bookstodon group

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Are you a webmaster with your own domain and web site?

If you have your own domain name and a web site please send me a mention with the link. I'm especially grateful for webmasters who publish RSS feeds of their sites.

I am avoiding all big tech sites as much as I can. This means I am mostly avoiding free blog sites, forums, most social media (except some Fediverse), video sites, substack, whatever. I am truly interested in reading and viewing only subject matter published by webmasters who have taken the time to set up their own web sites. This separates most low-effort work from real work. This is a good sanity check as well.

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Title: Millions of cats
Author: Wanda Gág
Original publication: New York: Coward McCann, Inc, 1928

A short, syrupy, predictable children's fable that is totally worth it. The story has a multiple morals entwined in a five-minute read without being moralistic. Although a children's fable the moral is every bit applicable to adults and even old codgers. I adore old writings such as this. This is a free Gutenberg book available at the link below.

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/74181/pg74181.txt

A book I edited was written up in the local paper.

So happy to see Shannon Bohrer's book, Judicial Soup: One Man's Wrongful Conviction and What It Means for Criminal Justice Reform, getting some media attention. This is a very relatable book on a hugely important topic. When you read it, first you'll be angry. Then you'll think, "If it can happen to that guy, it can happen to anyone."

https://www.fredericknewspost.com/news/arts_and_entertainment/judicial-soup-by-emmitsburg-author-highlights-the-need-for-justice-reform/article_ef4a743d-e470-5146-bf92-625c0cfb2a24.html

@bookstodon #books #bookstodon #review #AmEditing

This week I've been mainly reading, no. 153.

Each of Emma Newman's Planetfall quartet explores a different aspect of the same overarching story of religious driven intergalactic migration. In Atlas Alone (2019), the fourth story centres on an elite gamer & their attempt to uncover & then take revenge for a crime against humanity. To say much more would ruin the plot for you, but as with the others, this is great, fascinating sci-fi, which has a great payoff at the end.

#scifi
@bookstodon

How New Science Fiction Could Help Us Improve AI - Scientific American

Fascinating article about organizations trying foster positive sci-fi stories about AI. Good reason why AI sci-fi is mainly negative—more plausible given humankind’s record AND more interesting. My upcoming book The HONOR System is case in point.

@bookstodon @religion #bookstodon #amwritingscifi #secretscifinetwork #ChristianSciFi #ProfessorK #AI #HAL9000 https://apple.news/AXoC6_0DHQ8yjy44u1K4rLA

The actual NORTHERN LIGHTS showed up in Virginia and I was too engrossed in a book to notice. #bookstodon @bookstodon @librarians

"One never lies to people, they lie to themselves. A good liar gives fools what they want to hear and allows them to free themselves from the facts at hand, and choose the level of self delusion that fits their level of foolishness and moral terpitude."

--Carlos Ruiz Zafon

@bookstodon

10 authors, of whose books I've read at least five:

Ursula Le Guin
Kim Stanley Robinson
Octavia Butler
N. K. Jemisin
Becky Chambers
Iain M. Banks
Martha Wells
M. R. Carey
Lois McMaster Bujold
Vonda McIntyre

#scifi #ScienceFiction #SFF #books

#10Authors5BooksEach
@bookstodon

This week I've been mainly reading, no. 148.

The first book of Ann Leckie's Radch trilogy, Ancillary Justice (2013) offers an interesting plot of AI, identity & insurrection. Leckie builds an interesting (political) world/universe for her tale of revenge & becoming, which while at times a little too tricksy, overall remains a compelling bit of space-opera. If at times the plot seems a little too convoluted, the central idea(s) is/are intriguing & developed interestingly

#scifi
@bookstodon

Ygdrasil, the Internet's first and oldest literary journal is still in operation. Below find three links, [1] to the older archive and [2] to the recent editions and [3] to the old web page.

"Ygdrasil, A Journal of the Poetic Arts is the first Literary Journal to be published on the Internet (1994)."

The oldest archives are here:

https://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/201/300/ygdrasil/index.html

Newer issues from about 2017 to date are here:

https://independentscholar.academia.edu/KlausGerken

The ugly old Internet page and archive is here:

https://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/201/300/ygdrasil/html/2017/17-02/users.synapse.net/kgerken/index.html

Enjoy!

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Well @bookstodon, I thoroughly enjoyed reading those... #scifi #books #bookstodon

From yesterday, my review of the excellent Cascade Failure by L. M. Sagas. Published today.
https://susannashore.blogspot.com/2024/03/cascade-failure-by-l-m-sagas-review.html

#BookReview #scifi @bookstodon

Short Stories.

Love ‘em, hate ‘em, somewhere in the middle?

Years ago one of my dear friends (who is a huge bookworm) and I were talking. She told me she hated short stories. I can’t remember why or if she even told me a reason. This conversation has stuck with me, because I struggle with them- why? I have no idea. I have tried different tactics to overcome this. I am s l o w l y reading one now, but I don’t gravitate toward it (not the one pictured, but it’s one I really want to read if I can ever get there).

I’d love to hear your thoughts.
#books #photography #fediverse #shortstories @bookstodon

What are your thoughts on DNF (Did Not Finish)-ing books? Do you feel guilty about it? Do you worry you missed out on something? Or are you confident in dropping a book and reaching for the next one?

At what point are you most likely to DNF, if ever? What sorts of things cause you to DNF?

My friend, book blogger Kriti, was musing on these questions a while back, and it sparked this new post: https://armedwithabook.com/dealing-with-dnf-the-practice-of-did-not-finish/

@bookstodon
#Bookstodon #Books #ReadingCommunity #BookBloggers #AmReading

Spadework for a Palace, by Laszlo Krasznahorkai, trans John Batki. You are a librarian with a great plan to create a Permanently Closed Library, which you record with other thoughts in a single sentence that stretches 100 pages. 5 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈.

@bookstodon #bookstodon #books #reading #libraries #librarians #architecture #novela

Extinction Studies: Stories of Time, Death, and Generations

Extinction Studies focuses on the entangled ecological and social dimensions of extinction, exploring the ways in which extinction catastrophically interrupts life-giving processes of time, death, and generations. The volume opens up important philosophical questions about our place in, and obligations to, a more-than-human world.

@bookstodon
#books
#nonfiction
#extinction

#JustFinished The Humans, by Matt Haig.

The narrator leads us through a look at Earth and posh English culture from the eyes of an alien. Humorous without stepping too far, it leads into a serious story as the narrator grows. By the end, it's poignant and we're left with the warm fuzzies. Truly a lovely arc of a story.

#scifi #books #bookstodon @bookstodon

The Good Man of Nanking is a crucial document for understanding one of World War II's most horrific incidents of genocide, one which the Japanese have steadfastly refused to acknowledge. It is also the moving and awe-inspiring record of one man's conscience, courage, and generosity in the face of appalling human brutality.

@bookstodon
#books
#nonfiction
#diary
#WWII
#Nanking
#JohnRabe

@bookstodon In 2023 there's been a huge expansion in the number of graphic novels, graphic memoirs, and graphic nonfiction published. They deserve a 2023 "Best of" list of their own. Here's mine; add yours. I always want to hear about great graphic books!

Best Graphic Books published in 2023:

THE LIBRARIAN OF AUSCHWITZ, Salva Rubio, Antonio Iturbe

YAZIDI! Aurélien Ducoudray, Mini Ludvin

SUNSHINE, Jarrett J. Krosoczka (author of HEY, KIDDO)

DICTATORSHIP: IT'S EASIER THAN YOU THINK! Sarah Kendzior, Andrea Chalupa, Kasia Babis

THE INFINITY HEART, Wendy Xu

FUNNY THINGS: A COMIC BIOGRAPHY OF CHARLES M. SCHULTZ, Luca Debus, Francesco Matteuzzi

EIGHT BILLION GENIES: DELUXE EDITION, BOOK ONE, Charles Soule, Ryan Browne

GENDER IS REALLY STRANGE, Teddy Goetz, Sophie Standing

MONICA, Daniel Clowes (author of GHOST WORLD)

COURAGE TO DREAM: TALES OF HOPE IN THE HOLOCAUST, Neal Shusterman, Andrés Vera Martínez

ARTIFICIAL: A LOVE STORY, Amy Kurzweil

WASHINGTON'S GAY GENERAL, Josh Trujillo, Levi Hastings

#books #GraphicNovels #bookstodon #BooksWorthReading #BestBooks 2023

Margins of Writing, Origins of Culture

Collectively, the articles here provide well-documented challenges to conventional wisdom about that for which people actually used Sumerian, Egyptian, Hittite, and Hebrew. This conference was the first to bring leading philologists together with anthropologists and social theorists to explore what writing meant to politics in the ancient Near East.

@bookstodon
#books
#nonfiction
#AncientNearEast
#languages
#writing
#politics

Anger, Mercy, Revenge

"Raging with an inhuman desire to inflict pain in combat and shed blood in punishment, it cares nothing for itself provided it can harm the other: it throws itself upon the very weapons raised against it, hungry for a vengeance that will bring down the avenger too."

@bookstodon
#books
#nonfiction
#philosophy
#Seneca
#anger
#revenge

The Complete Poems of Michelangelo

There is no artist more celebrated than Michelangelo. Yet the magnificence of his achievements as a visual artist often overshadow his devotion to poetry. Michelangelo used poetry to express what was too personal to display in sculpture or painting.

@bookstodon
#books
#fiction
#poetry
#sonnets
#Michelangelo

Luís de Camões
Selected Sonnets: A Bilingual Edition

The most important writer in Portuguese history and one of the preeminent European poets of the early modern era, Luís de Camões (1524–80) has been ranked as a sonneteer on par with Petrarch, Dante, and Shakespeare.

@bookstodon
#books
#fiction
#poetry
#sonnets
#Portuguese

I love #MurielSpark.
'I am a descendant, do not forget, of Willie Brodie, a man of substance, a cabinet maker and designer of gibbets, a member of the Town Council of Edinburgh and a keeper of two mistresses who bore him five children between them.'

She is so cruel to her characters. What a brilliant thing to have Miss Jean Brodie say. It has to be one of the funniest lines in literature.

#books, #fiction, @bookstodon

The Chinese Myths: A Guide to the Gods and Legends

This is a concise and entertaining guide to the complex tradition of Chinese mythology. The Chinese Myths not only retells the ancient stories but also considers their place within the patterns of Chinese religions, culture and history.

@bookstodon
#books
#nonfiction
#China
#mythology