Reading for fun, threads over the years of scifi, history, social movements and justice, farming, philosophy. I actively work to balance out the white male default in what I read, but have a long way to go.
He/they for the praxis.
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A reluctant medium discovers the ties that bind can unleash a dangerous power in this …
Modern dark magic and action richly set in a Malaysian context of spirits, gods, mothers and daughters, family status, face, identity, and revenge.
The Actual Star takes readers on a journey over two millennia and six continents —telling …
Deeply satisfyingly layered and interwoven, imagined Mayan/Belizean past and future solarpunk Earths, central struggles with violence and disagreement and revolt without compromising voluntary consent, paced like a jaguar moving through ruins.
Beginning in 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work …
This is the most incredible sweetly depressing plague/pandemic novel. Seriously dark.
It began as a sudden strange fancy . . .
Polly Perks had to become …
Dipping back into Discworld, near abouts where I left off.
A man's hard life in Idaho panhandle, briefly carried from one near death to another.
In this ambitious successor to The Great Derangement, acclaimed writer Amitav Ghosh finds the origins …
Indicting colonial capitalism's responsibility for our modern environmental and poverty dilemma. Quick and smoothly focuses our attention on small acts, then global repercussions, offbeat books, then deep mysticism, to come back to the long-fought war of ideas and omnicidal violence we accept for the modern era's consumption and wealth.
A morality question of harm volleyed between players in broadly medieval conflict from the personal to all out war. Reads as homage to LeGuin than most Banks: while there's only one late line to connect this explicitly to the Culture universe (give or take), it's most clearly asking the same questions.
Last Culture novel for me to read, accepting that it may not be very.
Idris has neither aged nor slept since they remade him in the war. And one …
Not creative enough take on scrappy space crew, wizened ex-space-soldier, the future of the universe hangs in the balance, takes too many little bites at the big picture, but likeable enough.
After the tragic death of his beloved musician father, fourteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear …
A long many-voiced dialog on trauma and mental illness - perhaps society's role in mental illness, perhaps the basic human condition. Too much to go on, it fizzled for me.
Idris has neither aged nor slept since they remade him in the war. And one …
looking forward to this bookclub pick
Heartbreaking trauma. O'Connor comes through as frank and likeable, but it is clear (and clearly stated) that the first third of this was written in a good state of mind for reflecting on a distraught childhood, and the rest was thrown together after further trauma that's going to need future effort and space to sort out.
South Sea Bubble. If you are inventing financial derivatives to line your own pockets and enable your nation's endless military spending, it helps to bribe parliament. The author writes documentaries, with little scenes and character introductions and narrated voiceovers pulling us through the history. But I really expected more comparative analysis, and when given the chance (offering brief comparison to France's similarities in that period, and 2008) fails to connect.
Drawing on Maggie O'Farrell's long-term fascination with the little-known story behind Shakespeare's most enigmatic play, …
Quiet and nice, of course with grim death and plague and family conflict, but emotional characters well portrayed. I wanted more, yet thankful the plague and Shakespeare bits felt minor.
A reflection on prison industrial complex abolition and a vision for collective liberation from organizer …
Transformative justice, repairing relationships, redesigning society systemically, accountability for harms. Prisons had to be imagined; prisons were a reform, and like other reforms that leave in place the system of punitive surveillance, control, and violence they don't promote justice for so many harms, while harming more. We can imagine so many alternatives. We don't believe the world will change if we can just change enough minds to e.g. believe that black lives matter; we will define and practice and live a vision for a world where black lives matter.