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bgainor@bookwyrm.social

Joined 5 days, 1 hour ago

Programmer with a linguistics background, dad, trekkie. He/him Mastodon: @bgainor@mstdn.party

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Culture Warlords (Hardcover, 2020, Hachette Books) 5 stars

One reporter takes an immersive dive into white supremacy's explosive online presence, exploring the undercurrents …

Review of Culture Warlords

4 stars

Reads more like a memoir than an actual in-depth exploration of white supremacy. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and there was certainly a lot of background in there, but I feel like there was a lot more to unpack. The last chapter, "We Keep Us Safe", is as relevant as ever and is probably the most important part of the book.

Cipher, The (1991, Dell) 4 stars

Nicholas is a would-be poet and video-store clerk with a weeping hole in his hand …

Compelling and puzzling

4 stars

I don't normally like horror, especially body horror, and there was plenty of it in this. However, the mystery kept me coming back. I wanted to know more about the Funhole. Ultimately there was a lot I still didn't know, so I don't know how satisfying it was, but it was still a good read. Worth noting that the ebook version was really riddled with typos, but it kind of worked with the gradual unraveling of the protagonist's mental state.

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine 4 stars

History worth learning about, but for laymen it might be worth learning about it elsewhere

3 stars

I'm not a historian, and not qualified to critique this book on that basis, and anything in this review shouldn't be taken as factual problems I have with the book. What I'll say is that I wasn't really the target audience for this book. It is fairly academic, and it is written from an Israeli perspective. As an American, I was unaware of a lot of the history that is taken for granted by this book. One other thing to note is that this book is primarily about the Nakba. While the Nakba is of course important to understanding the nature of the conflict in Palestine today, and the author does a good job of pointing out how the memory of it is still being denied, I wouldn't recommend this for someone looking for a broad overview of the conflict.

That's not to say I didn't appreciate the book. I …

The AI Con (Hardcover, Penguin Random House) 5 stars

A smart, incisive take-down of the bogus claims being made about so-called ‘artificial intelligence’, exposing …

We don't have to accept this

5 stars

AI is being increasingly pushed as inevitable everywhere, but this book provides hope and recommendations for how to see through that hype. I had a slightly different perspective than most of the audience of this book, as a developer who has worked for years in language technology, but for the most part, the technical details matched my experience. I definitely recommend this book for anyone wanting to push back on the attempts by businesses and government agencies to automate away our jobs, knowledge, and vital services, which has become even more important in the last few months.

Very Fine People (2024, J. Goat Press) 5 stars

A roadmap for our time

5 stars

I've followed @JuliusGoat@mastodon.social for a while now, so I knew I had to pick up his book. It has all the trademark wit and moral clarity I've come to expect from him, but coming in, I had the thought that the people who most need this book wouldn't actually be the ones reading it. In the course of the book, I realized I was one of the people who most need this book. If you think you're an ally, this is a call to action you can't ignore. I recommend this book for anyone and everyone.

Death Comes for the Archbishop (1971, Vintage) 3 stars

In 1851 French Bishop Latour and his friend Father Valliant are dispatched to New Mexico …

Mixed bag

3 stars

This book has a lot of lovely descriptions of the landscape of New Mexico, some very interesting characterizations, and a lot of nice turns of phrase. But as @gwenprime@bookwyrm.social noted, it's very much a book of its time. In particular, the fact that Kit Carson is featured as a (mostly) sympathetic character feels very inappropriate from a modern perspective. I believe that in the 1920s, its sympathetic portrayal of Native Americans and the Long Walk of the Navajo was pretty progressive, but a lot of it now seems rather paternalistic. Worth reading as long as you can keep all that in mind.

Parable of the talents (2001, Warner Books) 4 stars

Environmental devastation and economic chaos have turned America into a land of depravity. Taking advantage …

A harder read in 2025

4 stars

Content warning No specifics, but does reference the book's ending

Parable of the Sower (EBook, 2012, Open Road Media Sci-Fi Fantasy) 4 stars

The Nebula Award–winning author of Kindred presents a “gripping” dystopian novel about a woman fleeing …

A hard read in 2025

5 stars

It was somewhat surreal to read a science fiction book set in the "future", and see a journal entry dated with today's date. The world of Parable of the Sower is in many ways worse than our current world, but there are also a lot of uncomfortable similarities. Ultimately, the book ends with a hopeful tone, but it makes it clear that a lot of hard work is required to get to the hopeful place.