FREE short story! “Ondine’s Curse,” a 19th century historical fantasy with a mermaid. https://youtu.be/NmA-Ew-Drms?si=SOpSVRkkIMdpK5GL
#bookstodon #shortstory #fantasy #audio @books @Books@mstdn.social @bookstodon
bookstodon
@bookstodon A medical emergency leaves the passengers of the Scampering Pete fending for themselves! They face pirates, mechanical issues, and more in Death In Transit!
Available on Amazon and more!
#Scifi #Adventure #Bookstodon #ActionAdventure #eBook
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.
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 324d ago
Today I emailed an author to ask how to spell one of her character's names. I've read the series as audiobooks and none of the descriptions include his last name. Well now he's married to the main character and she has taken his name. So now I need to know how to spell it.
Have you written to an author? The last time I did was about 40 years ago in 6th grade and that was a homework assignment.
Options: (choose one)
My contribution to the #1925Club this week is a post on the wonderful Love by Elizabeth von Arnim, which had a lot to say about double standards in society and the pressures on women as they age #bookstodon #BookReview #audiobook @kaggsy59
https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/3589831a-2956-408e-a6dc-19397cf94635
Five stars:
Book 'Em, Eddie by Laurie Cass and Erin Bennett (Narrator) (2025) is the thirteenth book in the Bookmobile Cat mystery series. Minnie and Rafe are now married and trying to settle into a new routine as a couple.
https://pussreboots.com/blog/2025/comments_12/book_em_eddie.html
"It takes an entire lifetime to unravel the mysteries of our own lives. Layer upon layer of knowledge accumulates upon the past, revealing it anew each time as a past that we certainly lived through, but couldn't even begin to understand."
Jenny Erpenbeck, "Homesick for Sadness," in her memoir 'Not a Novel'
#SundaySentence cluster @bookstodon #reading #bookstodon #identity #memory
Reading is an act of rebellion whether it's legal or not 😁
@reading @bookstodon @books @humor @humor@lemmy.world @aiop
#ReadingMemes #Meme #Memes #Humor #Humour #Funny
#Reading #Readers #ReadingCommunity
#Novel #Books #Fiction
#Bookwyrm #Bookstodon
FREE SHORT STORY! Saving Alan Idle, a story about a sentient computer program that previously appeared in Escape Pod. https://youtu.be/A7mEXacgd08?si=qwUY33Y2veBcgaTW
#bookstodon #scifi #shortstory @books @Books@mstdn.social @bookstodon
Looking for more spicy audiobooks for spooky season? 🎃
My Wife The Witch is another Size Fantasy I narrated for Amber Collins.
A naughty witch shrinks her husband to fit the dollhouse where she keeps four enchanted, doll-sized girlfriends — and then keeps shrinking!
This story goes hard, harder than most of my catalogue, so I will put content warnings in the next post in the thread.
If you like erotica with witches, magic, and a degree of peril, this might be for you!
Get yourself in the Halloween spirit with this spicy story. 😉
Available in audiobook format on Amazon, Audible an Apple Books. Also available in ebook format on Amazon.
1/n
#NSFW #Audioook #Audioobooks #Books #Bookstodon #Halloween #Erotica #SizeFantasy #Shrinking #Magic #Witch #Halloween
Edited 317d ago
Five stars:
A Gentle Noble's Vacation Recommendation, Volume 4 by Misaki, Momochi and Sando (2020) focuses mostly on Eleven and his attempts to join Liz and Gil's party.
https://pussreboots.com/blog/2026/comments_03/gentle_nobles_vacation_recommendation_4.html
Launching November 3! Get the audiobook and a special edition hardcover! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/villyard/immortal-gifts-hardcover-paperback-and-audiobook
#bookstodon #kickstarter #vampirebooks @books @Books@mstdn.social @bookstodon
Book Review: EC Comics Library: Weird Science Vol. 1 (Taschen)
The Rolls-Royce Collection of Era-Defining Sci-Fi Comics
NOAF co-founder @scifiromance has our review at the blog:
http://www.nerds-feather.com/2025/10/book-review-ec-comics-library-weird.html
#books #comics #review #bookstodon @bookstodon
Five stars:
The Puppets of Spelhorst by Kate DiCamillo and Julie Morstad (Illustrator) (2023) is the first of the Norendy Tales. It's a short, heavily illustrated parable of stepping into the roles given to you while still being true to yourself. The story follows five puppets as they come into the ownership of an old and lonely former ship's captain and then to a family with children.
https://pussreboots.com/blog/2025/comments_10/puppets_of_spelhorst.html
Four stars:
Audition for the Fox by Martin Cahill (2025) is a fantasy novella with a similar vibe to the Singing Hills Cycle by Nghi Vo. Nesi, a failed acolyte has one last chance to find her calling, if she can convince T’sidaan, the Fox of Tricks to take her on as his apprentice.
https://pussreboots.com/blog/2025/comments_10/audition_for_the_fox.html
#CoverReveal : We're obviously always delighted to celebrate one of our (very!) local literary stars, Muriel Spark, and Hodder has James Bailey's Like a Cat Loves a Bird, "a spiky and delicious new literary biography", coming next April.
#books #livres #MurielSpark #Edinburgh #Edimbourg #LikeACatLovesABird #JamesBailey #Biography #biographie #ScottishLiterature #bookshops #librairies #bookstodon
“You seem very unconcerned about this.“
“Man, I was not raised in the woods by Bolsheviks.“
“Are you a capitalist?“
“You should have asked me if I'm a fellow traveler before you kissed me, don't you think?“ Sam said, smirking.
“But?“
“I'm a librarian.“
“Is that a political affiliation?“
Sam considered this. “Near enough.“
#AmReading Old Time Religion by E.H. Lupton @pretensesoup
#Bookstodon
@bookstodon
finished reading A Court of Thorns and Roses 🌕🌕🌗🌑🌑
by Sarah Maas.
My first foray into #romantasy. The plot is so-so (humans vs faeries, love & intrigue) but finishes strongly. The romance is weak - it's never clear why she loves the faerie lord, except for his sexy man-beastiness. Hopefully this is not the best the genre has to offer.
Release day!! Space Trash is Trash You'll Want to Bring In! Off the curb and into your hands. https://books2read.com/u/mYJlro
#Kindle #Kobo #Nook #Apple #GooglePlay #books #sciencefiction #readers #readingcommunity #mustread #humor #Bookstodon
I've finished: Lessons in Magic and Disaster by Charlie Jane Anders
I learned something about myself when reading Lessons in Magic and Disaster.
I can read about wars and horrible dystopias and keep my distance. But a book about an LGBTQ family that is suffering from bullying as well as having it's own internal tensions is triggering for me. In 2025 this hits to close to home.
I had to find less stressful moments during the week to open this novel. I'm glad I stuck with it to its magical ending.
I love novels where the main character is researching a subject that illuminates the narrative.
https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/45a4a25f-74d4-4a09-aa55-df1c276dce1c
@bookstodon @audiobooks #fantasy #lgbtq #bookstodon #amReading #AudioBook
Fictional Things I’m Glad Are NOT Real: https://lydiaschoch.com/wednesday-weekly-blogging-challenge-fictional-things-im-glad-are-not-real/
#WednesdayWeeklyBloggingChallenge #Fiction #Books #Bookstodon
One of our authors, S. Parnam-Harris, isn't on social media, but she is running a 50% off sale on #DriveThruFiction during the #FediBookFair weekend.
The books are available as ePub or PDF, and do not have #DRM.
It's Saturday 1st November here in the UK, which means it's FediBookFair!
This weekend, we invite authors and publishers to write about their books, research, and related topics, with the #FediBookFair hashtag.
If that sounds interesting to you, please follow the hashtag and boost this so that more people can join us.
If it doesn't sound fun, please mute the hashtag - we have no interest in filling your timeline with stuff you're not interested in. You can find out how to do that here: https://fedi.tips/filtering-your-timeline-to-hide-posts-on-mastodon/
#AmReading At Midnight Comes the Cry by Julia Spencer-Fleming. I usually like this series but am feel iffy about the theme of small town white supremacists. Having a feeling it may get very white savior-y. But perhaps I'll be pleasantly surprised.