My favorite event from 2025: my local Book Crawl!
books
Free Ebook: https://books2read.com/EmergentConsequences
The painter of the universe, known as Life, just wanted to fulfill her reason for being, by creating a universe full of beautiful wonders and living things, but her twin brother, Death, exists solely to destroy her work, leading to an intractable argument about whose work should prevail.
@bookstodon
#author #indieauthor #writing #fantasy #fiction #books #life #death #creation #destruction #humor #satire #darkhumor #free
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.
"Call me Ishmael."
Readers dive into New Bedford Whaling Museum's 30th 'Moby-Dick' marathon
by Andrea Shea
https://www.wbur.org/news/2026/01/01/new-bedford-whaling-museum-moby-dick-marathon
Moby-Dick at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2701
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 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.
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
Ebook and paperback: https://books2read.com/TymeStarwitch
Audiobook: https://owentyme.bandcamp.com/album/the-book-of-newts-starwitch
The undead queen of the space pirates kidnapped Amelia’s sisters and damaged her ship, leaving her with little fuel. Amelia’s a dead woman without her sisters, forced to attack the pirate’s mountain-sized star ship, despite how slim the odds are…
@bookstodon
#author #indieauthor #writing #fantasy #scifi #sciencefiction #sff #sciencefantasy #scifi #actionadventure #fiction #books #audiobook
Nobody Knows Why the Caribou Are Disappearing - Literary Hub
Takahe has limited support for this type: See Original Page
The joke's on you, maybe I'm into that 😜😂
@reading @joinin @bookstodon @books @humor @humor@lemmy.world @aiop
#Book #Books #BookMemes #Memes #Humor #Humour
#ReadingMemes #Memes #ReadAllTheBooks #Reading #Readers #ReadersOfMastodon #ReadingCommunity
#Litterature #Novel #Novels #Bookshelf #Mastobooks #BooksofMastodon #Bookstodon #Bookworm #Bookwyrm #Bookstodon #BookLove #FantasyBooks
US book business faces challenges including AI slop, but print sales and e-book and audiobook revenue were stable in 2025, and 422 stores joined the ABA
Takahe has limited support for this type: See Original Page
finished reading The Shadow of the Wind 🌕🌕🌕🌗🌑
by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.
A rare book sets a teenage boy on a path of mystery, love & revenge. This was nearly great, with an intriguing setup, smooth prose, vibrant characters and an evocative sense of time & place (mid-century Barcelona). But it ran out of steam with repetitive storytelling and too much exposition. And nearly all the men were incorrigible womanisers.
#BookReview #Books #Bookstodon #HistoricFiction
@WildWoila @wildwoila@wyrms.de
This week's #NewBooks at the library: An early review copy of the 3-volume The Princeton Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs. What will you be doing with your January? Well...
#Books #Bookstodon #FossilFriday #Fossils #Paleontology #Palaeontology #Dinosaurs #Scicomm @princetonupress @bookstodon
"The educator must above all understand how to wait; to reckon all effects in the light of the future, not of the present."
Swedish writer Ellen Key was born #OTD in 1849.
She on many subjects in the fields of family life, ethics and education and was an important figure in the Modern Breakthrough movement. She was an early advocate of a child-centered approach to education and parenting, and was also a suffragist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Key
Ellen Key at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/502
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin: The Woman Who Unraveled the Stars
By: Akshita Singh
Her PhD thesis is available at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/73996
Fimbulvetr: When the Medieval World Saw the Sun Go Dark
In the medieval world, strange signs in the sky were rarely ignored. In AD 536, when the sun seemed to lose its light and the climate turned harsh, that catastrophe may have been remembered in the terrifying Norse legend of Fimbulvetr.
By Andrea Maraschi
https://www.medievalists.net/2026/01/fimbulvetr-medieval/
Norse mythology at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/subject/4932
"A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas."
Godfrey Harold Hardy, who died #OTD in 1947, was an English mathematician, known for his achievements in number theory & mathematical analysis.
In biology, he is known for the Hardy–Weinberg principle, a basic principle of population genetics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._H._Hardy
Books by G.H. Hardy at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/39236
"Ask no questions, and you'll be told no lies."
#OTD in 1860.
Charles Dickens's Bildungsroman Great Expectations begins serialization in All the Year Round. Although intended for weekly publication, Great Expectations was divided into nine monthly sections, with new pagination for each.
Great Expectations at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/1400
![With Estella after all.
Great Expectations
[1867 Edition]
by Charles Dickens
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/1400](/proxy/post_attachment/531410/604c689fba.jpg "With Estella after all.
Great Expectations
[1867 Edition]
by Charles Dickens
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/1400")
#OTD in 1892.
George Bernard Shaw's first play Widowers' Houses has its first performance, at the Royalty Theatre in London under the auspices of the Independent Theatre Society. The author is booed.
This is one of three plays Shaw published as Plays Unpleasant in 1898. The other plays in the group are The Philanderer and Mrs. Warren's Profession.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widowers%27_Houses
Books by Bernard Shaw at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/467
#OTD in 1812.
Leigh Hunt is tried and convicted of libel for calling the Prince Regent "a violator of his word, a libertine over head and ears in debt and disgrace" in The Examiner on March 22.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leigh_Hunt
Original files (with links) are available at @internetarchive
Books by Leigh Hunt at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/3612
"Was that, then, the way we do things? "Not knowing"— was that the way the most profound things happened? ... Was the secret of never escaping from the greater life the secret of living like a sleepwalker?"
The Passion According to G.H.
~Clarice Lispector (December 10, 1920 – December 9, 1977)
![Uma coletânea de contos de Clarice Lispector (1920-1977), publicada em julho deste ano nos Estados Unidos com o título "The complete stories", entrou na lista dos 100 melhores livros de 2015 feita pelo jornal americano "The New York Times". A editora Rocco planeja publicar a versão nacional de "The complete stories" em abril de 2016. O título da versão nacional ainda não foi definido. Clarice Lispector nasceu em Tchetchelnick, na Ucrânia. Seu nome de batismo era Haia. Ela se mudou com a família para o Brasil em 1922 e aqui ganhou o nome de Clarice. Em sua lista de melhores do ano, o "New York Times" escreve que "a brasileira foi uma das verdadeiras [vozes] autênticas da literatura latino-americana". O jornal cita como exemplos desses "inovadores" o argentino Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), o mexicano Juan Rulfo (1917-1986) e o também brasileiro Machado de Assis (1839-1908).](/proxy/post_attachment/540680/26a8fa37f9.png "Uma coletânea de contos de Clarice Lispector (1920-1977), publicada em julho deste ano nos Estados Unidos com o título \"The complete stories\", entrou na lista dos 100 melhores livros de 2015 feita pelo jornal americano \"The New York Times\". A editora Rocco planeja publicar a versão nacional de \"The complete stories\" em abril de 2016. O título da versão nacional ainda não foi definido. Clarice Lispector nasceu em Tchetchelnick, na Ucrânia. Seu nome de batismo era Haia. Ela se mudou com a família para o Brasil em 1922 e aqui ganhou o nome de Clarice. Em sua lista de melhores do ano, o \"New York Times\" escreve que \"a brasileira foi uma das verdadeiras [vozes] autênticas da literatura latino-americana\". O jornal cita como exemplos desses \"inovadores\" o argentino Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), o mexicano Juan Rulfo (1917-1986) e o também brasileiro Machado de Assis (1839-1908).")