A year very full of babies and book writing! I'm making a lot less progress through my planned reading than I hoped, but I think this might be the longest list of "favorite" reads to date. So not too bad a year. And my oldest is reading BOB books on her own, so one day… Read More
Tag: Bookshelf
Books I Hope to Read in 2024
Last year, I read all the books I put on my to-read list! (I last accomplished this feat in 2020, when I had a baby... and a pandemic). Overall, my reading has suffered the predictable consequences of having two children (and not counting all the bedtime picture books). I read 88 books and a little… Read More
My Favorite Books of 2023
It's been a turbulent but mostly good year, with some pileups of new projects, two sisters old enough to play together, and a new job on the horizon for the new year. No novels on my best of the year list, which makes me a little sad, but a lot that I enjoyed on the… Read More
Piecing Together Our Broken Medical System
I loved reading Ilana Yurkiewicz's Fragmented: A Doctor's Quest to Piece Together American Health Care, and I'm glad to have gotten to write about it for National Review. The range of treatments that doctors can offer has gotten more and more advanced. Robotic suturing tools allow surgeons to conduct delicate surgery through minimally invasive laparoscopic… Read More
Why Government Can’t Talk to Citizens
Whose to blame when government services don't work? I got to review an excellent book on the last mile of policy for Deseret. Social studies students learn how a bill becomes a law, but Jennifer Pahlka would argue that you can’t stop the story at the president’s signature. The administrative infrastructure and vendor contracts that… Read More
Greedy Jobs and Genericized Jobs
I got to write about Nobellist Claudia Goldin's Career and Family: Women’s Century-Long Journey toward Equity for Deseret. The whole book is fascinating, but what I wanted to focus on were the factors that made a certain kind of work a "greedy job" (long hours, pay scales quickly with intensity) or a "genericized job" (more… Read More
Books I Hope to Read in 2023
2022 had the most babies and the fewest books read, both in total, and off of my "to read" list for the year. This was predictable. I read 7/11 of my "to read" books, and 85 books/26k pages across the year. Nothing earlier than 1950, either, I think (though Goodreads gets this wrong if I… Read More
My Favorite Books of 2022
This year began with a baby, had a move in the middle, and I'm now getting to discover what normal might look like in our new state. These were my favorite books I read over the course of the year, listed in roughly chronological order. Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth, and Society… Read More
Books I Hope to Read in 2022
I wrapped up 2021 with 10/11 of the books on my reading list finished. (I had ambitions of at least starting to read Peace and Penance in Late Medieval Italy on December 31st, but instead I took a third trimester nap). I can live with that. Past my official list, I read 117 books in… Read More
My Favorite Books of 2021
I read in two homes, across a move. I read mostly library books, across three different states where I have borrowing privileges. I read very very little on planes, between covid and a toddler who spent most of a flight trying to steal my mask off my face. I read aloud, and I do a… Read More