Nerd Attack

Girls supporting Girls. 

New Young Adult Books Coming Out Today! (August 7, 2018)

Have I missed any titles? Have you added any of these titles to your TBR? Let me know!

New Standalones/First Book in a Series: 

Catwoman: Soulstealer by Sarah J. Maas

Heretics Anonymous by Katie Henry

#Murdertrending by Gretchen McNeil

Nines by Zach Hines

These Rebel Waves by Sara Raasch

Finding Yvonne by Brandy Colbert

The Last Best Story by Maggie Lehrman

Let Me List the Ways by Sarah White

Dance of Thieves by Mary E. Pearson

The Other Side of Lost by Jessi Kirby

Girl at the Grave by Teri Bailey Black

This Story is a Lie (Also known as White Rabbit, Red Wolf) by Tom Pollock

The Dark Beneath the Ice by Amelinda Bérubé

Echoes by Alice Reeds

New Sequels: 

The Forest Queen (Mechanica 0.5) by Betsy Cornwell

Neverwake (Dreamfall #2) by Amy Plum

Genius: The Revolution (Genius #3) by Leopoldo Gout

The only thing more bad ass than that is why she did it. As we all know Olympic figure skating can be quite racist and Surya was tired of being given consistently lower scores than her white counterparts, and she wasn’t shy about it. She believed that this was exactly why she has been given a low score on her short program earlier in the day, and decided to send the judges a message.

Now back flips are crazy dangerous. If you don’t land perfectly you can severely injure yourself, which would sideline any athlete, potentially permanently. In order to discourage athletes from attempting them, they were made illegal in Olympic competition. The official reason they gave is because all jumps must be landed on one blade to be scored and, of course, in order to complete a back flip you must land on both feet.

So not only did she complete an insanely risky and difficult move but when Surya landed her back flip she essentially made it legal, because she was able to do it while still only using one blade. She was daring the judges to try and low ball her. Unfortunately, they still ruled the move was illegal and deducted it against her in her final score. She may have been unable to medal but she got the last laugh. After completing her free skate she turned her back to the judges, showing them just how much their opinions matter. For this, and for everything else, she goes down in history as not only one the greatest figure skaters ever but a true bad ass.’

Prior to her first space flight, Ride got a lot of shit from the media and remained remarkably calm and non-homicidal:

“No other astronaut was ever asked questions like these: Will the flight affect your reproductive organs? The answer, delivered with some asperity: “There’s no evidence of that.” Do you weep when things go wrong on the job? Retort: “How come nobody ever asks Rick those questions?” Will you become a mother? First an attempt at evasion, then a firm smile: “You notice I’m not answering.” In an hour of interrogation that is by turns intelligent, inane and almost insulting, Ride remains calm, unrattled and as laconic as the lean, tough fighter jockeys who surround her. “It may be too bad that our society isn’t further along and that this is such a big deal,” she reflects.” (Source)

After her death in 2012 it was revealed that she had been with her partner Tam O’Shaughnessy (a woman) for 27 years. Below is a picture of Ride (left), her partner O’Shaughnessy (right), and their dog Gypsy, circa 1985. (Source).

Ride and O’Shaughnessy co-founded the Sally Ride Foundation, aimed at promoting interest in science among elementary and middle school aged-kids, especially girls. The two women also co-wrote six children’s science books. Here is a picture of them speaking at an American Library Association Conference in 2008. (source)

*Ride had been previously married to a man and it is unknown exactly how she identified (lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, etc). 

But yeah, Sally Ride was not only the first American woman in space, but also the first and only known LGBT astronaut at NASA. And she was also a badass. (source).