My Own Devices by Dessa

Dessa’s creative non-fiction book of essays is well-written, touching, and thought-provoking. She strings one story thread throughout the book – through different essays and sections, the story of her long-term relationship and how she finally used science to get over him. She gave a talk here a few weeks ago and I got to ask her some questions. If you’re anywhere near the book tour, I definitely recommend going – Dessa is super intelligent and I felt so inspired throughout.

I also made a Spotify playlist of many of the songs she references, or songs that are about this time period of her life, here on Spotify.

Broad Band by Claire L. Evans

This book was amazing. I can’t say enough how highly I recommend it. I’ve heard Grace Hopper’s name, but I never knew she was essentially responsible for modern programming. I didn’t know that “computers” were actually a job at first, all computations done manually, and usually by women. I had never heard of the ENIAC 6, or about so many other things in this book, and so many women who kind of blazed a path and a place for women on the internet, in computer science, and technology.

Tell Me Lies by Carola Lovering

Tina said in her review of this book that fans of it would fall into a specific niche, but that people who love it would love it – and I loved it. It’s told from alternating viewpoints of two people in a relationship over several years of being together and not. The male is an entirely irredeemable character, and as someone who was in some pretty crappy relationships, I saw a lot of parallels (hence being the target for this book.) There’s a twist in I even I didn’t expect, and I really liked the full circle storytelling – I normally don’t like happily ever afters, but they worked for me here. I totally loved this book and I can’t wait to read more by Carola Lovering.