Tessa > Recent Status Updates

"as of this writing, there have been no fatalities on manned submersibles since the 1970s"

Well, that didn't age well 😬

Crying on a random Friday morning because of this book

I have to get my winter fix through books this year, since we aren't having any winter in the real world.

Can't believe I've listened to 32 hours of this and I'm not done yet

"They are a direct short cut into poetry itself. How any child who was ever delightedly dandled to their strains can have managed to grow up proof against their enchantment...is a question to which I can find no satisfactory answer."

Why Tessa, you might say, didn't you just read this like three weeks ago????

Yes. And then my husband informed me that he's never read this series (what!!!) so now I'm reading them out loud for to him.

I'm sensing that I am about to become obsessed with the Aleutian Islands....

This is....a little boring :(

Some of this is SUPER new-agey but Wim Hof is such an enjoyable speaker to listen to that I'm enjoying it despite that. He is extremely personable and engaging.

Netgalley offered me a free copy of this without me even requesting it! I'm so excited!

seems like a good third trimester read :)

I'm confused about who this is meant for. David seems like a junior fiction narrator, but the amount of gore and violence would not be appropriate for junior age kids.

Enjoying it, just confused about the intended audience.

I really think I've read this before, but Goodreads says that I haven't....It's not very long so I am listening to it again, but I definitely have a sense of deja vu.

There are...a lot of difficult birth stories in this book O_o

"The surge and clatter of whitewater coneals
how shallow underneath is, how quickly gone.
Leave that noise behind. Come here
where the water is slow and clear.
Watch the crayfish prance across the sand,
the mica flash, the sculpin blend with stone.
It's all beyond your reach though it appears
as near and known as your outstretched hand."

A professor discusses how he asks his students to name 3 breakfast cereals, 3 sitcoms, 3 local birds, and 3 local plants. All students can list the first two, and fewer than half can do the last two.

He says the students who can all have something in common: they grew up rural. Most people in the US grow up in urban areas and they miss out on that knowledge. This has big potential problems for conservation efforts.

This book says that most Americans have never seen the Milky Way and live somewhere where light pollution is so severe star-gazing is impossible.

The second one is easy to believe, but the first? Are there really people who have NEVER seen the Milky Way in their lives?

Incomprehensible to me. Very thankful that I grew up in an area with only moderate light pollution. I can see the Milky Way any cloudless night.

"Hold cold is perceived depends substantially on the speed of the wind. In some parts of the world, weather forecasters report both the actual temperature and the apparent temperature taking into account the wind chill: the difference between what the air temperature is and how it will feel to you."

I live in an area where the weather is reported like that and believe me, windchill makes a HUGE difference.

Just unpacked this in a box of new releases for the library and I think I'll take it home and read it tonight. Hopefully Cora has become less annoying since book 3.

Total misrepresentation of Eve in the Garden of Eden...this book is interesting but seems fairly biased so far.

"But Katherine, the daughter of Isabella of Castile, did sometimes wonder why it was seen as essential for a man to rule. Her mother had been a great queen, and pray God that Mary would take after her..."

I think that Queen "Bloody" Mary perhaps took after her grandmother (of Inquisition fame) a little TOO much??

Oh I'm definitely going to be listening to the Six! soundtrack the whole time I'm reading this.

This book, set in the 1980s, includes a school debate about the equal rights amendment. The "against" argument includes this statement:

"If the equal rights amendment passed, then there would be no protections for women. They could be drafted to fight in wars, and guys could just walk into the girls' bathrooms..."

The "for" reply is "That wouldn't happen!"

I don't think that holds water in the year 2021....