I'm filling out the promts for the #storygraph Challenges 2026 and I'm open for recommendations
books
#Free @ #Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1897925
Hungry and hunting alone, a goblin boy meets a bouncing, blue slime and assumes it will be dinner. Naturally, the slime has other ideas, and the boy gets his hind-end handed to him by what’s supposed to be one of the weakest monsters of the forest.
@bookstodon
#author #indieauthor #writing #fantasy #fiction #goblin #books #audiobook #EOYSale25 #ebook #sale #books2read #indiebooks
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. By Ken Kesey.
You’re a half-Native guy in a mental hospital (it’s the 1950s) for 20 years, when a complete asshole conman white dude shows up thinking he can control everything; since he has little regard for his own life or that of others he succeeds in the way a wrecking ball succeeds in its task.
2 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈
CW: hate speech, racism, misogyny, cultural appropriation
I'm filling out the promts for the #storygraph Challenges 2026 and I'm open for recommendations
#OTD in 1878.
Henry Irving's production of Hamlet, with himself in the title rôle playing opposite Ellen Terry as Ophelia, opens at the Lyceum Theatre, London (of which they have taken over the management). The tendency of actor-managers to emphasise the importance of their own central character did not always meet with the critics' approval.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamlet
Hamlet at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/1524
My favorite books published in 2025:
Gliff - Ali Smith
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This - Omar El Akkad
Audition - Pip Adam
Dusk - Robbie Arnott
Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng - Kylie Lee Baker
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter - Stephen Graham Jones
Sour Cherry - Natalia Theodoridou
The Hymn to Dionysus - Natasha Pulley
Eternal Summer - Franziska Gansler (tr. Imogen Taylor)
The Silver Book - Olivia Laing
We Pretty Pieces of Flesh - Colwill Brown
Woodworking - Emily St. James
Edited 58d ago
What Influenced Mary Shelley to Write Frankenstein?
Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein is today lauded as the first science fiction novel as well as a seminal work of Gothic horror.
By Lauren Jones
https://www.thecollector.com/mary-shelley-wrote-frankenstein-novel/
#OTD in 1877.
Anna Sewell's animal welfare novel Black Beauty is published. It was written from a horse as main character's perspective. Sewell wrote it in the last years of her life, during which she was bedridden and seriously ill.
📚 Unlikely Story by: Ali Rosen
As a relationship therapist, Nora helps patients explore their feelings honestly. But she's hiding an embarrassing relationship secret of her own: she's in love with someone she's never even met.
J edits the advice column Nora's been writing anonymously for the last seven years. He's in London, she's in New York, a...
https://bookblabla.com/book/unlikely-story
#books #reading #libraries #fiction #romance #contemporaryfiction
In December 1876.
The first United States edition of Mark Twain's first individual extended work of fiction, the Bildungsroman The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, illustrated by True Williams, is published by the American Publishing Company. An authorised non-illustrated British edition has appeared in early June from Chatto & Windus in London (with the first review appearing on June 24 in a British magazine) and pirated editions have appeared in Canada and Germany.
Happy New Year!
This month's Distributed Proofreaders' Blog takes time out to talk about the Minute Boys juvenile series.
Here’s my 2025 review!
Takahe has limited support for this type: See Original Page
"Intelligent men are cruel. Stupid men are monstrously cruel."
Jack London died #OTD in 1916.
A pioneer of commercial fiction and American magazines, he was an innovator in the genre that would later become known as science fiction.
Mildly interesting. The receipt that was stashed in the cover, I assume from the purchase in Jan or Jun of 96, kept the cover from being faded.
Takahe has limited support for this type: See Original Page
finished reading Before the Coffee Gets Cold 🌕🌕🌕🌑🌑
by Toshikazu Kawaguchi.
In a particular seat in an otherwise unremarkable cafe, it is possible to travel through time. Despite stringent limitations, the customers and workers nonetheless find solace from the travails of life. Its a pleasing enough community of everyday people, but nothing special.
#BookReview #Books #Bookstodon
@wildwoila@wyrms.de @WildWoila
Mass-market paperbacks are going away?! 
(first segment in the video)
They are being replaced with e-books or their more expensive trade paperback jcousins.
#ebooks #MassMarket #Trade #books #MassMarketPaperbacks #ReaderLink #DanielGreene
Danish author Marie Bregendahl was born #OTD in 1867.
Her first novel Hendrik i Bakken was published in 1904. She went on to gain fame with En Dødsnat in 1912, based on the death of her mother when she was only 12.
Survey of 2,203 US adults: 59% say they read at least one book in 2025; readers who prefer e-books report more reading than those who prefer print or audiobooks
Takahe has limited support for this type: See Original Page
"Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. "
‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’: The raunchy banned book that became a best-seller and helped to launch counterculture
by Paulina Subia
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/raunchy-banned-book-helped-to-launch-counterculture/
Lady Chatterley’s Love at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/73144
#OTD in 1859
Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, an early example of mystery fiction, begins serialisation in All the Year Round.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Woman_in_White_(novel)#
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_Year_Round
#OTD in 1952.
Agatha Christie's murder-mystery play The Mousetrap opens at the Ambassadors Theatre in London's West End after a premiere in Nottingham, UK. It will become the longest continuously running play in history.
#OTD in 1919.
The Großes Schauspielhaus opens as a theater in Berlin, with an interior designed by Hans Poelzig. It begins with the director Max Reinhardt's production of the Oresteia.
The House of Atreus at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8604
This week's #NewBooks at the library: Some more unusual acquisitions from 2025.
- I purchased the last copy of the definitive retrospective on the #palaeoart of Zdenek #Burian from Albatros Media. Volume 3 focuses on his artwork of prehistoric humans. All these books are written in Czech, but the artwork is just lavish, and I'm a sucker for period palaeoart.
- I found a second-hand copy of the reissue of #AlexanderVonHumboldt's Views of Nature, released by the University of Chicago Press.
- #Spookslot - 44 jaar te gast bij de geesten, a Dutch book I hunted down via a friend, which was released to commemorate the closure of one of the most beloved attractions, Het Spookslot (a haunted house), in De #Efteling, a well-known Dutch amusement park I used to go to quite often as a child. I know they have completely rebuilt it into a new ride now with nods to the classic panoramic show, but I haven't visited it yet.
#Books #Paleontology #Palaeontology #HumanEvolution #Anthropology #HistoryOfScience #ScienceHistory #HistSci #Scicomm #Bookstodon @bookstodon
Is beauty natural?
Charles Darwin was as fascinated by extravagant ornament in nature as Jane Austen was in culture. Did their explanations agree?
By Abigail Tulenko via @aeonmag
https://aeon.co/essays/how-austen-and-darwin-converged-on-the-question-of-beauty