@n8foo@macaw.social2026-06-19 05:37:09
Think I found my summer #reading
@n8foo@macaw.social2026-06-19 05:37:09
@darkrat@chaosfurs.social2026-07-14 17:03:16
@callunavulgaris@mastodon.scot2026-06-14 08:56:24
Seen in town yesterday: new drum planters and a desk I deeply desire but that's nearly £800 😲 There's a viking exhibition on in the priory. Some detectorists were there and we had a good old chat and I'm hoping we can go along to their next meeting. Also had fun with fibre arts and learnt a bit about spinning.
Edited to add: the library is doing a #reading bingo card! I'm jus…
@ellie@ellieayla.net2026-07-12 20:30:51
@kurtsh@mastodon.social2026-07-31 02:21:42
@ellie@ellieayla.net2026-07-12 20:32:53
@pre@boing.world2026-07-15 11:38:57
I read Naomi Klein's "Doppelganger", mostly by the pool or the beach while on holiday last week.
It isn't really about her being confused with Naomi Wolf, except on a surface level. Or even really about Wolf moving from left feminism towards right wing conspiracy theory.
Really it's about how political culture has changed as the world has moved more online and suffered the consequences of a pandemic and the often wrongheaded political responses to that.
Conspiracy thinking and a whole culture concentrating on reticence and reactionary thinking instead of evidence and logic.
While reading it I was hanging out with some folks who are much more right wing than I generally do. Here's some things they said:
I don't believe in Sunscreen. Isn't it funny how skin cancer rates have gone up as sunscreen becomes more popular.
I don't believe in COVID.
Carbon Warming models don't even take into account the sun.
I thought Chemtrails were a conspiracy theory, but came to believe it.
Claiming to believe in freedom while also wanting a crack-down on asylum-seekers, thinking they are destroying society.
So it's easy to believe Klein's basic thesis here, the worry that reactionary conspiracy thinking is breaking the entire body politic.
I don't think it's that people have lost all rationality. It's that people are wearing their conspiracy theories as badges, identifying them as a member of a group. Like religious beliefs that bind a group, the more stupid and outrageous they are the more those badges work to identify the ingroup from the outgroup.
The worry is always when they decide the outgroup need punishing for not taking on those conspiracy beliefs and turn to suppression and violence.
#reading #books #worldPol
@ronaldsnijder@mastodon.social2026-05-24 17:05:38
Currently on a #WilliamGibson #reading binge. After Pattern Recognition, now I'm immersed in Spook Country and then Zero History. #sf
@tiotasram@kolektiva.social2026-08-16 23:32:08
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
@mariyadelano@hachyderm.io2026-08-11 18:45:48
@pre@boing.world2026-06-15 19:22:12
There's a bit in QualityLand [ #books #reading #socialMediaBan
@tiotasram@kolektiva.social2026-05-24 15:42:26
Content warning: Minor spoilers for "A Psalm for the Wild-Built"
Just finished "A Psalm for the Wild-Built" by Becky Chambers. Overall it's good but I also have some Thoughts.
First, it was very pleasant to finally read some non-trite utopian solarpunk after having read stuff like Octavia Butler recently. Both hope and despair can be poisonous on their own IMO, so getting some balance in is nice. It's definitely a very valuable thing to be able to lay out an actually desirable and in many ways imaginable future given our grim present. Chambers is no LeGuin though. I'll probably be reading more of her work and maybe she fleshes out these ideas elsewhere, but at least in this book there is no focus on either how the transition to a better society could happen nor on how the better society holds up in the face of adverse events and inclinations. Compare LeGuin's "The Dispossessed" or N. K. Jemisin's short story "The Ones Who Stay and Fight" and it feels like there's something important missing from Chambers' portrait of a future society. Of course, maybe the point is to make a cozy book, in which case fine, there's certainly a place for such things, and I can look for deeper inspiration elsewhere.
The second big thought I had was that Chambers' worldview seems not well-informed by certain indigenous perspectives, and this creates some contradictions. For example, (minor spoilers) when Dex enters the wilderness there's a whole bit about understanding humankind's place in nature and how human settlements are what we're used to but they're only a brief interruption of the vast untouched wilderness. Along the same lines, much of the world is intentionally left untouched by humans as a way to keep it pristine and natural. Later however, a character makes the point that humans *are* animals. The indigenous perspective that I appreciate would agree with that, and would further question the value in distinguishing between human influence on ecosystems and influences that others have. More sharply, one might observe that there's a bigger difference between how different kinds of humans relate to and influence their environments than between how less-disruptive humans and various animals do the same: the strip-mine-operator vs. migrant tribesperson impact difference is probably much greater than the migrant tribesperson vs. beaver gap, for example. Rather than talking about limiting human disruption, then, as if all human-environment interactions are disruptive and must be minimized, we could/should be talking about how to create human societies that have beneficial relationships with their environments and acknowledging that we actually have many positive examples of that, both historical and contemporary. Chambers' utopia is a "humans dominate nature but restrain themselves so that their disruptions are minimal and thus nature can thrive" vision, but what I'd even more like to see would be a "humans study old ways and make new ones so that they can interact positively with ecosystems again" vision, including some of "here are the places that sometimes breaks down but also the patterns and institutions that ensure repair of those breakdowns and thus long-term sustainability."
Final big thought: Chambers' utopia is too homogenous for my tastes. Of course it's hard enough and valuable work dreaming up and sharing any utopia and Chambers' transcends triteness in a number of ways, so this criticism is a bit rude. But the single shared religion, lack of mention of conflicts around shared decisions, especially historical society-defining ones, and nagging questions like "what about the people indigenous to the now-uninhabited lands?" and "what about the indigenous peoples who weren't part of the factory-building societies?" leave me wishing for more nuance in this direction.
All in all: a good book, and I'm criticizing out of a place of appreciation, not scorn. I've got there sequel out from the library as well and will probably detour to a few other books but get to it pretty soon.
Sadly I don't remember who, but I got this one because of a recommendation on here, so thanks if you're someone who recommended it!
#AmReading #ReadingNow #Bookstodon
@xiffy@mastodon.nl2026-07-11 10:23:01
@tiotasram@kolektiva.social2026-08-03 22:16:46
So... I've started reading Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey, and 110 pages in I'm finding a lot to dislike, even though I've mostly heard nothing but good stuff about the series (and also the TV show). The fact that it became a popular TV show should probably have been a warning, but so far it's got standard-issue patriarchal & misogynist background radiation plus copaganda, with no real signs that there's going to be any reversal or repudiation of that stuff. There's also no indication I'll get any interesting thoughts about society or humanity out of this beyond bog standard space opera fare, in stark contrast to, say, A Deepness in the Sky which I also read recently and which has a similar heft. Does anyone who has read deeper into the series have opinions on whether it's worth my time?
#Bookstodon #AmReading #ReadingNow
@tiotasram@kolektiva.social2026-08-01 21:56:44
Just finished reading "There is no Antimemetics Division" by qntm. Not nearly the kind of aid-to-the-societal-imagination stuff I'm craving these days, but it does pleasantly stretch one's conceptual boundaries (assuming the horror aspects don't bother you). The core idea is truly clever and well-explored, even if I think it could have been even stronger by discarding classic horror tropes entirely (then again, I'm very much not the target audience in this regard).
#AmReading #ReadingNow #Bookstodon
@kineticdiplomacy@infosec.exchange2026-08-06 09:21:47
Content warning
The book describes the political headwinds the Dutch company ASML found itself in, after people found out what the strategic importance of their products was. It is however a very light book. It glances over ASML's history, jumps back and forth in the timeline, and it keeps repeating itself. The authors love to talk about how amazing their own research work was, and how the authors this and how the authors that. I don't trust people who speak about themselves in the 3rd person, and are not God Emperor of Planet Earth. So low score, there are better books about the subject.
⭐
#BookReview #Books #Reading #Nonfiction #Politics #21stCentury #TechnologySociety
@tiotasram@kolektiva.social2026-08-10 17:12:49
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
@pre@boing.world2026-05-28 11:35:23
Content warning: "Pushing Ice" by Alastair Reynolds
Read "Pushing Ice" by Alastair Reynolds which is a sci-fi novel about the crew of an ice-mining ship which usually pushes comets around to harvest their snow.
In fact there's almost no actual pushing of ice in the novel though because the crew are immediately distracted by the strange behaviour of one of Saturn's moons, Janus, which turns out to have been an alien artefact all along.
Being closest, they chase it out of the solar system and onto the relativistic time-dilated future of the galaxy.
Alastair Reynolds writes long. Seems to go on forever. Been reading it for months. And yet when you reach the end you still want to know what happened to 'em all next.
Interesting hook of how by timing your relativistic journey's speed properly you can take civilisations from all around the history of the galaxy and put them all in one structure at the end. Gives a nice way to have aliens interacting with each other even which each evolved in a pretty much otherwise empty galaxy.
The politics and factionalism of both the humans aboard Janus and inside and between the other alien species is explored well. Betrayals and manipulations and hiding of truths going on and being justified by everyone.
Felt like the prologue was all a bit spoilery really. Might have been a more surprising story without letting us know in chapter zero what kind of thing to expect, making the path of the captain predestined.
Good stuff though. Nice long space opera.
#reading #sciFi #AlastarReynolds #pushingIce
@tiotasram@kolektiva.social2026-07-28 19:18:48
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
@kineticdiplomacy@infosec.exchange2026-07-28 07:22:50
Content warning
Yes, the Netherlands had its own CIA. Spies and everything. But with about 1% of the necessary budget, and you get a typically Dutch version of it. Always underfunded, more lucky than competent, the IDB was never going to be a great success. This book gives a fascinating insight into the service, it's reason for being and ultimate demise.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
#BookReview #Books #Reading #Nonfiction #History #TheNetherlands #20thCentury #Espionage
