This is a dystopian future where the water of the world is either gone or salinized by the melting of the poles. It is set in what we would call Finland but in the future has become part of New Qian. The narrator, Noria Kaitio, is an apprentice to the town's tea master, her father. So while there's some sadness overhanging all of this, I love all the water contemplations that are sprinkled throughout the book.
57. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot and read by Cassandra Campbell
It took me a long time to get to this book because I had heard so many podcasts about Henrietta Lacks. If you're in a similar boat, don't wait any longer! It's an amazing story that really can't be told in a short format. There is so much to her life, to her family's life, to the research using her cells, and the way medical research has been done in the US.
58. Peace Talks by Jim Butcher
Holy crude! I've been waiting such a long time to get a new Harry Dresden story. Six years but it felt like a hundred- and only some of that is 2020's fault!! Boy! It's a good one.
59. The AI Who Loved Me by Alyssa Cole
This book was originally just an audiobook with apparently an amazing cast, but it recently came out as a non-audiobook, an eyeball book? Since it had such rave reviews, I had to dig in!!!
60. The City We Became by NK Jemisin and read by Robin Miles
One of my book clubs picked this book as our next read. We haven't read a book during this whole pandemic and this book was super popular but I got a skip-ahead-of-the-line copy of the audiobook from my library. I don't think I would have been into it if I had had to read it in text form and wasn't doing it for the club because the beginning felt too male to me. But once that beginning bit was passed I didn't feel that way any more. I really enjoyed the book. She really does a lovely job personifying the different boroughs, which I admit I don't know much about but my husband is from NYC and he has thoughts! There was one character I wanted to like but couldn't, which made me sad. But seriously, can't like them! Can't!!
I've read 60 books and 49 were by woman, 9 were by men, 1 was an anthology by both women and men, 1 was by a nonbinary author, and 7 1/2 were translations. My year of reading lots of women and at least 12 translations is going well in that I've read mostly female authors, but the world is going through a pandemic and state sanctioned murders in the form of police brutality with a horrible man still at the helm and supported by horrible men in the Congress. In short this year has been really rough. What will this global health crisis leave us with? What changes will we make, not only in terms of the huge inequities of our health system where people of color and the poor (which let's face it- the system works really hard to ensure that people of color, especially black people, are poor) are more than extremely disadvantaged, but also all the other ways in which our society, our systems, actively damage people of color? Only time will tell. But I hope it is a greater sense of community, a need to care for one and another and support each other, not just people with the same colored skin as ourselves, not just people with the same sized wallet as ours. I hope all of this isolation leaves us wanting to lift each other up and not hold others down.
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