#OTD in 1898.
Émile Zola is imprisoned in France after writing J'Accuse…!, a letter accusing the French government of antisemitism and wrongfully imprisoning Captain Alfred Dreyfus.
He was sentenced to jail and was removed from the Legion of Honour. To avoid jail time, Zola fled to England. He stayed there until the cabinet fell; he continued to defend Dreyfus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%27Accuse...!
J'Accuse at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20974
📚 Gardens Of The Moon by: Steven Erikson
Bled dry by interminable warfare, infighting and bloody confrontations with Lord Anomander Rake and his Tiste Andii, the vast, sprawling Malazan empire simmers with discontent.
Even its imperial legions yearn for some respite.
For Sergeant Whiskeyjack and his Bridgeburners, and for...
https://bookblabla.com/book/gardens-of-the-moon
#books #reading #libraries #fiction #fantasy #epicfiction #militaryfiction #general
Ebook and print: https://books2read.com/SheHuntsDemons
Also in Ebook omnibus (volumes 1-3): https://books2read.com/AshenBladesOpenWounds
She’s small and cute, but this half-demon New Yorker lives to exterminate demons, because they murdered her parents. The demonic curse preventing her from saying anything but “it’s a secret” only fuels her desire for revenge.
@bookstodon
#indieauthor #writing #fantasy #actionadventure #fiction #books
wants to read Estação Perdido
#Livros #Books #SciFi #NewWeird #ChinaMieville
What character, storyline, setting, or other bookish topic are you currently overthinking in a fun way?
For example, I’m wondering how Yetu’s people first developed language in Rivers Solomon’s “The Deep” given their unusual origin story?
(Without giving away too many spoilers, the first wajinru were raised by oceanic creatures like whales instead of members of their own culture).
📚 Seascraper by: Benjamin Wood
Twenty-year-old Thomas Flett lives a slow, deliberate life with his mother in Longferry, Northern England, working his grandpa’s trade as a shanker. He rises early to take his horse and cart to the drizzly shore to scrape for shrimp, and spends the afternoon selling his wares, trying to wash...
https://bookblabla.com/book/seascraper
#books #reading #libraries #fiction #literaryfiction #historical #generalfiction #familylife
📚 A Midlife Holiday by: Cary J. Hansson
Meet Helen. She worries that the walls are closing in. With her children grown and her selfish husband away again, she's full of regrets at not taking the exciting paths she dreamed about in her youth. So when the chance of a last-minute holiday to Cyprus with her two best friends i...
https://bookblabla.com/book/a-midlife-holiday
#books #reading #libraries #fiction #generalfiction #humorous #womenfiction #friendship
#OTD in 1859.
German scholar Constantin von Tischendorf identifies portions of the mid-4th century Codex Sinaiticus (an uncial manuscript of the Greek Bible) at Saint Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai in the Khedivate of Egypt and arranges for its presentation to his patron, Tsar Alexander II of Russia at Saint Petersburg.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Sinaiticus
Tischendorf.IV.Monumenta Sacra Inedita. 1857-1870 at TIA:
https://archive.org/details/Tischendorf.iv.monumentaSacraInedita.newcollection.subscript.6vols.1857-1870/01.MonumentaSacraInedita.NCVA.FragEvangLucLibGen.v1.Tischendorf.Subsc.1857./mode/1up
From March 1 to October 15, 1919.
Publication runs of the American pulp magazine The Thrill Book are oriented towards the fantasy genre or science fiction. It includes the serialization of The Heads of Cerberus, written by Gertrude Barrows Bennett as Francis Stevens, with its early thematic use of an alternate time-track, or parallel worlds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thrill_Book
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heads_of_Cerberus
The Thrill Books is available at LibriVoX:
https://librivox.org/group/676?primary_key=676&search_category=group&search_page=1&search_form=get_results&search_order=alpha
Happy National Library Week!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Library_Week
#libraries #NationalLibraryWeek #LibraryWeek #books #reading #bookstodon
"About 422 new indie bookshops opened in 2025, according to the American Booksellers Association, a 31% rise from 2024."
Nice!
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/apr/19/independent-bookstores-comeback
📚 Bald-Faced Liar by: Victoria Helen Stone
Traveling nurse Elizabeth May has a promising new home in Santa Cruz. And another new identity. It's a pattern of reinvention for a woman escaping her traumatic childhood and hiding from the decades of notoriety and destruction that followed.Invisibility has kept Eliza...
https://bookblabla.com/book/bald-faced-liar
#books #reading #libraries #fiction #psychologicalfiction #thrillers #suspensefiction #psychological
I recently finished The Will of the Many. this story follows an orphaned prince surviving in the Republic that invaded his country in a Romanesque world that uses will based magic in all things. Vis finds himself stuck between a plot to tear down the Republic and a senator that adopts him to attend a school to solve the murder of his brother. This was a fun read but there were issues with the grammar that were frustratingly repetitive. ⭐⭐🌟 @bookstodon @fantasy #books #fantasy #books
It's been almost a month since I last performed any maintenance on my digital library (maintenance primarily being backing up recently purchased books and a few post-processing actions). I feel like the books that catch attention and make their way to a TBR shelf can tell you, well maybe not a lot, but at least something about someone, and I think this is a pretty comprehensive, and not bad looking list of books, IMO. So, here are the books I've recently added to my library (all, sadly, bought through Amazon at severe discounts):
- A Memory Called Empire (Book 1 of Teixcalaan) by Arkady Martine*
- These Prisoning Hills by Christopher Rowe*
- The Rose Rent (Book 13 of The Chronicles of Brother Cadfael) by Ellis Peters
- Shakespeare by Bill Bryson
- Pastoralia by George Saunders
- Grave Empire (The Great Silence) by Richard Swan
- The Best of Me by David Sedaris
- Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith by Studs Terkel
- The Kill Artist (Book 1 of Gabriel Allon) by Daniel Silva**
- The Mephisto Club (A Rizzoli & Isles Novel) by Tess Gerritsen
- The Running Man by Stephen King
- The Long Walk by Stephen King
- Night Shift by Stephen King
- Christine by Stephen King
- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas
- The Warded Man (Book 1 of the Demon Cycle) by Peter V. Brett
- Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits (Zoey Ashe) by Jason Pargin & David Wong***
- Shadow and Bone (Book 1 of the Shadow and Bone Trilogy) by Leigh Bardugo
- Siege and Storm (Book 2 of the Shadow and Bone Trilogy) by Leigh Bardugo
- Neon Riders by AE Marling*
- Sister Svangerd and the Not Quite Dead (The Loyal Opposition Trilogy) by K. J. Parker***
- Queen Demon (Book 2 of the Rising World) by Martha Wells
- Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud
- No Life Forsaken (Book 2 of Witness) by Steven Erikson
- Snake-Eater by T. Kingfisher
- The Tiger and the Wolf (Book 1 of Echoes of the Fall) by Adrian Tchaikovsky
- The Bear and the Serpent (Book 2 of Echoes of the Fall) by Adrian Tchaikovsky
- The Hyena and the Hawk (Book 3 of Echoes of the Fall) by Adrian Tchaikovsky
- King Sorrow by Joe Hill
- Mister B. Gone by Clive Barker
*These books were discovered via the fediverse (thanks for the recommendations and for sharing)
**Recommended via IRL local networks
***Just some badass covers because, don't lie, everyone loves a good book cover
"Years of not fitting in and being afraid of being busted takes it's toll. I have had a lifetime of being unsure of how to conduct myself and being baffled by others' behaviour. For many years I thought my only choice was to be constantly on the move. I have lost track of the times I have given all my belongings away and melted into the night."
#AnissaLjanta, Wild of Brain, 2024
OMG this is so me!
I just discovered this. The biography is a little weird but not totally inaccurate. It's always odd to read about yourself on the interwebz. And it does have all the books in the right order.
"The only thing that we know is that we know nothing — and that is the highest flight of human wisdom."
Book V, Ch. I
In February 1865.
Publication of Leo Tolstoy's "1805", an early version of War and Peace, begins in the magazine Russkiy Vestnik. The version that was published in Russkiy Vestnik had a very different ending from the version eventually published under the title War and Peace in 1869.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_and_Peace
War and Peace at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/2600
📚 The Mountain in the Sea by: Ray Nayler
The transnational tech corporation DIANIMA has sealed off the remote Con Dao Archipelago, where a species of octopus has been discovered that may have developed its own language and culture. The marine biologist Dr. Ha Nguyen, who has spent her life researching c...
https://bookblabla.com/book/the-mountain-in-the-sea
#books #reading #libraries #fiction #sciencefiction #generalfiction #thrillers #technologicalfiction
Limited restock of all signed copies of my poetry books are now available at https://www.nihtgengapress.com
#poetry #books #indie
Thank you for supporting an independent indigenous poet directly!
Das erste Buch aus der #Bücherwabe ist „Ferdinand der Stier“. Es erschien 1936 und war radikal bzgl. seines Verständnisses von Männlichkeit und dem hohen Wert von Individualität. Auffällig ist, dass Ferdinand nie Teil einer Gesellschaft ist. Er ist der glückliche Außenseiter, der nicht kämpfen will, sondern viel lieber (allein) an Blumen riecht.
Ferdinands Pazifismus bleibt für ihn folgenlos, ganz im Gegenteil zu dem Buch, das wir als nächstes vorstellen. #books #literatur #politik #chemnitz
Today is Burns' birthday, let's celebrate!
'There's no other poem like it': Why this Robert Burns classic is a masterpiece
Tam O'Shanter is a rip-roaring tale of witches and alcohol, but it has hidden depths. On Burns Night this Sunday – and 235 years after the poem was published in 1791 – Scots everywhere may well be treated to a masterwork with a unique, universal appeal.
By Nicholas Barber
https://www.bbc.co.uk/culture/article/20260122-why-this-robert-burns-poem-is-a-masterpiece
Tam O'Shanter at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25733
"Thus the wise and worthy singer
Sings not all his garnered wisdom;
Better leave unsung some sayings
Than to sing them out of season."
Epilogue, line 20
#OTD in 1835.
The Finnish language epic poetry Kalevala, compiled by Elias Lönnrot from oral sources, is first published in the Grand Duchy of Finland, becoming influential in the Fennoman movement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalevala
Kalevala at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/5186
Anactoria is a woman mentioned in the work of the ancient Greek poet Sappho, who wrote in the late 7th and early 6th centuries BCE. Sappho names Anactoria as the object of her desire in a poem numbered as fragment 16. Another of her poems, fragment 31, is traditionally called the "Ode to Anactoria", although no name appears in it.
Algernon Charles Swinburne wrote a long poem, "Anactoria", published in his 1866 collection Poems and Ballads.
Robert Burns and Mary, Queen of Scots: how the poet shaped the enduring cultural legacy of the executed monarch
The queen was the source of much debate among 18th-century thinkers.
by Kate Kane
Robert Burns at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/583
Why does fiction matter?
Because stories can sharpen the way we understand other people.
A meta-analysis found that reading fiction has a small but positive effect on social cognition. Including our ability to interpret emotions, motives, and inner lives.
In other words: novels may help us practice empathy.
#books #literature #bookstodon #mentalhealth @bookstodon #reading #fiction
