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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This is a book in which chimpanzees, Chekhov, and child care are equally at home. …
Thoughts on young children, on theatre, often the prompt is enough to fill in the thought, or provides the structure she proceeds to erase, in probing our expectations.
Referenced as source inspiration for Roanhorse's Black Sun, so as the sequel to that is coming up on my list I'll read a different kind of "speculative" pre-history...
Varied essays on anarchism in the 70s vs the Left, mostly aimed at redirecting consciousness raising, environmentalist, and marxist strains to fully abandon their industrial, capitalist, technologist, and fundamentally domineering underpinnings for a utopian but not universalist project of liberatory self-development self-organization and ecological coexistence.
For generations Prsoper Station has thrived under the guidence of its Honoured Ancestress: born of …
Ancestral memory implants and empire at war and family bonds strained... it helps to know this is a string of novellas, as much as this brings its characters to life and vivid inner conflict, there's a lot of setting for perhaps too many strands in this story.
Tough characters, tough children and adults who can't leave their childhood behind, the gritty taste of old western justice and revenge in a decaying modern setting. I can't fault the form for tying in and up every last thread of pain and stretch for redemption.
The premise and title irk me, but this interview with the author www.ttbook.org/interview/modern-parenting-tips-ancient-civilizations and the introduction set a good tone of seeking and humility in current cultural alternative-to-American parenting approaches, we'll see.
To possess the Mandate of Heaven, the female monk Zhu will do anything
Mulan meets …
Historical drama of struggle and battles and intrigue and a gender-complicated cast vying for their place in the world and power... hints of fantastical and fanatical possibilities to come, but this was slow and violent for me.
Kinch Na Shannack owes the Takers Guild a small fortune for his education as a …
Dark humor from below, a grimly magical adventure in a familiar but inventive world.
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of The Ants comes this dynamic and visually spectacular portrait …
Nerdy and approachably thorough, the level of structural and social development of these ants (millions to a nest!) is astoundingly conveyed in short picture-filled chapters.
Expanding the author's prior investigation into "wild" (airquoted throughout) space and rejecting the line between human and nature, she philosophically and environmentally unpacks what obligations we have to animals and species - in her view, mistaken valuing of "naturalness" and "species genetic purity" (reflecting colonial inflected categorization) rather than autonomy and ecosystem diversity - through location reporting on zoos and conservation projects, eradication campaigns and captive breeding. Well summed up in the suggestion that rather than de-extincting woolly mammoths, we coexist with nature in new ways such that we can imagine elephants able to migrate over the next ten thousand years to occupy places where they would adapt with hairy coats.
Roadside Picnic is set in the aftermath of an extraterrestrial event called the Visitation that …
Second read, the sense of absurdist normalcy around incomprehensible change drives every scene and is just gripping.
Consistently strong interior stories of women reaching for meaning and connection.
Roadside Picnic is set in the aftermath of an extraterrestrial event called the Visitation that …
Re-read after many years for bookclub.
Witty sitcom romp layered with grief and trauma, perhaps some growth and acceptance... this never goes deep, and it would have been better if it could have, but then it wouldn't be light-hearted and easy.
Defeated, crushed, and driven almost to extinction, the remnants of the human race are trapped …
Satisfying coming of age and coming to terms with fraught systems of power, with an interesting world at war to make sense of and plenty of sarcasm. But, a lot of military and courage and fight filling in for connections.