Tootfinder

somehow not *not* a beach book: made a game of trying to spot the proto-heads among the communards in chris jennings' brilliant, oddly fun, & wonderfully written "paradise now," a history of 19th century american utopians & socialist forerunners. #books

➡️ We Energies Cookie Book Archive
#bookmarks

Just finished "Snake-Eater" by T. Kingfisher (@…). I'd read and thoroughly enjoyed her "Digger" webcomic, and found this book to be quite enjoyable too. There's something indelibly heartwarming about an anxious character growing to feel more comfortable and self-assured, especially when escaping and unlearning emotional abuse, and I'm certainly a sucker for heartwarming characters. I like the way that Kingfisher has taken time to talk about and try to avoid cultural appropriation, in a way that I feel is reasonable, although of course I'm not an expert judge of the nuances and I'm biased by having liked the book, so I'm willing to be told things are complicated in that regard it others judge differently. I also really liked the window dressing of a vaguely solarpunk future society, in a book that's not at all about that society. I'd love to see Kingfisher write something focused on how that society could work (or maybe she already has?).
Probably going to look up some of Kingfisher's fantasy books soon.
#AmReading #ReadingNow #Bookstodon

Finished C Wilson - When women were warriors - book 1 (the warrior's path). Coming of age! And the many shapes relationships between mothers and daughters and warriors and apprentices and lovers and wives can take.
#book #reading

Hey Democrats - would you like a better platform than "we're not that guy"? maybe check out "Another World is Possible" by Natasha Zapata #bookstodon

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #VarietyMix
Book of Love:
🎵 Boy
#BookofLove
https://djwarrentrack.bandcamp.com/track/book-of-love-boy-ext-intro-outro-remix
https://open.spotify.com/track/4FQhTIpf3bnxGsCr0dHhtr

I hear that some #book publishers sell rejected texts, sent in by wanna-be book authors, to AI companies for #LLM training.
Garbage in, #garbage out.

When a book fails to provide an index, you just have to take matters into your own hands. I wish that were the only thing about this book that makes me a bit grumpy. Still, it’ll get used. #C64 #books

the last bookstore left on book row (besides the strand & forbidden planet) #nyc #books

I just finished the audio book "Factfullness" from Hans, Ola, Ana Rosling.
And I definitely like it! Judging situations by facts, not emotions. The world is better than most people think and what makes the world a better place.
#factfulness #books

This is one of three #books I acquired yesterday. The other two are still in the car, I'm in my nightie and it's raining, so they're staying put for now 😄
The Constant Gardener by le Carré, The Golden Hours by Louisa Young and Anna of the Five Towns by Arnold Bennett.
I'm particularly looking fwd to TGH, the next in The Cazalet Chronicles, written by EJH's niece. It…

Finally re-started reading House Of Leaves.
Still wondering why it's not getting more attention, with all the liminal space trend in recent years
Probably because it's virtually impossible to create an audio book and movie from it?
#books #reading

➡️ Tim Bray · Life During Class Wartime
https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2026/05/03/Life-During-Class-Wartime
(This is a link from my bookmark collection. A new link gets posted each night.)

Life During Class Wartime

Finished: CL Polk - Even though I knew the end. Lovely bit of not knowing how to trust.
#book #reading

"Rudeboy: Inside outsider": over het toch wel chaotische leven van (en door) Patrick Tilon, ooit frontman van de legendarische Urban Dance Squad. Hoe de spanning tussen personen spannende muziek en persoonlijke spanning oplevert.
Af en toe wat chaotisch boek, maar zeker interessant.
#book #goodread

I've finished reading "The Shining" by Stephen King yesterday. I don't think the title nor the author need any introduction. I just wanted to say that the movie (Kubrick's version) ls less scary. I guess a movie can put you behind somebody's eyes, but only a #book can truly put you inside somebody's head, and for hours.
#bookstodon #horror

➡️ Open Library
#bookmarks

"The Witches of Moonshyne Manor" is exactly the book I needed this week. It's a book about good people with good intentions doing their best and sometimes making mistakes and then figuring out how to move forward. #bookstodon

The Ex Vows, by Jessica Joyce
#Book #Humour #Meh #Review

make no mistake, i enthusiastically huffed all 771 pages of the new velvet underground bio & will refer back to it often, but i kinda wanted a lot more. more moe! more gear/drone forensics! more roadie details! more myth busting! more yule era! more reunion! shoulda been 2 volumes, market be damned. #books

Do you ever meet a book that inspires you to be its cheerleader? This book is so good I think everyone in the US should read it. So I bought several copies and I'll be dropping them off at various coffee shops in the city. First stop: Yellowbird Coffee in Saint Paul. Come by to find a book or for a good cup of coffee. #bookstodon

I like this! #books

Uncovered · Judge a book by its writing
Read first pages blind. No cover, no name, no hype. Find out what you actually fall for.

Just finished reading "The Beast Player" by Nahoko Uehashi. I had already watched the anime, but it had been so king I didn't remember all the details. While the anime was great, the book is even better, and it's going to be high on my list of things to recommend to my children when they're old enough to read for fun.
The neurodivergent representation is cool, as is the deep central question of interspecies bonds and the political possibilities and dangers they entail. Uehashi handles the exploration of that question well in my judgment, including appropriate ambiguity without muddying moral clarity. Elin is a truly fantastic protagonist, not without flaws but nevertheless a excellent role model and a very sympathetic figure without being pitiful.
One thing I really love about Uehashi's writing is that she's not shy about using interior narration to tell the reader directly what a variety of characters are feeling, but when she does this she focuses on human contradictions, quirks, and weaknesses that make those characters feel much richer, and that remind the reader of all the ways our weird and sometimes contradictory or inexplicable quirks guide our actions just as much as both logical thought and predictable/expected feelings. None of the characters is an unerring source of wisdom, with every grand principle presented shown to have its weaknesses and biases, and even the wisest characters making mistakes and learning from them.
Overall, a wonderful book, and having also seen the "Seirei no Moribito" anime but not read the books, I'm excited to dig into more of Uehashi's extensive catalog.
#AmReading #ReadingNow #Bookstodon

"The Ministery of Time" by Kaliane Bradley is a witty mix of a character from the Franklin expedition caught up in the present, and the oddities of time-travel and friendship.
#book #goodread

I've read Douglas Preston's "The Blasphemy" and it was pretty good.
The synopsis is that the US government has built the largest particle accelerator ever, in the remote area of Arizona, and a small team of scientists are about to get it running. However, as it is about to reach full power, they suddenly start losing output and a mysterious "greetings" appears on the main screen. Suspecting prank malware, they decide not to report it upstairs but to resolve it themselves. However, with no progress and suspiciously piling up problems, an ex-CIA operative is sent to investigate, under the cover of liaison tasked with improving the relations with the local Navajo people. On top of that, a lobbyist wanting to see their contract renewed engages with a televangelist to put some pressure on the project.
The book sets a mystery quite really, and keeps you caught in it to the very end. It's also packed with action. You get annoyed by politics, corruption and fundamentalism. You get mystified by the philosophical and theological problems. At some point, you just keep reading to see how the events unfold.
Apparently it's a part of Wyman Ford series, but the story is self-contained.
#books #bookstodon #thriller #SciFi

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #MiddayShow
Book of Love:
🎵 I Touch Roses
#BookofLove
https://prepedits.bandcamp.com/track/book-of-love-i-touch-roses-full-bloom-prep-edit
https://open.spotify.com/track/44o844oHFVKj3bJ9oRuoji

Something Wilder, by Christina Lauren
#Adventure #Book #Crime #Humour

"Up Above the City, Down Beneath the Stars". The biography of Barry Adamson.
Sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll, the usual ingredients are all there. And he's a good storyteller.
#book #goodread

Please, don't justify your texts if you don't know how to adjust the spaces, and, for the love of Satan or whatever deity you fancy, please don't print a book like this.
#GraphicDesign #Unjustified #books #layout

I rewarded myself for #BackToSchool preparation with this book by Anders Kofoed, and it's wonderful. Every Danish home should own it as a beautiful guide to the wildlife and the challenges that we encounter in Danish waters. And then maybe we'd do something finally about our choking seas. A huge recommend on #bookstodon for #DKmastodon from me.
I hope it is translated, the format would do well all round the North and Baltic Seas.
A particularly tasty nugget unearthed today: the Kattegat hosts one of the world's rarest and shallowest of ecosystems, a cold seep which is rather wonderfully named a bubble reef (boblerev) in Danish.
I think we should use this term in English - surely a bubble reef sounds much more appealing than a cold seep?
#biodiversity #marineBiology #Stem #BiodiversityCrisis #danmark

I'm going on a reading adventure. I just finished up with Shadows of the Apt series by Adrian Tchaikovsky. As I started thinking about what to read next, I thought I might go back and finish series that I never completed. I try to only read book series whose story is concluded. But occasionally I can't resist like Dungeon Crawler Carl. But I'm so bad at waiting.
So thought this might be a good use case for my local AI. I downloaded by reading history from #BookWyrm and asked it to find all the series that had concluded, but I never finished. And it worked great.
So now I get to go back and jump into old worlds that I used to explore. Its going to be so much to visit old friends, old stories. Squee! First up, #Mistborn!
#bookstodon #books #reading @…

Time for another book on my #Bookstodon: "Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents" by Isabel Wilkerson. I'm pretty sure I've read it because someone recommended it on Fedi, and it's a good recommendation. However, note it's a bit on the emotionally heavy side.
The book is built upon a thesis that the racism in the USA is actually a caste system. It covers a lot: the history from slavery through Jim Crow regime to today's white supremacist movements and US elections; comparisons to India and Nazi Germany; detailed analysis of causes ("pillars of caste") and consequences. As it turns out, these can be pretty detrimental to the dominant caste itself too. All of it is illustrated by many examples and personal stories.
It's an important read, and it reads really good though. However, it weighs heavily, so I had to take breaks while reading it.
#books

"How the World Made the West".
The West, so the story goes, was built on the ideas and values of Ancient Greece and Rome, which disappeared from Europe during the Dark Ages and were then rediscovered by the Renaissance.
Josephine Quinn shows in a fascinating longread that this is an oversimplification.
A connect-the-dots history lesson well worth reading.
#book #goodread

The Burning Land (The Last Kingdom #5), by Bernard Cornwell
#Adventure #Book #Favourite

Recently finished "Noor" by Nnedi Okorafor. I'd enjoyed her book "Binti" but to me this was even better (it also has a different target audience). "Noor" has a lot of great things, like an interesting exploration of some of the conflicting ideas of physical transhumanism, a rich historical perspective on the interplay between a few different Nigerian cultures, and a brief glimpse at an alternative society of outcasts. It doesn't have the deep exploration of the outcast society I would have loved, but that would have been a very different story, and I don't begrudge Okorafor writing this one instead. I do think that the "corporate evils are finally exposed" ending elements ring hollow and have for some years now, but I can also understand how monumental an effort it is to write a truly compelling happy ending in our current age. Overall, a really good book, and yet more confirmation to me that the marginalized voices so long kept out of literature in general and science fiction in particular have a deep wealth of perspective to offer when they graciously choose to do so.
#AmReading #ReadingNow #Bookstodon

An Accidental Death (D.C. Smith #1), by Peter Grainger
#Book #Crime #DCSmith #Mystery

"The Running Grave" is a whole lot better than the previous Cormoran Strike. A bulky book, telling you to stay clear of cults. By Robert Galbraith
#book #goodread

Just finished the very excellent "The Many Assassinations of Samir, Seller of Dreams" written by Daniel Nayeri with occasional illustrations by Daniel Miyares. It's rich with silk road culture and fantastical coincidences, and took the dread created by the initial foreshadowing and did something very clever with it at the end. I even appreciated its treatment of romance by the end of the book. Just in general super enjoyable to read for a lot of different reasons.
#AmReading #ReadingNow #Bookstodon

"Maurice and Maralyn" bt Sophie Elmhirst. A story of their lives, that were more than the story of their shipwreck caused by a sperm whale and the four months at sea before they were rescued.
Interesting how people can change, but their true being remains very much the same.
#book #goodread

Down Among the Sticks and Bones (Wayward Children #2), by Seanan McGuire
#Adventure #Book #Family

NEW BOOK: "End Times Fascism" by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor
#book #news #fascism #broligarchy #NerdReich #technology #PeteThiel #DarkEnlightenment #NeoReactionary #NRx #cameralism #NeoFascism #TechnoFeudalism #apocalypse #NaomiKlein #AstraTaylor

What to do with a bunch of defeated Atheneans in Sicily in 400 BC? Let them perform Euripides, of course.
"Glorious Exploits", a striking storyline, well written by Ferdia Lennon.
#book #goodread

The Fiancée Farce, by Alexandria Bellefleur
#Book #Family #Favourite #Humour

Just finished "Rialto" by Kate Milford. A wonderful book with a *lot* of things to like but also a few I wish had been done differently.
Starting with the good stuff, an #OwnVoices portrayal of anxiety depression is always welcome, *especially* one that portrays positive coping strategies, including active therapy, and complex but ultimately supportive family dynamics. Dad & daughter each reminding each other to use calming strategies at different points in the book was lovely, and getting to see the complexities of the trying to be a supportive sibling was great! Larger than that aspect, portraying a YA adventure in which the parents are actively involved but don't spoil things is so great and must have been difficult to pull off. Most YA stuff quickly ushers the parents out of the picture, and this fails to provide any kind of positive or negative role model for parent/child interaction. This book had ample examples of the former, *and* let the kids have plenty of agency too. Excellent stuff that I absolutely want to see more of.
So what didn't I like?
First, as an anarchist, I always hate to see unapologetically positive (and thus drastically unrealistic) portrayals of the police. Without getting into spoilers, even the stuff about the Piepowder court bothered me. It's presented here as a cutesy alternate court tradition, but I can't help but speculate that these courts were likely not always fair in practice, and the whole "single person makes immediate judgments model" from this book is terrible in general. I just don't like positive portrayals of terrible systems that happen to be good because the people involved are good people, since they reinforce harmful positive mental models of "justice" that don't apply to the real world. This element wasn't enough to totally spoil the book for me (the plot could have mostly functioned without it) but it's a downside to me.
Second, the book is set in rural Missouri, and has plenty of Black characters. Yay for representation? Certainly better than the cast being all-white given the setting. But the book doesn't have any Black *culture* that I picked up on, and it chooses to try to completely sidestep the relevant history. Maybe I'm just not attuned to elements that were there; if anyone who read this did see them feel free to point them out. The history definitely isn't there though... for example, was the park segregated, or not? During the time it was active one imagines most parks would have been, and that if it hadn't been that would have been a very important difference, which would even have been relevant to the plot and themes of the book as written.
Now perhaps this critique is unfair because Black children and young adults *should* get to see themselves portrayed in cozy fantasies without things always having to be about racism... In a choice between erasing Black characters and erasing racism (and especially racist histories) maybe there's no right answer here and this is fine, actually. My instinct tells me that there are ways to do better, though, and that presenting a history with all the racism carefully elided isn't the greatest compromise to make here.
A while ago I read "Under the Heron's Light" by Randi Pink. It also has mythical animal guides, a Southern setting, helpful family members, a multi-generational mystery to solve, and a (slightly older) teen protagonist who is up to the task. In contrast, it is all about racist history, and takes us through multiple extremely harrowing scenes from the past.
In any case, this discomfort also wasn't a deal-breaker for me, in part because, as I said, I think it's probably good for Black children to see uncomplicatedly positive representations of people like them alongside the plenty of stuff out there that does get deep into the racism and history. I also don't have the best perspective to judge this stuff, although that doesn't mean I should default to "it's probably fine" (I'd be happy to hear from anyone who feels they have a better perspective on this, about this book or the trend in general...).
Overall, I enjoyed Rialto quite a lot. I don't think it quite makes it into my top tier of recommendations for my kids, but I think it does make the list somewhere.
#AmReading #ReadingNow #Bookstodon

"Dark Matter" is a ghost story set in Spitsbergen during the cold and dark winter. Not the best place to be alone in the arctic dark....
By Michelle Paver.
#book #goodread

RE: #CemeteryBoys and the ending is just what I needed emotionally right now.
So glad that my book club chose to read it for September, especially given the sequel is coming out so soon.
I listened to the audio book and #AviRoque did an excellent job bringing the characters to life.
#Bookstodon #trans #LGBTQ #Latinx #DiaDeLosMuertos #AidenThomas

A Murder in Springtime (Bruno, Chief of Police #19), by Martin Walker
#Book #Bruno #Crime #Meh

Just finished "Amazona" by Canizales (indirect trigger warning: rape). An excellent fictional graphic novel about the displacement of indigenous people from the Amazon in Columbia. I especially liked the dedication: "Dedicated to those who have had to flee, leaving their lives behind. May the light in their hearts never fade. May it light new paths, so its brightness can blind the greedy. Early on the refugees, hosted in a city, comment that they now need money, when before if they had a need they could just take what they needed from the jungle. The book doesn't make this point, but communities like that have been living that way for tens of thousands of years, and I have hope that those ways of life will continue, at least where not yet destroyed, for tens of thousands more years, if not millions or billions of years. I am myself not a primitivist, despite being an anarchist, but I think there are nevertheless a plethora of important perspectives to be seen if one pays attention to indigenous groups around the world.
#AmReading #ReadingNow #Bookstodon

The Way We Play (The Bradford Boys #2), by Tia Louise
#Book #Crap #Family #Meh…

Alien Clay: fascinating xenobiosphere fascism
Shroud: fascinating xenobiosphere capitalism
Is there any book by Tchaikovsky where our future society isn't a nightmare?
Not a rhetorical question, I very much liked those two books, that's why I'm curious about how he'd write a livable future.
#books #adrianTchaikovsky #sciFi #scienceFiction

Just finished "Cry When Baby Cries" by Becky Bairncoat, an excellent autobiographical graphic novel about pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting through toddlerhood, including IVF and a miscarriage. It's wonderfully frank and unvarnished in its depictions of some of the horrors, while also talking about the joy and love. I don't think any book can really prepare anyone for parenthood (and everyone experiences it differently; I'm sure some won't see their experiences reflected here), but this one is better than a lot of stuff, or at least rings truer to me (relevant fact: my one-year-old is still not sleeping through the night).
#AmReading #ReadingNow #Bookstodon

Reliquary (Pendergast #2), by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child
#Adventure #Book #Crap #Horror

Just fished "Coldwire" by Chloe Gong. An interesting and well-written cyberpunk thriller, even though it didn't have the social-imaginative elements I was looking for. I liked the reveal, and the overall construction, even if I felt that a lot of things were a bit off, and I'm not sure how I feel about an ultimately-optimistic-about-technical-possibilities view of the future right now, especially after reading Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky" just recently which offers an idea of a future that's less optimistic (even if it dilutes that a bit towards the end).
Even if Gong's imagined future doesn't feel like it has anything interesting to say about either how to get to or sustain a more libratory society, it's a fun book and I'm definitely somewhat interested in the potential for a sequel.
#AmReading #ReadingNow #Bookstodon

Just finished "Healer of the Water Monster" by Brian Young. I'm reading a bunch of juvenile fiction right now in a quest to have some good recommendations for my kids to read in a few years when they're old enough, and this one definitely makes the cut, with deeply-integrated #OwnVoices Diné cultural elements, good (to my reading) handling of complex topics like divorce and depression, and cool magical elements. This is exactly the kind of new generation of kids' fiction I'm looking for that drops the regressive themes present in so much of what I read at that age. For example, I just before this I read Howl's Moving Castle and then The House of Many Ways by Dianna Wynne Jones, and while the first was pretty much great, the sequel has a whole benevolent monarchy thing that's central to the book in a way that weighs down the politics of the book a lot. Unsurprisingly, the indigenous perspective is a refreshing one.
#AmReading #ReadingNow #Bookstodon

Just finished reading "Holler: A Graphic Memoir of Rural Resistance" by Denali Sai Nalamalapu. An excellent graphic novel about resistance to the Mountain Valley Pipeline in Virginia and West Virginia. Although the pipeline is sadly operational today, resistance delayed it by more than twice the originally-planned timeline, and increased the cost tremendously. This kind of action increases cost and risk projections for pipelines all around the world and slows down capitalist extraction even where it can't stop it.
The book is lovely, drawn from interviews with 6 different activists and including a variety of perspectives on resistance, including an indigenous perspective. A gray thing to read if you're into #SolarPunk, #anarchism, or #ClimateJustice, or just curious. I've included a picture of a page talking about building towards future communities here.
#AmReading #ReadingNow #Bookstodon