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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Wolf Hall (2015)
In the ruthless arena of King Henry VIII's court, only one man, Thomas Cromwell, dares …
Engaging historical drama, vicious and saucy and wry, and I still just don't care about Tudor England.
An intense, intimate and first-of-its-kind look at the world of human smuggling in Latin America, …
Even more than I was hoping for, a thoroughly humanizing personal and anthropological narrative closely following several young Hondurans over several recent years in their own experiences of migration up and down Mexico, the relentless gang violence and poverty causing them to be stateless human smugglers, the shrinking space between state enforcement and cartel consolidation for less violent less exploitative routes.
Rosemary Kirstein’s acclaimed epic continues, as a servant of truth journeys through a world where …
Jumping right in to finish the series - er find out how it doesn't yet end.
Two-hour podcast interview with the author on Tin House' Between the Covers: tinhouse.com/podcast/omar-el-akkad-one-day-everyone-will-have-always-been-against-this/
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
Set amid Colorado’s wild beauty, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story of a resilient young …
Chance, sense of place in the mountain west, love, home front, racism, what can be washed away and what can be transplanted. Women-focused, twists around an expected plot, hard scenes of loss and violence, I'm not sure they add up to a great whole but has a fitting firmness and solidity.
Faced with genocide in Gaza (and a personal immigrant journey reporting on Afghanistan, Guantanamo, and more confrontations of us vs them), a sharp and painful breakup with the comfortable beliefs of liberal western democracy's morality that allow any of us to look away.
Two months since the stars fell...
Two months since sixty-five thousand alien objects clenched around …
Hard, as jargon-heavy sci-fi, as violent eldritch horrors, as our unlikable unforgiving neurodiverse crew tears apart those around them, as a philosophical conclusion about consciousness, self-awareness, and artificial intelligence. It is surprising to me that I still deeply liked it on re-read.
John Scalzi channels Robert Heinlein (including a wry sense of humor) in a novel about …
A cozy military sci-fi. On the first hand this is a fun romp of geriatric boot camp with fun technological reveals. Fails in comparison to "The Forever War" for any confrontation with political and social impacts of the endless colonial war context. And introduces several maddeningly open-ended universal author escape hatches for the subsequent series.
From Pulitzer Prize winner Ed Yong, a groundbreaking, wondrously informative, and vastly entertaining examination of …
Our interrelations with microbes as co-equal participants in health and evolution, from coral reefs to human microbiomes. Upturns simplifications of good and bad, of in and out, self and other, and finally made sense of metagenomics for me.
A tale of what happens when we can no longer ignore what has been lost …
Contemplative pandemic novella, weaving in loss, racial disparity, resilience, sitting and walking with grief, and an undercurrent of hopeful action.
An eccentric detective and her long-suffering assistant untangle a web of magic, deceit, and murder …
Entirely enjoyable imperial intrigue and whodunnit with outsider characters in a strange enough world, just not quite my cup of tea but could see revisiting for the world once the series is complete.
From a global icon, a bold, essential account of how a fear of gender is …
A response to authoritarian anti-gender movements, the first half rails a bit more than I need to relive current politics, the second half updates Butler's approach to co-constructed gender in society as anti-colonial anti-racist, and emphasizes the right's lie of gender ideology being a destructive force in society, distracting from dealing with real dangers of climate, economic precarity, and war.
Wry, uplifting, political, dark academia joy on a death-sentence planet.
Girl, Woman, Other follows the lives and struggles of twelve very different characters. Mostly women, …
RIch chorus of struggling and striving and femininity in black British lives loosely connected.
When pioneering marine biologist Dr. Ha Nguyen is offered the chance to travel to the …
Solid near-future sci-fi on intelligence and environment. Moves easily between gripping techno-action-violence, challenging witness of human and ecological oppression, and a shimmering wonder at science, consciousness, and marine biology.