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The Sufi Storyteller by Faiqa Mansab

Who left the corpse in Professor Layla Rashid’s office? More importantly, why did they leave a corpse in Professor Layla Rashid’s office?

https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/by-the-pricking-of-my-thumbs
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Trigger warning: This book touches on almost all the way old cultures, meaning patriarchies, have devastated women.

This is an amazing book. It starts out with two women characters, unflinching in their inner thoughts. Then it moves into a tough journey novel. From there it gets even more brutal in its honesty.

But it is so cathartic. The characters investigate themselves in ways I hadn't imagined for myself.

@Sasu@bookrastinating.com Cool, thx. I do need some more solarpunk in my life. I tend, when not too depressed, to believe it is possible. :)

I just re-read this book for the second time and loved it even more.

I'll have to check this out because I just watched this conference based on it, Oxford Ministry for the Future Event. (youtube link)

Which has the great Kate Raworth of Doughnut Economics. (Which I'm about half-way through (patting my own back).)

I realized what I don't like about romance-style writing in other genres. Romance as a genre is fine; it has a very specific structure to lead to specific outcomes. And this is because the readers want these things. Mysteries are the same; very specific needs.

But you know what sitcoms are like on TV? They set up a situation for the characters then try to find the comedy in it. This book sets up a situation then tries to find the romance in it. It's a sitrom.

Finding romance in plots or situations of other genres pulls the emotion out of the moment. It completely deflates the character's story and does nothing to add to the plot's advancement. In this way, it lets the reader down. I did not finish it.

Brain not working well. Try something light...

Reminiscent of Monk and Robot though broader and darker, we're along for a calm inquisitive road novel with an earnest robot butler some moment after the world as they and we know it ended. Satirically enjoys itself in upending formulaic scenes and takes us to some imaginative places, surprisingly light fun.

I still enjoy that these worlds are so individual that they show the inner workings of the character. I have no interest in being in any of them. And that's the point, the worlds are not for me. But I still enjoy reading about them.

Readable tour through infrastructure's reflections of our collective cultures, in its histories, dependence on social pasts and futures, and the agency it gives us individually and en masse to reduce labor and lessen daily focus on basic needs. Maintenance and the shifting baselines of climate bring our attention now to the need and opportunity to redesign infrastructure to address a larger collective future.

A bizarrely imaginative and gripping queer climate road novel deeply evoking its two narrative poles in Ethiopia and India, querying class and privilege and sexual violence.