just got back from a week-long sesshin (zen meditation retreat), so no reading during that time, lol. a bunch of my holds came in at the library though! "Prophet Against Slavery" about the early American emancipationist vegan Quaker Benjamin Lay, "Vegan Africa" by Marie Kacouchia, and also "Borne" by Jeff Vandermeer. gonna be on the road a lot this week so i am hoping to make some progress on these!

As for me, I'm working on "Birnam Wood" by Eleanor Catton. i'm having a slow time getting into it, but i've heard it's good. likely won't get it finished in the next week as tomorrow i'm off to a zen retreat for a week, but it'll be waiting for me when I get back.

i've got a couple things specifically relating to veganism on order from my local library: "Veganism: Politics, Practice, and Theory" by Eva Haifa Giraud, and "The Vegan Studies Project: Food, Animals, and Gender in the Age of Terror" by Laura Wright.

i'm no academic but i am a nerd, and am hoping that these so-called foundational texts in vegan studies will help me have a better theoretical and actionable framework within which to work. speaking of which, i also have on order "Striking at the Roots: A Practical Guide to Animal Activism" by Mark Hawthorne. this one i have purchased so that i can have it as a reference for actual praxis.

have any of you read any of these and have any thoughts, or recommendations?

thanks to this post i just learned about rajma! i am excited to try making it in the near future.

i did create a post about what we're reading, but i realize now that might be stepping on toes so if so, i apologize. let me know and i can take it down in favor of whatever we collectively decide we'd like to see.

As for me, I just finished "The Future" by Naomi Alderman. i enjoyed it enough to stay up late last night finishing it. i don't necessarily agree with some of the premises, but i found it enjoyable to read. there are a few scenes that stuck with me in unpleasant ways, but i found myself very intrigued as to what, exactly, the fuck was going on.

four out of five stars from me.

i like the idea of a book club where we just share what we've been reading and would love to participate! or even if we all decide to read the same thing, i just like getting recommendations from new folks about things that i might not have heard of or thought about. so i guess my vote would be 2 or 3 above.

it was great. i ended up going with the NuWave wok shown in this video, despite in the end him recommending the other one (heads-up, his channel is not vegan; there are some vegan recipes but viewer beware). at my price point and lack of a functional separate wok, the NuWave checked the boxes and worked just like i was hoping for.

lol, that's fair - i always run my cell phone photos through Google Photos to dial up the saturation and what they call the "pop". it makes for more interesting photos but if you have a good monitor i bet it's almost unpleasant, ha! sorry for that.

in Google Photos there's an option to dial up the saturation and dial up what it calls "pop" and I usually dial up both a fair bit, otherwise my photos tend to look dull and unappealing.

hella delicious!