Books List - 2023

 Ordered by most recently listened to, first.

Audiobooks 

1. Queued:
1. All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries) (2017) - Martha Wells
2. Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole (2022) - Susan Cain
3. Conundrum (1974) - Jan Morris
4. Atomic Habits (2018) - James Clear
5. Come As You Are - Emily Nagasaki
6. Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere (2023) - Maria Bamford
7. Angela Davis: An Autobiography (1974) - Angela Davis
8. Making It So: A Memoir (2023) - Patrick Stewart
2. Finding Me (2022) - Viola Davis
   
3. The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times (2022) - Michelle Obama
   
4. The Princess Diarist (2016) - Carrie Fisher
1. This was the 2nd time listening (first listen was in 2017)
2. We still miss you Carrie
   
5. Cry of the Kalihari (2019) - Delia & Mark Owens
6. Bad Feminist (2014) - Roxane Gay
7. Meaty (2018) - Samantha Irby
8. Wow, No Thank You.: Essays (2020) - Samantha Irby
9. Quietly Hostile (2023) - Samantha Irby
10. We Are Never Meeting in Real Life (2017)  - Samantha Irby
11. The Late Americans (2023) - Brandon Taylor
12. The Menopause Manifesto: Own Your Health with Facts and Feminism (2021) - Dr. Jen Gunter
1. DASH Diet
2. High fiber cereals: Kashi Go Original cereal, Kellogg's All Bran, and Post Foods Uncle Sam
13. The Mimicking of Known Successes (2023) - Malka Older
14. This Is All Your Fault (2020) - Aminah Mae Safi, with narration by Kyla Garcia
1. Light summer fare
2. Jo pockets a gun to later return, but we never hear about it again 🤔 Violation (intentional?) of Chekhov's gun?
3. Someone mentioned this seems similar to movie Empire Records
15. Africatown: America's Last Slave Ship and the Community It Created (2023) - Nick Tabor
1. "Promises are like pie crust...made to be broken"
16. Resistance: A Songwriter's Story of Hope, Change, and Courage (2020) - Tori Amos
17. Calypso (2018) - David Sedaris
1. KAPITAL clothing (Japan)
18. Happy-Go-Lucky (2022) - David Sedaris
1. Two candles worth buying: 1) Cire Trudon, and 2) Diptyque 
19. From Cradle to Stage: Stories from the Mothers Who Rocked and Raised Rock Stars (2017) - Virginia Hanlon Grohl
20. Victory City (2023) - Salman Rushdie
1. Deeply impressed by its breadth and depth
2. Pampa Kampana
21. The World's Worst Assistant (2022) - Sona Movsesian
1. Pochacco (ポチャッコ, Pochakko) represents Sona's favorite Sanrio character
   
22. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (1970) - Judy Blume
23. Crying in H Mart: A Memoir (2021) - Michelle Zauner
1. The "H" in "H Mart" stands for Han Ah Reum (한아름), a Korean phrase meaning "one arm full of groceries". This phrase translates more literally to "spreading both arms to cover" or "armful". (via: Wikipedia)
2. Grandmother's last words to her: "You used to be such a chickenshit," she said. "You never let me wipe your asshole." (note, previously in the text: "But I was chiefly afraid of one particular weapon she proudly brandished--the ddongchim. Ddongchim literally means poop needle. It involves clasping your hands in the shape of a gun, index fingers pressed together to create a needle used to penetrate an unsuspecting anus. As horrifying as it sounds, it's a common cultural thing, something akin to a Korean wedgie and not some unique form of sexual assault. Nevertheless, it scared the shit out of me.")
3. Mother's last word: "Pain"'
4. Korean beauty standards: Double eyelid, small face
5. Pronunciation of Willamette (wil-AM-it)
6. Descriptions of food and reference to Maangchi)
24. Spare (2023) - Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex
1. "Wales" nickname
25. Room to Dream (2018) - David Lynch and Kristine McKenna 
1. "David likes dead plants"
2. "And Dave...I am blessed with good reception" - Paul, an elderly cashier Lynch loved at a drugstore coffee shop on Cherry Street
3. Ate lots of grilled cheese or egg salad sandwich or tuna salad sandwiches
4. Wore three neckties
5. Favorite wine: Chateau Lynch-Bages
6. Sparky the dog
7. Called Kyle MacLachlan "Kale"
8. Jenny Lynch: "...the thing he does with his lip when he's talking out loud...."
9. Three subjects triggered him to speak uncharacteristically passionately: 1) Tree deforestation (angry, swearing); 2) High School (angry, swearing); Transcendental Meditation (proselytizing, earnest). First two: jarring; snaps from mellow reminiscing to intense. Third was fine, just awkward.
26. The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music (2021) - Dave Grohl
1. Champagne & KFC post-show 
2. "...[Y]ou are only as happy as your unhappiest child"
3. "To really see America...drive it mile by mile"
4. Coincidences chained together to give Grohl an arc into rock and roll stardom...he was willing and able to take all of them as they happened (to be fair, living in strangers houses on a $10/day per diem) 
27. Filthy Animals (2022) - Brandon Taylor

1. Madison, Wisconsin stories
2. Well crafted interactions

Using the Libby app (via Overdrive).

E-Books

1. Gender Queer: A Memoir (2019) - Maia Kobabe
2. A Fish Has No Word For Water: A punk homeless San Francisco memoir (2022) - Violet Blue
1. "I came to learn that people show you who they really are when they believe they can behave without consequence"
2. Blue Front Cafe
3. "At that moment, I thought that trauma only exposes who you have always been"
4. "... religion radically decentered him from the necessary human mechanisms of accountability and empathy. Those who are hated are always more human than those who hate them."
5. "My mother abandoned me because I was a witness."
6. "I felt lighter, but also more in my own skin. I had made a marker for the night's trauma, planted a flag to show I'd been there and conquered it, and stepped through. Goodbye old me. Goodbye scared little girl: I was sending her away to live in her new home; the stories of the past."
7. "I looked at the carrot in my hand. I admonished it, 'No more!'"
8. "People occasionally checked in on my carrot, and I appreciated that. We were both well, thank you."
9. "We were all homeless. Walking the ruins of San Francisco's dreams."
10. "A fish has no word for water, I guess." - Rogue
11. "Like, with my mom, I think she's so wrapped up in how ashamed she is about drugs and sex, and stuff she's done, and how trapped she is in all these lies, she's always in these relationships where guys beat on her and yell at her. I think she thinks she deserves it."
12. "Ashley didn't judge me, and I thought that we all try so hard to make family what we wish it could be, and it wasn't fair that we only got what we could steal from life in moments like this."
13. "Ashley was actually telling me that inflicting pain was about powerlessness."
14. "I had recently been reading about navigation by triangulation. How do you know where to go when you don't know where you are?"
15. "I was in a very familiar place called trauma...."
16. "I could ask, and ask, and ask why trauma happens to me. Or I could use it as information to help me decide how to get through all of this, better. I chose the latter."
17. Typo: "Youth's meagre clinic"
18. "If callers encounter silence, they'll always tell you who they are first in one way or another."
19. "Privacy is better than pornography when you're homeless."
20. "I had come to understand that in moments of insanity there are really only two things: Survival, and who we become during these moments."
21. Stray Toasters
22. "When people die, they really take a piece of you with them. It would be several years and many more ...."
23. "For my generation, an AIDS test was like the San Francisco version of patriotism."
24. "I figured out that you can't heal in the same environment that made you sick."
25. "I was learning to get used to the fact that out here in the wasteland of homeless kids, sometimes people just disappeared. But I'd never be able to accept it. You never knew if it was the last time you'd see someone."
26. "...surrounded by people we joked were only moving toward death a bit more comfortably and slower than we were."
27. "I'm good at running from cops, telling frilly stories, making loud Kung Fu noises during serious fist fights, palming black eyeliner, falling on my face when I run up stairs, and insulting people in Spanish."
28. "Bitch, this is a palace! I'm gonna wash my twat in your sink!" - Jess
29. San Francisco's art collective Survival Research Laboratories

Print

1. Slouching Towards Neverland: 20 years of Writing About San Francisco (2022) - Stuart Schuffman, better known as Broke-Ass Stuart

Suggestions

Previously

Previously (2022), Note: No books list 2021, Previously (2020), Previously (2019), Previously (2018), Previously (2017)