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Tales from the Cafe

Book Notes Written with a loving hand by kitt some time around 16:42 on 4 August 2024

This is book two of the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series that Mom was reading up to and during our family trip to Japan last year. I had seen the book in her collection and on Libby, and had started reading them.

This book continues Before the Coffee Gets Cold, with the same characters, different stories. Each of the four stories have different lessons, with the arching lesson to understand that by not choosing happiness, you are rejecting the gifts others have given you, in time, in love, in existing. Those who love you want you to be happy. Life lived in regret makes their love and sacrifice in vain.

I enjoyed this book as much as the last one. The stories are quick reads, perfect for a short quiet read before bed.

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Perhaps they were two different people who just happened to look alike. Human memory is a vague thing, after all.

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Shuichi had always been like this. It never mattered how tough the going was, he was the eternal optimist. Plowing on had always been the only the option. And like always, he was being the man who, even after just learning of his own death, could think of the happiness of others.

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But while she did, her usual cool expression was temporarily replaced by the look of someone about to pass a carefully chosen present to a special someone with the hope that it will bring them joy. When people choose presents hoping to delight the recipient, they have in mind that special person’s reaction. And as they do, they often find that time has suddenly got away from them.

The Convenience Store Woman

Book Notes Posted by kitt at 15:07 on 7 December 2022

This was a cute, short book recommended to me by Moazam. It is the tale of Keiko, a 36 year old woman who works in a convenience store in Japan. That she is a high functioning autistic is revealed very quickly in the book, so I don't believe I am giving much away by mentioning that part away. She is content with her life, but feels society's influence by the small jabs and comments made by her family and friends.

Not quite understanding society, Keiko is dependent on the actions of others to navigate the world, copying their styles and behaviours to fit in. When pushed in one direction, she goes. Pushed in another direction, she goes that way. As a result, rather than defining her life with what makes her happy, she follows others to fit in. One can guess where this story goes.

When reading it, I became more annoyed at Moazam for even suggesting this book. The sign of a good book, actually: that I became annoyed at some of the characters.

The ending, however, totally explained why Moazam recommended the book, and redeemed the book completely. Adorable tale, worth the hour or so it'll take to read it.

Feed

Book Notes Written with a loving hand by kitt some time around 23:11 on 22 May 2021

This book, by Anderson not Grant, was indirectly recommended in the XOXO slack, after a fellow attendee, community member, slacker posted about how his kid was setting up a large number of privacy-focused technologies in the home, and how either proud or nervous the parent should be. The consensus was proud, but, hey, was the kid inspired (terrified?) by Feed by M. T. Anderson into being more privacy conscious? Something that could inspire a kid to be more privacy focused? Yes, I will read this book.

The book follows Titus and his friends as they venture off to the moon for a weekend jaunt. Without explaining the various technologies (they just are), Titus and his friends go to a big party, where their neurological connections to the internet, their feeds, are infected. There are repercussions from the infection (gosh, five of them go a whole week without constant distractions), mostly surrounding Violet who is the awkward social outcast of the tale.

While Titus's family is rich and privileged, Violet's is not. The book does a great job contrasting the two of them while exploring privilege, the obliviousness of the privileged, the exploitation of corporations for our attention, the abuses by corporations of the data we provide, the potential disaster of media with the suppression of journalism, the dumbing down of society as a whole even as technology progresses, and the absurdity of mindless consumerism. Violet is the breath of fresh air, the voice of reason in the disaster that is this American culture (and let's be real, a completely believable prediction given the us vs them mentality and anti-science rhetoric that pervades our current culture). As a result, we know that Violet shall be the tragic character in this tale.

Oh, look, she is.

Diary of a Bookseller

Book Notes kitt decided around 19:20 on 21 May 2021 to publish this:

This is the second Books on Books Book Club book that I read. The book is a diary / blog / FB posting collection of experiences of Shaun Bythell, the owner of The Bookshop in Wigtown, Scotland. Having worked in bookstores in high school and all through college, I would like to say, oh good lord, I am having flashbacks with this book. The people that come into the stores, wow. "You had a book out front two, maybe three years ago, it was blue, do you still have it?" Why, yes, YES WE DO, and actually, after a couple years, I did know which book they meant. I worked in bookstores pre-Amazon, and pre-Internet, so, of course my experience was different than Bythell's, but, wow, so yes the same.

I love bookstores. I'm the customer who always buys a book when I visit a bookstore. I'm the customer that straightens the shelves when I browse. I'm the customer who, indeed, enters the bookstore and declares, "I am in my element!" Fortunately, I declare that quietly, so as not to disturb others.

While my bookstore experience was from an employee, not an owner, I relate to this book in ways I wasn't expecting. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

Math Without Numbers

Book Notes kitt decided around 11:19 on 6 May 2021 to publish this:

This book was recommended by another micro.blog reader as a book that describes math without weighing the reader down with, well, numbers. I agree: it was a lovely read. Even some of the book reviews are lovely reads, for goodness' sake!

I mean, start at the beginning with shapes and manifolds. Who knows of manifolds? Ask me about manifolds and I'm going to start telling you about intake manifolds and possibly exhaust manifolds, not mathematical manifolds. And yet, here we are talking about manifolds and shapes and different dimensions, and the whole of me swoons.

And then infinity comes into the story, along with "what's bigger than infinity?" and hooboy. I want to sit Jonathan's boys down and read this book with them, explore the nature of math and show just how amazingly beautiful it is, and how amazingly big it is.

I, too, strongly recommend this delightful, fun read, especially to anyone who thinks (or was told) they suck at math. You likely don't suck, you more likely had an uninteresting, detached teacher who failed to demonstrate the joy of math.

Wintering

Book Notes Written with a loving hand by kitt some time around 10:46 on 5 May 2021

This book came to me circuitously via reader responses to Austin Kleon's post I'm not languishing, I'm dormant.. The two posts were mentioned in S's RSS feed, and I rather enjoy S's article curation, so I read Austin's post, and checked May's book out from the library.

Wow, this is such a lovely book. The story isn't as it seems. It seems to be the tale of a woman with stomach cancer suddenly needing to slow down, because, well, stomach cancer. Isn't that at all, though the misdirection fits so amazingly well, and there are a lot of health issues involved in the telling. The book is about slowing down, but also about growth. I was a little uncomfortable with just how much anxiety May has in certain situations that I either don't have anxiety in or about, or have learned to jump in feet first, the depth be damned. I recognize that discomfort is entirely mine, and I loved noticing it as I read the book.

There are so many beautiful parts to this book that I was recommending it after reading not even half of it. Mm immediately started reading it, and shortly began sending me beautiful quotes from the book. I loved that synergy.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is or has been wintering (the title of a Sylvia Plath's poem about bees). Resting is okay. Promise.

The Eating Instinct

Book Notes Posted by kitt at 12:32 on 15 April 2021

This book was mentioned in another book, though I don't recall which recently-read one it was. The book discusses just how detached we are from our normal hunger signals, to the point we all have some sort of eating dysfunction. From trauma-induced aversions (L's dislike of asparagus and bacon is a strong example similar to the ones listed in the book, where L ate too quickly and choked on both asparagus and bacon at different times, and now "doesn't like them"), to media-induced distorted body images inspire us into often-unhealthy restriction diets, the Eating instinct is a great starting point for "finding your food freedom," a Whole30 tagline.

I enjoyed the book, and immediately went to the freezer, pulled out a dozen cookies, and ate them without guilt.

Lost In Thought

Book Notes Written with a loving hand by kitt some time around 21:26 on 2 April 2021

As a recommendation engine, the XOXO conference group slack books channel does not disappoint with this book. A lovely book about learning and reading for the sake of learning and reading, that the activities don't have to lead to increased wealth or better productivity or higher social status. One can read because she enjoys reading.

Do Nothing

Book Notes Instead of being asleep at 19:32 on 16 December 2020, kitt created this:

Similar to How to Do Nothing, this book (full title is "Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving") is a woman's journey into the realization that, hey, hamster on the hedonic treadmill is not the way to a happy life, and neither is killing ourselves for our capitalist overlords (my phrasing, not Headlee's).

This book goes through Headlee's journey to, not slowing down per se, more like recognizing that all of this attention grabbing stuff is adversely affecting your well-being. I appreciate that Headlee also specifically calls out luck for her success: there are millions of people working hard to be successful, and it's the good luck that springs them over the top into success. The parts where Headlee says, "this is true for me, so it is true for other people," well, I unsurprisingly both noted that and disagreed with them.

Also similar to How to Do Nothing, there's the history of work: how we used to work less, Industrial Revolution changed the economic landscape, labor fought for fewer hours, labor negotiated fewer hours for us, we drifted back into longer hours. And talk about longer hours: Headlee completely dismisses women's unspoken, unregistered, unpaid workload. While reading this book, I wanted to mail her a copy of Invisible Women and ask her to rewrite the book. As a single mother, I was hoping Headlee would not have been as dismissive of the unpaid work women do, as, as above, she has a "this is true for me, so it is true for other people" elements. Maybe she didn't recognize that the overwhelming amount of work she did includes that unpaid work, and that the workload is different for men and women? I don't know.

Battle Hill Bolero

Book Notes kitt decided around 21:37 on 27 November 2020 to publish this:

This is the third (and last at the time of my reading) book of the "A Bone Street Rumba" series. I picked up all three books in the series at once, figuring even if I didn't thoroughly enjoy the series, at least I would have something to listen to on the drive back from Denver. The audio books were recommended to me, and I continue the recommendation: Older's reading is fantastic, which is unusual for most authors, tbh. If you enjoy audiobooks, Battle Hill Bolero is a good choice.

This book continues the end of the previous book, where the cockroach creepers are still around, there are still ghosts being turned into assassins, and the Council still sucks a large amount. Several of the ghosts can see more than a little bit of the writing on the wall (that is to say, Mama Esther), which means we read a number of delightful foreshadowings. We also learn of Carlos' and Sasha's past, their lives, their deaths, and Sasha's previous life husband who is more than a little bit creepy.

The whole book culminates in a Battle of the Good Guys vs the Bad Guys™, where, you know, the good guys win. The corrupt Council is routed, despite incredibly superior numbers, but you can't ever forget the bumbling hero, nor the competent hero, nor even the big-hearted hero, especially when they are some of the main characters.

Great road trip listening material. Worth reading if you enjoy urban fantasy, or Older's works.

"I had a meeting to attend. Two in fact. I hate meetings. Meetings are Satan's way of balancing out all the beautiful things in the world, like music."
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