@salrandolph@zirk.usI write in haste—it was hard to stop reading and start writing. This week I found myself pursuing a writer who makes an art of pursuing others, and I got caught up in the chase.
On Sophie Calle’s The Address Book & other miniature novels.
https://salrandolph.substack.com/p/the…
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialDay 19 (a bit late): Alice Oseman
As I said I've got 14 authors to fit into two days. Probably just going to extend to 30? But Oseman gets this spot as an absolute legend of queer fiction in both novel & graphic novel form, and an excellent example of the many truths queer writers have to share with non-queer people that can make everyone's lives better. Her writing is very kind, despite in many instances dealing with some dark stuff.
I started out on Heartstopper, which is just so lovely and fun to read, and then made my way through several of her novels. The one I'll highlight here which I think it's her greatest triumph is "Loveless", which is semi-autobiographical and was at least my first (but no longer only) experience with the "platonic romance" sub-genre. It not only helped me work through some crufty internal doubts about aro/ace identities that I'd never really examined, but in the process helped improve my understanding of friendship, period. Heck, it's probably a nice novel for anyone questioning any sort of identity or dealing with loneliness, and it's just super-enjoyable as a story regardless of the philosophical value.
To cheat a bit more here on my author count, I recently read "Dear Wendy" by Ann Zhao, which shouts out "Loveless" and offers a more expository exploration of aro/ace identities, but "Loveless" is a book with more heart and better writing overall, including the neat plotting and great pacing. I think there are also parallels with Becky Albertalli's work, though I think I like Oseman slightly more. Certainly both excel at writing queer romance (and romance-adjacent) stuff with happy endings (#OwnVoices wins again with all three authors).
In any case, Oseman is excellent and if you're not up for reading a novel, Heartstopper is a graphic novel series that's easy to jump into and very kind to its adorable main characters.
I think I've now decided to continue to 30, which is a relief, so I'm tagging this (and the next post that rounds out 20) two ways.
#20AuthorsNoMen
#30AuthorsNoMen
@bourgwick@heads.social
@publicvoit@graz.socialI'm thinking of (1) recording my #PIM lecture as a larger set of 5-30min video snippets (1 for each sub-topic) and/or
(2) writing a book with even more background information on the same subject including further links.
What would you consider more important to you personally?
Please do limit yourself to not more than 2 choices even if they are hard to do.
@salrandolph@zirk.usI write in haste—it was hard to stop reading and start writing. This week I found myself pursuing a writer who makes an art of pursuing others, and I got caught up in the chase.
On Sophie Calle’s The Address Book & other miniature novels.
https://salrandolph.substack.com/p/the…
@philip@mastodon.mallegolhansen.com
@jtk@infosec.exchangeEvery book I checked (>6) that I used in computer networking classes I taught going back 25 years, except for one was found in this list.
https://ecoevo.social/@hydropsyche/115322277085213039
@stefan@gardenstate.socialJust finished The Way of Kings.
while the writing was good and the characters were good it's such a poorly plotted book that it becomes unenjoyable.
Very little happens over 800 pages and while I love character development it's no excuse for how slow this moves. I would have enjoyed this at 500 pages. At 1000 I don't even want to read more.
#books
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialDay 18: Mark Oshiro
Having just learned that Oshiro is nonbinary, they're an instant include on this list. In veering extremely heavily towards YA, and losing a spot that would have gone to an absolutely legendary mangaka, anime writer, or feminist philosopher, but "Anger is A Gift" and "Each of us a Desert" are just that good, and I'm trying to steer a bit towards towards lesser-known authors I respect.
I already mentioned "Anger is a Gift" above, but to recap, it's a painful, vivid, and beautifully honest story of queer love, loss, and protest against an oppressive system. CW for racist police murder, intergenerational trauma, and police brutality against highschool students. It's a book a lot of Americans could benefit from reading right now, and while it's fiction, it's not fantasy or sci-fi. Besides the themes and politics, the writing is just really solid, with delicate characterization and tight-plotted developments that are beautifully paced.
To me "Each of us a Desert" is maybe even more beautiful, and Oshiro leaps into a magnificent fantasy world that's richly original in its desolation, dark history, lonely characters, and mythical magic. Particularly the clearly-not-just-superscription but ambiguously-important/powerful magical elements of Oshiro's worldbuilding are a rare contrast to the usual magic-is-real-here's-how-it-works fare, and pulling that off a all as they do is a testament to their craft. The prose is wonderful, probably especially so if you speak Spanish, but I enjoyed it immensely despite only knowing a few words here and there. The rich interiority of the characters, their conflicts both with each other and within themselves, and the juxtaposition of all that against origins in cult-like ignorance allows for the delivery of a lot of wisdom and complex truths.
Between these two books, so different and yet each so powerful, Oshiro has demonstrated incredible craft and also a wide range of styles, so I'm definitely excited to read more of their work and to recommend them to others.
I'm also glad to have finally put a nonbinary author on this list; the others I had in mind won't make it at this point because there's too much genre overlap, although I'll include them in my didn't-make-it list at the end. I've now got just 2 slots left and have counted up 14 more authors that absolutely need to be mentioned, so we'll see what happens.
#20AuthorsNoMen
@Mediagazer@mstdn.socialAmid US public media funding cuts, a look at how the model of private donations can lead to an audience that's older, whiter, and richer than average Americans (Sarah Scire/Nieman Lab)
https://www.niemanlab.org/2025/11/funding-c…
@outer@mas.toThis a great book! Teri's a great author! This is a great price!
If someone tries to charge you more for it, don't go there.
#Bookstodon #Humanity #GreatWriting
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialJust finished "Endgames" by Ru Xu, sequel to "Newsprints." I was happy to see the characters from the first book get their endings, but Xu feels incredibly out of her depth writing about the politics of empire and the power/complicity of the press, which completely dampened my enjoyment.
As just one example, there's a ton of interesting nuance to explore behind the idea of a disabled imperial ruler and how disadvantage/persecution (from which you have been effectively shielded) does not justify harming others. This book explores none of that.
I think it does serve as a great example of how severely one limits one's own imagination when one buys into the myth of nationhood as natural/inevitable/good. It's not that Xu's politics are especially authoritarian, I think, but that she's just (been kept?) resoundingly naïve, and so her plot resolution feels childish (or perhaps that's an insult to children).
#AmReading #ReadingNow
@hex@kolektiva.socialNow that I'm almost 40 pages in, I've started to accept that I am, in fact, in the process of writing a book and not a zine.
@tante@tldr.nettime.org"Eliezer Yudkowsky is confusing a very human obsession with death and a very modern fear of a techno-deity"
https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2025/10/the-guru-of-the-ai-apocalypse
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialFinished "Lobizona" by Romina Garber. I have extremely mixed feelings about this book. It's a powerful depiction of the fear of living as an undocumented child/teen and it has interesting things to say about rejection, belonging, and the choice between seeking to be recognized for who you are and wanting you blend in enough to be accepted as normal. However, it's also an explicit homage to Harry Potter, and while it doesn't include antisemitic tropes or glorify slavery or even have any anti-trans sentiments I can detect, to me the magical school setup felt forced and I thought it would have been a better book had it not tried to fit that mould. Also, it would have been a super interesting situation to explore trans issues, and while it's definitely fine for it not to do that, the author's praise of Rowling's work has me wondering...
There's a sequel that I think could in theory be amazing, but given the execution of the first book, I think I'll wait a bit before checking it out. By putting her main character in opposition to both ICE in the human world and the magical authorities in the other world, Garber explicitly sets the stage for a revolution standing between her protagonist and any kind of lasting peace. But I'm not confident she's capable of writing that story without relying on some kind of supernatural deus ex machina, which would be disappointing to me, since "a better world if only possible through divine intervention" is an inherently regressive message.
Overall, #OwnVoices fantasy centering an undocumented immigrant is an excellent thing, and I've certainly got a lot of privilege that surely influences my criticism. However, #OwnVoices stuff has a range of levels of craft and political stances, and it can be excellent for some reasons and mediocre for others.
On that point, if anyone reading this has suggestions for fiction books grappling with borders and the carceral state, Is be happy to hear them.
#AmReading
@vrandecic@mas.toI know some complain about George R.R. Martin and his speed of writing his book series: he started writing "Song of Ice and Fire" in 1991 and so far published five big books (1996, 1998, 2000, 2005, 2011) with two more planned.
Beginners.
Ever heard of Donald Knuth? He started writing "The Art of Computer Programming" in 1962, planned in 12 chapters. So far, six and a half chapters have been published, in five big books (1968, 1969, 1973, 2011, 2023) with thre…
@primonatura@mstdn.social"Consumed by convenience: The culture of disposability"
#Consumerism #Disposability
https://
@kctipton@mas.toGeorge Orwell's Surprising Stance on Hypocrisy #Orwell
@PwnieFan@infosec.exchange“the book's thesis: that the AI bubble is driven by monopolists who've conquered their markets and have no more growth potential, who are desperate to convince investors that they can continue to grow by moving into some other sector,”
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/115277162069992407…
@jredlund@social.linux.pizzaOnce More to the Paragraph
#teaching writing An email from The New Yorker a few mornings ago gave me a teaching idea. In it, Nathan Heller discusses E.B. White’s long relationship with the magazine. White is probably most famous for a children’s book, Charlotte’s Web, or perhaps for “Once More to the Lake,” an essay much anthologized in student textbooks, but at The New Yorker…
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialDay 16: Mayra Cuevas & Marie Marquardt
Okay so this is cheating, but they're co-authors of multiple books together, and there's no way for me to separate their contributions... I've already got too many authors I'd like to list, so why not?
I read their book "Does My Body Offend You?" and absolutely loved it; it's a celebration of teen activism while also being a deep exploration of feminist issues through practical situations that bring out the complicated side of things, which the authors refuse to reduce back to a simple formulaic answer. It has a supporting cast of appropriately-complex male characters that help in exploring the nuances of issues like the line between female empowerment & male gratification, and it brings race and macho culture into the conversion as well.
CW for sexual harassment & deep discussion of the resultant trauma.
I'll cheat again here to sneak in mention of two male authors whose work resonates with theirs: Mark Oshiro's "Anger is a Gift" has a more pessimistic/complex take on teen activism along with a gay romance (CW for racist cop murder), while Jeremy Whitley's graphic novel "Navigating With You" deals with queer romance & disability, while having a main character pairing that echoes those from "Does My Body Offend You?" in a lot of ways. Another connection (to non-men authors this time) is with "Go With the Flow" by Lily Williams and Karen Schneemann. Their graphic novel about teen activism and periods is a bit more didactic and has a much lighter tone, but it does necessarily have some overlapping themes.
To bring it back to Cuevas & Marquhardt, their writing is great and their ability to discuss such complex topics with such nuance, all wrapped up in a story that feels completely natural, is amazing to me, and makes their book feel like one of the most valuable to recommend to others.
In writing this I've realized a grave oversight in the list so far that I'll have to correct tomorrow, but I'm quickly running out of days. The didn't-quite-make-it list is going to be full of more excellent authors, and I'm honestly starting to wonder whether it might actually be harder to name 20 male authors I respect now that I've found the sense to be mostly somewhere between disgusted and disappointed with so many of the male authors I enjoyed as a teen.
#20AuthorsNoMen (cheating a bit)
@hikingdude@mastodon.socialThe weather is cold and wet.
I'm not sure if there's a lot of outdoor activity today. But I've finished a book and wrote a quick review on #bookwyrm .
Funny - I NEVER wrote reviews on any platform. No Idea why but nowadays I'd only put it on bookwyrm because then I do not give my writing to any company for free.
@outer@mas.toHere's the cover from a really great book of short stories, from 2010, named "Shadow Show".
The stories, written by a wide variety of top-notch authors, such as Margaret Atwood and Harlan Ellison, each celebrate Ray Bradbury's life and writing.
(The book cover art is by Tom Gauld--I found it searching online for Gauld's cartoons.)
#Writing
@PwnieFan@infosec.exchangeBrownies to celebrate book release day! Good thing I'm better at writing than knitting socks. Now I just need to find a magic pen that would let me write fascism away. #bookstodon
@philip@mastodon.mallegolhansen.com@… Tangential but you may find it interesting: In Kent Beck’s book on Test Driven Development one of the examples is to build your own testing framework in Python, using that very same framework to test the code for the framework you are writing.
It was so much fun to do. I could imagine a parallel where you build a CI service, using the same to deploy changes to yo…
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialDay 5: Robin Wall Kimmerer
I'm taking these liberty of changing my hashtag and expanding the intent of this list to include all non-men, although Kimerer is a woman so I'll get to more gender diversity later... I've also started planning this out more and realized that I may continue a bit beyond 20...
In any case, Robin Wall Kimmerer is an Indigenous academic biologist and excellent non-fiction author whose work touches on Potawotomi philosophy, colonialism (including in academic spaces), and ideas for a better future. Anyone interested in ecology, conservation, or decolonization in North America will probably be impressed by her work and the rich connections she weaves between academic ecology and Indigenous knowledge offer a critical opportunity to expand your understanding of the world if like me you were raised deeply enmeshed in "Western" scientific tradition. I suppose a little background in skepticism helped prepare me to respect her writing, but I don't think that's essential.
I've only read "Braiding Sweetgrass," but "Gathering Moss" and her more recent "The Serviceberry" are high on my to-read list, despite my predilection for fiction. Kimmerer incorporates a backbone of fascinating anecdotes into "Braiding Sweetgrass" that makes it surprisingly easy reading for a work that's philosophical at its core. She also pulls off an impressive braided organization to the whole thing, weaving together disparate knowledges in a way that lets you see both their contradictions and their connections.
The one criticism I've seen of her work is that it's not sufficiently connected to other Indigenous philosophers & writers, and that it's perhaps too comfortable of a read for colonizers, and that seems valid to me, even though (perhaps because I am a colonizer) I still find her book important.
An excellent author in any case, and one doing concrete ideological work towards a better world.
#20AuthorsNoMen
@hex@kolektiva.socialYou could kind of see that, even though he couldn't write a female character to save his life, Heinlein was really trying to be "woke." He would have absolutely fucking hated Musk and it could be more obvious from his writing. But yeah.... You have to actually read the book not just know the reference.
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialJust finished "It's Lonely at the Center of the Earth" by Zoe Thorogood.
CW: Frank/graphic discussion of suicide and depression (not in this post but in the book).
It feels a bit wrong to simply give it my review here as I would another graphic memoir, because it's much more personal and less consensual than the usual. It feels less like Thorogood has invited us into her life than like she was forced to put her life on display in order to survive, and while I selfishly like to read into the book that she benefited in some way from the process, she's honest about how tenuous and sometimes false that claim can be. Knowing what I've learned from this book about Thorogood's life and demons, I don't want her to feel the mortification of being perceived by me, and so perhaps the best thing I could do is to simply unread the book and pull it back out of my memories.
I did not find Thorogood's life relatable, nor pitiable (although my instinct bends in that direction), but instead sacred and unknowable. I suspect that her writing and drawing has helped others in similar circumstances, but she leaves me with no illusion that this fact brings her any form of peace or joy. I wonder what she would feel reading "Lab Girl" or "The Deep Dark," but she has been honest enough to convey that such speculation on my part is a bit intrusive.
I guess the one other thing I have to say: Zoe Thorogood has through artistic perseverance developed an awe-inspiring mastery of the comic medium, from panel composition, through to page layout and writing. This book wields both Truth and Beauty.
#AmReading #ReadingNow
@stsquad@mastodon.org.uk@…
I'm sure it's the nostalgia speaking but I do have fond memories of cutting my teeth writing assembly to push pixels and abuse the hardware. An era when the entire annotated listing for TOS was in the back of a book and you could read and understand most of it.
@…
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialDay 28: Samira Ahmed
As foreshadowed, we're back to YA land, which represents a lot of what I've been enjoying from the library lately.
I've read "Hollow Fires", "This Book Won't Burn", and "Love, Hate, and other Filters" by Ahmed, along with "Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know" which is quite different. All four are teen ~romances with interesting things to say about racism & growing up as a South Asian Muslim, but whereas the first three are set in small-town Indiana, the third is set in France and includes a historical fiction angle involving Dumas and a hypothetical Muslim woman who was (in this telling) the inspiration for several Lord Byron poems.
Ahmed's novels all include a strong and overt theme of social justice, and it's refreshing to see an author not try to wade around the topic or ignore it. Her romances are complex, with imperfect protagonists and endings that aren't always "happily ever after" although they're satisfying and believable.
My library has a plethora of similar authors I've been enjoying, including Adiba Jaigirdar (who appeared earlier in this list), Sabaa Tahir ("All my Rage" is fantastic but I'm less of a fan of her fantasy stuff), Sabina Khan ("The Love and Lies of Rukhsana Ali"), and Randa Abdel-Fattah ("Does My Head Look Big In This?"; from an earlier era). Ahmed gets the spot here because I really like her politics and the way she works them into her writing. Her characters are unapologetic advocates against things like book bans, and Ahmed doesn't second-guess them or try to make things more palatable for those who want to ban books (or whatever). Her historical fiction in "Mad..." is also really cool in terms of "huh that could actually totally be true" and grappling with literary sexism from ages past.
#30AuthorsNoMen
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialOkay, here's the promised follow-up with more authors I respect who didn't make it onto this list. I won't do deep dives but I'll list at least one work per author:
YA novelists:
- Randi Pink ("Girls Like Us")
- Louisa Onomé ("Twice as Perfect")
- Emery Lee ("Meet Cute Diary")
- Robin Benway ("Far from the Tree")
- Angela Velez ("Lulu and Milagro's Search for Clarity")
Children's book authors:
- Jacqueline Davies ("Bubbles Up")
- Freya Hartas ("Slow Down in the Park")
Novelists:
- Rimma Onoseta ("How You Grow Wings")
Graphic novelists:
- Linda Medley ("Castle Waiting")
- 🖋️Magsalene Visaggio 🖌️Paulina Ganucheau ("Girlmode")
- Ursula Vernon ("Digger")
- SJ Sindu ("Tall Water" w/ Dion MBD)
- Hope Larson ("Be That Way"; "Salt Magic" w/ Rebecca Mock)
- Lily Williams Karen Schneemann ("Go With the Flow")
- Maia Kobabe ("Gender Queer")
- Kay O'Neill ("Tea Dragon Society")
- Marjane Satrapi ("Persepolis")
Mangaka:
- Kaoru Mori ("Young Bride's Stories")
- Ryoko Kui ("Delicious in Dungeon")
- Natsuki Takaya ("Fruits Basket")
Anime writers/directors and/or Japanese light/fantasy/SF novelists:
- Nahoko Uehashi ("Moribito")
- Sayo Yamamoto ("Michiko & Hatchin"; "Yuri!!! On Ice")
- Mari Okada ("Ano Hana: The Flower we Saw That Day"; "Toradora!")
Game designers/programmers:
(Upon review I was pretty remiss in skipping over a few of these people, some of whom I wasn't aware of but most of whom I just didn't remember when writing my short list. Subconscious misogyny in action. Short & Thorson probably would have squeezed out some of the YA authors I included, although I have no real regrets.)
- Junko Kawano ("Suikoden")
- Elizabeth LaPensée ("When Rivers Were Trails")
- Momo Pixel ("Hair Nah")
- Zoë Quinn ("Depression Quest"; narrative designer on "Solar Ash")
- Kellee Santiago ("Cloud"; "Flower")
- Tanya X. Short ("Moon Hunters")
- Kim Swift ("Portal")
- Maddy Thorson ("Celeste")
- Andi McClure @… ("Jumpman")
Note: I haven't included composers or artists here, but there's a deep bench.
Games journalists/steamers:
- Tanya DePass @… (#/INeedDiverseGames; twitch streams)
- Anita Sarkeesian (Feminist Frequency)
Game/play scholars:
- Mary Flanagan ("Critical Play")
- Tracy Fullerton ("Game Design Workshop")
- Brenda Laurel ("Toward the Design of a Computer-Based Interactive Fantasy System")
- Janet Murray ("Hamlet on the Holodeck"l
- Susana Tosca ("A Pragmatics of Links")
- Jichen Zhu ("Agency Play: Dimensions of Agency for Interactive Narrative Design")
- Magy Seif El Nasr ("Design patterns to guide player movement in 3D games")
- Kate Compton ("Causal Creators"; also "Spore")
P.S. upon consideration I've decided not to include any authors who are men in this coda.
There are definitely others who probably deserve to be here that I'm forgetting...
#GsmeDesign #Authors
