@Tuxramus@social.linux.pizza2026-03-29 10:51:47
This is my friend's new book, he's in Ireland. I can't put it down, I absolutely love it! #author #books #writingcommunity
Astral Hours (English Edition)
@Tuxramus@social.linux.pizza2026-03-29 10:51:47
@emd@cosocial.ca2026-05-24 21:24:52
The wonderful Kate Quinn’s latest, The Astral Library (https://www.katequinnauthor.com/books/the-astral-library/) is a different kind of book for her. It’s more treatise than fiction, but worth a read,
@callunavulgaris@mastodon.scot2026-04-25 11:45:38
Go to the library to pick up my reservation, the latest Ken Follett, and pretty much inevitably come home with a couple more books. Despite The Line of Beauty being "A classic of our time", I've never heard of it, so that will be a gap in my reading knowledge filled. #books #bookstodon
@bourgwick@heads.social2026-03-23 02:32:42
that bittersweet feeling of opening a used book & finding a sweet bookmark from a long-departed bookstore in a faraway place (closed in 1999, according to reddit) #books
@sherold@mastodon.online2026-05-21 16:09:53
RE: #books bubble. 👋🏻 Does anyone happen to have a good recom…
@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
@bourgwick@heads.social2026-03-14 20:31:39
@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
@primonatura@mstdn.social2026-05-13 17:00:53
@UP8@mastodon.social2026-05-01 20:32:56
Been up cleaning at Room 23 and returning library books so I took a good look at this bookshelf
#photo #photography #bookshelf
@TFG@social.linux.pizza2026-05-14 18:17:03
The nice thing when reading old #books is, you sometimes find things the owners left in them.
Today I found a very thin chocolate wrapping. It was from "Victor Schmidt & Söhne" (Victor Schmidt & Sons). A sweets company founded ~1850 in Vienna. The wrapping may be waiting for ~120-130yrs in the book (because the book is that old) and it told me something about the previo…
@hikingdude@mastodon.social2026-04-02 05:15:53
@philip@mastodon.mallegolhansen.com2026-05-06 04:59:32
@mgorny@social.treehouse.systems2026-05-25 15:18:11
I've finished reading Simon Winder's "#Germania" a while ago, but I've been slacking with the review. This is a book about the history of #Germany, in the wide meaning of word. However, it's not your boring detailed history book. The author takes us on a deeply personal journey across German landscape, across tiny towns and great forests, Schlosses, churches and monuments, and uses that as a context to bring the country's surprisingly interesting history to light. And honestly, it works — it is deeply enjoyable, to the point of making me wonder if one day I should actually move to Germany, get a Bahncard 100 and start exploring myself.
I didn't quote the book here, but if I were to choose one quote that really resonated with me, it would be:
"""
Solitary tourism is something that everybody should indulge in. Of course it is a fraudulent solitude because its enjoyment comes from its limited duration and having a cheerful, only very temporarily abandoned main base area. […] And then, suddenly, I am in Vienna, standing in the shadow of a monstrous, derelict flak tower, and completely alone. The virtue of solitary tourism is its infinite ability to absorb boredom. I often find myself almost crippled with anxiety that the companion or companions on a journey might be finding everything wholly without interest, would rather be eating somewhere else, are secretly angry that we have wound up walking down this street rather than that, are contemptuous of my own interests. Solitary tourism cauterizes all this: if a museum is boring beyond all measure there is no pressure to feign interest, you just leave. I am perfectly happy, in a zoned-out way, to crisscross a town, walking for hours, just for the off-chance something curious might be round the next corner – indeed in the confidence that there will always be something curious (there always is). But for each street, each bar, each folklore museum to be converted into an inter-human negotiation creates an entirely different dynamic.
[…]
Quite possibly the pleasure of this way of life would be much reduced in some other countries, particularly more insistently gregarious places such as Italy. German culture puts a high value on temporary solitude of a stagey kind. Perhaps this is its great gift. In some moods I think there is no need to do anything other than read German writers from the first half of the nineteenth century – a sort of inexhaustible storehouse of attitudes flattering to those who just like sometimes to be left alone. Everyone must have at least a part of them that wants to live in a stairless, doorless tower as a sort of intellectual Rapunzel, setting aside, at least in part, the complicated sexual frisson laid out by such an idea. Germany really is thick with ivy-covered turrets and the promise of solitude (Kepler staring at the planets above Prague, Faust conjuring demons) – the great majority presumably built in the nineteenth century in response to the whole literature devoted to the subject. There is one turret in Lübeck, built onto a city guard tower of just outrageous fakeness, which would do me for life.
"""
(Simon Winder, Germania)
And if you follow me, you have evidence that the part about crisscrossing towns is so true: the best things I've posted here I found by complete accident, especially the murals.
#books #bookstodon
@bourgwick@heads.social2026-04-19 17:56:42
@mela@zusammenkunft.net2026-05-09 22:41:51
Wonach ich suchte: einem Ersatz für die App, mit der ich E-Books von meinem Calibre-Web-Server auf meine mobilen Geräte synchronisierte.
Was ich jetzt möglicherweise habe (weitere Tests ausstehend): ein komplettes E-Book-Audiobook-Ökosystem, mit Synchronisierung des Lesestatus über alle Geräte.
Fast wie zu Amazon-Zeiten, aber OpenSource.
Oder in anderen Worten: Well, that escalated quickly.
@lpryszcz@genomic.social2026-05-14 17:40:20
Addicted to anxiety by Owen O'Kane
"many people are addicted to the process of #anxiety ... because it promises safety, less risk and protection."
#wellbeing #bookstodon
…
@laimis@mstdn.social2026-03-30 21:14:06
@bourgwick@heads.social2026-03-13 14:38:25
amazing piece but basically woke up in the middle of the night wondering about the unanswered question here: if book freak richard hell has been in the same wee spot since '74, what does he do when his shelves are full? does he have storage spaces like verlaine? does he deaccession at the strand? #nyc #books
@ruth_mottram@fediscience.org2026-04-03 19:53:41
Jeg er næsten færdig med en kort historie om Italien og det giver stort indtryk om lige præcis hvor imponerende EU er efter tusinde år af mere eller mindre konstant krig i Europa.
Jeg får også lyst til at starte en ny europæisk bogklub til at lære om vores fælles europæisk naboer samt læse nogle gode bŸger jeg ellers ville aldrig har kommer til. Nogen der har lyst til at komme og læse med i hovedstaden?
Eng:
I’ve almost finished a short history of Italy, and it really brings home just how impressive the EU is after a thousand years of more or less constant war in Europe.
I’m now also keen to join/start a European book club to learn about our fellow European neighbours and read some good books I’d otherwise never get round to. Anyone fancy joining me in or around Copenhagen?
#bookstodon #bogstodon #dkæs
@UP8@mastodon.social2026-03-22 22:20:58
Fairy Wing Woman Works at Buffalo Street Bookstore
#photo #photography #books #ithaca
@kingconsult@berlin.social2026-04-27 10:55:20
Im #2MR-Statement erklärt Cartoonist @… wie er sich die sozialen Medien der Zukunft vorstellt.
Auf der #2MR zeigen wir, was demokratiestärkende #SocialMedia-Netzwerke für #Kultur und #Kreative zu bieten haben und warum der #Creator-Frust bei #Instagram #X #Facebook #TikTok & Co. zunimmt.
Wer ist dabei?
👉 #Cartoon #Art #Comic #Kultur #Bookstodon #Books #CreatorCommunity #Creators #Autor #Zeichnungen #kreativ #Kunst
@laimis@mstdn.social2026-03-30 21:14:06
@bourgwick@heads.social2026-04-11 18:18:01
recent-ish reading/rereading. #books
@bourgwick@heads.social2026-05-10 21:26:56
@bourgwick@heads.social2026-05-10 00:53:04
thoroughly dug peter richardson's "brand new beat," rich archivally-informed history of rolling stone's 1st 10 years, how it grew from the bay area scene before blanding out in nyc, essentially from the perspective of their less glamorous but far hipper co-founder ralph j. gleason. #books
@bourgwick@heads.social2026-03-07 23:53:59
learned today that mass market paperbacks sometimes had full color advertising in the middle. #books
@pre@boing.world2026-03-05 19:09:41
Read the second of the Murder Bot novellas by Martha Wells, Artificial Condition.
Our hacked security droid takes a job looking after more idiots in order to get a ride to investigate his missing memories.
And they get into trouble of course.
Enjoyed it more than the first one. The ship intelligence he teams up with sure does have a lot of ability for an auto-pilot. The Secunit's sarcasm and reluctant disdain of his charges seems better written and deepening.
#reading #books #murderBot
@bourgwick@heads.social2026-05-02 20:45:44
