2024 Reading Challenge: Psalm for the Wild-Built

I loved this little novella so much, that I actually wrote a good old fashioned piece of fan mail to the author:

Dear Becky Chambers,

I'm a cultural anthropologist and a 53-year-old professor of Russian and East European Studies at Penn that never has time to read for leisure. It was snowing in Philadelphia today so I stayed in bed and did something I almost never do: I read your wonderful little book, Psalm for the Wild-Built, cover-to-cover on my stomach and under my covers in my pajamas like a teenager. It was the most luxurious thing in the world and it so suited the message of your book.

Anyway, as I fellow author, I always love it when readers reach out to tell me how much they were moved by my words. So I just wanted to do the same.

No expectation of a reply here; just know that your writing reached out on a cold winter's day in Philadelphia and made this sometimes cynical intellectual smile.

In solidarity,

Kristen R. Ghodsee

2023 Reading Challenge: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

One of my favorite books of all time, I just reread it for my class on Anarchism and I can see the influence of Godwin, Goldman, Bakunin, and Kropotkin everywhere. So much to discuss with this book, and I am so excited for teaching my class today. There are days where I just really love my job.

Quarantine Goals: BSG rewatch

So, when I remember the year 2020 one of the things I will add to my list of quarantine achievements is a full rewatch of the rebooted Battlestar Galactica (my third full time through the series!). I loved the original show when I was a kid in the late 1970s and the excellent reboot helped get me through my divorce starting in 2005 when I became absolutely obsessed with the adventures of the Galactica and its crew.

I’m not a huge watcher of TV , but I love good SciFi, and this series is one of my all time favorites (which is why we own all of the DVDs in both English and German). In fact, Admiral Adama (Edward James Olmos) is tied with Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) for my all time most loved fictional ship’s captain or commander.

So say we all!