User Profile

loppear

loppear@bookwyrm.social

Joined 4 years, 6 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 6)

2025 Reading Goal

47% complete! loppear has read 38 of 80 books.

Alfred Bester: The Stars My Destination (1996, Vintage Books)

A science fiction retelling of the Count of Monte Cristo.

engaging, angry, superman

Revenge across all time and reason, swashbuckling adventure and escape, twisted double-crossing. And good literary feel in many borrowed and emphasized lines and themes, a fantastic sci-fi homage to The Count Of Monte Cristo.

Kurt Vonnegut: The Sirens of Titan (Hardcover, Octopus/Heinemann)

The Sirens of Titan is an outrageous romp through space, time, and morality. The richest, …

subpar absurdism

Despite the entertainment of fully immiserating an Elon-esque failson, along with wealth and war and human timescales of happiness, the misogyny is heavy and the plot is pointlessly dulled along the way. Can't all be winners.

R. F. Kuang: Yellowface (Hardcover, 2023, HarperCollins Publishers Limited)

What's the harm in a pseudonym? New York Times bestselling sensation Juniper Song is not …

skewering

Wonderfully contrived to make you care about what horror the dislikable narrator will justify next, in a savage and very online swipe at publishing, representation, and authorship.

Isaac Fellman: Notes from a Regicide (2025, Doherty Associates, LLC, Tom)

When your parents die, you find out who they really were.

Griffon Keming’s second parents …

Loving care in transition

Lit novel of chosen family support for self-determination, in trans and in revolt, with a tinge of speculative fic background and an arms-length from the action, taking place as much in the kitchen and studio as the streets. I loved this for the care and openhearted family dynamics, even though everything in the story is triggering trauma and violence, it is a warm story.

Joan Halifax: Standing at the edge (2018)

via Rebecca Solnit, who provides the introduction

Accounts and reflection, mostly personally connected to the author's global Buddhist peacemaking journey, of deeply lived altruism, empathy, integrity, respect, and engagement (her organizing terms) that are central to ethical life but risk becoming all-consuming and counter-destructive at the extremes. Care and freedom for all is inseparable from care for oneself.

Salman Rushdie: Knife (AudiobookFormat, 2024, Books on Tape)

From Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, a searing, deeply personal account of enduring—and surviving—an attempt …

cathartic for him

Good parts are Rushdie's imaginings, mental literary meanderings, and gallows humor. Would have been fine as a long-form article, a love letter to his new wife and to aging's difficulties healing, touches only briefly on the regret of still being better known for his tragedies than for his books.