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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63% complete! Phil in SF has read 19 of 30 books.
It's 1960, and the Axis powers dominate the world. Life goes on, because, as we …
Set in an alternate history where fascism won during World War II and Lindbergh has taken a turn as President of the US. Times are tough for the handful of working class people who appear in the story, and they face temptations trying to get ahead. A few temptations that arise under fascism, where one can get ahead by denouncing others.
It's 1960, and the Axis powers dominate the world. Life goes on, because, as we …
I have a whole buncha short stories that Tor.com published online and then put out in free EPUB format before they started selling them. They're great reading while having breakfast at a diner counter.
It's 1960, and the Axis powers dominate the world. Life goes on, because, as we …
She's only thirty-four, but she knows she looks raddled.
— Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction by Jo Walton (64%)
new vocabulary: raddled
showing signs of age or fatigue
A goblin with too many pockets and a disturbing affinity for cutlery, a rain-soaked night, …
A goblin enters an inn, stumbling into the scene of a murder. A band of thieves surround two of their own lying dead on the floor. While they don't trust each other, which thief of the group is the one who committed the murders?
Free short story ebook from Subterranean Press.
A goblin with too many pockets and a disturbing affinity for cutlery, a rain-soaked night, four adventurers, a pair of …
A goblin with too many pockets and a disturbing affinity for cutlery, a rain-soaked night, four adventurers, a pair of …
She said, We needed a tool. So I asked the gods.
There have always been whispers. Legends. The warrior who …
A profound, startling, and beautifully crafted debut novel, The Sympathizer is the story of a …
The unnamed narrator is a mole for the Communist North in the South Vietnamese military. Unlike a lot of spy novels, the tension in this book is all about the narrator trying to be two different moral people, not a spy who tries not to be discovered. As a mole, he does terrible things to people on both sides of the conflict. He is also the son of a French man and Vietnamese woman, which brings its own tension. After they evacuate and become refugees in the U.S., he has to negotiate between being Vietnamese and American expectations and views. All of these pull him in brilliantly written fashion in multiple directions. It's rare that I get this engaged with a book where the tension is primarily internal, but it pulled me in so much I missed a Muni stop even. There's a few scenes of action, but the tough …
The unnamed narrator is a mole for the Communist North in the South Vietnamese military. Unlike a lot of spy novels, the tension in this book is all about the narrator trying to be two different moral people, not a spy who tries not to be discovered. As a mole, he does terrible things to people on both sides of the conflict. He is also the son of a French man and Vietnamese woman, which brings its own tension. After they evacuate and become refugees in the U.S., he has to negotiate between being Vietnamese and American expectations and views. All of these pull him in brilliantly written fashion in multiple directions. It's rare that I get this engaged with a book where the tension is primarily internal, but it pulled me in so much I missed a Muni stop even. There's a few scenes of action, but the tough stuff is in our protagonist's inner monologue.
@sanae@bookwyrm.social has a much meatier review of The Sympathizer than mine; go read their review for a deeper discussion of the book's ethics.
A profound, startling, and beautifully crafted debut novel, The Sympathizer is the story of a man of two minds, someone …
A profound, startling, and beautifully crafted debut novel, The Sympathizer is the story of a …
Likewise, in the small wad of folded piastres I paid her with, there might or might not be a cartridge of film or a message of my own, written invisibly with with rice water on cement paper.
— The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (57%)
new vocabulary: piastres
a monetary unit of several Middle Eastern countries, equal to one 100th of a pound
A profound, startling, and beautifully crafted debut novel, The Sympathizer is the story of a …
In this scene, a squad of suicidal guerrillas defiladed amid the tombs, whereupon Shamus would call down a white phosphorous strike on the sacred realm of the hamlet's ancestors, obliterating living and dead with 155 mm shells.
— The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (44%)
new vocabulary: defilade
noun: the protection of forces against enemy, observation or gunfire.
verb: protect (forces) against enemy observation or gunfire
A profound, startling, and beautifully crafted debut novel, The Sympathizer is the story of a …
By the final take two hours later, James Yoon really was lachrymose with pain, his face bathed in sweat, mucus, vomit, and tears.
— The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (42%)
new vocabulary: lachrymose
tearful or given to weeping
i remember encountering this word before, but cannot recall where, when, or what it meant.
A profound, startling, and beautifully crafted debut novel, The Sympathizer is the story of a …
His task: save the prelapsarian Montagnards of a bucolic hamlet perched on the border of wild Laos.
— The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (32%)
new vocabulary: prelapsarian
( literary) of the time before the Fall of Man; innocent and unspoilt
Two “paleonerds” embark on a roadtrip across the West in search of fossils.
The new …
There's a fossil camel from the corner of 6th and Clermont, a group of Ice Age peccaries from excavation for the Colorado capitol building, chunks of mammoths from the stream valleys, a dinosaur rib from the home plate at Coors Field, and fossil palm trunks from all over town.
— Cruisin' the Fossil Freeway by Kirk Johnson, Ray Troll (Page 14)
new vocabulary: peccary
any of several largely nocturnal gregarious American mammals resembling the related pigs
Two “paleonerds” embark on a roadtrip across the West in search of fossils.
The new edition has been updated throughout, …
