Hello hello! I hope you had a good month. This month had a lot going on, and I didn’t read as much – but what I did read was pretty good!

August in General

The month of August has really been, well….something else. It’s a bit confusing to look back on in hindsight because there was so much going on, and my routines were totally thrown off. This month, I had a two-week family visit, got laid-off, and now I’m back to work on Monday? But for the time in-between, I was trying to figure out what to do next-and while I was at it, work on certifications. So things were definitely off-schedule for me, making things a bit weird, but thankfully it seems like that was short-lived and things will (hopefully) be falling into place this September.

August In Stats

BOOKS BREAKDOWN

August In Books

The Viral Underclass
Steven W. Thrasher
⭐⭐⭐⭐

Goodreads | Bookshop

From preeminent LGBTQ scholar, social critic, and journalist Steven W. Thrasher comes a powerful and crucial exploration of one of the most pressing issues of our times: how viruses expose the fault lines of society.

Having spent a ground-breaking career studying the racialization, policing, and criminalization of HIV, Dr. Thrasher has come to understand a deeper truth at the heart of our society: that there are vast inequalities in who is able to survive viruses and that the ways in which viruses spread, kill, and take their toll are much more dependent on social structures than they are on biology alone.

Told through the heart-rending stories of friends, activists, and teachers navigating the novel coronavirus, HIV, and other viruses, Dr. Thrasher brings the reader with him as he delves into the viral underclass and lays bare its inner workings. In the tradition of Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste and Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, The Viral Underclass helps us understand the world more deeply by showing the fraught relationship between privilege and survival.

This was a good deep-dive into disparities in disease prevention and treatment. This is something I’ve been wondering about since the start of COVID, and Thrasher does a great job of breaking down all of the elements that contribute to this long-standing issue.

Overcoming Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors
Charles S. Mansueto,
Sherrie Mansfield Vavrichek,
Ruth Golomb
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Goodreads | Bookshop

“The definitive guide for those who pick or pull.”
—Reid Wilson, PhD, author Stopping the Noise in Your Head

A comprehensive treatment plan grounded in evidence-based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to help you overcome body-focused repetitive behaviors for good!

If you have body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRB) such as hair pulling (trichotillomania) or skin picking (dermatillomania), you may feel embarrassed about seeking help. But there are proven-effective strategies you can use to overcome these behaviors and improve your overall quality of life—this book will show you how.

In this evidence-based resource, three renowned experts and clinicians offer powerful CBT skills to help you move past BFRB. You’ll learn why you engage in these behaviors, and how to identify your own sensory “triggers”—places, things, or experiences that cause your behavior to become worse. Finally, you’ll learn strategies to use when faced with these triggers, and develop your own customized “plan of action” for moving beyond BFRB for good.

With time, practice, and solid skills for managing stress, anxiety, urges, and other triggers, this book will help you break free from BFRB and feel more in control of your life.

This was an incredibly helpful guide that I have heavily annotated and taken from in my day-to-day life. It’s of course a bit of a niche topic, but even knowing that this book is out there has been so helpful (and also will be to those who not only have BFRB’s, but know someone who does). 

In Focus: Chakra Healing
Roberta Vernon
⭐⭐⭐

Goodreads | Bookshop

Become a more complete peaceful, spiritual, emotional, and physical individual with In Focus Chakra Healing. This essential guide provides in-depth summaries about each chakra, followed by expert advice from Roberta Vernon on how to identify and restore blocked, weak, or closed chakras through common holistic approaches, such as crystal healing, color healing, astrological healing, essential oils, and magic healing. Included inside the back cover is a beautifully illustrated 18 × 24–inch wall chart detailing the main characteristics of the major and minor chakras.

Chakras are energy centers in our bodies that act as the seats of our internal functions, such as health, state of mind, and body functions, as well as our external environments, like alerting us when a place feels right for us or when it makes us feel uncomfortable. However, the six major chakras—base, sacral, solar plexus, heart, throat, brow, and crown—are many times blocked or misaligned, bringing about a host of negative ailments, feelings, and emotions. Thankfully, chakras can be corrected through various healing practices explained in this guide.

Common ailments addressed:
Overeating
Digestive disorders
Fatigue
Allergies
Emotional stress
Physical stress
Headaches
The In Focus series applies a modern approach to teaching the classic body, mind, and spirit subjects. Authored by experts in their respective fields, these beginner’s guides feature smartly designed visual material that clearly illustrates key topics within each subject. As a bonus, each book includes reference cards or a poster, held in an envelope inside the back cover, that give you a quick, go-to guide containing the most important information on the subject.

This was a helpful introduction to chakras, but for a beginner book I would have liked a little bit more information. I also thought this could have been structured differently (and felt it needed a little more editing). 

Portrait of A Thief
Grace D. Li
⭐⭐⭐⭐

Goodreads | Bookshop

Ocean’s Eleven meets The Farewell in Portrait of a Thief, a lush, lyrical heist novel inspired by the true story of Chinese art vanishing from Western museums; about diaspora, the colonization of art, and the complexity of the Chinese American identity.

History is told by the conquerors. Across the Western world, museums display the spoils of war, of conquest, of colonialism: priceless pieces of art looted from other countries, kept even now.

Will Chen plans to steal them back.

A senior at Harvard, Will fits comfortably in his carefully curated roles: a perfect student, an art history major and sometimes artist, the eldest son who has always been his parents’ American Dream. But when a mysterious Chinese benefactor reaches out with an impossible—and illegal—job offer, Will finds himself something else as well: the leader of a heist to steal back five priceless Chinese sculptures, looted from Beijing centuries ago.

His crew is every heist archetype one can imag­ine—or at least, the closest he can get. A con artist: Irene Chen, a public policy major at Duke who can talk her way out of anything. A thief: Daniel Liang, a premed student with steady hands just as capable of lockpicking as suturing. A getaway driver: Lily Wu, an engineering major who races cars in her free time. A hacker: Alex Huang, an MIT dropout turned Silicon Valley software engineer. Each member of his crew has their own complicated relationship with China and the identity they’ve cultivated as Chinese Americans, but when Will asks, none of them can turn him down.

Because if they succeed? They earn fifty million dollars—and a chance to make history. But if they fail, it will mean not just the loss of everything they’ve dreamed for themselves but yet another thwarted at­tempt to take back what colonialism has stolen.

Equal parts beautiful, thoughtful, and thrilling, Portrait of a Thief is a cultural heist and an examination of Chinese American identity, as well as a necessary cri­tique of the lingering effects of colonialism.

This is a book that I’ve been wanting to read for a while, and overall it was pretty interesting. I liked how, although this was a heist novel, it focused more on the characters and their backstories and motivations. That being said, I feel like the ending for this was slightly abrupt and I would have loved to see a little more story development overall.

That’s all for my August 2022 Wrapup. How did your month go this August? What were your favorite reads? Let me know! I’d love to know if you’ve read any of these as well and what your thoughts were!

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