@Tak@reading.taks.garden yeah. I don’t have kids and it’s still going to haunt me for a while.
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I'm currently the coordinator of the #SFFBookClub so a lot of what I'm reading is suggestions from there.
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el dang commented on How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
Beginning in 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work …
Chapter 3: I see now that characters from one story do show up in others, so the book overall will get to have character arcs not just a zoomed-out plot one. Makes me even more curious how much the stories have been reworked between individual publication and collecting into book form.
el dang commented on How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
Beginning in 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work …
Content warning Chapter 2 spoiler; CW for plague
At first, I thought the plague business was a bit too much of a neat topical tie-in. But then I noticed in the front matter that many of the chapters are adapted from previously published short stories, and the original version of ch2 was published in 2013. So at least the outline of the plague predates COVID by years.
I'm curious whether the line about disagreement whether the virus was airborne was added in the editing for the book, because if not then that detail is astonishingly prescient.
Either way, I find myself wanting to know what happens to Skip and Dorrie after the events of this chapter. I can't tell yet if the book will pick them up again later or if each chapter's going to be a totally isolated vignette within the overall setting.
el dang commented on How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
Beginning in 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work …
Just sharing Enne's set of CWs for this book from weirder.earth/@picklish/111701657327009106 because hashtags still seem to only partially work between Mastodon and Bookwyrm:
"I wanted to pass on content warnings for: suicide, pandemic, climate change, death, euthanasia, animal experimentation, body horror, despair" #SFFBookClub
el dang commented on Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is an 1818 novel written by English author Mary Shelley. …
I just noticed that I've added a translation to bookwyrm even though I'm reading it in English. More importantly, in today's reading group we realised that there are at times quite large differences between the 1818 and 1831 texts, and decided we're going to stick to the 1831 one, which conveniently is what Standard Ebooks used.
I like how with the 1831 introduction this is a story within a story within a story: Frankenstein's story within Robert Walton's tale of how he found Victor Frankenstein, within Shelley's own frame story about being stuck in the Alps with Lord Byron in the notorious Year Without A Summer.
el dang started reading How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
Beginning in 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work …
From the one chapter I've read so far I can tell this is going to be a lot heavier than the last couple of things I've read. Promising start, though. #SFFBookClub
el dang reviewed System Collapse by Martha Wells
Am I making it worse? I think I'm making it worse.
Following the events in …
💗 Murderbot 💗
5 stars
I continue to love the Murderbot series. By this point, the action parts have lost impact because there's too much precedent for how they're going to turn out, so I think it's wise of Wells to play that part down a bit in this book, in favour of a story more about persuasion and trust building. And the ongoing saga of Murderbot learning about both its limits and capabilities continues to be one of the most relatable arcs in SF/F.
el dang
boosted
Jules, reading quoted Network Effect by Martha Wells
Murderbot returns in its highly-anticipated, first, full-length standalone novel.
You know that feeling when you’re …
Impulse control; I should try to write a code patch for that.
@Tak@reading.taks.garden Me neither! I've just read the first chapter so far, and been struck by just how vividly the research base is rendered.
el dang quoted System Collapse by Martha Wells
Am I making it worse? I think I'm making it worse.
Following the events in …
If they were like other humans, recreational activities = throwing balls or sticks at each other really hard.
— System Collapse by Martha Wells (Page 143)
Human survival hinges on an bizarre alliance in Semiosis, a character driven science fiction novel …
This fell off the #SFFBookClub poll because it didn't seem to grab other peoples' interest, but I am still intrigued.
el dang started reading System Collapse by Martha Wells
System Collapse by Martha Wells
Am I making it worse? I think I'm making it worse.
Following the events in Network Effect, the Barish-Estranza corporation …
Brutal, and much more human than I'd expected
5 stars
Between the cover and the scene descriptions the author had trailed on Mastodon, I was expecting this book to be mostly gore. What I actually found on reading is that it's mostly a story of a very relatable character suffering in the isolation of having to be twice as good and still never fitting in due to everyone else's racism. With some very hard-to-read descriptions of just how brutal the competition of a top ballet school is, and frankly easier-to-read interludes of supernatural gore, all of which serve the human story.
It's also beautifully written, with the protagonist's internal conflict carrying through, and a lot of confusion about other characters' relationships and motives that feels like the confusion I would be experiencing in the protagonist/narrator's shoes rather than any flaw in the telling.
As straight storytelling, the climactic scene is preposterous, but as a continuation of the emotional rollercoaster up …
Between the cover and the scene descriptions the author had trailed on Mastodon, I was expecting this book to be mostly gore. What I actually found on reading is that it's mostly a story of a very relatable character suffering in the isolation of having to be twice as good and still never fitting in due to everyone else's racism. With some very hard-to-read descriptions of just how brutal the competition of a top ballet school is, and frankly easier-to-read interludes of supernatural gore, all of which serve the human story.
It's also beautifully written, with the protagonist's internal conflict carrying through, and a lot of confusion about other characters' relationships and motives that feels like the confusion I would be experiencing in the protagonist/narrator's shoes rather than any flaw in the telling.
As straight storytelling, the climactic scene is preposterous, but as a continuation of the emotional rollercoaster up to that point it works perfectly.
I wasn't expecting this book to be my kind of thing, and now I can't wait for Shea's next one.
Paris was beautiful in the ugliest way, and I only dreamed of being loved so unconditionally.
— I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me by Jamison Shea (Page 221)
Content warning end of ch4 spoiler
...and then, even though every page of the first 4 chapters has been infused with Laure's unambiguous lived experience of racism, the first time anyone actually says the quiet part out loud and is directly racist to her face still manages to be infuriating, as it should be.