Kate
This was a fascinating look at “superforecasters” - basically people who are the best at predicting the (near) future. They're not always the people you think though - none of the guys who make their living doing forecasts for the news wanted to be tested so who knows how well they're doing! But a lot of the superforecasters described in this book are regular joes who do this for fun on the side. There's a lot of good advice in here on how you too can become a superforecaster - it's a learnable skill, if you're willing to put in the time and effort to practice. Some of the lessons are good to know for everyday rational thinking as well, and reading this book has made me want to try and put some of these suggestions into practice for myself.
Mr. Panda strikes me as a grumpy guy. I don't know if I'd have waited to see what he was baking either, because he doesn't seem big on conversation. Maybe if I knew penguin was waiting too I'd stay and chat with them, but otherwise sitting silently in Mr. Panda's kitchen isn't my idea of a good time, regardless of what the surprise is. Anyway, the point is that patience reaps rewards and if you can't be patient you won't get a giant donut. But also what if all those bunnies went off and had a much better time doing something else fun, and they didn't even want a giant donut? Maybe they're all gluten free and they would have been waiting for a disappointment! A lot of the animals were pretty rude to Mr. Panda though so maybe they didn't deserve a giant donut after all. Penguin seems like the type to share with everyone regardless of whether or not they deserve it so probably everyone will get some anyway.
This is a great fast read covering a bunch of current thoughts on female sexuality. The history of women as sexual beings is pretty messed up, and always only placed in juxtaposition with men's sexuality. The clitoris was “discovered” and “lost” (read: covered up) so many times over the years (by men - it's harder to know what women thought of this because they didn't get to be in the medicine or write shit down), and still today women's sexuality is seen as more shameful than men's (compare all the disparaging words we have for women who have multiple sexual partners to the positive, encouraging ones for men). So no wonder so many women have trouble seeing themselves as sexual beings, or are so inside their head about what sex is “supposed” to be that they can't enjoy themselves. Society exerts a lot of pressure. And I really liked that Barmak talked about the important of sexual health as a part of health and wellness in general. It's easy to dismiss these problems as first world and privileged because women's sexuality has been dismissed throughout history. And the fact is that men's reproductive and sexual health has been studied so much more than women's, to the extent that stuff is still being discovered and renamed! Barmak tells a story about a women who suffered from infected Skene's glands for years because her doctors didn't believe that the “female prostate” existed (even though they were written about in the literature in the 1800s!!!).
So basically, even though a lot of this book describes some stuff that sounds real bullshitty to me (the word “yoni” was mentioned by white folks a lot), it's kind of understandable when you think that these are modern women who are trying to live in the space between being shamed for being sexual and being shamed for not being sexual (this idea is partially from porn, where multiple orgasms are the norm, and partially from the narrative of the liberated strong feminist woman who is fully in control of her own sexuality - both almost impossible standards to meet when girls aren't taught about pleasure in sex ed and aren't expected to masturbate (and therefore learn about their bodies and what they like) in the same way that boys are)...basically there's a lot of baggage and it's not weird that some women are trying to find their orgasms through some scammy-sounding yoni retreats.
I picked this up because it was on a list of fiction books with deaf characters, but it's also a middle-grade sci-fi which is right up my alley. So like most middle-grade sci-fi action stories, the adults are either not around or something happens to them, forcing the children to take action and be heroic! I wasn't necessarily struck by how realistic it was, but I liked the story well enough. I liked Michael, presumably black but possibly brown (only his dark skin was commented on) and a computer genius. Parker was an alright protagonist, nothing special.
My only real quibble was that the difference between American Sign Language and British Sign Language was shrugged off as comparable to the difference between American and British accents. Unless Emma had been studying ASL while in England, she wouldn't be able to land in America and be able to sign with the kids in her school immediately. They're really different languages.
Otherwise, anything else I didn't love was just aesthetic.
When I got this book in on hold, I just left it in my workroom and flipped through it whenever I was on break. I think it's the best way to read it, just open to random pages and see what you find. I love the gibberish text and how it was laid out. I love that the illustrations are done in pencil crayon.
When I was looking through it as an art book, I had a great time savouring all the little details. How much work must have gone into putting it together, and Serafini's weird imagination. But then I started thinking about it as a travel guide and it freaked me right out. I tried to imagine that I was planning a trip to this world, and I grabbed an encyclopedia to prepare. Everything got real uncanny valley for me pretty quick. I imagine I'd be delighted for a few days, taking in all the weird sights (and I'm sure, sounds and smells that aren't available in book form) and meeting the people who live there. But pretty soon, I'll hunger for something familiar, and everything I see will start to haunt me with its just-not-rightness. I kept thinking about that episode of Futurama where Fry's girlfriend ends up in the future and just can't handle all the new weird stuff that's happening. After a (probably pretty short) while, I'd want to just see or feel or eat or experience something comforting, and it would slowly destroy my psyche that I couldn't. It would be even worse than a place that is totally different from what I'm used to, because this world would tease me with familiarity. I would feel gaslighted by this vacation. I wouldn't be able to trust anything. Oh, ok, that animal looks like a hippo, that's pretty comforting but oh god its two halves are actually connected by wires ok ok I'll just look at this dog, it looks fluffy and normal and NOPE it doesn't have a head it's just a clear orb well that's fine, that's fine, we have clear orbs on Earth too, maybe I'll just have a bite of this juicy looking pear to calm me down AND IT'S BLEEDING THE PEAR IS BLEEDING INTO MY MOUTH OKAY I'm going to sit down here by this lake, lakes are nice and tranquil, though this lake is staring back at me with multiple pairs of eyes, which is unsettling, I think I'll go back to my room and lie down. I won't even be able to take comfort in making love for fear that my partner and I would turn into a crocodile. I mean I can't say I'm not intrigued by the idea of being one half of a crocodile for a short while, but I'd have to know that I could become human again and eat some food without it bleeding on me afterwards. Flipping through the pages of this book got slightly anxiety-inducing after thinking about going to visit. I'd have to get a room in the Earth Town neighborhood where people hold pens to write with instead of grafting nibs to the tips of their fingers and I can eat a banana that is banana all the way through and not partially made of tiny beads. Call me closed-minded but my tolerance for change is low.
Yeah, I needed this. I forget why I put it on hold in the first place, but I'm happy that past-kate was on the ball. This is a hilariously dark book about a guy who learns that when his body dies, his consciousness just moves into the next person over. Jimmy gets pretty adept (and real creative) at killing himself, it's pretty impressive. I'm rooting for him through his blatant disregard for human life.
Great illustrations, and a nice story about a fox who wants a friend. They try to be like a dog so the humans will play with them, but the human games just end up being itchy and no fun. But then Ooko finds a raccoon friend and they have a lot in common (“This is my stick. This is my other stick. And this is my other other stick. WANNA PLAY?”). Extra points for including a lady with hairy legs.
Emily Gravett does the best illustrations. Pete the badger is a serious tidier and none of the other forest animals managed to stop him from leveraging his tidiness into paving over the entire forest. They did all start eyeing him warily when he started collecting all the leaves, and looked real concerned when he started uprooting all the trees, and by the time the concrete arrived I guess they felt there was nothing they could do because they'd been silent the whole time. They were all happy to help Pete put the forest back to normal after he realized he'd made a mistake, but no one spoke out against his actions while multiple mistakes were being made. They all knew there was a problem, but they said nothing! How does Pete have so much power? Does he have a brute squad somewhere that keeps these animals living in fear? Even at the beginning the birds seemed quite happy to have their beaks brushed by Pete, but the fox always looked nervous. Was Pete democratically elected the leader of the forest and now the people aren't sure how to deal with the consequences of the Make The Forest Great Again campaign? Or are they all deferring to him because he has a mental illness and they're scared to scold him? Is Pete Charlie X?? Are the animals all afraid that if they make him angry he'll disappear them with his mind? Did all the animals just move on to another forest while theirs was paved, or were they also huddled in abandoned construction equipment, waiting for Pete to come to his senses? What if he never did? Would the animals have just died on the concrete, thinking about how there was nothing they could do? OR MAYBE Pete is the only animal who has gained some kind of sentience and the other animals just go along with him because they aren't capable of making conscious choices. Maybe they're just looking worriedly at everything Pete's doing because they can sense something is wrong, this is not how the forest is supposed to be, but they can't break out of their compulsion to follow the leader.
Nah. The bulk of the book is cute enough, with different artists illustrating the different situations in which you can say please, but then I read the introduction and realized who the author is. Apparently back when Bill O'Reilly and James Patterson were growing up (in the 50's and 60's), there were rules that everyone followed so life was easy and wonderful. Nowadays there's “confusion”, but if we could all just learn to say “please” America would be great again. Poor guys. Kids are so rude these days, demanding rights for women and minorities and not saying “please”.
Don't underestimate the little guy! Also, maybe respect people's boundaries.
I love the colours in this book, the bright yellow of our protagonist against the green-to-blue-to-purple sea, and the lines of water turbulence around the creatures (and their speech bubbles, sometimes). I like how the size and positioning and cursiveness of the octopus's speech makes it more clear how little its actually speaking to its future lunch as much as about it. I love the endpapers that begin with the hungry denizens of the sea stalking our friend and end with their comeuppances, though I'm not entirely sure all of those animals would want to be eating a tiny fish in the first place (what would a giant clam want with a fish?). I keep flipping through this book to admire the background curlicues and the various contortions of the octopus's tentacles.
When I saw the title I was hoping this book would be more about math. Tadeo's search for the perfect circle was kind of baffling to me because I assumed by “perfect” he meant “perfectly round” but actually he was just talking about human connection. Tadeo travels around the world with his rope, seeing circles he thinks might be perfect but actually aren't...but he never actually says what makes them less than perfect and it's unclear why his mom's hug is the perfect circle other than just being a nice thing to have after exploring the world and not seeing her for a while. It's a nice tale of a kid going off on a magically real/imagined adventure and being happy to come home at the end of the night, but it being couched in terms of perfect circles kind of threw me. The narrative was kind of clunky for me.
Gorgeous illustrations and a cute story. A kid brings some food to a fox and her little foxlets after the adults in the town shun her, and the foxes plant a beautiful garden on the kid's carpet to thank him. Pretty whimsical. It's really the paper cut illustrations and the amazing use of lighting that make this book so beautiful.
I love this booooooook. This is such a great counting book. I am thinking of ways to read this book with a flip chart or felt board to count all the legs. There may be some arguments about what constitutes a “leg” though - does a frog have 2 legs or 4? This could spark some great discussions. Kind of excited to read this one with kids!