Quick Take: The Stakes Are Nigh

Keep calm and GOTV, then wind down your day with these books and articles

Feeling anxious? If so, I hope you are finding ways to channel your emotions into volunteering your heart out. The last thing you want to say to yourself the day after the election is this: I wish I did more.

That said, we still have to get through the next five days without eating ALL the Halloween candy. After long days of work and volunteering to stop elected autocracy and fascism, there’s nothing I like better than curling up my bed with a book and my kids to read for a bit before we all try to get some damn sleep.

Need an escape? Here are two science fiction books that struck me with their vivid and absorbing stories that turn colonization and de-colonization on their heads. The Saint of Bright Doors is the breathtaking debut novel from Vajra Chandrasekera and Alien Clay is the latest from prolific British author Adrian Tchaikovsky.

Chandrasekera invites into a world where history itself can be remade by the very powerful (sound familiar?), while Tchaikovsky confronts us with alien life so starkly different that it can help rewrite the future of humanity (let’s hope it doesn’t come to this). Both books will lift the spirits of organizers who see corporate power and structural oppression as root causes of the problems we face, and who need some people-powered revolutionary vibes about now.

Need inspiration? Here are three book reviews I wrote after the 2022 elections that ground us in what really works to make change.