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.
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60% complete! Phil in SF has read 18 of 30 books.
In the small Alaskan village of Chukchi, what are the odds of two suicides occurring …
The woman sitting at the counter next to me at The Pork Store this morning was reading White Sky, Black Ice. I mentioned reading and liking it. Because it's not a well known book, it sparked a long discussion of our favorite authors.
July 1977. Jack Reacher is almost seventeen, and he stops in New York City on …
Also, he's in high school but so cool he picks up college girls.
As before, young Reacher is even less believable than adult Reacher. Very meh on this story.
Much has happened in the years since the publication of the seventeenth edition of The …
I bought the latest edition of the CMOS and put it on a newly created "Reference" shelf here.
Set in the near future, Nancy Kress’ story gives us a world increasingly hostile to …
Kress likes to do "what if human bodies were changed..." stories. This one is: what if a symbiotic species inhabited a human such that it could make changes to the host but the person and symbiote could only communicate in a general sense. So the symbiote can make its host able to spit toxic saliva when threatened, or change the host's pigment and apparent age, etc. Set in an era where there's a breakdown in civil society because large numbers of US residents believe in witches (and want to burn them at the stake).
The Pieczynski piece features a woman in 1980s Sandinista Nicaragua who focuses the energy of the fighting between Contras and Sandinistas and turns it into sentient whirlwinds and golems.
Former military cop Jack Reacher makes it all the way from snowbound South Dakota to his destination in northeastern Virginia, …
Set in the near future, Nancy Kress’ story gives us a world increasingly hostile to new ideas as religious fundamentalism …
Set in the near future, Nancy Kress’ story gives us a world increasingly hostile to …
On the other hand, some very respectable scientists, including Francis Crick and Stephen Hawking, had believed that both panspermia and pangenesis were possible: clouds of spores coming in from space on comets that had either started or influenced early life in the primordial seas.
— New Under the Sun by Nancy Kress, Therese Pieczynski (41%)
new vocabulary: panspermia & pangenesis
panspermia The theory that life on the earth originated from microorganisms or chemical precursors of life, present in outer space and able to initiate life on reaching a suitable environment.
pangenesis a disproven hypothetical mechanism of heredity in which the cells throw off particles that collect in the reproductive products or in buds so that the egg or bud contains particles from all parts of the parent
The best stories are the ones we didn’t know needed to be told.
The small, …
While attending a tea party in Great Diddling, author Berit Gardner witnesses the murder of Reginald Trent in the manor of his aunt, Daphne Trent. Reginald Trent is pretty universally disliked in the village of Great Diddling. Everyone there dislikes him. Berit Gardner, wanting to avoid writing her next book, investigates instead. Meanwhile the townsfolk, lead by tourist board chair, decide to take advantage of their sudden notoriety by holding a books & murders literary festival on short notice. At the center of the crime is who controls the books of Tawny Hall, Daphne Trent's massive collection.
It's a cozy mystery. It's a bit of a police procedural. It's an homage to readers, though there precious little of the point of view of readers. All the town's characters have backstories. My main nitpick is the ultimate solution to the mystery of the murder follows a pretty standard pattern, so whodunnit …
While attending a tea party in Great Diddling, author Berit Gardner witnesses the murder of Reginald Trent in the manor of his aunt, Daphne Trent. Reginald Trent is pretty universally disliked in the village of Great Diddling. Everyone there dislikes him. Berit Gardner, wanting to avoid writing her next book, investigates instead. Meanwhile the townsfolk, lead by tourist board chair, decide to take advantage of their sudden notoriety by holding a books & murders literary festival on short notice. At the center of the crime is who controls the books of Tawny Hall, Daphne Trent's massive collection.
It's a cozy mystery. It's a bit of a police procedural. It's an homage to readers, though there precious little of the point of view of readers. All the town's characters have backstories. My main nitpick is the ultimate solution to the mystery of the murder follows a pretty standard pattern, so whodunnit won't be a surprise after a while. But the journey there is pretty entertaining.
The audiobook narrator, Helen Lloyd, does a great job in the audio version.
Phil in SF
boosted
Lirael lost one of her hands in the binding of Orannis, but now she has …
Content warning Spoilers about the romance parts
I have figured out that I Iike vanilla romance and that Romantasy books don't have vanilla romance in them. So in Garth Nix's books, which no one refers to as Romantasy, he has wonderful action adventure fantasy but also each book has a very cute love story of two young people who are awkward shy and nerdy who slowly fall in love. It is sometimes comedic with the young man frequently embarrassing himself and the young woman finding him endearing. There is only some hand holding and a few kisses. Everything is so "vanilla." There are no love triangles. There are no people trying to have sex with as many people as possible. It is just love. And it is the best thing in the whole world. Why on earth is Garth Nix not heralded as a great romance writer? I don't understand. I guess I will never understand how other people view sexuality and what is "sexy." Too me two people forming a strong emotional bond while on an adventure and then realizing they love each other is the absolute greatest love story anyone can tell. I would read this same story in as many incantations of it as I could if only more writers would write romance like this.
Phil in SF
boosted
I often say that my favorite books are ones which provide a new way of thinking about things. An insightful explanation or an inspiring model, perhaps. This volume doesn't quite get there, but it is very very close. It's clean and tight and does exactly what it says on the tin. While my favorite pieces of non-fiction are lenses which bring things I've always been able to see into clearer focus, this is more like a well-tuned bell which rings true and clear.
We are treated to a roundup of pre-neoliberal philosophy, the development of neoliberal thought, its ascent into US politics, rise to major bipartisan force, and then stumbling in the 21st century. There's nothing to criticize here. We engage effectively with other schools of thought and other global regimes like Soviet communism and European social democracy. Neoliberalism is positioned relative to these other forces and philosophies. It's described …
I often say that my favorite books are ones which provide a new way of thinking about things. An insightful explanation or an inspiring model, perhaps. This volume doesn't quite get there, but it is very very close. It's clean and tight and does exactly what it says on the tin. While my favorite pieces of non-fiction are lenses which bring things I've always been able to see into clearer focus, this is more like a well-tuned bell which rings true and clear.
We are treated to a roundup of pre-neoliberal philosophy, the development of neoliberal thought, its ascent into US politics, rise to major bipartisan force, and then stumbling in the 21st century. There's nothing to criticize here. We engage effectively with other schools of thought and other global regimes like Soviet communism and European social democracy. Neoliberalism is positioned relative to these other forces and philosophies. It's described in terms of its causes & effects, and I think I came away with a clear picture.
Great work. Going right back on the end of the reading list. I recommend this book to you, and to future me.
A bold, laugh-out-loud funny, and heartwarming story about one young woman’s attempt to navigate adulthood, new motherhood, and her meager …
The best stories are the ones we didn’t know needed to be told.
The small, rundown village of Great Diddling …
Set in the near future, Nancy Kress’ story gives us a world increasingly hostile to new ideas as religious fundamentalism …
