Memes of Production

Rice Cooker by Russell Hobbs

A classic.

I'm reading Labor's Untold Story. It's about the rise of unions. The latest chapter ended with a capitalist killing themselves, so pretty damn good so far.

Off to a great start! It feels a lot faster paced than the first book

Girl dinner

My second attempt.

Terry Pratchett Men at Arms

As per suggestions from here!

👀

Post-apocalyptic tale of tech-priests, kind of. It starts slow, and then you get used to it.

Does this count?

PIC18(L)F2X/4XK22 Data Sheet

It's an older anthology but it checks out, sir.

I finally started reading it. Saw a review that said "just read it. The less you know the better" so I got it. Haven't read it.

Went to dinner at cousins place who also heard good things, got the book, and hasn't read it. So I'm reading it for the both of us I guess

I don't really read much, this is my first book since a couple years since I wanted something to do while on a plane. I really like it though, the court intrigue and attempts to consolidate power are interesting if you can keep up with all the different characters, and there are many. The author also uses quite a lot of not-so-common words, so as a non-native speaker you'll have to infer a bit from context but I didn't find it too bad.

The brand new translation of LOTR.

The Dungeon Crawler Carl series by Matt Dinniman. I'm half way through book 7 and excited for book 8 to come out in a few months.

Audiobook while I drive, but still

Adrian Tchaikovsky - Pretenders to the Throne of God

The fifth installment in the "Tyrant Philosophers" series, the fantasy series takes inspiration from the european independence movements of the 1840s. It is based in a world where magic isn't just real, but where hundreds of different magic systems all come together and clash, as each different culture has several ways that things are done. From helliers calling demons through contracts to work the industrial mills, to the leftovers from thousand-year-dead necromantic empires that locked themselves away in their tombs, to a city that has actually figured out utopia, and can work any miracle (but the city has a hard population cap) to minor gods who actively manifest and can do miracles, to the keepers of a mysterious forest that seems to allow people to move between realities... For a price.

Between them all (or, rather, surrounding them), we have the Palleseen: a new imperial power swiftly taking over the world. Strictly "rational", abhorring all gods, woowoo, and mumbo-jumbo, the Palleseen are all-business, exporting their "perfection" (in the form of absolute bureaucracy) to the rest of the world by diplomacy, and, failing that, the underside of an iron-shod army-regulation boot. From a Pal-occupied city turning into a powderkeg of rebellion, to the front lines of one of the Palleseen's ever-present wars, to a country facing the Pal's more diplomatic face, to a city under siege, we see this world the Pals seek to "perfect" through the eyes of the weirdos, the outcasts, and those whose livelihoods rely on the messy inefficiencies of human life (those whom the Palleseen philosophically reject, and yet rely on as integral parts of civilisation) we explore the perspectives, flaws and beautiful rube-goldberg collision of these weirdos, both those fighting against and as part of the Palleseen engine.

This series examines the inescapable fallacy of a system which claims to be perfect, and how systems that work require the flexibility afforded by diversity of thought. Through every crack we glimpse as the imperialist war machine plods implacably forward, we glimpse the inevitable fall of such a machine, and have to ask "at what point is there hope in standing against an unbeatable foe? Should you stand against it anyway?"

The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin

Enshittification by Cory doctorow

Book 7 of " Dungeon crawler Carl " series by Matt Dinniman.

I just finished The Lamb Will Slaughter The Lion, a queer anarchist horror novella about a trans travelpunk hunting a demon with a group of anarchists whose commune is about to go to shit. It's a pretty fun read, I am looking forward to reading the rest of the trilogy.

Why yes I am crashing out over the blasé, abject cruelty of normal average humans. How could you tell?

Rule 34

LOL, I'm very tired right now and read, "book checkpoint," and thought, "...do they mean a fucking bookmark?"

Working through the Three Body Problem trilogy. Absolutely loving it so far and open to recommendations if you've got em.

Planning to read Ball Lightning next and potentially pivot to Mistborn next.

Physical book: I'm re-reading House of Leaves

Audio book: I'm listening to the latest Wandering Inn book

Nation by Terry Pratchett

None😅

(I really should read more though)

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. I am halfway and understood nothing. 5/5, would recommend.

Kimi no Hanashi by Miaki Sugar One of my favorite Novels author

Accidentally read book #4 first and am now going back to read the first one.

Three Body Problem

This is abuse of authority and police brutality 😭

~~more please~~

It's interesting, but on the subjects of Grant and Sherman in particular the text goes out of its way to paint them as anti-Reconstruction or Reconstruction-skeptical, even when the immediately preceding or succeeding sentence in the original text directly contradicts it.

Sherman's opinions changed with time, and radically so. Not that Sherman in particular isn't chalk-full of horrific opinions even at the latest possible point, mind, only that it's not entirely fair to paint him, as one popular history put him, as the original "unreconstructed rebel" when his entire trajectory was increasingly pro-African-American even through a period when white Americans as a whole began to lose their stomach for the fight for equality.

But Grant in particular is a sore point for me, since Grant went far out of his way to support racial equality, even though his strong support for civil rights literally split 'his' party in two. He may not have been the most radical Republican, but he also was far from lukewarm on equal civil rights or a simple opportunist.

Nevertheless, it certainly cites a wide variety of primary sources and makes otherwise compelling arguments. The only downside of a book is that picking the author's mind on specific points is much harder. :p

Just re-reading my favorite fantasy series for the umpteenth time