A first retrospective collection at 10 years, her notes before each story are sharp and advancing even for otherwise tangent tales. And then it ends fiercely with the kicks of "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" and "The Day Before The Revolution".
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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
View all books2023 Reading Goal
5% complete! loppear has read 6 of 101 books.
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loppear reviewed The Wind's Twelve Quarters by Ursula K. Le Guin
loppear reviewed Eversion by Alastair Reynolds
good, but you might as well read The Jungle
4 stars
It seems everyone read this when I lived in Chicago except me, but the true crime hook turned me off then. Turns out it's mostly about architecture and temporary facades of respectability, and engagingly told as popular history. Satisfyingly travel-back-in-time-to-Chicago.
loppear started reading Our Own Metaphor by Mary Catherine Bateson
loppear started reading Lovingkindness by Jon Kabat-Zinn
loppear reviewed Ways of Being by James Bridle
Yes.
5 stars
Where I am right now, after an overlapping decades-long journey through computability, animal and ecological intelligence, finding human humility after capitalism's techno-categorizing-hubris. Seeking an answer to how technology, how participation in understanding, should adapt to a collaborative-multiple-perspective de-centering of humanity and our binary truths. This sticks to a deep middle, the claims Bridle makes for "opening up to the more-than-human world" are broad, pointed in good directions, and avoid anger or hopelessness while staying critical. My recommendations for adjacent reading would be Frans de Waal's "Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are", Emma Marris' "Wild Souls", Richard Power's "The Overstory", and a lot of Ursula K LeGuin, but the bibliography has a whole stack of new reading lined up for me too.
loppear reviewed Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers
the slightest arc pulls this through
4 stars
Nice to be reminded that Chambers can weave her deeply attentive human and social reflections into compelling longer form, and live up to high expectations for unconventionally but quite comfortably answering what matters in a story or a culture.
loppear reviewed The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal
enjoyably cantankerous
4 stars
Witty low stakes riff, not so noir - the vibe is more 5th Element romp given the cruise ship setting, and the mystery bends to suit - but true to the original in prominent stiff drinks, and comfortably egalitarian in gender roles.
loppear started reading Trust Kids! by Matt Hern

Trust Kids! by carla bergman, Matt Hern
Trust Kids! weaves together essays, interviews, poems, and artwork from scholars, activists, and artists about our relationships with children in …
loppear started reading Eversion by Alastair Reynolds

Eversion by Alastair Reynolds
A small group of intrepid explorers are in search of a remote and mysterious artefact. It's a well-funded expedition, well …
@quaad @cblgh aye, I don't consider myself a fast reader, but I slowly gave up video time for reading, and about a ¼ of my reading is audiobooks, substituting for what used to be more music and podcasts while working in the kitchen or yard. And I'm always in the middle of several books, so that something always sounds good to read.
loppear commented on Ways of Being by James Bridle
This is such a satisfying wondrous summation of my last decade of reading, I love how many diverse threads are in the bibliography and new encounters in the text suggest a good year's reading project could be just to read through the rest of the bibliography. Possible overlapping new highlights there: Monica Gagliano, Suzanne Simard, Donna J Haraway, Eva Meijer, Andrea Wulf, Alexis Pauline Gumbs.