Reading Round Up for November 2020

This month’s Reading Round Up offers a collection of some of the best articles I read, covering topics including LIST Plus a list of my own written work. Get those tabs ready!

My Writing

Short fiction spotlight: Must-Read Speculative Short Fiction: October 2020

Book review: “From Darkness” by Kate Hazel Hall

Book review: “When No One Is Watching” by Alyssa Cole

Book review: “Peace Talks” and “Battle Ground” by Jim Butcher

Book review: “Piranesi” by Susanna Clarke

Book review: “The Only Good Indians” by Stephen Graham Jones

Other Works

“On Happiest Season & Coming Out” by Christina Orlando: “It was the first time I remember experiencing direct shame around who I was kissing. I knew I was queer, my friends knew, and it wasn’t an issue amongst my peers. But I had grown up with a mother who used to cover her eyes and say “ew” whenever two men kissed on television, and a Fox News-loving father who used to joke that if my best friend and I were gay, he could be like Dick Cheney (a conservative politician with a queer daughter, who later became estranged from some homophobic members of her family)—all he’d have to do was shoot someone and make them apologize for it.”

“About That Wave of Anti-Racist Bestsellers Over the Summer…” by Katherine Morgan for LitHub: “I had multiple customers ask me why their particular order of White Fragility was now backordered, even though it had been in stock when they originally added it to their cart. “Oh, it’s because white people saw a Black man die at the hands of police, and even though Black people have been talking about police brutality for years, it took seeing him take his last breath as that officer kneeled on his neck before many white people felt as though it was time to finally have that talk,” I wrote as a reply. Then I took a deep breath, erased that message, and simply responded, “It’s a popular book right now.””

“A Man of the Grandest Design: Architect Paul R. Williams” by Mike Landers for Built: “Duality. Balance. Design. These were the guiding principles in the life of one of the greatest Americans you’ve never heard of. Paul Revere Williams was one of the most important and prolific commercial architects ever to hit the drawing board. As a black man in early 20th-century America, he encountered constant reminders of racism and prejudice that threatened to bar his success, but Williams didn’t see these threats as insurmountable walls. Besides, by trade, the man drew and sketched his own walls.”

“Sia, Stories About Autism Should Center Autistic People. Period.” by Alaina Leary for Refinery29: ““Nothing about us without us” is a common saying in the disability community that traces back to South African disability rights activists in the 1990s. It’s more than a phrase, it highlights how common it is for disabled people to be excluded from conversations about our own civil rights, healthcare, and media representation. Parents of disabled children often carry more weight as experts on disability than disabled people do, and most film and TV roles for disabled characters cast a nondisabled person to portray them.”

“On Not Meeting Nazis Halfway” by Rebecca Solnit for LitHub: “There’s also often a devil’s bargain buried in all this, that you flatter and, yeah, respect these white people who think this country is theirs by throwing other people under the bus—by disrespecting immigrants and queer people and feminists and their rights and views. And you reinforce that constituency’s sense that they matter more than other people when you pander like this, and pretty much all the problems we’ve faced over the past four years, to say nothing of the last five hundred, come from this sense of white people being more important than nonwhites, Christians than non-Christians, native-born than immigrant, male than female, straight than queer, cis-gender than trans.”

“How a Deadly Police Force Ruled a City” by Shane Bauer for The New Yorker: “Three police officers in an unmarked pickup truck pulled into the parking lot of a Walgreens in Vallejo, California, responding to a call of looting in progress. It was just after midnight on June 2nd, and a group of people who had gathered around a smashed drive-through window quickly fled in two cars. Sean Monterrosa, a twenty-two-year-old from San Francisco, was left behind. As the police truck closed in on Monterrosa, Jarrett Tonn, a detective who had been with the Vallejo police force for six years, was in the back seat, aiming a rifle. No one told Monterrosa to freeze or to put his hands up, but he fell to his knees anyway. As the truck came to a stop, Tonn fired five rounds at Monterrosa through the windshield.”