Books shelved under “Non-Fiction”

In The Only Woman in the Room, Eileen Pollack shares her story of eagerly matriculating into physics at Yale, completing her degree, and then dropping out of science in favour of an eventual career as a writer and professor of English—ironically, what her parents initially advised her to do. Pollack connects challenges she faced, primarily during her time at Yale, to the larger systemic issue of the leaky pipeline in science and why more…

With most memoirs, I already have a good sense of who the author is, like in the case of Making It So, and I’ve picked up the memoir because I’m interested in hearing their story in their own words. In the case of But Everyone Feels This Way, I hadn’t heard of Paige Layle before. Instagram recommended a Reel by her. I don’t remember the Reel or what she said in it, but…

Amid the calumnious pushback in the United States against so-called “critical race theory” (it’s not) in schools remains the single truth: you don’t learn the true history of the US in school. The same goes for Canada, where we learn about the enslavement of African people in the US, but we don’t learn about slavery in Canada or our own history of anti-Black racism following abolition. So I do my best to read and learn,…

Wow, has it really been eight years since I read The Measure of All Things, by Ken Adler? It doesn’t feel that long. Referenced in Beyond Measure, that book satisfied my curiosity regarding the origins of the metre. I love history of science. In this book, James Vincent takes the story wider and further, investigating the origins of measurement and metrology (the science of measurement). It’s nerdy as all get out, but if…

When you really think about it, the idea of gender is such a fraught concept. How can we ever really know our gender? What even is gender, anyway? It shouldn’t be surprising I have spent a great deal of time in recent years thinking about this, yet I don’t know that I am any closer to an answer. So I was very intrigued by Gender Without Identity, by Avgi Saketopoulou and Ann Pellegrini. This…

Anyone who knows me knows that Star Trek is my first fandom. Before Doctor Who. Before Supergirl, the show that gave me my name. I have watched and rewatched Star Trek to the point where it is now in my DNA. I love all the series (albeit not equally), but Captain Picard is my captain. So, naturally, when I learned Patrick Stewart had written a memoir, I had a mighty need. Thankfully,…

Science continues to be a discipline which I love to learn about yet have no interest in doing, if that makes any sense. I studied mathematics in undergrad because I love that you can do it with a pencil and paper (or even, sometimes, in your head). Science, especially experimental parts of science, in contrast feels so … well … messy. And nothing is messier than smashing radioactive atoms together in the hopes of…

White supremacy is a problem for all of us, not just Black people. But Black people are best positioned to critique it—and to defend the need for academic responses to it. As Florida and other US states decry “critical race theory” i schools, Our History Has Always Been Contraband: In Defense of Black Studies is just that. Colin Kaepernick, Robin D.G. Kelley, and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor have selected a treasure trove of historic essays that explicate…

Back in my day, the internet used to be better. I feel old saying that—I only just turned thirty-four—but it is true. When I first started using the internet in the early 2000s, the web had become functional enough to be fun, the walled gardens of nineties CompuServe and AOL had come down, and anyone (including fourteen-year-old Kara) could make a website for free on a place like Geocities.

And then it…

The rallying cry of so much reactionary thought in politics and education is, of course, “But this is the way we have always done it.” This is seldom true. So much of our modern systems emerged from the paradigm shift that was the Industrial Revolution. Nowadays, of course, you have the tech bros at the opposite end of the spectrum claiming that their innovation is the next paradigm shift, that crypt or “AI”…

Bodies are complicated. In addition to the indignity of merely having one, the way it constantly needs maintenance and has such a limited warranty, bodies are one of the primary ways we interact with our world. And our world is racist. It’s Always Been Ours: Rewriting the Story of Black Women’s Bodies is Jessica Wilson’s attempt to sort through how anti-Black racism permeates diet culture and eating-disorder treatment when it comes to Black women. I…

Thunder Bay is not the most diverse place, demographically, in Canada, but that has been changing. For various reasons, more immigrants have been arriving here in recent years from a wider array of countries. This includes many Muslim immigrants, as well as people from MENA (Middle East and Northern Africa) countries. Not only do these newcomers often face challenges with language, but my city can be a racist place. So I was intrigued by Broken:…

It feels like I have had this Massey Lectures book forever, always next on the to-read list, always another nonfiction book slipping in and taking its place but finally, finally I’ve sat down and given Esi Edugyan the time she deserves here. Out of the Sun is a great example of what the Massey Lectures can be: give someone the platform to talk about whatever they want, basically, but in a way that is…

First off, shout-out to this book for no subtitle! That’s rare for a work of nonfiction—not that I have any great hatred of subtitles, but the absence of one here is notable. Anyway. Algorithmic Culture Before the Internet caught my eye because the history of computing, intertwined as it is with the history of mathematics and the history of feminism, interests me a lot. Ted Striphas discusses how we conceptualized both the word algorithm and…

As an aromantic asexual person, all three things in this book’s title have confused me at one point or another! Attraction, Love, Sex: The Inside Story examines our scientific understanding of makes humans interested in one another, romantic stylez (yes, with a Z). Simon LeVay, a neuroscientist, brings together research from psychology, biology, chemistry, and more in order to help the reader understand the physiological, psychological, and even evolutionary underpinnings of sexuality and romance. There’s…

If it is possible to get burnt out on reading nonfiction about asexual and aromantic identities, that might be happening to me thanks to all of the great books Jessica Kingsley Publishers has put out this year. Ace and Aro Journeys: A Guide to Embracing Your Asexual or Aromantic Identity is yet another, though the Ace and Aro Advocacy Project has done a good job of making sure it is providing a valuable and different…

This book was published when I was five years old, yet it remains timeless and in a way prescient. My second bell hooks book, I read this for the book club I’m a part of. Teaching to Transgress is quite a different vibe from All About Love. This one is more practical, more focused on work rather than personal life (though hooks, of course, blurs those lines). I value both books but in different…

Another in the slate of ace-focused books released recently by Jessica Kingsley Publishers, who through NetGalley provided me with an eARC that I am finally getting around to reviewing! Ace Notes: Tips and Tricks on Existing in an Allo World by Michele Kirichanskaya is a kind of how-to guide for being asexual in a world that privileges sexual attraction and desire. It’s not prescriptive (as Kirichanskaya notes, there is no one right way to be…

Dyscalculia is finally getting the attention it deserves as the lesser-known sibling condition to dyslexia. I was intrigued by the title of Camonghne Felix’s book, its tantalizing promise to connect dyscalculia to Felix’s tribulations with romance. Dyscalculia: A Love Story of Epic Miscalculation does all of this, though with less focus on math skills than I hoped. Thank you to NetGalley and publisher One World for the eARC!

Felix experiences trauma at a young age…

One of my responsibilities as an English teacher is to help my students build their media literacy skills. In the past couple of years, I have become increasingly convinced, in fact, that media literacy is the most essential skill English classes can cover. The deluge of disinformation and morass of misinformation out there is staggering. Throw in the challenges of deepfakes, and, well, it’s starting to get depressing, how difficult it is to evaluate the…