It's nearly the end of October as I write this and I'm plodding slowly toward a reset. 

This year started with my first trip to mainland China (Chengdu), my first visit to Vietnam (Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City), and my first time in Hong Kong. Never have I had such a remarkably easeful time traveling internationally. I think the combination of an extended travel window (nearly 20 days), local and familial guides, and a substantial time disconnected from work was the "magic" needed. Of those three factors, I think the second was the most important.

In China, I met my future parents-in-law and my fiancé's best friend. We based travel in Chengdu, an amazing city that's connected to a great region. Chengdu did suffer from "sun behind the smog" periods, but all-in-all the city is dazzling – visually, artistically, and aurally. The last is due to the incredible density of electric vehicles. Chengdu streets, at busy periods, are a quiet hum. I was reminded of how quiet New York City can be when you get deep into a neighborhood, it's like that but everywhere in Chengdu.

Every time I mention visiting China to someone, they remark at how they'd likely eat too much! No. Such. Thing. The food, and food culture, in this UNESCO City of Gastronomy, exceeds expectation and the smells beg you to try something new, something barely visible in a sea of chili peppers… It felt like we could go anywhere and find amazing food that was priced well, served with polish and care, and told the story of the Sichuan region.

The city is, like all cities, in a constant state of flux. The Chengdu Sports Centre, above, opened in 1991, hosted sport for two decades, and then closed to transform into an archeological site. Chunxi Road developed from a 1920s commercial block with arcades into an almost obscene celebration of commerce, retail, and transformation. However, many buildings from earlier periods have been preserved and enhanced such that one can walk several hundred meters and go from modern glitz to republican-era structures.

Chengdu has a depth of culture and history that are sometimes in opposition to modern development pressures, but often embraced and enhanced as national cultural treasures. From monasteries to parks to Du Fu Thatched Cottage, it's easy to slip out of the big city flow and into quieter, more reflective spaces. As I wandered through the park that surrounds Du Fu Thatched Cottage I connected the reverence of that place to Thoreau's cabin at Walden Pond , which is around a half hour drive from my home in Massachusetts. Both were identified by their respective national government organizations as important national heritage sites in the early 1960s and preserved thereafter. Both writers thought deeply about place, habit, connection, and more but in very different times. Du Fu was active in the later part of the 700s, where Thoreau was active 1100 years later. 

Outside of Chengdu, to the north east, is ‎⁨Sanxingdui Museum⁩ in ⁨Guanghan. I wish I could write more eloquently about the site, the museum, and the cultural importance of all of it. 2400 years before Du Fu, circa 1700 – 1150 BC, during the Bronze Age, a unique culture developed in the region. The museum displays an incredible bounty of artifacts, interpretations, and historical context of the exploration of this unique culture/civilization. I could have spent more hours at the site and the new exhibitions, expanding into the 2023 new building, are presented so well.

Sichuan has such a great beating heart of culture, complexity, and connection to natural spaces. Beyond what I noted above, giant pandas are bred and supported in the region (so you can make a day trip to see them, if they decide to be mobile…). I really enjoyed Chengdu and I hope to explore more in western Sichuan in the future.

For many years I've been a subscriber of the Bangor Daily News and that has continued even after I've moved out of Bangor. The BDN is a robust, local paper that manages to cover the state of Maine (and it's many regions) quite well. I subscribed when I lived in Bangor as I wanted to support local journalists, including Emily Burnham, and I read most of the content via RSS.

In 2024, I read RJ Heller's brief review of Adopting Anton in the BDN. The author, University of Maine at Augusta (UMA) emeritus Robert Klose, sought to adopt in Ukraine in the early 2000s and grow his family. As graduate of UMA who is interested in adoption I immediately added this tight, focused memoir to my to-be-read pile. Adopting Anton is primarily set in Ukraine, chronicling the challenges and joys of international adoption. The Russian war of aggression in Ukraine was two years deep, with Russian forces advancing and international funding (via the US) delayed, when this book was published in 2022.

Robert recounts how he and his first adopted son, Alyosha, came to the conclusion that they'd be okay to grow the family through a second adoption. Working through an adoption agency, single-father Robert prepares for the vetting, travel, red tape, and more… then had one more thing to worry about: the terrorist attacks of 9/11, which shut down air travel and threw the air transport world into disarray. On busses, planes, trains, and automobiles, across states, countries, cities, and towns, the reader is pulled in and alongside Robert as he is propelled through the complexity and physical spaces he must inhabit in order to achieve his objective. 

I loved how we are brought into the journey and how Robert describes the whiplash between the poles of control and surrender. Particularly touching is the support of communities all along the way, but especially in the home town of Anton, the orphanage, and the agencies. To say "it takes a village" is understating the work and investment of time and care.

A lot has changed in the twenty years since Anton came to the United States. After the recent war started, Ukrainian refugees made it to Maine and were resettled officially and through community networks. Mainers and Bangorians volunteered to aid Ukrainians "in theater" as they traveled closer to the conflict zone. Now, with the current US Presidential administration, it's hard to tell what's next for Ukraine and Ukrainians both in the US and around the world. International adoption is a fraught thing and I have friends who are strongly against it. It seems likely that in the near future, Ukraine will face signifiant resource and familial challenges that could drive international adoption issues.

Adopting Anton is well written, cohesive, emotionally powerful, and I recommend it. The book can be obtained, signed, through The Briar Patch in Bangor, ME. A small, independent, and passionate bookstore, The Briar Patch is operated by a great friend and all around excellent person Gibran Graham. Gibran and I met through Twitter through a "tweetup" over a decade ago and he is a standout in the community. I miss curling with him and the crew that formed through Twitter during that time.

This year has been full of a continued wrestling with the positives and negatives of social media, particularly Instagram. For the past three years, during the spring and fall semesters, I would log out of Facebook and Twitter and save my brain from both of those social media networks — knowing full well that having excessive "content" would cause me to waver from my school commitments. However, I would remain logged into Instagram. At the end of August 2025, I'm realizing just how much time has gotten sucked into that endless scrolling blackhole. I resent my own weakness for the dopamine scroll.

That resentment is moderated by some of the good that comes from discovering new connections and new ideas through social media. I don't think I would have been connected to Ethan Tapper through a blogroll or news article, but I was through Instagram's algorithm. Ethan is a Vermonter and a forester who has found a way to communicate his vision of involved, active, and restorative environmentalism (roughly) through short form video and his book, How to Love a Forest, published in 2024.

How to Love a Forest takes the reader through a forest from top of the crown to deep in the ground. Ethan explains why his views on forests have changed over the years (away from a prescriptive, protective approach and toward an expansive, active involvement approach) and how much humanity needs to change in order to ensure the long term survival of our species and the ecosystems on which we depend. Over ten chapters, I was introduced and reintroduced to the minute and large parts of a forest, their interactions, the mysteries of how plants communicate, the opportunity to make a difference, and the beauty of what was, is, and can be. 

I can tell this book was a challenge to write and shape into a cohesive, clear narrative. The ideas and actions are plainly shared, at times, and then bulked out with beautifully visual language that transports the reader a Vermont hillside. The simplicity of the key messages occasionally get lost in repetition and rework of language. There is more that Ethan can share as his writing skills develop further and his message strengthens and deepens.

This book constitutes book eleven of my ten book reading commitment for the summer. It's a tight book, less than 220 pages, and complemented Things Become Other Things as memoirs that share a bigger idea or a call to action.

Yesterday evening I apparently reached the point in Hammajang Luck where all the planning and preparation for the heist of the millennia was complete, the top of the roller coaster, and all that was left was action, action, action before denouement. In Makana Yamamoto's debut, Edie returns home after a stint in prison and finds that in the far future at Kepler Space Station corporate power has grown even stronger, distorting the lives of regular people.

Edie finds that regular employment is impossible to find when you've made it onto the blacklist of Joyce Atlas, the trillionaire leader of Atlas Industries and beneficiary of that concentration of corporate power. Confronted by the impossibility of quitting crime, Edie is recruited into the plan for the heist of a lifetime which just so happens to target the same individual who blacklisted them – Joyce Atlas.

Christina at All She Wrote Books suggested this potent exploration of motivation and chosen family set in a sci-fi heist setting. I quite enjoyed the set up and execution of the heist, which was complicated and required many different characters to deliver on their expertise. Some of the characters were not deeply developed. I think there's room to give more heft to each, perhaps that's planned for future stories in the author's universe. As a summer read, Hammajang Luck delivers a reasonably paced caper story with queer characters, strong influences of Hawaiian culture, and a little spicy content.

If you're interested, take a look at The StoryGraph's entry for the book.

I had set myself a reading goal of ten books over the summer and this book makes a nice, even ten. Technically, there are several more weeks in summer here in the northern hemisphere so I may exceed my target!

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I'm midway through a two week break between jobs and, somehow, my reading pace has slowed considerably. If I step back and look at the situation, the primary cause for the slowdown is a confluence of multiple factors: a relaxation of constraints, new commitments, and the winding down of summer activities. I'm making pretty short work of my current read — it's relatively lightweight and an action story, so it flows quickly.

The summer activities have been anchored in my future parents-in-law staying with us for the summer. Earlier this year, they told my fiancée that they wanted to visit and escape the heat of southern China. After a bit of negotiation, they flew in a week after my graduation in May. It's very hard for me to put into words the whirlwind of emotions that has accompanied their visit, but most of those emotions have been good — the overwhelming preponderance of them are great! Hosting long-term guests is hard work and it's been harder for my fiancée, because I'm monolingual. I'm supremely grateful that we've been able to spend so much time together.

The time has overlapped with an uptick in parent-care for me. While not as substantial as it could be, I've spent some time attending to my parents' transport needs. One of the lessons of my forties is that our time together is short. I knew this in my thirties as I worked through my undergraduate and graduate programs, but I sure didn't internalize it well. The arrow of time does not reverse, though, so I just have to make better choices now.

Since I'm not working, I have fewer constraints on my daily schedule. The practical impact of that is that bad habits can explode out of small and into large time consumers. Specifically, this time around, it's short-form video. I have to take very conscious steps to drive short-form out of my life as assertively as I can. Otherwise, I will lose hours into nothingness. Helping me in this effort is the external works of folks contributing to Craig Mod's "The Good Place", which is part of his Special Projects community.

In the coming week, I'll be finishing the current read and finishing the "prep for work" book that I picked up yesterday from the bookshelf. The latter is about preparing for the first 90 days of a new job or role and how to make best use of that time. I'm early into reading it, but it was part of Harvard Business School's "So you're graduating, here's some stuff" gift basket. 

If I write more often, will it become easier?

Sticking in the queer, debut, and historical fiction Venn diagram overlap, I consumed Florenzer with unusual vigor. This book weaves the stories of Leonardo, Lorenzo de' Medici, and Francesco Salviati from youth through their thirties set in the bustling hub of commerce and art of Florence, Italy in the 1400s. Respectively, the primary characters are an artist and genius, a banker, and a priest. Each have complicated familial, political, and religious challenges and their stories overlap and influence each other repeatedly over the span of twenty years.

I don't often read historical fiction and I've never read about Leonardo's early years as an apprentice and then master painter. I barely knew about the immense wealth of the Medici family or the political intrigue that sprawls across Italy and the Vatican. Even though the book is fictional, I think the author, Phil Melanson, has anchored this novel in historical reality in a way that translates so well for a modern reader.

While the pile of names can be confusing at times, there's a helpful guide at the front of the book. The language ranges from very formal (and a bit Italian) to relaxed. I looked up a number of words as I went along, which is unusual for me, and also very exciting. Always one should be reading about and learning through new words!

Honestly, I didn't expect to read so much queer inflected literature this summer, but I've been loving it. A recap, nine books out of ten — getting close and I only have a couple weeks before my free time collapses:

• States of Emergency
• Things Become Other Things
• A Different Kind of Power
• The Emperor of Gladness
• The Alice Network
• Mothercare
• What My Bones Know
• The Lilac People
• Florenzer

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Milo Todd's debut novel, The Lilac People, is set in Germany before and after World War II. That timeframe evokes a lot of feelings in the queer community, but I didn't realize how potent those feelings would become when informed through a historical fiction trans and queer story. In dense, powerful prose, Milo conveys the depth of depravity the Nazis embodied, the moralistic drivers in the victorious Americans, and the resilience and joy of the queer and trans folks who existed and persisted.

I found the primary character, Bertie, to be so beautifully whole. From his pre-War joy in Berlin, tempered with fear for the future, Bertie's actions and words speak to the excitement of freedom to be oneself and associate with the best chosen family. The romance of Bertie and Sofie was suffused with longing, the dance, the headiness, so artfully described. I think that most of the main characters were written exceedingly well with clear voices. One voice that rang out is Karl, who tells his story in an absolutely brilliant chapter in his own distinct voice. 

This book does not just tell the story of Bernie, Sofie, and Karl. It's impressively researched and calls upon the remarkable archives that tell the story of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld and the Institute of Sexual Science (which was nearly totally destroyed by the Nazis). This book, along with Secret City and it's description of the Lavender Scare, remind me of how much effort, strength, and time it takes to make progress as a society around queer and transgender rights and how fast that can be reversed during reactionary times. Unfortunately, we're in a period like that right now.

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I watched the development of podcasts in the early 2000s and spent a lot of those years avidly consuming independent and mainstream audio. When This American Life hit the podcast aggregators, I was a subscriber. Through This American Life, I got to know the name Stephanie Foo.

In 2022, Stephanie Foo published What My Bones Know a memoir about complex PTSD, in which she incorporated excellent science writing along with incisive commentary about race, media, and more. I read the book as soon as it came out, marveling at its structure, Foo's strong and unique voice, and the resonant themes. During 2020-2025, many books I read dealt with trauma, but none so completely as this one.

Cambridge Public Library hosted Stephanie Foo recently. I attended her talk, after my sister shared the information about it with me, and brought my hardback copy for her to inscribe. Like on NPR, the talk was incredibly potent and the collected audience honored Stephanie's presence. I was a blubbering mess by the time I requested she sign my book. I struggled to communicate to her just how impactful her writing is and why inscribing the book to my mother, Linda, was so important to me. 

If you get a chance to listen to the audio book of this memoir, you should! The book is so important and I recommend it wholeheartedly, for those who are identified as complex PTSD folk or, well, pretty much anyone!

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I didn't know of Lynne Tillman until I watched her discussion with Craig Mod as part of the book tour promoting Things Become Other Things. After hearing Craig's glowing recommendation of Lynne as a writer, I ended up with Mothercare on my to-be-read list. (I need to get better at logging where these recommendations come from…)

Mothercare's subtitle, "On Obligation, Love, Death, and Ambivalence", is not subtle and for good reason. In around 160 pages, the hard reality of moving from adult to adult caregiver to a parent is laid bare in a blend of understated to vivid stories. I was struck by how deftly Lynne integrated childhood recollections about her family dynamics into the account of how her mother so quickly moved toward dependence on family and caretakers and the following decade.

I found this book to be pointed, potent, and so very timely. While my parents have not suddenly changed, as they age there are fits-and-starts toward an unpredictable, but fully predictable, crisis. As a family, we know there will be surprises and hard challenges ahead. This book, with its very humanizing depiction, helps prepare not for the tiny, technical, tactical responses but for the broad, emotional, and personal.

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The Alice Network, by Kate Quinn, was quite a turn from the prior several books. A thoroughly adventurous set of protagonists make their own way — one in war and one in escaping the constrictive life of a "proper girl". The two main characters are visited in alternating chapters, and across a time gap of around thirty years, as their paths eventually intertwine. The character development is strong, the sense of place in history is even stronger, in this story set in the time of the Great War (1914-1918) and post-World War II (1947-1949).

This book was recommended to me by my sister Kelly and is in the to-be-read pile of my sister Kartika. I had to put this book down multiple times to breathe, steady myself, and confront discomfort from some of the very visceral scenes. I couldn't recommend this book to young readers, but I heartily recommend it for older readers who seek adventure, complex situations, and historical liveliness.