Mostly read around bedtime. Mostly.
He/him/they cishet white fragile trying dreamer antiracist gullible.
Since the ratings on the Bookwyrms don't impact authors' livelihoods, I feel comfortable getting more granular and using all the stars, so if you see a 3/5 rating on a book I say I liked, this is a rough breakdown of what I mean by my stars:
As always, the text of my review is a much more accurate representation of my feelings.
I have a very WIP website here.
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Success! Another Hopeful Fool has read 5 of 1 books.
An unsparing investigation into Spotify’s origins and influence on music, weaving unprecedented reporting with incisive …
Maybe this will give me some talking point to siphon more customers away from Spotify. 👹
Listen. A god is speaking. My voice echoes through the stone of your master's castle. The castle where he finds …
With an introduction by David Krakauer, this prophetic 1978 essay follows legendary science fiction author …
Looks delightfully meta.
Moravia's political fable about an Italian anti-Fascist and the frightened, suicide-seeking German girl he encounters on a boat to Capri--the …
After the tragic sinking of a cargo ship, one solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the …
Heard someone else say it's better than the movie, and I remember actually liking the movie, so I'm doubly excited to check out the book.
Once, Lovelace had eyes and ears everywhere. She was a ship's artificial intelligence system - …
The dual stories, told in short, impactful chapters is such a powerful mechanism, and Becky Chambers wields it perfectly.
Both stories are riveting for their own, very different reasons. But both have to do with social justice, and personhood denied.
I found myself getting to the end of one chapter and being oh but I want to stay with this character! only to get embroiled in the other character's chapter immediately.
It's like an anti-cliffhanger. Rather than leaving you hanging, it pulls you in to the next segment, and then pulls you right back into the following.
If you liked The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet - the previous entry by Becky Chambers, then I can super-recommend this.
Another Hopeful Fool
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The last thing the wizard Drum Billet did, before Death laid a bony hand on …
‘It must be quite interesting, reading books,’ said Esk. ‘Sort of. Can't you read, Esk?’ The astonishment in his voice stung her. 'I expect so,' she said defiantly. 'I've never tried.'
I'll take whatever I can get of this world.
@3ivin6@books.babb.no Whoa that is a juicy quote. "The consumer feast" in particular sounds interesting. I hope to hear your thoughts on it if you feel like doing a write-up at some point. :)
Once, Lovelace had eyes and ears everywhere. She was a ship's artificial intelligence system - …
I'm really really liking this book. It goes back and forth between two vignettes, that I suspect will cross at some point, and they're both fascinating in their own way. One is definitely of the more "cozy" variety, whereas the other is much darker, and starts off with some heavy exploitation of a vulnerable group.
The worldbuilding here is incredible. I find myself re-reading little sentences that explain shades of the world. Never going into too much exposition, so that when some fact of the world is explained I'm like gimme gimme gimme nom nom nom!!!
Only my second Becky Chambers book, but I think I'm a fan for life. <3
The word ‘capitalism’ is heard and used frequently, but what is capitalism about, and what …
Like all of these "Very short introduction" books it does what it says - provides a kind of thumbnail intro to what are actually very big topics.
As far as content, you're just as well off going to the "Capitalism" page of Wikipedia and just clicking around for a week. But the book does provide a good historical and geographic structure to the evolution of different capitalism(s), so in that respect it's kind of a perfect intro, and could spark some great conversations.
Actually if you've never read on the origins and alternatives to capitalism, this book might just blow your mind. Maybe a good book for the teenager, or dad, in your life who thinks they know everything already.
@kingrat@sfba.club Thank you for your service, and sharing your findings.
@LiterallyGraphic I feel you on the x/5 rating system. It's so limiting. So 1-dimensional. Actually, I think that's precisely what it is - just one dimension in a more nuanced, multidimensional (re)view, like you've written up here.
