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Wednesday reading — bugs and baseball
Dec. 16th, 2015 09:31 pmWhat I've been reading
I read Bug in a Vacuum, based on some list of interesting picture books that were published this year. This is definitely the best picture book published this year that illustrates Kubler-Ross's five stages of grief through the experiences of the titular bug in a vacuum. I'm not even sure what kids it would appeal to—aside from myself as a kid, who loved books that had jokes aimed at grown-ups hidden in the text of the illustrations, because I was reading at the level of a grown-up and wanted to find my place in that grown-up world—but it's beautifully-executed enough I have total faith that kids will love it somenow.
I read Imaginary Fred, from, IIRC, the same list. It's a pretty cute picture book about imaginary friends and how they befriend kids who will abandon them for real friends, until the titular Fred's kid makes a friend who is just as unwllling to abandon their own imaginary friend, and the imaginary friends become an imaginary couple.
I read Little House, Long Shadow: Laura Ingalls Wilder's Impact on American Culture. I really would have appreciated more from this book and was disappointed with how it meandered through the middle with uninsightful bits of analysis of Little House fans on the internet talking about how they felt about the books before in the last chapter really trying to dive into politics but without enough space left to really dig into it.
I read The Grind: Inside Baseball's Endless Season and was super jealous of Nats fans for having sources this good for their RPF. It's definitely an insider/booster's view of the Nats clubhouse in 2014, and even I, who don't directly follow the Nats, am kind of skeptical of the rosy view of Matt Wlliams's management on account of I have only heard negative things, but the day-to-day perspective is pretty priceless. A lot of my feels about the Nats are based on the Tyler Clippard/Drew Storen fic, which is super hot, incidentally.
I read Bug in a Vacuum, based on some list of interesting picture books that were published this year. This is definitely the best picture book published this year that illustrates Kubler-Ross's five stages of grief through the experiences of the titular bug in a vacuum. I'm not even sure what kids it would appeal to—aside from myself as a kid, who loved books that had jokes aimed at grown-ups hidden in the text of the illustrations, because I was reading at the level of a grown-up and wanted to find my place in that grown-up world—but it's beautifully-executed enough I have total faith that kids will love it somenow.
I read Imaginary Fred, from, IIRC, the same list. It's a pretty cute picture book about imaginary friends and how they befriend kids who will abandon them for real friends, until the titular Fred's kid makes a friend who is just as unwllling to abandon their own imaginary friend, and the imaginary friends become an imaginary couple.
I read Little House, Long Shadow: Laura Ingalls Wilder's Impact on American Culture. I really would have appreciated more from this book and was disappointed with how it meandered through the middle with uninsightful bits of analysis of Little House fans on the internet talking about how they felt about the books before in the last chapter really trying to dive into politics but without enough space left to really dig into it.
I read The Grind: Inside Baseball's Endless Season and was super jealous of Nats fans for having sources this good for their RPF. It's definitely an insider/booster's view of the Nats clubhouse in 2014, and even I, who don't directly follow the Nats, am kind of skeptical of the rosy view of Matt Wlliams's management on account of I have only heard negative things, but the day-to-day perspective is pretty priceless. A lot of my feels about the Nats are based on the Tyler Clippard/Drew Storen fic, which is super hot, incidentally.
