#whatimreading
#Horses, a 4,000 year genetic journey across the world, by Ludovic Orlando (translated). Somewhen somewhere in our past a group of people figured out domesticating horses for fun & profit. Their horses are ancestors to all horses today. The search for the first domesticated horses combines archeology, linguistics, genetics to track down who did it and where and when. #bookstodon #science #genetics Spoiler: it was the Yamna Kurgan indo-European speakers on the Pontic steppe.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Dr-dPzhzrxI

#WhatImReading

#whatImReading #bookstodon
Where the Water Goes, by David Owen. Water in the US South West is way more fraught than elsewhere. Who “owns” it, who gets it, and why, have been contentious issues for over 150 years. Basically there’s not enough, but no one wants to cut back. Severe drought isn’t helping. Owen travels the length of the #coloradoRiver, describes & explains the issues and the people involved, clearly, and with some humor. If you live in the West you might wanna know about this stuff.

Well, ok then.

#WhatImReading

"The straight line of liberty is something I admire, without being able to walk it."

Annie Ernaux, A Frozen Woman

#WhatImReading

"Amazing. I'm living the great dream of my childhood, the scenes of kissing and embracing so often imagined and acted out. Where is the guilt I thought I would feel--and the love? The idea that going out with a boy is some kind of pinnacle of experience is definitely dead, almost laughable. Our two bookbags lie side by side in the grass, but a life together, forget it. For the first time I'm terrorized by the idea of marriage. I'm beginning to emerge, to disencumber myself."

Annie Ernaux, A Frozen Woman

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This is interesting. I may skim over some of the technical parts, but I'm happy they're in there. Maybe I'll learn something.

#WhatImReading

"I'm writing myself and can do as I please: I can turn myself in any direction I like and easily put new words into my mouth. But if I'm trying to show clearly the path I took to become a woman, then I shouldn't spit on the great lump of a girl weeping with rage because her mother won't let her wear stockings and a revealingly tight skirt. I should explain. Without calling myself a fool. Are those years even over?"

Annie Ernaux, A Frozen Woman

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Yet another first paragraph, by Kaveh Akbar:

Cyrus Shams

Keady University, 2015

"Maybe it was that Cyrus had done the wrong drugs in the right order, or the right drugs in the wrong order, but when God finally spoke back to him after twenty-seven years of silence, what Cyrus wanted more than anything else was a do-over. Clarification. Lying on his mattress that smelled like piss and Febreeze, in his bedroom that smelled like piss and Febreeze, Cyrus stared up at the room's single light bulb, willing it to blink again, willing God to confirm that the bulb's flicker hsd been a divine action and not just the old apartment's trashy wiring."

#WhatImReading

Arthur blinked at the screens and felt he was missing something important. Suddenly he realized what it was.
"Is there any tea on this spaceship?" he asked.

- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

#books
#WhatImReading

Rereading this, I doubt it's the 42nd time, who knows. I just finished a book about people dying, and keep thinking about people that have died, but it's cold and grey November, so something lighter, that begins with the random destruction of the entire planet 🙄. I've never read The Ice Storm (seen the movie), that's up next, for Thanksgiving. I picked it up and didn't feel cynical enough, but a week or so of holiday advertising should do it 🤔
I know many find this book annoying, but that's true of most things 😆

#books
#WhatImReading

This morning's excerpt from "I See You've Called in Dead"

"Where do you see yourself in the hierarchy of humanity?" Tuan asked.
"I don't understand the question," I said.
"As a cisgender white male, I mean. Where do you stand, do you think?"
"I'm eating, Tuan."
"Let me tell you where I see you," he continued.

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From "I See You've Called in Dead," by John Kenney

"Does the underground thing bother you? Is that why cremation?"
"Not really. Also I'll be dead."
"Yes, but that's the quandry for me. I can't imagine a complete lack of feeling."
"You should read your own writing."

#WhatImReading
#books

Why I’m Drawn to Emotional Horror (and Why It Stays With Me Long After the Last Page)

Lately, I’ve been realizing something about the stories I gravitate toward — they’re not always the ones that make me jump, but the ones that make me feel.

I’ve been reading a lot of what I like to call emotional horror — stories that linger, that haunt through empathy instead of monsters. Books where the scariest thing isn’t the ghost in the corner, but the grief we haven’t made peace with, or the silence between people who love each other but can’t quite say it.

The Kind of Horror That Hurts (in a Good Way)

I used to think horror was only about fear. But emotional horror taught me that fear wears many faces — guilt, loss, shame, regret. Those are the things that crawl under your skin and stay.

Books like Bochica have this beautiful tension — spiritual dread mixed with moral reflection. The haunting isn’t just supernatural; it’s internal. The Haunting of Hill House does the same thing — the house becomes a mirror of the characters’ loneliness. And of course, The Ordinary Bruja was born from that same place in me — where horror becomes a language for grief.

Emotional horror says:
“You’re not afraid of the dark — you’re afraid of what you’ll see when the lights come back on.”

Why These Stories Feel Like Home

I think I’m drawn to this genre because it mirrors the way I process emotions. When something hurts, I can’t always cry it out or talk it through. I write it. I build a world where the emotion has a name — even if that name is a ghost, or a curse, or a woman trying to survive herself.

That’s what I find so cathartic about emotional horror: it gives form to the things we can’t articulate. The sadness, the trauma, the yearning — they become characters. They become visible.

What I’m Reading Now: Salt Bones by Jennifer Givhan

Right now, I’m reading Salt Bones by Jennifer Givhan, and it’s the kind of book that feels written for readers like me — those who find beauty in the unsettling.

Givhan blends the lyrical with the eerie, the sacred with the profane. Her work has always lived between worlds — much like mine — exploring faith, trauma, womanhood, and the ghosts that never quite leave. Salt Bones isn’t traditional horror; it’s psychological, spiritual, and emotional all at once.

It’s about the hauntings we inherit — the ones tied to our families, our cultures, and our own bodies. It reminds me that horror doesn’t have to scream to be powerful. Sometimes it just breathes beside you while you read.

If you loved The Ordinary Bruja or stories that braid faith with fear and tenderness, Salt Bones belongs on your list.

The Ordinary Bruja Lives in That Space

Marisol’s story, at its core, is emotional horror wrapped in magical realism. It’s not about gore or shock — it’s about confronting what haunts you.
The ghosts in her world aren’t just spirits; they’re insecurities, inherited shame, grief passed down like an heirloom.

That’s why I think so many of us find solace in this kind of storytelling. It whispers, you’re not crazy for feeling deeply — you’re just haunted by being human.

What’s Next on My Reading List

Once I am done with Salt Bones I will be reading The Posession of Alba Diaz. You can follow along. Or if you want to sink into this same energy, here are a few books I recommend for your own emotional haunting session:

• The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson — the original “feel something and then question everything” horror classic.
• Bochica by James Montaño — a lyrical, haunting exploration of faith, power, and colonial echoes.
• Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia — lush, eerie, and feminist as hell.
• The Ordinary Bruja by Johanny Ortega — (yes, my own, because this one carries my ghosts, too).

My Takeaway

Maybe emotional horror is so powerful because it lets us face what we’ve buried.
Not to scare ourselves — but to recognize ourselves.

And when the book ends, when the ghosts quiet, what’s left isn’t fear.
It’s empathy.

#bookishSaturday #emotionalHorror #jenniferGivhan #magicalRealism #saltBones #whatImReading

[Substituted asterisks because I haven't figured out italics on my phone]

"The kinds of signs I was now reading about weren't meant for us at all, they belonged to processes to which human beings were not privy, even if they took place in our own cells.
These were alluring thoughts. Secret languages, codes, strange forms of cognition, visible, and yet incomprehensible signs. Everything that lived was pervaded by information and communication, from the very smallest components of a cell to flocks of birds, shoals of fish, crowds of people in the streets during a revolution or on any normal day. The problem was that life wasn't *at all* like that, an abstract, fantastic system, and I was too quick by half to have pursued such trains of thought. Because down on my hands and knees in the moist soil of the forest, meticulously teasing forth a white thread of the mycelium, *that was all it was,* a white thread. It connected with one of the roots of the tree and absorbed nutrients. What it knew was in *itself,* quite literally."

Knausgaard, The Wolves of Eternity

#WhatImReading

My current new read 📖📚

#WhatImReading #USHistory #GreatBooks #MichaelHarriot #Photo #UnWashed #Learn #Photography #History

Assata Shakur, political activist and ex-Black Liberation Army member, has died

Assata Shakur “died in Havana, Cuba, as a result of health conditions and her advanced age,” according to Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

from #WhatImReading
Phil Lewis
Sep 26, 2025

#AssataShakur, a famed political activist who was found guilty of shooting a New Jersey state trooper in 1973 and later granted political asylum in #Cuba, has died. She was 78.

On Thursday, Shakur “died in Havana, Cuba, as a result of health conditions and her advanced age,” according to Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“At approximately 1:15 PM on September 25th, my mother, Assata Shakur, took her last earthly breath. Words cannot describe the depth of loss that I am feeling at this time,” Kakuya Shakur, her daughter, wrote on Facebook.

https://www.whatimreading.net/p/assata-shakur-political-activist-dead

#BlackLiberation #BlackLivesMatter #BlackMastodon #news #politics #USpol