reader? I’m a slow one, and I used to use it as an excuse whenever I borrowed books from friends, or whenever they’d ask me what I was reading. But now I’ve decided, it’s not an excuse, it’s how I read, and it’s a badge that I…
October 29, 2022
October 2022 Reading Roundup
A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine is a one-of-a-kind science fiction story that had my intense attention as soon as I started it. It’s possible I needed to be more sober, but I think it’s because the protagonist houses a working memory (that talks back!) of another ambassador inside her mind. Right? What makes…
September 23, 2022
Aug & Sept 2022 Reading Roundup
Hello again and thank you for allowing me to cheat by combining two months into one. August got away from me with frequent trips to Chiang Mai and starting the new school year. I already wrote about it here. Years ago, I got turned on to micro-memoirs through a short online course. Most folks are…
August 1, 2022
July 2022 Reading Roundup
This month I finished two fiction and one non-fiction book. Woohoo! Let’s go! The Night Tiger has all the delicious elements that I enjoy and seek in historical fiction. Written by Malaysian Yangsze Choo, The Night Tiger is set in 1930s Malaysia and is essentially about a missing finger. The story follows a young dressmaker,…
