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.
This link opens in a pop-up window
30% complete! loppear has read 27 of 90 books.
It was January 2021, and Rick Deckard had a license to kill. Somewhere among the hordes of humans out there, …
High above a jungle-planet float the last refuges of humanity—plant-made civilizations held together by tradition, …
Potentially fascinating Hindu-inspired (?) world building of magic vs technology and struggles of commitment, betrayal, and hierarchy. A slog, where the detailing of the world and revisions to our characters understanding of it stands in for plot.
Women-led jailbreak in space with swords in an unsettling but not deeply convincing AI-run prison ship. Ultimately I failed to like or believe enough of the dysfunction and misdirection in the character's relationships to enjoy what is mostly a fast-paced light fantasy.
Curious in-depth examination of childhood depicted in art and writing from the middle ages through early modern focused on France and England, a necessary but ultimately bizarre citation for any claim of change in family or schooling over shorter recent periods in its cataloging of moralistic and class-driven changes in views on protecting innocence and justifying corporal punishment etc.
Reading to compare to more local and recent 'A Bold Return To Giving A Damn' by Will Harris, TBR. bookwyrm.social/book/1506031/s/bold-return-to-giving-a-damn
This a blow by blow and month by month account of how a well-managed, but totally unprofitable estate farm in …
In this spirit, the critical inquiry into human-soil relations of care presented in this chapter is not so much driven to debunk the productionist subjection of soils but by an aspiration to engage speculatively with imperceptible ten- dencies that could be troubling and reworking these dominant relations from within by transforming everyday soil care
— Matters of Care by María Puig de la Bellacasa (Page 170)
@sam@books.theunseen.city not quite sure, it's been on my list for a year or two, I thought from a rec here, a few other folks on here read it in the last month to prompt me, and a few friends read it when republished in 2014 per GR. But I don't quite know, as folk tend to say, "I don't want to give anything away" around it. Enjoyable so far.
The Steerswoman is the first novel in the Steerswoman series. Steerswomen, and a very few Steersmen, are members of an …
On a dusty backwater planet, occasional thief Jun Ironway has gotten her hands on the …
Starts off in a stock fantasy of clerics and assassins, and clearly riffing on some familiar themes of space classics, but as this thriller's clever use of flashback and recall keeps weaving a strong set of character relationships and loyalties in unflinching intrigue, the wide-ranging story pulls off a lot of sharp turns without losing the individual threads. I'll likely read the next one, and thankful it's not just left as a part two.
A curious history through dramatizing a series of primary sources in paintings, dioramas, and travelogues depicting the banjo at a uniquely African-Caribbean intersection of slavery, music, worship and celebration, and adaptation. As some of the threads are light echoes, I wish there was a bit more sense of engaging with other supporting or supplanted accounts of the instrument's background.
Am I making it worse? I think I'm making it worse.
Following the events in …
While the complexity of trauma and self-doubt was a welcome thread here, this felt like a solid novella lost its way in variations.
