I saw this sweatshirt. I was like "Oh yeah, True!" Lol
books
More on school book bans from Kelly Jensen for BookRiot:
"There are now 19 books prohibited in any Utah public school. Of them, 16 are written by women, and their average publication date is 2011. This means that most of these books have been on shelves and available for many years and caused no issues until this manufactured crisis."
"There are 42 public school districts in Utah, but two districts account for nearly 80% of the books banned statewide"
#books #writing #writersofmastodon #WritingCommunity #bookstodon @bookstodon
Looking for a new ebook? My novel THE EXPERT OF SUBTLE REVISIONS is on sale now! Just 1.99, wherever you buy ebooks.
"In this 'appealing intellectual mystery' (Publishers Weekly) spanning continents, Hase knows exactly what to do when her dad goes missing: Go to the library, find a specific book, and follow instructions. 'Brilliant, uplifting… I was swept away' (New York Times bestselling author Janet Skeslien Charles)."
#books #writing #writersofmastodon #WritingCommunity #bookstodon @bookstodon
Italian mathematician, astronomer and engineer Giovanni Domenico Cassini was born #OTD in 1625.
His observations & calculations helped to confirm & refine Kepler’s laws of planetary motion. He formulated Cassini’s Law, describing the rotational behavior of the Moon, which was crucial for understanding the Moon's synchronous rotation with the Earth. He was involved in measuring the meridian arc of Paris, contributing to the accurate determination of the shape of the Earth.
Edited 2y ago
French novelist, memoirist and journalist George Sand died #OTD in 1876.
Sand's writing combines elements of Romanticism and early Realism, with rich descriptions, strong emotions, and detailed character studies. Her novels often critique societal norms, particularly the limitations placed on women and the injustices faced by the lower classes.
Books by George Sand at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/851
"The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is Reason."
The Age of Reason (1794)
Thomas Paine died #OTD in 1809.
He had a great influence on the thoughts and ideas which led to the American Revolution and the United States Declaration of Independence. He wrote three of the most influential and controversial works of the 18th Century: Common Sense, Rights of Man, and The Age of Reason.
Books by Thomas Paine at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/91
50% off @ #Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1733647
Levi Jacobs always dreamed of being like his father, a great wizard, but had no understanding what it would be like. Follow Levi’s journey from bumbling teen to a great hero, while the young wizard learns to master magical powers that are initially completely beyond him and barely under control.
@bookstodon
#fantasy #scifi #sciencefiction #sff #sciencefantasy #scifi #actionadventure #fiction #books #EOYSale25 #ebook #sale #books2read #indiebooks
Beyond Winnie-the-Pooh: On A.A. Milne’s Romance Novels
Gyles Brandreth Explores the Adult Side of an Iconic Children’s Author
https://lithub.com/beyond-winnie-the-pooh-on-a-a-milnes-romance-novels/
Milne at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/730
The #SmashWords sale has started! Lots of discounts and free books for the rest of December.
Browse all sale items here:
https://www.smashwords.com/shelves/promos
Mine are cosy-adjacent fantasy with romance, often queer, all 25% off:
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/wendylpalmer
The Mathilda Effect - The Missing Heroines of Science
If you believe the history books, science is a guy thing. Discoveries are made by men, which spur further innovation by men, followed by acclaim and prizes for men. But too often, there is an unsung woman genius who deserves just as much credit.
By Martha Rossiter
https://medium.com/s/the-matilda-effect
More about it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matilda_effect#:~:text=The%20Matilda%20effect%20is%20a,attributed%20to%20their%20male%20colleagues.
Ovid’s Metamorphoses is all about mothers
Mothers don’t normally belong in Latin epics, which were meant to be devoted to warriors and warfare.
by Frances Myatt
Metamorphoses at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21765
This week's #NewBooks at the library: I bought several second copies of
- How the Mind Changed: A Human History of our Evolving Brain
- Kate Raworth's Doughnut #Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist. We had hoped to get this signed when she recently spoke in London, but, alas, failed.
- An ex-library copy of an older classic on #Buffon: From Natural History to the History of Nature: Readings from Buffon and His Critics, of which I made a note after reviewing Every Living Thing some time back.
#Books #Scicomm #Bookstodon #Neurobiology #Degrowth #HistoryOfScience #ScienceHistory #HistSci @bookstodon
The waitlist for “A Man Called Ove” Fredrik Backman at my local library has shrunk from about a year to about a month, so I finally requested a copy.
Isn’t it nice when libraries are able to dramatically increase their supply of popular titles?
It’s a title I’ve been hemming and hawing about for ages. We’ll see if I like it! In the meantime, maybe I should finally watch the film.
📚 Crying in H Mart by: Michelle Zauner
In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expec...
#APeoplesClimate welcomes #LeahPenniman, founder of #SoulFireFarm and author of #FarmingWhileBlack
"From the legacy of #BlackFarmers in the U.S. to the ongoing exploitation of agricultural workers, this conversation reveals how land is not only the foundation of sustenance but the basis of revolution, independence, and justice."
https://www.thenation.com/podcast/environment/peoplesclimate-10252025/
#BlackHistory #decolonialStruggles #AfroIndigenousFarming #sustainableFarming #agriculture #environmentalJustice #books @bookstodon
Make Biblioburros Great Again
#SpeakingOutOfPlace welcomes #QuinnSlobodian & #BenTarnoff to talk about their book #Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed.
'We see a mind that is profoundly troubled by any contagion spreading into seemingly closed systems—it can take the form of racial others, transpeople, “woke” populations, or most generally and dismissively, “Non-Player-Characters.” '
#Musk #ElonMusk #tech #BigTech #SiliconValleyRight #techFutures #techCriticism #techOligarchs #books @bookstodon
📚 King Sorrow by: Joe Hill
Bookish dreamer Arthur Oakes is a student at Rackham College, Maine, renowned for its frosty winters and beautiful buildings.
But his idyll - and burgeoning romance with Gwen Underfoot - is shattered when local drug dealers force him into a terrible crime: stealing rare and valuable books from the ...
https://bookblabla.com/book/king-sorrow
#books #reading #libraries #fiction #generalfiction #fantasy #contemporaryfiction #horror
Nobel literature laureate László Krasznahorkai delivers rare lecture in Stockholm
"Destiny and history are untidy."
Nightwood (1936)
American writer, journalist, and artist Djuna Barnes died #OTD in 1982.
"Ryder" was Barnes's first novel, a semi-autobiographical and highly experimental work. "Nightwood" is widely regarded as Barnes's masterpiece. The novel is a dense, poetic exploration of love, identity, and despair, set in the bohemian world of Paris and Berlin in the 1920s and 1930s.
Books by Djuna Barnes at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/51179
The Hidden Aesthetics of Early Astrophotography
Behind the transformative star photographs of the 1880s lay a complex collaboration between astronomers and engravers.
By: Danny Robb
https://daily.jstor.org/the-hidden-aesthetics-of-early-astrophotography/
Astronomy at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/bookshelf/101
finished reading Wind and Truth 🌕🌕🌕🌗🌑
by Brandon Sanderson.
An absolute brick of a book - possibly the longest I've ever read. Could certainly have been shorter (successful authors get way too much latitude), with too frequent changes in PoV, and while I appreciate his use of mental health to disrupt tired fantasy tropes, after three weeks of amateur therapy I was a bit over it. But he does pull together sprawling plotlines to a satisfying climax, with an appealing set up for a fresh take on the second half of the series.
Top 5 books about migration, chosen by Gosia Buccanza
I couldn't resist doing some analysis of ABC Radio National's Top 100 Books of the 21st Century.
How much more likely were people to vote for books because they had read them in recent memory (recency bias)? You would expect that good books are spread out evenly across the years, but it's hard to remember books that you read many years ago! Turns out there was an even spread of books across 2000-2019. But there were 40% more books than expected from 2020-2024. (See first graph.)
Were newer books more likely to be lower down the list? I thought this might be lkely because votes for recently read books might spread out more. But that wasn't completely true. The bottom 40 of the list did lean new, but so did the top 20. (See second graph.)
How diverse were the authors on the list? Not very! Only 22 of the books were by authors with diverse backgrounds, by which I mean non-white or not hetero-normative. The top 20 were the least diverse, but it was pretty even across the range. Probably not surprising - people might connect most strongly with books that speak to their own experience. Would be fascinating to see more demographic info on the voters.
Most books were by authors from Australia (35), the USA (31), the UK (17) and Ireland (7). Ireland seemed to punch above its weight. New Zealand only had one author! (Heather Morris, The Tattooist of Auschwitz).
There were very few non-fiction books, especially if you exclude memoirs and true crime. I count 4: Dark Emu, Stasiland, Sapiens and A Short History of Nearly Everything. And yet non-fiction accounts for something like 40% of book sales. I wonder if that is because a non-fiction book tends to focus on a particular subject, which would have less widespread appeal. It could also be that the type of people who vote in this sort of poll are book nerds, and book nerds mostly read fiction.
As a keen #fantasy & #scifi reader, I was disappointed. Project Hail Mary is the only full-blown scifi, but I wouldn't say it is a good representation of the genre. There is Hunger Games and Harry Potter, but both are young adult. The others (Cloud Atlas, Station Eleven, Piranesi, Never Let Me Go) feel borderline (I've not read the last two).
How did the list compare with my own ratings? I've read 57 of the 100 books, and I did rate higher books better, but the relationship was very weak. (See third graph.)
Highest ranked book that I didn't really like: #12. Where The Crawdads Sing. (Runner up The Dry.)
Lowest ranked book that I really liked: #86. Cloud Atlas
Highest ranked book I'd never heard of: #9. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
I've got 43 books to catch up on in the next few years, plus the favourites as voted by my friends. Never short a good book!
Edited 360d ago
“A Conflicted, Imperfect Love.” Jesmyn Ward on William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying
“I realized he was kin in telling this complicated, complex story that is Mississippi.” (from the archives)
Mississippi at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/subjects/search/?query=mississippi
