Lists
by Emily B., April 22, 2022 8:35 AM
Spring in Portland has brought sunny 70 degree days, but also record-setting snow, hail, and thunderstorms. Combine that with last year's "heat-dome" and 2020's forest fires and it's pretty clear that our years of CO2 emissions, pollution, disregard for our planet, and general hubris have caught up to us. Good ol' mother earth is out for revenge.
There are scientists doing incredible work to find new technologies that will help us cut carbon emissions and there are brilliant, dedicated activists pushing for climate action around the world. I highly recommend that you read about those efforts and get involved if you can. There are great lists of books for educating yourself on the latest in climate science out there. This however...
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Lists
by Emily B., March 8, 2022 9:02 AM
March is Women's History Month. It's a time for commemoration, reflection, and a recommitment to the struggle for women's rights. This year brings mixed blessings. Title IX celebrates 50 years while reproductive rights face challenges across the country. We can look back and honor all of the women who have fought for the rights we now enjoy, but we can also look around and see ...
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Best Books
by Emily B., November 2, 2021 10:35 AM
What a year. If 2020 was the longest year ever, 2021 must be a contender for the shortest. The promise of "hot vax summer" faded away in a haze of boiling temperatures, continued worry, and safety precautions, and time slipped away like a field mouse not shaking the grass...*
On the bright side, authors have stepped into the breach to fill our time during the unanticipated continuation of our voluntary home confinement. From incredible graphic memoirs and pop culture deep dives to urgent reckonings with racism and poetic reflections on our Anthropocenic age, 2021 has offered up some amazing nonfiction books. They've instructed us, engrossed us, sustained us, opened our minds, and diversified our points of view. We hope you love them as much as we do...
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Lists
by Emily B., October 4, 2021 8:51 AM
Is there any combination more Portland than books and craft beverages? The rain that makes this city the green, sometimes gloomy place we love is finally back and when it’s wet outside there’s nothing better than curling up by the window with a book and a good drink. But which book? And what drink? We called in the experts at 12 of our favorite local breweries and cideries to share their perfect pairings. With book + brew combos ranging from the spooky to the psychedelic, your fall reading and drinking are covered.
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Lists
by Emily B., March 8, 2021 8:14 AM
Books that modernize, grapple with, or converse with existing materials are plentiful. They range from lightly updated retellings true to the original content and context to full reimaginings that use the tropes of the source material as inspiration for almost wholly new stories. The books on this list run the gamut between the two, but each of them uses a myth, fairy tale, fable, or classic as a starting point to give one-dimensional female characters agency, reimagine traditional stories with a feminist bent, and update and interrogate antiquated tropes to reflect more modern and diverse experiences. Given the abundance of important, thought-provoking retellings, this list is, by necessity, nondefinitive. Share your favorite retellings in the comments...
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Lists
by Emily B., February 22, 2021 8:19 AM
Science is a system that uses unbiased, empirical evidence to make awe-inspiring discoveries, but the ways in which we attribute and chronicle those discoveries are far from impartial. From textbooks and history books to scientific journals, the contributions, or attributed contributions, of white males have long been privileged. Others, particularly the contributions of Black scientists, and Black female scientists, have been purposely distorted or left out.
In recent years, authors, professors, journalists, and others have worked to uncover and highlight those buried legacies, but they’ve really only scratched the surface. From Alice Ball, who invented the 20th century's best treatment for leprosy at just 23, to Dr. Marie Maynard Daly, the first Black woman to earn a PhD in Chemistry in the United States, there are still scientists about whom books are scarce, out of print, or nonexistent...
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Lists
by Emily B., January 19, 2021 4:40 PM

We are still in the middle of a pandemic. We've had four long years of broken norms and endless, horrifying, exhausting outrages. 2020 brought a long-overdue and ongoing reckoning with racism. We have spent January watching armed domestic terrorists attempt to stage an insurrection at the behest of political leaders. It feels like a strange time to be a policy wonk, but once it was the job of politicians to do that "boring" work and it was the job of an informed citizenry to learn about, advocate for, and criticize that work.
We can't put things back the way they were before and, in many ways, we shouldn't want to, but we can take time this inauguration day to reset, refocus, and think about the concrete policy changes we want to see made. As a small step towards that lofty goal, we have put together a reading list based on President-elect Biden's publicized policy goals for his first 100 days in office. From pandemic response and criminal justice to immigration and the economy, these books are a starting point for understanding the social issues that underlie the policy priorities of the incoming administration. May the next four years bring more time spent on policy and less time spent on Twitter...
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Best Books
by Emily B., November 2, 2020 8:51 AM
In 2020, the year of endless doomscrolling (and doom-reading), it is sometimes easy to despair. Through that lens, the theme that encapsulates the best nonfiction books of the year is “ending”: The end of the human epoch via global warming. The end of privacy via invasive tech. The end of our country via autocracy, oligarchy, racism and white supremacy, and economic inequality. The final end of the universe. But there is also a less cynical thread running through these books: they can represent turning points. These books inform us, they give us the sometimes-uncomfortable knowledge necessary to understand our past, inform our present, and actively create our future...
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Lists
by Emily B., February 28, 2020 9:25 AM
Women authors, particularly queer authors and authors of color, have frequently been relegated to the dustbin of history while their male contemporaries have been added to the Western canon and taught in classrooms ad infinitum. Some women are successful in their lifetimes, but, overshadowed by their male contemporaries, fall out of print and the collective consciousness after their deaths. Others languish in obscurity during their most prolific years and find recognition only at the end of their lives; or, they are recognized posthumously, when the mores of society catch up with them. In celebration of Women’s History Month, here are seven authors who were underappreciated in their lifetimes, or who were forgotten and deserve to be better known...
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Lists
by Emily B., January 7, 2020 9:14 AM
It will be six years before we know if Kim Stanley Robinson’s first colonial voyage to Mars is on schedule and 802,681 years before we can render a verdict on H. G. Wells’s Eloi and Morlocks, but for many beloved speculative books, those far-flung years are now in our past, and their predictions are ripe for judgement. Some authors' prognostications have proven excessively bleak or excessively optimistic (we are still waiting for our hoverboards), while others make us wonder if there are secret time travelers in our midst.
From Ursula K. Le Guin’s gloomy 2002 Portland to John Brunner’s overpopulated 2010 NYC , here are eight of our favorite books that made predictions about futures past, with varying degrees of accuracy...
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