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.
In the weeks after Japan finally surrendered to the Allies to end World War II, …
Webb was appalled that Keenan was relying on perorations about the awfulness of aggressive war to prove that it was a crime.
— Judgment at Tokyo by Gary J. Bass (Page 630)
new word: perorations
The concluding part of a speech, typically intended to inspire enthusiasm in the audience
Earth is not well. The promise of starting life anew somewhere far, far away—no climate …
If you're exposed to space, most likely you'll just have the death. In fact, the only people who've ever died in space were killed by sudden loss of pressure. It was June 30, 1971, and cosmonauts, Georgy Dobrovosky, Viktor Patsayev and Vladislav Volkov were returning from Salyut-1. […] The three cosmonauts entered the capsule, and after some brief issues getting the hatch to seal, undocked and began their descent. When the ground crew arrived and the capsules was opened, the men were found, still seated, serene in death. Attempts to revive them proved useless- each had suffered massive brain hemorrhaging. Subsequent investigation determined that when they undocked from their space station, a valve on the return craft had unexpectedly popped open, exposing them to a near-perfect vacuum.
— A City On Mars by Kelly Weinersmith, Zach Weinersmith (Page 120 - 122)
I can't recall ever having learned about this!! I hope for their sake that this is a quick and painless death.
This is in a chapter on how we pretty much don't know shit about how to live in space from a medical perspective.
Earth is not well. The promise of starting life anew somewhere far, far away—no climate …
Ebook checked out from Solano County library
Newly married and navigating life with a preschooler as well as her adopted adolescent son, …
A police procedural set in Cambridgeshire England, with DI Manon Bradshaw. The character still grates on me because she is so unhappy in her own life. She alternately wants to be free of her relationships and family and desperately wants them to never go away. I found myself frequently thinking "stop waffling and commit" because of how much time the text spends inside her head.
However, I love her as a police detective, and I loved this particular crime-solving tale. Lukas and Matis are undocumented Lithuanian immigrants to England, living in squalor in effective slavery. The townsfolk hate them because they think the Lithuanians are taking their jobs and women. The neighbor particularly hates Lukas because he has been sleeping with his wife, and another hates Matis because he's spent time with his impressionable daughter. The Lithuanian bosses use them ruthlessly and are apt to disappear them if trouble arises. …
A police procedural set in Cambridgeshire England, with DI Manon Bradshaw. The character still grates on me because she is so unhappy in her own life. She alternately wants to be free of her relationships and family and desperately wants them to never go away. I found myself frequently thinking "stop waffling and commit" because of how much time the text spends inside her head.
However, I love her as a police detective, and I loved this particular crime-solving tale. Lukas and Matis are undocumented Lithuanian immigrants to England, living in squalor in effective slavery. The townsfolk hate them because they think the Lithuanians are taking their jobs and women. The neighbor particularly hates Lukas because he has been sleeping with his wife, and another hates Matis because he's spent time with his impressionable daughter. The Lithuanian bosses use them ruthlessly and are apt to disappear them if trouble arises. One fellow resident of the house gets sick. Rather than get medical care for him, they let him die and disappear his body.
All of these people are viable suspects when Lukas body is found hanging from a tree with a note reading "Mirusieji negali kalbėti" attached.
What I loved most about this is that the crime & investigation doesn't involve a bunch of improbable coincidences, and that the investigation is basic police legwork: interviews, reviewing surveillance video, reviewing logs of phone calls & license plate readers, etc. It's a mark of a good writer that Susie Steiner was able to craft a compelling story with twists & turns and do it without the improbable crutches so prevalent in the genre. It's a shame she died, as this book was the best of the series and I would have eagerly snapped up new entries.
Newly married and navigating life with a preschooler as well as her adopted adolescent son, …
When Teddy was a toddler and fresh from the bath, he'd pelt down the stairs naked and fly into Mark's arms at the front door, like a winged Renaissance putto.
— Remain Silent by Susie Steiner (Manon Bradshaw, #3) (Page 536)
new word: putto
a representation of a naked child, especially a cherub or a cupid in Renaissance art
Newly married and navigating life with a preschooler as well as her adopted adolescent son, …
I'm not kidding, but I think I've got chilblains from standing out in the garden all day.
— Remain Silent by Susie Steiner (Manon Bradshaw, #3) (Page 497)
New word: chilblains
a painful, itching swelling on a hand or foot, caused by poor circulation in the skin when exposed to cold
Very radicalized! The character declares that she's for removal of driver's hands when caught texting and driving.
Newly married and navigating life with a preschooler as well as her adopted adolescent son, …
"We spend millions on murder, right?" Manon had said. "Every area in the UK has a murder squad. And yet driving in this country is shocking. They don't stop at crossings; they chat on mobile phones, put makeup on, send texts. That's what's really killing people in the UK. What terrifies parents" — and she very much included herself in this, because she has skin in the game— "sensible parents, that is, is not pedophiles or gangs. It's cars."
— Remain Silent by Susie Steiner (Manon Bradshaw, #3) (Page 420)
My daily moment of urbanism. Welcome to the war on cars, fictional murder detective.
Newly married and navigating life with a preschooler as well as her adopted adolescent son, …
This is why the Holmes database was invented- a police IT system to collate and store evidence so that officers' open minds were not involved in the equation. Holmes told you to follow every lead. Holmes didn't care about your hunches. Trace. Eliminate.
— Remain Silent by Susie Steiner (Manon Bradshaw, #3) (Page 273)
When i see mention of something like "Holmes" i have to look it up. How does such a system work, because something that takes bias out of the process seems very fanciful to this software engineer.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HOLMES_2
And what made it into Wikipedia is so much gobbledygook that I'm even more sure the quoted passage is a bunch of wishful thinking or copaganda told to the author.
A delightful A-to-Z menagerie of the sea—whimsically illustrated, authoritative, and thought-provoking.
For millennia, we have …
This is a collection of essays about ocean animals, arranged from A-Z and including everything from abalone to zooplankton. Includes descriptions of the animals and often discussions of their importance in ocean ecology and how humanity has affected each, usually to the detriment of animals. However, what makes this book so delightful is the framing device, stories of human encounters with each, taken from writings as far back as the ancient Greeks and as recent as poetry from the 2020s. Scientists such as Charles Darwin and Rachel Carson, explorers like Matthew Perry, and seamen like Thomas Albro and Alexander Selkirk all get pieces of their stories retold. Recommended.
A delightful A-to-Z menagerie of the sea—whimsically illustrated, authoritative, and thought-provoking.
For millennia, we have …
First book finished here on sfba.club.
A delightful A-to-Z menagerie of the sea—whimsically illustrated, authoritative, and thought-provoking.
For millennia, we have …
So far, the book has covered abalone, Architeuthis dux (giant squid), beluga, and chinstrap penguins.
