#ArthurCClarke 's prose could most charitably be described as unassuming, and his attempts to write human characters and politics are not very convincing, and yet this story of first contact encountering a massive alien spacecraft still, somehow, really works: Rama is such a memorable, mysterious, awe inspiring creation. #Bookstodon @bookstodon
bookstodon
Sabed que acabo de leer Piranesi y soy una persona 200% más feliz que cuando la empecé. Qué maravilla, qué gozo de libro
Finished Piranesi. What a joy of reading @bookstodon #bookstodon #libros
https://lectura.social/user/berniethewordsmith/reviewrating/141516
Edited 1y ago
Book Review: Making History by K. J. Parker
Another novella set in Parker's mainline secondary universe, about a group of academics tasked with a seemingly impossible task by a tyrant.
@princejvstin.com has our Boxing Day review
http://www.nerds-feather.com/2025/12/book-review-making-history-by-k-j-parker.html
New #BookReview on my #blog: "The Ferengi Rules of Acquisition."
https://itinerantlibrarian.blogspot.com/2025/12/book-review-ferengi-rules-of-acquisition.html
#books #reading #ItinerantLibrarian #reviews #StarTrek #DeepSpaceNine #bookstodon
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New #BookReview on my #blog: "Alchemy and Mysticism: the Hermetic Museum."
https://itinerantlibrarian.blogspot.com/2025/12/book-review-alchemy-and-mysticism.html
#books #reading #ItinerantLibrarian #reviews #art #hermeticism #mysticism #occult #esoterica #bookstodon
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House of Mirth. By Edith Wharton.
It’s late 19th century NYC, and you’re a youngish beautiful woman with few $ assets, and you’ve managed to live off higher society while avoiding getting married, but this arrangement starts to come to a sudden end; you are confident you can save yourself, but you’d somehow missed how powerless you’d be if others had other uses for you.
4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈
CW: antisemitism
Ello sweet and lovely (gaming) Friendos 
Howdy! I've not been around much, sorry. Not on this account, at least...
I've not been gaming. And I've not been trying to get further with my puzzle, although it's still open on my table. I've just needed a pause I guess. 😊
Yesterday, well, still today for less than 30 minutes, I did manage to finish the last book by Dan Brown, "The Secret of Secrets". I think it was the biggest book by mister Brown so far! It was a long read... But! If you enjoyed his previously released books, you may also like this one. 😊 It's a bit different from his previous books, but then, so was Origin... Even though it took me longer to get through the pages (there were 899 on my Kobo with my settings), it was worth the read! 😁
More info 🔗 https://danbrown.com/books/novels/the-secret-of-secrets/
I have now started a re-read of an older book, the first one of the "Women's Murder Club", by James Patterson (1st to die). (🔗 https://www.jamespatterson.com/series/james-patterson/womens-murder-club/). There are many books in the series now. I read the first few a long time ago, so it may be fun to re-read a few and then make progress with some I haven't read yet. 😊
Although I also want to read the two "not Robert Langdon" books by Dan Brown. I've read them before, but it would be nice to re-read those as well.
Anywhoo... Maybe soon, I'll try some more on the puzzle. But for now, with the colder days, I've been snuggling under my blanket with my Kobo eReader. 😊
Happy reading 
I write, erase, rewrite
Erase again, and then
A poppy blooms.
Katsushika Hokusai
finished reading Blackout 🌕🌕🌕🌑🌑
by Connie Willis.
The Oxford time travellers are back, back to the London Blitz in WW2. But they are having trouble returning home, and getting caught up in all sorts of trouble in the meantime. Slow moving and overly detailed, but the near slapstick humour saves it. Only the first half of the story, so unfulfilling.
I've finished: The Ragpicker by Joel Dane
It is not easy to do something innovative in the post-apocalyptic sub genre.
Humans surviving in enclaves, hunted by robots inhabited by broken uploaded minds is nothing new. But Joel Dane manages to explore these themes in a very humanizing manner.
As Ysmany partners with the ragpicker, to save a baby from the military twitch that dominates her enclave, they go on a journey that will form a new partnership that will change the relationship between the remaining humans and the remnants of the uploaded.
For this is a found family novel, though it is in no way cozy. Filled with danger, pain and trauma, while there is a healing process, and the new partnership builds a safer community, it is an incremental improvement.
I like it when the authors don't forget that life is hard when they write about a healing journey.
https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/2f165f4f-d323-4ed4-beee-d0d1ccd945d1
@bookstodon @audiobooks #ScienceFiction #postApocalyptic #FoundFamily #amReading #bookstodon #AudioBook
I've finished: Lucky Day by Chuck Tingle
Lucky Day dresses a well worn fantasy trope: you can't cheat lady luck, and dresses it in science fiction clothes.
It is interesting to see a statistician have to deal with probability defying events on the personal, philosophical and investigative levels.
However this novel must come with a body horror content warning. Tingle absolutely delights in graphic descriptions of injury and death.
If you want a more family friendly novel that deals with the implications of impossible phenomena manifesting in our world, try When We Were Real by Daryl Gregory.
https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/7690dede-bb83-45a7-98cf-28dd75493055
@bookstodon @audiobooks #ScienceFiction #BodyHorror #bookstodon #AudioBooks #amReading
I saw that question in one of the groups, and I think it's an interesting one to ask.
I've had a good reading year, with many interesting reads (and exciting re-reads), but if I was to pick one book... I think "Ninefox Gambit" by Yoon Ha Lee takes the spot. What's your top book?
Here are a few thoughts on Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1934, a reread for me, about the excesses of a wealthy American set living on the French Riviera, alcoholism and the ways mental illness was treated at the time #bookstodon #BookReview #reading #Storygraph #Braille @bookstodon
https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/214d6cce-ed09-4e6c-ad04-3b6efbb7db3b
🚨BLOGGAGE HAS OCCURRED🚨
I review the latest volume of @cstross”s I have read.
CAUTION: the final half or so sees me going off on a tangent where I expand on Mr Stross’ thesis regarding blind regard of D&D as being ‘evil.’. There’s little editing in that section, so it’s quite ’stream of consciousness’ and its argument will be weakly made — if even that strong at times.
As always, commentary is welcomed; both pro and anti.
https://unnecessary.bearblog.dev/conventionalboy/
#LaundryFiles #BooksTodon #reviews
I’ve enjoyed reading others’ lists of favorite books read in 2025. Here’s my offering. I started out planning to limit the list to ten books, but I just couldn’t do it. So there are 15 — well, really there are 16, but two of them are volumes one and two of a six-volume novel. I’ve listed the books by month — you can find my notes about them on my blog at https://johnrakestraw.com/reading/.
@bookstodon #bookstodon #reading
I've finished: Vigilance by Robert Jackson Bennett
This is not what I'm used to from Robert Jackson Bennett,
A hard hitting, near future, techno-thriller, parody of American gun culture.
It is not the funny sort of satire, it is the tragic, tense drama kind.
Published in 2019 it hit's a bit too close to home in 2025.
https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/08c7b0e6-cf4b-4405-8219-5d51dd7b8095
@bookstodon @audiobooks #ScienceFiction #dystopia #satire #NearFuture #amReading #bookstodon #AudioBooks #robertjacksonbennett
The Inquisitive Biologist looks back at 2025 and picks his five favourite books. Palaeontology, aerobiology, speleology, degrowth, and geomicrobiology top this year's list.
#Books #BookOfTheYear #BookReview #Bookstodon #Scicomm #Paleontology #Palaeontology #Aerobiology #HistoryOfScience #ScienceHistory #HistSci #Speleology #Caves #Lechuguilla #Economics #Degrowth #Microbiology #Geology #Geomicrobiology #EdgarAllanPoe #EAPoe #Biography #Literature #Goth #Gothic #Horror #ScienceConvention #ScienceFair @markwitton @princetonupress @princetonnature @Carl_Zimmer @timparrique @TetZoo @bookstodon
I mentioned yesterday my discovery of Henrik Karlsson (thanks again, Sacha). I've been reading through a few of his essays. There's richness there. But here's a different sort of treasure: "In Denmark you can open all public libraries with your social security card, so although it was closed, I walked in. The stacks lit up." What? What kind of world is this? Books for reading openly exposed like that? Who wants to live in a world like that? (Well, count me in!)
Hi @bookstodon
. Don't forget that the Smashwords End Of Year sale is nearly over. If you're not sure where to start, why not check your favorite Mastodon / Fediverse writers and the #EoYSale25 tag?
In the mood for android heat? @rubyjones has the stories for you!
Dark epic fantasy more your interest? @etaski 's
Sister Seekers has got you covered.
@JessMahler has a mix of fiction and non-fiction including a non-fiction series on Polyamory On Purpose.
@saxbrightwell "has been writing self-indulgent smut about men who are ride-or-die for each other since 2014." Check out their Secrets of Sleipnir free through tomorrow.
There's much more on the tags!
This post doubles as my #WordWeavers response today. 
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
Last year, 23 of my 100 books were nonfiction. This year, I'm only aiming for 78, with 16 nonfiction. So far, I've chosen 14 of them. The one at top left of the screenshot I don't yet have. It's of a type I almost NEVER buy - a book printed ON PAPER, so I'll be buying it with my next pay. I just LOVE the title, it amuses me to see my grandfather's birthplace thus described.
#Reading #nonfiction #bookstodon
@bookstodon
What were your favourite reads for the year? I finished 69 books in 2025, and these are 4 of my faves: Ursula Le Guin's trippy, wonderful homage to her friend Philip K. Dick; the grimy, nasty vampire story that set the template for the zombie movie genre; the hilariously fun heists of the early 20th century gentleman burglar Arsène Lupin; and Adrian Tchaikovsky's millennia-spanning story of humans - and spiders! - in space. #Bookstodon @bookstodon #BooksOfTheYear
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 318d ago
2025 in #books, a thread, inspired by (but not limited to) https://shereads.com/traci-thomas-best-books-of-2025/ :
Two books I loved, part 1:
Gliff - Ali Smith
A fable about survival in a totalitarian surveillance state. A reflection on childhood, siblinghood, and the cost and worth of kindness. A dance with language and memory. I was torn between the impulse to read it all in one sitting and the urge to savor every single sentence.
Have people made their reading lists for the #TransRightsReadathon ? I'm such a mood reader I'm just collecting ideas, but I'm thinking about Womens Hotel by Daniel Lavery and maybe something by Sarah Gailey.