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This is a topic I've been interested in since visiting Zagreb a few years after its war ended, and wondered about how different its 20th century built environment felt from other recently-Communist places I'd visited. I wasn't there very long and one can only read so much into the shapes of buildings, so it's always just been a sort of "hrm, I ought to learn if there's any there there" sort of thing at the back of my mind. So when @loshmi@social.coop posted social.coop/@loshmi/113568017088684018 I figured this book could be a way for me to find out.

Finally reading the Oct/Nov #SFFBookClub book. A few chapters in and I'm both enjoying it and seeing what seems to have frustrated a few other readers. I'm curious to see how I find the balance of those as I read on.

#SFFBookClub December

AK Press has made 6 e-books free to download for a limited period: www.akpress.org/featured-products/featured-topic-free-ebook.html

• Practicing New Worlds - Abolition and Emergent Strategies
• Street Rebellion - Resistance Beyond Violence and Nonviolence
• No Pasarán! - Antifascist Dispatches from a World in Crisis
• The Operating System - An Anarchist Theory of the Modern State
• Joyful Militancy - Building Thriving Resistance in Toxic Times
• Emergent Strategy - Shaping Change, Changing Worlds

chaos.social/@catileptic/113453646275291175

Referenced by Tressie McMillan Cottom in a recent article; the thesis seems to be that whiteness as an identity is a powerful political force distinct from and in addition to out-group hatred. I'm not sure I understand what it means for a dominant group's identity politics to operate distinct from hatred of the Other, and if this reference had come from an author I respect less I might dismiss the idea, but given the context I want to learn more and try to understand it.

I don't know about you, but I'm finding everything really hard right now.

So today I come to you with free books. No code. No minimum purchase. No secret handshake. Just free books.

If you need a dash of hope, then maybe The Left Hand of Dog will bring you joy. www.whitehartfiction.co.uk/products/left-hand-ebook

If you'd prefer a story of women getting justice through any means necessary, then A Bit of Murder Between Friends might be what the doctor ordered. www.whitehartfiction.co.uk/products/between-ebook

wandering.shop/@clacksee/113464365271096503

This podcast has got me very interested in this book: www.cbc.ca/radio/secretlifeofcanada/sloc-s6-ep11-1.7320521 - and the same author's "Native Seattle" is wonderful so I have high hopes for this one.

Not only in the story itself, but also the pacing and atmosphere make this a perfect resolution to a series I've been slowly reading for something like 10 years. The circle feels satisfyingly complete, and I probably will start again with A Wizard Of Earthsea sooner or later.

I found this book frustrating because it kept being just interesting enough to keep me reading, but never really seemed to develop the potentially more interesting of its ideas, and ultimately felt like a lot of SFF / cyberpunk cliches thrown into a pot and not quite stirred enough to become a whole.

[#SFFBookClub September; I am slowly catching up on reviews]

A very powerful and varied collection, in which not one story misses the mark. They range from direct explorations of the brutality of invasion and occupation, through some elegiac expressions of exile and loss, through to stories that aren't even particularly about current conditions, and work unusually well together for such a diverse set. I'll be looking for more work from the majority of these authors.