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. I make a lot of Bookwyrm lists. 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.
This link opens in a pop-up window
60% complete! Phil in SF has read 18 of 30 books.
They're the galaxy's most wanted—and our only hope.
When Elza became a space princess, she …
I've now completed a Bookwyrm list for the Locus Award for Best Young Adult Book, with Promises Stronger Than Darkness being the final book on it (for now).
List can be found at sfba.club/list/79/s/locus-award-for-best-young-adult-book for those on SFBA.club.
Aerial combat brings a thrilling new dimension to the Napoleonic Wars as valiant warriors rise …
The men had already been through one nasty gale as a crew and knew their work; fortunately the wind was not contrary, so they might go scudding before the gale, and the topgallant masts had already been struck down properly.
— His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik (Temeraire, #1) (8%)
new vocabulary: scudding & topgallant
scud: move fast in a straight line because or as if driven by the wind
topgallant: The section of a square-rigged sailing ship's mast immediately above the topmast
Phil in SF
boosted
This anthology of transfeminine cyberpunk stories had some gems in it. The pitch made me hope for transformative ways of being intersected with surviving under oppressive social structures (it's always capitalism), and it very much delivered. It's rare that every story in a collection lands for me as a reader, but it seems a positive trait that they all didn't in this one trying to go in weirder and stranger directions.
There are so many good quotes I want to share from this collection but I'll try to limit myself.
A taste of my favorite stories: * a woman who drives a giant robot cube on the moon for scientists as a second job and dreams of moving there to have less lag in her embodiment * a bespoke body-creating artist (with their own nuanced dysphoria) trying to create body euphoria for others in a world where their bodies are …
This anthology of transfeminine cyberpunk stories had some gems in it. The pitch made me hope for transformative ways of being intersected with surviving under oppressive social structures (it's always capitalism), and it very much delivered. It's rare that every story in a collection lands for me as a reader, but it seems a positive trait that they all didn't in this one trying to go in weirder and stranger directions.
There are so many good quotes I want to share from this collection but I'll try to limit myself.
A taste of my favorite stories: * a woman who drives a giant robot cube on the moon for scientists as a second job and dreams of moving there to have less lag in her embodiment * a bespoke body-creating artist (with their own nuanced dysphoria) trying to create body euphoria for others in a world where their bodies are callously sold at auction * an underground group who syncs their memories with each other working to collectively survive (and fight) puritanical fascists * a scientist who injects herself with own soon-to-be-shutdown nanite project and tries to figure out how to be a mother to them
Phil in SF
boosted
A fast-paced, completely delightful new mystery about what happens when parents get a little too …
When I picked up this book it has everything going for it, not copaganda, has a Black woman protagonist, written by Black author. But the romance part of this somehow felt way off to me. This man who is a school employee comes on to her – a parent – way too strong, almost giving me stalker-y vibes. But otherwise, really enjoyed the friendship portrayed between two mothers & all the gossip in the school parents Facebook chat.
A modern American classic, this huge and galvanizing biography of Robert Moses reveals not only …
Just acquired in ebook. Will start when I finish my current read.
Aerial combat brings a thrilling new dimension to the Napoleonic Wars as valiant warriors rise …
This has been on my TBR for 15 years. I originally got the ebook as a freebie from suvudu.com, a long defunct site run by Penguin or Random House (I forget which company owned the Del Rey imprint before the merger). Let's finally take a crack at it.
An accessible, compelling introduction to today’s major policy issues from the New York Times columnist, …
when i picked this up i thought it was new writing. it's actually old columns of his. they were great when i read them the first time. not really interested in re-reading them, particularly the ones from the Bush era.
Former military cop Jack Reacher makes it all the way from snowbound South Dakota to …
Never Go Back has a simpler conspiracy than the previous book, A Wanted Man, and it meant I could actually enjoy this one. The bad guys mess with Reacher, setting him up to take a fall for a murder he did not commit. This sets up a cat-and-mouse between Reacher and the baddies, as he escapes, dodges the fuzz & the henchmen, tries to rescue the girl, and gets down & dirty with the woman he decided he wanted to meet something like 4 books ago.
An accessible, compelling introduction to today’s major policy issues from the New York Times columnist, best-selling author, and Nobel prize–winning …
Former military cop Jack Reacher makes it all the way from snowbound South Dakota to his destination in northeastern Virginia, …
Former military cop Jack Reacher makes it all the way from snowbound South Dakota to …
Which is what the phrase means these days, I suppose, now that the whole parturition business has been institutionalized.
— Never Go Back by Lee Child (Jack Reacher, #18) (72%)
new vocabulary: parturition
(formal) or (technical) the action of giving birth to young; childbirth
had a few other new vocabulary words, which is weird for a Reacher nook, but i didn't have my phone handy to post.
Phil in SF
boosted
The world is in the grips of mass formation—a dangerous, collective type of hypnosis—as we …
Nope, sorry, we're just whipsawing between banal generalities and pernicious nonsense too fast for me. If there's a point or lesson in this book it'll either be from the other real knowledge that it builds on, or absolute incoherence from the dross with which those firm facts are mortared. I don't care to find out.
Phil in SF
boosted
Ezra Friedman sees ghosts, which made growing up in a funeral home complicated. It might …
This is October's choice for the Queer Romance Club read on Mastodon.
Much has happened in the years since the publication of the seventeenth edition of The …
1.5 Book pages. The trimmed sheets of paper in a printed-and-bound book are traditionally referred to as leaves. A page is one side of a leaf. The front of the leaf, the side that lies to the right in an open book, is called the recto. The back of the leaf, the side that lies to the left when the leaf is turned, is the verso. Rectos are always odd numbered, versos are always even numbered.
— The Chicago Manual of Style by University of Chicago Press (Page 6)
Now I know where Verso Books took its name, from the left side of an open book.
Phil in SF
boosted
Yume Kitasei's The Deep Sky is an enthralling sci fi thriller debut about a mission …
People with wombs are selected to colonize a new planet (yuck) because people on earth are too busy destroying themselves & climate change has become too violent at scale. They travel with thousands of specimens to be used for artificial insemination.
I really liked this plot twist on how people get chosen. It's a murder mystery that is sorta melancholic that ends on a more hopeful note. I felt really sad reading about the climate change and how the last hummingbird was caged in a zoo that was then hit by a missile. It really gutted me because thats what is happening now in Lebanon & Palestine.
Otherwise, my only criticism is that this book is too kind to fascists.
