While this month’s books were a bit of a mixed bag (some I loved, some were more meh), I’m most excited about how much I managed to read this month. After feeling like I was in a reading slump for big chunks of this year, it was nice to get into a really serious groove.
My first book of the month, A Woven World by Alison Hawthorne Deming, was not what I expected it to be, but I enjoyed it all the same. I thought it was going to be a more detailed history of various textile processes, particularly those used in making the sardine dress that is referred to in the book’s subtitle, On Fashion, Fisherman, and the Sardine Dress. And while there were little bits of that, it’s really more memoir and reflection on Deming’s family history (her grandmother and great-grandmother were dressmakers) and the small fishing village where she spends her summers. But even though it wasn’t the history I was hoping for, it was still the sort of book I enjoyed, especially because Deming writes so beautifully about material culture.
I learned about The Aesthetics of Excess by Jillian Hernandez from an Instagrammer I follow, and I was so glad I did. Despite being an academic book, it was also an excellent dive into the aesthetic and adornment practices of Black and Latina women, written from Hernandez’s own perspective working as an arts facilitator in Miami. The book covers a range of topics, but I particularly loved the chapter on Nicki Minaj and rococo excess. This book certainly isn’t for everyone, but for anyone interested in art, body adornment, or self-presentation, I would definitely recommend it!
I wish I could say the same about Temple Grandin’s new book, Visual Thinking. I really wanted to like this book because Grandin and I are definitely on the same page when she talks about how American schools support student’s who are visual thinkers, from marking them out as not-smart to removing programs (shop, home ec, art) that visual thinkers gravitate towards, and how that has created a vacuum when it comes to American manufacturing and innovation. But unfortunately, there were two things I just couldn’t reconcile. Despite Grandin’s insistence that visual and verbal thinking aren’t binary, she still presents them as opposing ways of thinking that exist on a continuum. And as someone who is both a visual and verbal thinker, I just couldn’t reconcile that in my brain. The second thing is that at several points Grandin holds Elon Musk up as an amazing visual thinker and innovator, while, quite frankly, I think Elon Musk is a douchebag who got rich using his family money and other people’s ideas while exploiting workers and generally being a dick. Anyone who feels otherwise about Musk definitely looses some points in my book.
After my disappointment with Visual Thinking, I was excited to get my hands on another new book, Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hersey of The Nap Ministry. If you are already familiar with The Nap Ministy’s work, nothing in this book is going to be ground-breaking, but the ideas in the book are so incredibly important culturally that if you haven’t yet read anything about resisting hustle culture and the cult of productivity, this is a must-read. I’ll admit that my favorite part was in the beginning when Hersey writes that she is going to be talking about how she knows rest is important because of her own experiences, and that is enough. This isn’t some book that regurgitates other people’s research on the science of rest. It’s one woman’s impassioned plea, based on her life experience, to do nothing less than change the world, which is needed in so many ways.
October was my birthday month and I treated myself to a trip to one of my favorite local bookstores, where Everything, Beautiful by Ella Frances Sanders. I adored this book. It’s a mix of Sanders illustrations and writing, so it’s a short read, perfect for those who struggle with longer books, but it’s also a luxurious read. I kept encouraging myself to slow down and spend time with the illustrations and the words, which are a meditation on the things Sanders finds beautiful and a history of beauty. Definitely a book I can see myself coming back to again and again when I need a pick-me-up, and one I would recommend to others.
I finished the month with Threads of Life by Clare Hunter, which I intended as counterpoint to the history I didn’t quite get in A Woven World. Overall, I liked this book, though I can’t say I loved it. It covers so much ground in the history of textiles and our relationship to them. There were parts of the book where I was utterly fascinated, parts where I was a little bored, and parts where I wished Hunter could have gone deeper into a particular subject. Still, Threads of Life introduced me to some interesting bits of textile history that I wasn’t familiar with, and I’ve now got a whole list of things I want to dive into deeper. Which is always a positive result of a book for me. (Though if I’m being honest, I wish the book’s bibliography was a little more detailed to aid in my future research.)
And I couldn’t resist sticking one more book into the pile for this month, mine! That’s right, my ebook, Try It & See, is now available in paperback!! I couldn’t be more excited to finally hold my book in my own hands! And since I did have to go through it to get it ready for print, I’m counting it as read for the month!! (And also, going back through it made me realize how proud I truly am of that book!) If you want to grab your own copy, you can find it in my online store!
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