2018 Reading

There is no excuse for my minimal reading in the fall, especially when I was only working part-time.  Starting in December 2017, I was adjusting to a long driving commute (3 hours daily) and crossed over to podcasts as my primary entertainment. I only read a handful of books this year.

Educated - Tara Westover. Borrowed over Christmas while my mom was reading it. This book is amazing. A young woman raised by a survivalist family in the Idaho mountains leaves as a teenager, against her family's wishes, and starts her education at BYU, then goes on to Cambridge (UK) and Harvard. I struggled a little with the domestic violence hitting to close to home because of my work. It's an incredibly well-written story about a life that is hard to imagine, yet she makes you picture each scene along with her. It avoids the stereotypes and  willful ignorance of Hillbilly Elegy.

Stay With Me - Ayobami Adebayo. A LFL find and finally a break from all DV and death I've been picking up. It follows a Nigerian couple who met in college and struggle to raise children with inherited sickle-cell disease. It won a number of top book of the year awards in 2017 and is the author's first novel.

The Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller who Corrupted Adoption - Barbara Raymond. Also borrowed from my mom. True account of a woman who ran the Memphis-based Tennessee Children's Home Society for thirty years and removed infants and children from their unwitting parents and placed them with adoptive families across the United States

The Fantastic Laboratory of Dr. Wiegl: How Two Brave Scientists Battled Typhus and Sabotaged the Nazis - Arthur Allen. This was a great Christmas gift from my mom. It checks all the boxes - WWII, tells a story I would have never heard of before, and broaches a discussion on the ethics of working, for the Nazis, but to develop a vaccine for typhus.

2018 Podcasts

This is a list of all podcasts I tried out this year. In December 2017, I started a new job that includes 90 minutes each way in the car. After about 3 weeks of saying, "I don't like podcasts" I started giving them a try and found out they're great! Rather than listing them by season or year, I'm going to keep the list alphabetical and build it.

30 for 30 - ESPN's short documentary films are now in podcast form. I never thought I would be so interested in the decathalon or UFC. Expertly produced, and I'd expect nothing less from ESPN. #favorite #sports

Bad with Money - a slightly annoying twenty-something who used to work at Buzzfeed discovers things like CDs and health insurance. Some of the earlier episodes were obnoxious, but her emotional reactions makes her fun to listen to. After the first season of entry level finances, she gets into systemic and intersectional issues and that is pretty great. #finance #progressive #LGBTQ #feminist

Butterfly Effect - a 7 part series that explains how PornHub was invented and how technology is disrupting the porn industry in CA. A little weird, but well researched and told. #longform

Dirty John - a true crime podcast about domestic violence affecting a LA family. I heard great reviews but had no idea what it was about. Well done, but I don't really want to listen to DV podcasts on the way to and from my job dealing with DV cases. #longform #truecrime #DV

Empire on Blood  - a true crime podcast about a black crack dealer convicted in 1995 of double homicide in the Bronx. #longform #truecrime

Heaven's Gate - eerie look into a cult's growth, dominance, and eventual demise. #favorite #longform

Not Each Other  - podcast about gender, society, culture. I had high hopes, but didn't care for the content and it wasn't well-produced so I gave up after a couple episodes. #progressive #LGBTQ

Opinionated Broadscast - rugger teammates from DC started a podcast! PRO: I know one of the two co-hosts, they're funny, they blend super liberal LGBTQ stories with DC politics in a way that makes politics digestible (I'm avoiding all other political podcasts). CON: They've had a bumpy road with tech/sound and a couple episodes are hard to hear or unplayable. They tend to ramble in a way that would probably bother a casual listener, but they mentioned addressing that with 2019 goals. #rugby #progressive #politics #LGBTQ

Serial Season 1 and 2 - Great storytelling and I appreciate the Baltimore ties in Season 1. This is the gold standard for what I enjoy. I keep googling "podcasts like Serial" to find another longer, multi-episode, well-researched story that will last a week or two of commuting. #favorite #longform

Smithsonian Sidedoor - short episodes that draw together 2-3 common story lines related to something that's in a Smithsonian museum. It's okay. #history

Stay Tuned with Preet - He's the former US Attorney for S.D.N.Y. and this should be right up my alley. I tried it twice. Can't do politics in the car, too depressing. #politics

Story Grid - two male hosts discuss how the newer writer is using the more experienced editor Shawn Coyne's Story Grid technique to write a book. It's helpful to think about different, necessary elements in a fictional story - for example, obligatory scenes - that I hadn't considered before. I eventually lost interest because I couldn't related to many of the books they use as examples (often sci-fi). #writing

S-town (Shittown) - a story of small-town intrigue focused on a grouchy, queer old man in Alabama. There's an ongoing conversation about if the journalist respected the subject's privacy enough, and I think it was done tastefully and fairly. Here's an opposing view with spoilers. #favorite

Ted Talk - I've only listened to a few, I need to check out more. #selfhelp

Uncivil - this podcast revisits the Civil War and tells stories about black people that weren't written in the history books. So far, a few episodes take place in South Carolina, including in Beaufort where I work. It also corrects long-standing rumors about enslaved people fighting for the South and where the song Dixie came from. #history #progressive

Welcome to Night Vale - a quirky fiction story about a town in the American southwest where aliens keep arriving and the dog park is haunted. Suspend your disbelief and enjoy the ride as Cecil from Night Vale Community Radio narrates what is going on around town in 20-25 min episodes. There are 100+ episodes with more still being added, so this will keep me going for a while. #longform #scifi

What it Takes - biographies of famous people. Occasionally a little long and dry, but they play a lot of clips from actual interviews with the subject, which I like. Here's the website's summary: Revealing, intimate conversations with visionaries and leaders in the arts, science, technology, public service, sports and business. These engaging personal stories are drawn from interviews with the American Academy of Achievement, and offer insights you’ll want to apply to your own life. #biographies #selfhelp

Why oh Why  - this is the podcast I love to hate. It's a thirtysomething New Yorker trying to give dating advice, and a year into it, her relationship ends. It's entertaining at times, but I also hate her whining, her awkward guests and recorded dates, and live shows. I've listened to 3/4 of it so I'm going to finish, but I don't actually like her. #dating

Writing Class Radio - a female writing instructor leads a memoir writing class in Miami. She provides the prompts and you hear short stories from different members of the class each week. It can get incredibly personal and emotional. #writing #selfhelp #LGBTQ