Month: November 2024

Books Read in November 2024

* book group selection | bolded means favorite

Picture Books

*Noodles on a Bicycle by Kyo Maclear and Gracey Zhang
*We Who Produce Pearls: An Anthem for Asian America by Joanna Ho and Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya
*Built to Last by Minh Lê and Dan Santat
*Mama in the Moon by Doreen Cronin and Brian Cronin
*My Daddy Is a Cowboy: A Picture Book by Stephanie Seales and C. G. Esperanza

*The First Week of School by Drew Beckmeyer

To me, this felt like a subpar self-published Kindle book. But the rest of book group really enjoyed it.

Middle Grade

*How It All Ends by Emma Hunsinger
*Island of Whispers by Frances Hardinge and Emily Gravett
*Quagmire Tiarello Couldn’t Be Better by Mylisa Larsen
*Tree. Table. Book. by Lois Lowry
*Puzzled: A Memoir about Growing Up with OCD by Pan Cooke

*The Secret Library by Kekla Magoon

This was great escapist reading after November 5. It’s also a sneaky historical fiction.

Young Adult

*Pearl by Sherri L. Smith and Christine Norrie
*Libertad by Bessie Flores Zaldivar
*The Forbidden Book by Sacha Lamb

*When the World Tips Over by Jandy Nelson

Alas, slog city. And I was looking forward to it.

Young Nonfiction

*Thomas Jefferson’s Battle for Science: Bias, Truth, and a Mighty Moose! by Beth Anderson and Jeremy Holmes
*Side Quest: A Visual History of Roleplaying Games by Samuel Sattin and Steenz
*Narwhal: Unicorn of the Arctic by Candace Fleming and Deena So’Oteh

Grownup Fiction

The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff
The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn
The Girl On Legare Street by Karen White

Miracle Creek by Angie Kim

The thing I want to gush about is a spoiler, so I won’t. But know that I am gushing!

Hiroshima in the Morning by Rahna Reiko Rizzuto

I found this through Pearl, by Sherri L. Smith and Christine Norrie. It’s an engrossing memoir of time spent in a foreign environment, strain on a marriage, and choices the USA made in the early 2000s.

Skin & Bones by Renée Watson

Watson crams so much into this novel. And yet it never feels crammed.

Grownup Nonfiction

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling

One Week in January: New Paintings for an Old Diary by Carson Ellis

This is a very niche book, but I’m the niche, so I loved it. Like Ellis, I also moved to Portland in the early 2000s. Like Ellis, I made friends, ate bagels, and did things. It was fun to notice the subtle nuances that her eight days of journal entries caught, like checking your email and being disappointed when there wasn’t any.

This is a great time capsule view of being mostly unencumbered, creative, and looking for a place in the world.

Central Library Visit

I had a bit of time on a Saturday afternoon (thank you, 9/80 day off) so I stopped by the Central Library to check out how it looked after the renovation. It’s very beautiful and quite different, while retaining the flavor of the previous incarnation.

For one thing: soft seating. This was something I’ve wished the library had ever since I visited the big Seattle Public Library and enjoyed comfy chairs. All the renovated and refreshed libraries will have soft seating. There’s a general feeling that people are less agitated when soft seating appears. They aren’t uncomfortable while sitting on top of the other problems they may have.

Sightlines are very different. In the picture above most of the floor area had stacks that were taller than me. There are a few places where I did find traditional-height stacks in the building, but most of the books on the floor area are housed in bookshelves no taller than 4 feet high. This improves sightlines for all.

Bathrooms. I didn’t take a picture, but the bathroom renovations are top-notch. There are many toilets, each has its own floor-to-ceiling door. The sink area is shared by all. There is no door to the bathroom, so it’s easy to see what’s going on in the bathroom (outside of the toilet cubicles). For people who like a gender-specific experience, there are men’s and women’s restrooms on an upper floor.

Overall, this feels very much like a library that is primed for the future. Nicely done!

I also looked up my family in this 1955 city directory. For some weird reason, my grandparents weren’t listed, but my great great uncle was.

There he is: Anastas, Tom 7505 SW 64th. I looked up “clk” and it means “clerk.”

I find it weird that there are places of employment listed in the city directory (Adriano Ancheta was a baker at the Bohemian Bakery) and home addresses, but no phone numbers.

I also love the name Aloysius Amzurfluh. Do you suppose he had a nickname? Aloysius is Antares’s middle name.

Holiday Tree Lighting in Pioneer Square

I’ve lived in Portland for twenty-three Christmas tree lightings and finally, on the twenty-fourth time, I attended.

While I didn’t love how many times they wanted us to clap for their sponsors (three times over the course of an hour; the sponsor names were prominently displayed around the stage; it felt like the sponsors were very needy) I did enjoy this evening of cheer and signing.

Good old Thomas Lauderdale loves a community sing along, and China Forbs loves to sing. We also got performances by a variety of choral groups.

There was a bouncing ball, and the person in charge of that had a hard job. The lyrics on screen didn’t always match up with what we were singing.

Santa came out to flip a massive light switch after we counted down from 10, and the tree was suddenly alight. I enjoyed that a few of the bulbs started to flash as we got closer to one, before the entire tree was ablaze.

Thanks to Pioneer Square (and their sponsors, of course) for putting together this community celebration.

Paylocity Finally Gives Me My Money Back

In September, I got nervous and accidentally paid my COBRA payment twice. It was the first one I was responsible for (my former company paid for June, July, and August) and I forgot that I had set up autopay. Because of the Labor Day holiday, the autopay hadn’t come out by the third, and I paid via credit card.

When I realized my mistake (about September 6) I called to ask them to refund my money. It was $681.91, so not an insignificant amount.

And thus began my journey with every single customer service agent telling me the check would be to me by a certain period (two weeks, eight weeks, November 15 for sure) and the check never arriving.

By the time the fourth person told me yet a different story, I asked to speak to a manager who did not care at all about my plight, the fact that three previous employees did not have their facts straight, and that this was my fourth phone call. She never said she was sorry. She didn’t believe me when I quoted what I had been told. “I mean, I would have to listen back to the tapes to see if that’s what they said,” she said more than once. I’m quite certain she didn’t bother.

I’m guessing the company doesn’t put any money into training their customer service people. The people who call customer service are not the ones to choose their services; that would be their employer. So why bother making sure the frontline customer service workers have correct information? It’s cheaper to have them say whatever and then it’s the customer who has to waste time calling back.

The fourth person did seem to have the correct story, and the check has arrived. I never want to work with Paylocity again, but I will not be the person who makes that choice. Fingers crossed that our paths will never meet.

p.s. When I paid by credit card, they charged me an extra $20 fee for using credit. On the fourth phone call they told me they wouldn’t be refunding that amount. And of course, I didn’t want to start all over again, so they netted $20. Good job, corporate America.

Reader Comments in Renee Watson’s Skin and Bones

I really loved this book. It was one of my favorites of the year. But this particular copy had a fun surprise.

At one point, Lena, the main character is at church, and a guest preacher explicitly says that if a woman wants a man, she needs to shape up and have a thin body. And a previous reader wasn’t having it.

There was one more comment.

Thanks, previous reader, for leaving your comments (on post-it notes). I left them there for the next reader to find and enjoy.

Zentangles November 20, 2024

More meetings! I like how I carried the curved lines through different sections.

In this one, I was shading the same tangle in different ways.

I can also tell that the above is a homemade tile. Bit of a cutting error at the top.

Here’s another one with same tangle, different shading. More successful, I think.