I read 40 books in 2024. It was a great year for thoughtful memoirs and eye-opening nonfiction, as well as some imaginative novels. Book covers in the graphic above are arranged from favorite (top left) to least favorite (bottom right). Below are some recaps for a couple of my favorites, which all happen to be…
I was very excited to participate in two different Taiwanese celebrations in May. First, the Taiwanese American Cultural Festival in San Francisco, and second, Taiwan Day with the Oakland A’s. The Taiwanese American Cultural Festival happens in San Francisco’s Union Square on one Saturday each May. I can still remember the first time I saw…
I read 40 books in 2023. It was a banner year for celebrity memoirs, as well as heavy nonfiction that left me feeling largely doomed. But there were a few bright spots as well. Book covers in the graphic above are arranged from favorite (top left) to least favorite (bottom right). Below are some mini-reviews…
What a beautiful setting on a beautiful evening for this wedding welcome party. Katelyn and Max held their rehearsal dinner with their closest friends and family, followed by drinks and a book swap with all of their guests. Take a peek at some highlights below. Welcome party guests were asked to each bring a book…
I read 50 books in 2022, almost all of which were just on my little phone screen via my library’s ebook collection. It was an especially rich year for heartfelt memoirs and fascinating nonfiction. I also decided to sketch all my books on my little notebook bookshelf, in the order I read them. Below are…
I read 82 books in 2021, most of which were finished in the first couple months of the year. I read most of them as ebooks on my phone, yes, 82 books on that little screen. I figured since I spend most of my day staring at the device anyway, I might as well at…
My reading habits came and went as they pleased in 2020, dipping to zero in both May and July as I became overwhelmed by doomscrolling or other things in life and in the world. But I still managed to read 34 books. They are shown above in roughly descending order from favorite (top left) to…
56 books is the most I’ve ever read in a year, almost double the 31 I read in 2018. My basic strategy was to convert some of the endless hours of scrolling through social media into time reading books instead. And as always, I check out all of these books as ebooks from the library–…
After two years of reading not quite as much, I dove back in in 2018, and I read 31 books by the end of the year. My three-year-old Kindle is still serving me well, and I checked out every single one of these books as ebooks from the library– for free! My strategy is to…
I’ve been hard at work on my 100 day project, 100 Bay Area Gems, which involves both 1) illustrating and sharing my favorite spots in the Bay Area and 2) going around to more places on my bucket list to see if they might qualify as new gems! I’m very happy to share two of…
When Elizabeth and Derek met at a college party, they hit it off immediately. She loves rugby. He plays rugby. He is a total film nerd. She was a film major. They also discovered a shared love of books, Berkeley, history, and architecture. So when it came time to be wed, there was no more perfect spot…
My love affair with reading blossomed in 2015, bolstered by a new purchase toward the end of the year: my kindle paperwhite, which I’ve lovingly named “Sassafras.” I already did most of my reading via the kindle app and free ebooks borrowed from my local libraries, but with my new kindle, I upgraded to a better…