What I'm...

• Taylor, Joseph E. Making Salmon: An Environmental History of the Northwest Fisheries Crisis. University of Washington Press, 1999. A very well-written history of willful ignorance on the part of government and business leaders regarding the decimation of salmon runs in the Pacific Northwest. (Finished)

• Egan, Timothy. The Good Rain: Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest. Vintage Departures, 1991. A classic "following in the footsteps" travelogue and a snapshot of the PNW at the end of the logging era and before tech became the major industry. (Finished)

• Spiedel, William C. Sons of the Profits or There's No Business Like Grow Business: The Seattle Story 1851-1901. Nettle Creek, 1967. A rather sarcastic look at the greed and rapaciousness in the colonization and early history of Seattle. (Finished)

• Harvey, Samantha. Orbital: A Novel. Grove Press, 2024. The winner of the 2024 Booker Prize, and so far, evocative novel about what it means to be human when you are so far removed from most of humanity. (Finished).

• Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Purple Hibiscus. Algonquin Books, 2003. A Bildungsroman in a time of crisis in Nigeria and in the narrator's family that takes a dark turn. (Finished)

• Bleecker, Julian and Nicolas Nova. "A Synchroncity: Design Fictions for Asynchronous Urban Computing." Situated Technologies Pamphlets 5, editors Omar Khan, Trebor Scholz, and Mark Shepherd. The Architectural League of New York, 2009. Before IOT really took off, Bleeker and Nova published this discussion of what on the creative possibilities and undesirable outcomes from location-based and spatial computing technologies. (Finished)

• Noessel, Christopher. Designing Agentive Technology: AI That Works for People. Rosenfeld Media, 2017.  A slightly older book on designing AI technology that is even more applicable in the era of LLM applications. (Finished)

• Ai Qing. Selected Poems, translated by Robert Dorsett. Crown Press, 2021. A collection of Ai Qing's poems on nature, art, and freedom. (Finished)

• Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space, translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Blackwell, 1991. Originally published by Editions Anthropos, 1974. Lefebvre argues for a "science of space" separate from anthropology, geography, or systems theory and proposes three aspects of analysis: spatial practice, representational space, and representations of space. (Finished).

• Phoenix, James and Mike Taylor. Prompt Engineering for Generative AI: Future-Proof Inputs for Reliable AI Outputs. O'Reilly, 2024. 

• Dent, Borden D., Jeffrey S. Torguson, and Thomas W. Hodler. Cartography: Thematic Map Design, Sixth Edition. McGraw Hill, 2009. Textbook covering the elements of map design.  (In progress)

• Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. Hachette, 1993. Butler's first volume in a dystopian future of the United States that feels very prescient today. (Finished)

• Reyes, Lawney. The Last Fish War: Survival on the River. American True Stories, 2016. A book that covers the individual and tribal stories with the conflicts over salmon fishing and Native rights in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s in Western Washington. (Finished)

• Li, Yuzhuo, Mariam Mughees, Yize Chen, Yunwei Ryan Li. "The unseen AI disruptions for power grids: LLM-induced transients." arXiv, 2024. A proposed set of mathematical models and future directions for understanding the impact of LLM training, fine-tuning, and inference on power grids. (Finished)

• Thom, Brian. "The paradox of boundaries in Coast Salish territories." Cultural Geographies 16 (2009): 179-205. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474774008101516.  An investigation of the contrasts between the cartography demands for land claims in the Canadian land claims process and the ideals of Coast Salish territorialization based on kinship. (Finished)

• Itäranta, Emmi. The Moonday Letters. Titan Books, 2022. An animist healer and a scientist who's an ethical bioterrorist share a love story across the Solar System through letters, messages, and imagination. (Finished)

• Itäranta, Emmi. The Memory of Water. Harper Collins, 2014. A young tea-master sifts through government disinformation to discover a truth that could overthrow the authoritarian regime she and much of the world live under. (Finished)

• Arènes, Alexandra, Bruno Latour, and Jérome Gaillardet. "Giving depth to the surface: an exercise in Gaia-graphy of critical zones." The Anthropocene Review 5, no. 2 (2018): 121-135. Arènes and her co-authors propose a new cartography for localized site studies of Critical Zones, so as to capture the dynamic and ongoing processes that make and remake local landscapes. (Finished)

• Luccioni, Alexandra Sasha, Emma Strubell, and Kate Crawford. "From efficiency gains to rebound effects: The problem of Jevons' Paradox in AI"s polarized environmental debate." arXiv.2501.16548v1 (2025). Luccioni and her co-authors discuss evidence that increasing energy efficiency in AI are going to lead to greater energy consumption due to larger overall use of generative AI. (Finsihed)

• Laestadius, Ann-Helén. Punished. Translated by Rachel Willson-Broyles. Scribner, 2023.  A novel with a central group of Sámi adults who live with the long-term consequences of attending a Swedish boarding school. (Finished)

• Joukhadar, Zeyn. The Map of Salt and Stars. Atria, 2019. The story of the journey of a Syrian girl fleeing with her family from Homs to Ceuta in 2011, with a framing story that is a fictionalized account of al-Idrisi's mapping expedition around the eastern Mediterranean. (Finished)

• Blili-Hamelin, Borhane, Christopher Graziul, Leif Hancox-Li, Hananel Hazan, El-Mahdi El-Mhamdi, Avijit Ghosh, Katherine Heller, Jacob Metcalf, Fabricio Murai, Eryk Salvaggio, Andrew Smart, Todd Snider, Mariame Tighanimine, Talia Ringer, Margaret Mitchell, and Shiri Dori-Hacohen. "Stop treating 'AGI' as the north-star goal of AI research." arXiv:2502.03689v2 (2025). A concise coverage of the massive shortcomings in the pursuit of AGI as a goal in AI research, recommending specific "traps" to avoid in AI research and recommendations for further research.. (Finished)

• Emezi, Akwaeke. Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir. Riverhead Books, 2021. An epistoloary memoir of Emezi's life of love, loss, rebirth, and powerful self-determination. (Finished)

• Gebru, Timnit and Émile P. Torres. "The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence." First Monday 29, no.4 (2024). Gebru and Torres trace the intellectual history of AGI from 19th-century colonialism and eugenics. (Finished)

• Itämanta, Emii. The Weaver. HarperCollins, 2016. A young weaver falls in love and challenges the dystopian power structures in her island city.

• Gordillo, Gastón.  "The power of terrain: The affective materiality of planet Earth in the age of revolution." Dialogues in Human Geography 11, no.2 (2021): 190-194. Gordillo argues that terrain, not only landforms, but air, water, lifeforms, are powerful in and of themselves and rejects the anthropocentric and Eurocentric notion this redefined notion of terrain does not have agency. (Finished)

• Keegan, Claire. Small Things Like These. Grove Press, 2021. A working-class man in 1980s Ireland defies the church to rescue a young Magdalen from the prison-like convent in which she was trapped. (Finished)

• Tuan, Yi-Fu. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. University of Minnesota Press, 1977. Tuan explores what place-making means for humans from embodied experience and cultural perspectives. (Finished).

• Neimanis, Astrida. Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology. Bloomsbury Academic, 2017.  Neimanis explores water in its situated existence as part of the human body, its perception within sociocultural milieus, and its economics in the Anthropocene. (In progress).

• Pasternak, Boris. Doctor Zhivago. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Vintage Classics, 2011 (Originally published 1957).  I don't need to give a summary of this book. If you know, you know. (Finished).

• Rovelli, Carlo. Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution. Riverhead Books, 2020. I kind of think of this as a pop-sci version of Meeting the Universe Halfway. The whole "quantum" thing is very popular right now, but I suspect most people will miss what Rovelli is saying here and what Barad said in 2007. (Finished).

• Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake. Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead. Haymarket Books, 2025.  I can't describe this book easily or well, but it is Simpson's deep exploration of the role of water in Nishnaabeg lifeways. (Finished).

• ​LaPointe, Sasha taqʷšəblu. Thunder Song: Essays. Counterpoint Books, 2024. A series of essays on growing up Native in Western Washington.  My favorite essay is her talking about the famed tulips of Skagit County - while famed and feted, these flowers represent colonialism for her, as the land they now grow on were land Coast Salish peoples used for food gathering and harvesting for millennia, and now they simply grow showy flowers that only last a few weeks.(Finished)

• Kelly, Dara. Feed the people and you will never go hungry: Illuminating Coast Salish economy of affection. PhD Diss, University of Auckland, 2017. Kelly investigates the history of the potlatch and Coast Salish relationships with other living beings in their traditional homelands in British Columbia to explore what economic freedom and unfreedom mean in the colonized context of present-day Coast Salish First Nations. (Finished)

• Toha, Mosab Abu. Forest of Noise: Poems. Alfred A. Knopf, 2024. Toha's second volume of poetry is filled with more vivid lines on life under occupation and war in Gaza (also, Toha is in my mind one of the very best English-language poets alive). (Finished)

• Hanson, Thor. Buzz: The Nature and Necessity of Bees. Basic Books, 2018.  We all know bees are central to human food chains.  Hanson goes through this and his own personal experience with bees, and the description of the many species and their evolutionary niches.

• Goldfarb, Ben. Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter. Chelsea Green Publishing, 2018.  All things beaver - their centrality in vitality of watersheds, particularly in the American West and in preservation of salmon and water tables, the history of trapping in North America, and the myths that people have against them. (Finished)

• Ocean as Method: Thinking with the Maritime, edited by Dilip M. Menon, Nishat Zaidi, Simi Malhotra, and Saarah Jappie. Routledge, 2022. A set of essays discussing how to incorporate the ocean as a frame for humanistic and social science research.

----------------- Currently reading books to determine whether to keep or get rid of books I haven't read

• Rea, Dennis. Live at the Forbidden City: Musical Encounters in China and Taiwan. Blue Ear Books, 2015.  A personal account of the author's experiences as a musician in China and Taiwan in the early-to-mid 199os. (Finished, giving away due to interesting read but it's a one and done for me)

• Matsumura, Naohiro. shi-ka-ke: the japanese art of shaping behavior through design. Liveright Publishing, 2016. The author discusses shikake and how it applies to design. (Finished and giving away due to I'm really tired of Stanford d-school influenced behavioral economics)

• Ghosn, Rania and El Hadi Jazairy. Climate Inheritance. Actar Publishers, 2023. A volume with contributions and discussions of design projects that look at the intersection of climate change and historical/heritage preservation and the implications for the future of preservation sites and historical cities. (Finished and keeping because it's relevant to what I'm currently studying).

• Butler, Octavia E. A Few Rules of Predicting the Future: An Essay. Chronicle Books, 2000. A short essay that is thoughtful and optimistic from the brilliant Octavia Butler on how to make a better future. (Finished, keeping due to really liking Butler's work in general).

• Chacaby, Ma-Nee. A Two-Spirit Journey: The Autobiography of a Lesbian Ojibwa-Cree Elder. University of Manitoba Press, 2016. I won't really summarize - the title is self-explanatory, but Chacaby has such a clear voice that comes through in this text that draws you into the story of her life.  (Finished, keeping because Chacaby is such a good storyteller).

• Barnd, Natchee Blu. Native Space: Geographic Strategies to Unsettle Settler Colonialism. Oregon State University Press, 2017. An insightful study of how Native Americans and First Nations people reclaim spatiality through sign-making, renaming practices, art, and cartography. (Finished, keeping)

• Coco, Coppélie and Thomas A. DuBois. Sámi Media and Indigenous Agency in the Arctic North. University of Washington Press, 2020. A recent history of how Sámi peoples have used film, dance, art, music, and social media to claim power in light of their historical discrimination in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. (Finished, maybe keeping, but likely not).

• Pauls, Cole. Kwändür. Conundrum Press, 2022. A graphic novel about Pauls' experience as a Tahltan artist, covering his experiences where people questioned his Indigeneity while a student at Emily Carr University and some of his zines exploring languages from the area where he grew up in the Yukon Territory. (Finished, keeping)

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