aka @kingrat@sfba.social. I'm following a lot of bookwyrm accounts, since that seems to be the only way to get reviews from larger servers to this small server. Also, I will like & boost a lot of reviews that come across my feed. I will follow most bookwyrm accounts back if they review & comment. Social reading should be social.
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Success! Phil in SF has read 54 of 28 books.
Phil in SF
boosted
In the bestselling tradition of Why Nations Fail and The Revenge of Geography, an award-winning …
Interesting and a fast read, but it could be better organized in each chapter and would benefit from trading off some breadth for more depth in places. Tends to jump to conclusions, and overall leans vaguely right wing though it clearly tries to be neutral, at least from the Western lens.
For centuries, men and women have manned lighthouses to ensure the safe passage of ships.
It is a lonely job …
An inquisitive life-form finds there’s more to existence than they ever dreamed in an imaginative …
humans colonize a planet with tentacle & beak having aliens that have a low level of intelligence. one of them talks their human liaison into genetically altering them to live longer. they're playing the long game. it's very talky
In Alafair Burke's electrifying thriller, Dead Connection, a rookie detective goes undercover on the Internet …
Starts with a lot of setup written "as you know, Bob" but it settles into a fast paced and pretty well constructed police procedural.
An inquisitive life-form finds there’s more to existence than they ever dreamed in an imaginative short story by New York …
An inquisitive life-form finds there’s more to existence than they ever dreamed in an imaginative short story by New York …
In Alafair Burke's electrifying thriller, Dead Connection, a rookie detective goes undercover on the Internet dating scene to draw out …
@pootriarch Reviews, comments and quotes are federated nicely. Even lists mostly are. But federating the book database itself is hard. When is an author the same author? When is a book the same book? When is it okay to override what someone entered for a book with what someone else put on another server?
The story of the Combahee River Raid, one of Harriet Tubman's most extraordinary accomplishments, based …
And with the addition of this book, I've now completed the Pulitzer Price for History list on SFBA.club (sfba.club/list/115/s/pulitzer-prize-for-history). If you follow me, there should be a version of the list on your server. I've added descriptions and high quality covers on SFBA.club; what shows up on other servers may be a crapshoot.
Phil in SF
boosted
Art history encompasses the study of the history and development of painting, sculpture, and other …
Good intro to the concepts and some key figures of art history. As a personal aside, I've been taking up shifts working the counter at a small art gallery, so I got to "test out" some of my newfound art history chops in real time. So while I can't hope to compare to the veterans, I was at least able to avoid embarrassing myself too badly--so I can consider that a testament to the utility of this book.
The delivery is economical, and uses accessible language. I feel like this is the author's voice coming through: some sentences give the impression they were tacked on as afterthoughts, or maybe as part of a final edit pass. They feel parenthetical, but they're not actually in round brackets, and the author does very little to explain them.
This kind of lack embellishment (or "didactics" for the art folks hehe) is the style …
Good intro to the concepts and some key figures of art history. As a personal aside, I've been taking up shifts working the counter at a small art gallery, so I got to "test out" some of my newfound art history chops in real time. So while I can't hope to compare to the veterans, I was at least able to avoid embarrassing myself too badly--so I can consider that a testament to the utility of this book.
The delivery is economical, and uses accessible language. I feel like this is the author's voice coming through: some sentences give the impression they were tacked on as afterthoughts, or maybe as part of a final edit pass. They feel parenthetical, but they're not actually in round brackets, and the author does very little to explain them.
This kind of lack embellishment (or "didactics" for the art folks hehe) is the style of the book. I liked it, it lent itself to a brisk pace of reading, while leaving lots of little breadcrumbs for further research and interesting thoughts to puzzle over.
Phil in SF
boosted
"A resonant look at that most mysterious of fish, the eel--including their biology and epic …
One of those bookshelves in a shared accomodation on an island in the hauraki.
Became a comfort book over the months afterwards- clearly written by someone who cared about the stories that he was being told. Has tapped into/made me low key obsessed with eels now…
In Alafair Burke's electrifying thriller, Dead Connection, a rookie detective goes undercover on the Internet …
I've also had Alafair Burke's 212 on my TBR pile for a while, but it's the 3rd book in the Ellie Hatcher series. So I went and got the 1st book in the series on Libby because I hate starting series after the first book.
The year is 2010. More than a century of ecological damage, industrial and technological expansion, …
Reid Malenfant has a plan to go to the stars, and it's very Musk-like even before Musk was a thing. OK fine. Most of the first 12% of this book (which is where I pressed the eject button) is taken up by a sophist discussion of the chances of human survival. So here's the argument: either human population grows exponentially/polynomially, it levels off at a sustainable level, or it crashes. Following so far? The fact that you are alive means that the most likely outcome is the third. Here's the logic: In the first two scenarios, the vast majority of all humans will live in the future. So if you picked someone (you) randomly, you'd most likely be in the far future! Because you are here, the most likely outcome is that humans die off soon. In the story, within 240 years at the most.
First of all, this is …
Reid Malenfant has a plan to go to the stars, and it's very Musk-like even before Musk was a thing. OK fine. Most of the first 12% of this book (which is where I pressed the eject button) is taken up by a sophist discussion of the chances of human survival. So here's the argument: either human population grows exponentially/polynomially, it levels off at a sustainable level, or it crashes. Following so far? The fact that you are alive means that the most likely outcome is the third. Here's the logic: In the first two scenarios, the vast majority of all humans will live in the future. So if you picked someone (you) randomly, you'd most likely be in the far future! Because you are here, the most likely outcome is that humans die off soon. In the story, within 240 years at the most.
First of all, this is not a plot. Or characters. Or poetic language. Or description. Or ... any of a hundred other things that would be interesting. This is someone smoking too much pot and explaining their pot-infused philosophy to you. If an author wants to set up a coming apocalypse there's so many better ways to do it than this "clever" thought experiment.
Second of all, this therefore means that if humanity does survive into the far future, they have sent a message back in time to us with instructions on how to survive. That whole sophistry just sets up Reid Malenfant's purpose to be to look for the message from the future. This whole first part of the book is just to set that up. That makes no sense and I had to read it all for that reason? Give me a break!
At this point I searched for reviews of the book to see if anyone said the later parts of the book are worth it. And the top review of Manifold: Time that Google referred me to is one from Kirkus. It's fairly spoilery, so if the above BS is actually intriguing to you, don't click the review. Anyway, I've no interest in reading the schmoz that's described there.
DNF at 12%.
The year is 2010. More than a century of ecological damage, industrial and technological expansion, …
Good lord.
Phil in SF
boosted
From the internationally bestselling author of Tigana, All the Seas of the World, and A …
Set in Ferrieres, Kay’s alt-version of medieval France, in the city of Orane, Thierry Villar, tavern poet, is about to become in embroiled in affairs much more complicated than a rivalry for Jolis de Charette’s affections.
As usual, I found Kay’s prose beautiful, filled with sentences I love reading. The way he ruminates upon fate, feelings, and fortunes, and the inevitable bittersweet of his characters lives is once again extremely rewarding. Written in the Dark is yet another tile in the Sarantine mosaic, and I really enjoyed it.
