User Profile

loppear

loppear@bookwyrm.social

Joined 4 years, 3 months ago

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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loppear's books

Currently Reading (View all 8)

2025 Reading Goal

23% complete! loppear has read 19 of 80 books.

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Ilyon Woo: Master Slave Husband Wife (2023, Simon & Schuster) 3 stars

a good bookclub discussion

3 stars

Locally-connected story of escape from slavery in Georgia and public life on the abolition circuit in Massachusetts and England. While there are many moments of intrigue and risk, the somewhat dry telling is well-riddled by neatly connected reminders of slavery's implications in wealth everywhere they travel, and the novelty of the 'white slave' in drawing abolitionist crowds repeatedly highlights the deep veins of racism and misogyny even in those risking more or less to end slavery.

Laozi, Ken Liu: Laozi's Dao de Jing (2024, Scribner) 4 stars

spare translation

4 stars

Nicely elucidated clear translation, compared to others there's nothing florid and mostly less poetic (reading alongside LeGuin's equally spare version in particular here), interspersed with short essays on commentary, lived experience, and the translator's challenges for a text so embedded in culture and so dismissive of language as a way to approach Dao.

Louise Glu ck: The Wild Iris (1993, Ecco Press) 4 stars

From Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Louise Glück, a stunningly beautiful collection of poems that encompasses the …

bounding between the dirt and the heavens

4 stars

Spiritually infused poetry that slips between weeds in the garden and fleeting seasons and omniscient conversation beyond these bounds to ask of life in the crevices.

Yangsze Choo: The Fox Wife (Hardcover, 2024, Henry Holt & Company) 4 stars

'Vivid, enigmatic, enchanting' M. L. Rio 'Irresistible' Sunday Times

Some people think foxes go around …

a pervasive metaphorical mood of foxes and snow

4 stars

Subtle feeling mystery unraveling in a slight and mythical magic of historical China setting that meditates on friendship, vengeance, and moral obligation. Quite wonderful.