I don't mean to nitpick, Tom, but is this really your plan?

Fiction

2026-04-27T18:49:47Z

Stephen Graham Jones, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter: ( horror horror )
T. Kingfisher, Illuminations: ( fun for younger readers )

Dessa, Tits on the Moon: ( poetry )

Cat Sebastian, Star Shipped: ( romance on set )

Nnedi Okorafor, Death of the Author: ( racialized posthumanism )

Kai Butler, Shadow Throne King: ( assassin's need )

T. Kingfisher, Snake-Eater: ( western approaches )

Laura Elliott, Awakened: ( grumpy review of apocalypse premise )

Tasha Suri, The Isle in the Silver Sea: ( excellent fantasy about stories )

Jim Butcher, Twelve Months: ( the saga continues )

Ilona Andrews, This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me: ( isekai done just right for me )

comments

Nonfiction

2026-04-04T20:06:49Z

Michael Sfard, The Wall and the Gate: Israel, Palestine, and the Legal Battle for Human Rights. ( yikes )

Daniel A. Bell, The Dean of Shandong: Confessions of a Minor Bureaucrat at a Chinese University:( Who goes Party? )

Fashion and Intellectual Property, ed. David Tan, Jeanne C. Fromer, & Dev S. Gangjee: ( around the world )

Rebecca Solnit, The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change: ( hope in the ashes )

Nicholas Buccola, One Man’s Freedom: Goldwater, King, and the Struggle over an American Ideal: ( one of them was right )
Blake Scott Ball, Charlie Brown’s America: ( Peanuts )
John J. Sullivan, Midnight in Moscow: A Memoir from the Front Lines of Russia’s War Against the West: ( we lost )

Greg Grandin, America, América: A New History of the New World: ( recommended )

Srdja Popovic with Sophia A. McClennen, Pranksters vs. Autocrats: Why Dilemma Actions Advance Nonviolent Activism: ( thinking about resistance )

comments

Fiction and life whining

2026-03-01T19:06:31Z

Hi there--it's been a bit! The first day of school (which was also a snowstorm) involved me waking just before 7 to the sound of water pouring through my bathroom ceiling, followed shortly by electrical explosions and a fire that will have me out of my apartment for, apparently, at least a year. No one was hurt! That is very good. The rest, not so much. I've now moved all my clothes, shoes & jewelry to my office (which I might actually keep in place forever if I can manage the jewelry organization--turns out bookcases are also really good shoe racks, and they make pretty good clothes racks for cheap now). Anyway I have been running around like a chicken with my head cut off; the apartment is now empty except for the stuff that was destroyed, which sadly includes two century-old curved glass windows. And I've acquired a place to nap in my office. I'm both grateful for the resources I have to get through this and still pretty overwhelmed given all the rest of the terrible stuff in the world.

Greer Stothers, Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die: ( fantasy about a cowardly knight and the wizard he seduces )

Aisling Rawle, The Compound: ( hell is reality tv )

Matt Dinniman, Operation Bounce House: ( the wargamers throw stones at frogs for sport but the frogs die in earnest )

Kimberly Belflower, John Proctor is the Villain:( great even as a script )

Aliya Whiteley, The Misheard World: ( an interrogation in a strange world )
Charles Stross, The Regicide Report: ( good night and good luck )

Alix E. Harrow, The Everlasting: ( fantasy about a knight and the man who loves her )

Constance Fay, ( two sf m/f romances )

Joanna Russ, The Female Man: ( the feminine shriek )
James S.A. Corey, The Faith of Beasts:( alien enslavers )

Adrian Tchaikovsky, Pretenders to the Throne of God: ( started as it meant to go on )

Kai Butler,( 2/3 of a fantasy trilogy about an assassin and his emperor-target-lover )

Kai Butler, The Inconvenient Count: ( space m/m regency )
Joe Hill, King Sorrow: ( playing in the King wheelhouse )

comments

Happy New Year! Some (not all happy) nonfiction

2026-01-03T00:04:45Z

Annalee Newitz, Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind: ( history and present )

Luke Kemp, Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse: ( not what I hoped )

Justin F. Jackson, The Work of Empire: War, Occupation, and the Making of American Colonialism in Cuba and the Philippines: ( so shockingly, racist! )

Elliott West, Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion: ( this too )

Nicole Eustace, Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America: ( um ... )

Charles S. Maier, The Project-State and Its Rivals: A New History of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries: ( history as forces )

Mary Louise Roberts, What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France:( it's complicated? but also racist; rape and rape myths )

Caroline Fraser, Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers: ( Helter Smelter (her joke, not mine) )

Ada Palmer, Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Age: ( lots'o'quotes )

Elliott Kalan, Joke Farming: How to Write Comedy and Other Nonsense: ( good instructions )

comments

Fiction

2025-12-31T18:57:44Z

Uketsu, Strange Houses: ( floor plans )

Jim Butcher, Out Law: ( Harry helps out Marcone )

Freya Marske, Cinder House: ( ghost Cinderella )

Seanan McGuire, Through Gates of Garnet and Gold: ( Wayward children reunite )

Kai Butler, The Earl and the Executive: ( space Regency m/m romance )

Olga Ravn, The Employees: ( weird crew )

James Islington,( the first two books of an engaging trilogy about a Marty Stu )
Rachel Reid, Heated Rivalry: ( yep, that's what I expected )

Vajra Chandrasekera, Rakesfall: ( reincarnation sf )

Isaac R. Fellman, The Two Doctors Górski: ( Yeah, it's Dark Academia )

Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, The Salvage Crew: ( a human in a ship's body but not Anne McCaffrey )
Barbara Truelove, Of Monsters and Mainframes: ( monsters in space )

Jim Hines, Slayers of Old:( BtVS, but retired )

Neal Shusterman, Scythe: ( remember that Star Trek episode where they wouldn't use birth control? )

comments

Nonfiction

2025-11-26T18:22:31Z

Michael Grunwald, We Are Eating the Earth: The thing about land is that they aren’t making any more of it, and although you can make more farmland (for now) from forests, it’s not a good idea. This means that agriculture is hugely important to climate change, but most of the time proposals for, e.g., biofuels or organic farming don’t take into account the costs in farmland. The book explores various things that backfired because of that failed accounting and what might work in the future. Bonus: the audiobook is narrated by Kevin R. Free, the voice of Murderbot, who turns out to be substantially more expressive when condemning habitat destruction.

Tony Magistrale & Michael J. Blouin, King Noir: The Crime Fiction of Stephen King (feat. Stephen King and Charles Ardai): Treads the scholarly/popular line, as the inclusion of a chapter by King and a “dialogue” with Ardai suggest. The book explores King’s noir-ish work like Joyland, but also considers his horror protagonists as hardboiled detectives, trying to find out why bad things happen (and, in King’s own words, often finding the noirish answer “Because they can.”). I especially liked the reading of Wendy Torrance as a more successful detective than her husband Jack. Richard Bachman shows up as the dark side of King’s optimism (I would have given more attention to the short stories—they’re also mostly from the Bachman era and those often are quite bleak). And the conclusion interestingly explores the near-absence of the (living) big city and the femme fatale—two noir staples—from King’s work, part of a general refusal of fluidity.

Gerardo Con Diaz, Everyone Breaks These Laws: How Copyrights Made the Online World: This book is literally not for me because I live and breathe copyright law and it is a tour through the law of copyright & the internet that is aimed at an intelligent nonlawyer. Although I didn’t learn much, I appreciated lines like “Back then, all my porn was illegally obtained, and it definitely constituted copyright infringement.” The focus is on court cases and the arguments behind them, so the contributions of “user generated content” and, notably, fanworks to the ecosystem don’t get a mention.

Stephanie Burt, Taylor’s Version: The Poetic and Musical Genius of Taylor Swift: ( longer )

Kyla Sommers, When the Smoke Cleared: The 1968 Rebellions and the Unfinished Battle for Civil Rights in the Nation’s Capital: Extensive account of the lead-up to, experience of, and consequences of the 1968 riots after MLK Jr.’s assassination. There was some interesting stuff about Stokely Carmichael, who (reportedly) told people to go home during the riots because they didn’t have enough guns to win. (Later: “According to the FBI, Carmichael held up a gun and declared ‘tonight bring your gun, don’t loot, shoot.’ The Washington Post, however, reported Carmichael held up a gun and said, ‘Stay off the streets if you don’t have a gun because there’s going to be shooting.’”) Congress did not allow DC to control its own political fate, and that shaped how things happened, including the limited success of citizens’ attempts to direct development and get more control over the police, but ultimately DC was caught up in the larger right-wing backlash that was willing to invest in prisons but not in sustained economic opportunity. Reading it now, I was struct by the fact that—even without riots, fires, or other large-scale destruction—white people who don’t live in the area are still calling for military occupation because they don’t feel safe. So maybe the riots weren’t as causal as they are considered.

comments

Nonfiction

2025-11-25T23:16:02Z

Quinn Slobodian, Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right: ( it's always racism )

Corinne Low, Having It All: What Data Tells Us About Women's Lives and Getting the Most Out of Yours: ( self-help from an economist )
Cory Doctorow, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It: ( Doctorow in fine form )
Tim Wu, The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity: ( Another account of enshittification )

Kim A. Wagner, Massacre in the Clouds: An American Atrocity and the Erasure of History: ( written by the victors )

Mary Roach, Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy: ( strange but true )

comments

Fiction

2025-11-24T18:47:13Z

Hugh Howey, Wool: ( underground dystopia )
Stephanie Burgis, Wooing the Witch Queen: ( meet cute )

R.F. Kuang, Katabasis:( hell is other academics )

Qntm, There Is No Antimemetics Division: ( fighting a war you can't remember )

Mia Tsai, The Memory Hunters: ( memory and mushrooms )

John Scalzi, R. F. Kuang, Peng Shepherd, Kaliane Bradley, Olivie Blake, P. Djèlí Clark, The Time Traveler’s Passport: ( short stories )

Francesca Serritella, Ghosts of Harvard: ( ghosts or just mental illness? )

V. E. Schwab, A Darker Shade of Magic: ( world hoppers )

comments

Fiction (short takes)

2025-11-08T00:57:05Z

Kelli Storm, Desolate: Mia is a witch in a world concealed from but intertwined with mundanes; her ADHD makes her powers unpredictable. When things are going badly for her at high school, she accidentally sends herself back in time, which creates further problems both magical and romantic. This was too YA-ish for me, but I think it could work for an actual teenager who would empathize more with the emotional stakes.

Patricia Lockwood, Will There Ever Be Another You: A memoir-ish thing about surviving covid with a brain injury, dealing with a husband’s illness, and trying to write a TV show based on her previous book Priestdaddy. It conveys the hallucinatory disjointedness of brain fog, but for that reason was mostly inaccessible to me.

KJ Charles, All of Us Murderers: In 1905, the reclusive heir to the family fortune calls his potential heirs to him, offering everything to whoever marries his young ward. One of the heirs has ADHD and thus has found it difficult to keep a job, especially after being discovered in flagrante with his lover—who turns out to be the heir’s personal secretary. Everyone else in the family is a nasty piece of work, and then strange things start happening in the gothic pile in which they are trapped by mists. It’s fast-moving and very (gayly) gothic.

Caitlin Rozakis, The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association: After her five-year-old daughter is attacked and turned into a werewolf—a severe breach of werewolf law—the protagonist, her daughter, and her husband move to a tony Connecticut suburb full of magical creatures, where her daughter may be able to get an education among people who understand her. But the new school is full of traps—high-stakes testing, Mean Girl moms, financial shenanigans, and a pesky prophecy that might involve her baby girl. I liked the fact that the issues were driven not so much by magic but by people trying to game the system (as rich Connecticut denizens are known to do).

T. Kingfisher, What Stalks the Deep: Another short Alex Easton novel, this time set in America, where a strange sighting in an abandoned mine heralds something very creepy indeed. Avoid if “gelatinous” is a no-no for you.

Deborah Tomkins, Aerth: Novella about an underpopulated, cooling world that discovers Urth, on the other side of the sun, which has similar languages and human beings but is hot and overpopulated. The noninterventionist, consensus-based culture of Aerth seems healthier than the headlong rush to authoritarianism of Urth, but that doesn’t stop its inhabitants from feeling choked by their obligations, and there might be a few secrets in its past too, though Tomkins isn’t very interested in that except as background. It wasn’t for me.

The End of the World As We Know It, ed. Christopher Golden & Brian Keene: A collection of stories set in the world of Stephen King’s The Stand. (They all seem to have agreed to go with the date of 1992 for the plague instead of the initial 1982; there are therefore fewer anomalies/more actual engagement with the world in 1992 than in the revised version of The Stand, though I did note a character who was not online using “FAQ,” for an anachronism in the other direction.) Most of the stories are set during the collapse and therefore don’t add a lot, and more of the stories than I’d hoped are set in the US. There’s one story set in Pakistan that is quite interesting—this is all Christian nonsense to them—and one UK story that really gets the vibe right.

Naomi Novik, The Summer War: Novella about a girl—daughter of an ambitious lord—who accidentally curses her brother when he leaves her behind after renouncing his family because of his father’s homophobia. In her attempt to fix the curse, she allies with her remaining brother and tries to navigate a political marriage, but otherworld politics complicate matters. It’s a pleasant variation on Novik’s core themes: Epic people can be very hard to live with; power must be used to serve others or it is bad; loving other people is the only thing that can save us.

T. Kingfisher, Hemlock and Silver: A king seeks out an expert on poisons to treat his daughter, Snow, who is mourning the deaths of her mother and sister Rose and keeps getting sicker. There are apples and mirrors and magic in the desert, as well as a little romance among the very practical people. It’s nice that the healer was a scientist even dealing with magic, and the imagery is genuinely creepy at times.

Melissa Caruso, The Defiant Heir: Second in a trilogy. Amalia, heir to an Italianate ruling family, continues to fight against the planned invasion of her empire by the neighboring mages. I could wish for a bit more Brandon Sanderson-style working out of the magic system, but it was still a fun read.

Freya Marske, Sword Crossed: Luca, a con man on the run, becomes the sword tutor of Matti, heir to a noble house. (This is romantasy without magic—just nonheterosexist family structures and different gods than were historically in place.) Their connection is problematic because Matti needs to get married to save his house, and he hired/blackmailed Luca into being his “second” in the expected challenge by a disappointed suitor. So falling in love with Luca is really inconvenient. Marske’s best work is handling the arranged marriage—they like each other fine and Matti’s intended has rejected the suitor who won’t take no for an answer. But I wanted magic! If you are fine without it, then this is probably more enjoyable.

Will Greatwich, House of the Rain King: Really interesting, unusual single-volume fantasy. In the valley, when the Rain King returns, the water rises until a princess comes from the birds to marry him (and die), and then they recede. A priest, an indentured servant, and a company of foreign mercenaries all get caught up in the struggle to make the Rain King’s wedding happen. There are also undead guarding treasure as well as fairies and marsh-men, who have their own roles to play.

Nghi Vo, The City in Glass: Short novel about a demon whose city is destroyed by angels; her parting curse sticks with one angel, who keeps hanging around as she slowly decides whether and how to build/love again. Dreamy and evocative.

comments

I have an icon for this!

2025-10-09T21:48:57Z

I’ve been rereading Stephen King for comfort reasons, and I have a couple of observations. First, The Dead Zone—which posits political assassination as an actual solution to a potential presidential madman—hits a bit different these days. Second (and not unrelatedly), while I am happy enough to get the expanded version of The Stand, it was a huge mistake for King to try to change the setting from 1980 to 1990; random updated pop culture references can’t disguise the fact that America changed substantially in that decade, such that characters and settings that made sense in 1980 were no longer plausible in 1990. The teenaged, white Nick Andros would almost certainly not have used the word “Negro” to describe an old woman in 1990. The singer Larry Underwood would have different beliefs about music from the 70s, when he was a young child rather than a teen/early adult. From attitudes towards single mothers to how racism was expressed to the dumping practices of fabric mills, the revised version still reads like 1980, but with a mention of rap on the radio, and it’s not good.

comments

Nonfiction

2025-09-09T23:20:00Z

Sara E. Wolf, Teaching Copyright: Practical Lesson Ideas and Instructional Resources: ( for non-legal educators who teach about (c) )

How Republics Die: Creeping Authoritarianism in Ancient Rome and Beyond, ed. Frederik Juliaan Vervaet et al.: ( democratic decay: how does it work? )

Michelle Carr, Nightmare Obscura: A Dream Engineer’s Guide Through the Sleeping Mind: ( I took a ton of notes )
Noah Feldman, To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People: ( Interesting )
Ko-Lin Chin, Counterfeited in China: The Operations of Illicit Businesses: ( also interesting )

Adam Becker, More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity: ( depressingly interesting )

Shoshana Walter, Rehab: An American Scandal: ( oh look more depressing )

comments

Fiction, including an unhappy rant at the end

2025-09-02T20:04:30Z

Edward Abbey, The Monkey Wrench Gang: ( Ecoterrorists )

Ben Aaronovitch, Stone and Sky: ( Abigail to the front )

Rachel Hartman, Among Ghosts:( ghosts versus abusive family )

Adrian Tchaikovsky, Bee Speaker: ( Mars to the rescue (?) )

KJ Charles, Death in the Spires: ( murder among the swells )

Antonia Hodgson, The Raven Scholar: ( my favorite book so far this year )

The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume One (2018), ed. Neil Clarke: ( the pulse of the moment )

Richard Siken, I Do Know Some Things: ( prose poems )

Scott Carson, Departure 37: ( eerie phone calls )

Charlie Jane Anders, Lessons in Magic and Disaster: ( magic and community )

Melissa Caruso, The Tethered Mage:( palace intrigue and magic )
Chuck Tingle, Lucky Day: ( Not for me, sorry )

Kate Elliott, The Witch Roads:( survival in a dangerous magic world )

KJ Charles, A Nobleman’s Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel: ( more m/m in rural England )

Ray Nayler, ( Three very interesting books )

Matt Dinniman, Every Grain of Sand: The Shivered Sky - Book 1: ( Nope, need more Donut )

Ada Palmer, Too Like the Lightning( also not for me )

Allie Therin, ( 2/3 of a paranormal m/m trilogy )

Mira Grant, Overgrowth: ( Rant incoming! )

comments

Nonfiction and Wednesday

2025-08-13T19:53:45Z

I'm 2 episodes into s2 and I think I'm going to have to stop. She's not funny, she's not punching up, she's just selfish and mean. I think this might be the showrunners having no theory of how the Addamses fit into a larger supernatural universe. Sigh. On to Alien: Earth!

Gretchen Heefner, The Missile Next Door: The Minuteman in the American Heartland: In South Dakota, people largely welcomed missiles but landowners often didn’t like giving up their land for them (NIMBYism for weapons of mass destruction). Heefner also tracks the persistence of antinuclear protest once it got started, and she makes the point that one reason the lack of success didn’t stop the hardcore protestors was religious faith—protest was an act of sacrifice and witness even if it didn’t have worldly effects.

Nathan Bomey, Detroit Resurrected: To Bankruptcy and Back: Newsy-ish account of Detroit’s bankruptcy. Bomey really doesn’t like unions; he’s more neutral about the interests of lender-creditors.

Grant Faulkner, The Art of Brevity: Crafting the Very Short Story: Paean to the affordances of flash fiction, including drabbles and six-word stories, with exercises. Interesting read.

Tiya Miles, Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Bondage and Freedom in the City of the Straits: Another attempt to reconstruct a history of people who were mostly spoken about in the records we have. I didn’t think the speculation about what they felt and thought was very helpful, but it was a useful reminder that there was an active slave trade in Indians in the area for a long time, as well as African/African-American slavery. Michigan was supposedly free territory after the Northwest Ordinance, but that didn’t mean that slavery disappeared (despite opportunities that many took to cross borders to change status).

Andy Horowitz, Katrina: A History, 1915-2015: The premise here is that the disaster didn’t start in 2005. Most of the book is pre-hurricane explanations of why the city was so vulnerable. Greed and racism play their roles.

Simon Schama, Rough Crossings: The Slaves, the British, and the American Revolution: Schama focuses on loyalist African-Americans who were forced out to Canada and then to Sierra Leone. While most whites were indifferent to their fate and willing to violate the promises that the Crown had made during the Revolutionary War, a few took their duties seriously, which is how the transitions were made. The first elected black government, and the first women voting for that government, was in Sierra Leone (though a subsequent white guy sent to replace the good one removed women’s ability to vote). It’s beautifully written as well as interesting.

comments

Nonfiction

2025-07-17T18:51:10Z

James C. Scott, ( James Scott, resisting dominance )

Agustin Fuentes, Sex Is a Spectrum: The Biological Limits of the Binary: ( not as detailed as I wanted )

Deborah Valenze, The Invention of Scarcity: Malthus and the Margins of History: ( Malthus and corn (and corn laws) )

Jane Marie, Selling the Dream: The Billion-Dollar Industry Bankrupting Americans: ( The bad kind of MLM )
Becca Rothfeld, All Things Are Too Small: ( in praise of excess )

Douglas Brinkley, The Boys of Pointe du Hoc: Ronald Reagan, D-Day, and the U.S. Army 2nd Ranger Battalion: ( a big day and its commemoration )

Anthony Shadid, Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War: ( shockingly, it's complicated )

Guru Madhavan, Applied Minds: How Engineers Think: ( they try things )

Theatre Fandom: Engaged Audiences in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Kirsty Sedgman, Francesca Coppa, & Matt Hills: ( live theater as a fandom source )

Dan Ariely, The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone - Especially Ourselves: ( he's not wrong or exempt )

Tony Judt, When the Facts Change: Essays, 1995-2010: ( foresight that didn't help )

KC Davis, How to Keep House While Drowning: A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organizing: ( functionality is all )

comments

self-censorship

2025-06-27T18:02:49Z

no good, very bad thing: for the first time ever, I carefully concealed my Star of David scrunchie to do an interview in case it became a distraction. I try hard not to self-censor, but ...

comments

Nonfiction

2025-06-23T17:12:15Z

Rana Mitter, Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II, 1937–1945: China fought imperial/Axis Japan, mostly alone (though far from unified), for a long time. A useful reminder that the US saw things through its own lens and that its positive and negative beliefs about Chiang Kai-Shek, in particular, were based on American perspectives distant from actual events.

Gregg Mitman, Empire of Rubber: Firestone’s Scramble for Land and Power in Liberia: Interesting story of imperialist ambition and forced labor in a place marked by previous American intervention; a little too focused on reminding the reader that the author knows that the views he’s explaining/quoting are super racist, but still informative.

Alexandra Edwards, Before Fanfiction: Recovering the Literary History of American Media Fandom: ( fun read )

Stefanos Geroulanos, The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins: Wide-ranging argument that claims about prehistory are always distorted and distorting mirrors of the present, shaped by current obsessions. (Obligatory Beforeigners prompt: that show does a great job of sending up our expectations about people from the past.) This includes considering some groups more “primitive” than others, and seeing migrants as a “flood” of undifferentiated humanity. One really interesting example: Depictions of Neandertals used to show them as both brown and expressionless; then they got expressions at the same time they got whiteness, and their disappearance became warnings about white genocide from another set of African invaders.

J.C. Sharman, Empires of the Weak: The Real Story of European Expansion and the Creation of the New World: Challenges the common narratives of European military superiority in the early modern world (as opposed to by the 19th century, where there really was an advantage)—guns weren’t very good and the Europeans didn’t bring very many to their fights outside of Europe. Likewise, the supposed advantages of military drill were largely not present in the Europeans who did go outside Europe, often as privately funded ventures. Europeans dominated the seas, but Asian and African empires were powerful on land and basically didn’t care very much; Europeans often retreated or relied on allies who exploited them right back. An interesting read. More generally, argues that it’s often hard-to-impossible for leaders to figure out “what worked” in the context of state action; many states that lose wars and are otherwise dysfunctional nevertheless survive a really long time (see, e.g., the current US), while “good” choices are no guarantee of success. In Africa, many people believed in “bulletproofing” spells through the 20th century; when such spells failed, it was because (they said) of failures by the user, like inchastity, or the stronger magic of opponents. And our own beliefs about the sources of success are just as motivated.

Emily Tamkin, Bad Jews: A History of American Jewish Politics and Identities: There are a lot of ways to be an American Jew. That’s really the book.

Roland Barthes, Mythologies (tr. Annette Lavers & Richard Howard): A bunch of close readings of various French cultural objects, from wrestling to a controversy over whether a young girl really wrote a book of poetry. Now the method is commonplace, but Barthes was a major reason why.

Robert Gerwarth, November 1918: The German Revolution: Mostly we think about how the Weimar Republic ended, but this book is about how it began and why leftists/democratic Germans thought there was some hope. Also a nice reminder that thinking about Germans as “rule-followers” is not all that helpful in explaining large historical events, since they did overthrow their governments and also engaged in plenty of extralegal violence.

Mason B. Williams, City of Ambition: FDR, La Guardia, and the Making of Modern New York: Mostly about La Guardia, whose progressive commitments made him a Republican in the Tammany Hall era, and who allied with FDR to promote progressivism around the country. He led a NYC that generated a huge percentage of the country’s wealth but also had a solid middle class, and during the Great Depression used government funds to do big things (and small ones) in a way we haven’t really seen since.

Charan Ranganath, Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory's Power to Hold on to What Matters: Accessible overview of what we know about memory, including the power of place, chunking information, and music and other mnemonics. Also, testing yourself is better than just rereading information—learning through mistakes is a more durable way of learning.

Cynthia Enloe, Twelve Feminist Lessons of War: War does things specifically to women, including the added unpaid labor to keep the home fires burning, while “even patriotic men won’t fight for nothing.” Women farmers who lack formal title to land are especially vulnerable. Women are often told that their concerns need to wait to defeat the bad guys—for example, Algerian women insurgents “internalized three mutually reinforcing gendered beliefs handed down by the male leaders: first, the solidarity that was necessary to defeat the French required unbroken discipline; second, protesting any intra-movement gender unfairness only bolstered the colonial oppressors and thus was a betrayal of the liberationist cause; third, women who willingly fulfilled their feminized assigned wartime gendered roles were laying the foundation for a post-colonial nation that would be authentically Algerian.” And, surprise, things didn’t get better in the post-colonial nation. Quoting Marie-Aimée Hélie-Lucas: “Defending women’s rights ‘now’ – this now being any historical moment – is always a betrayal of the people, of the revolution, of Islam, of national identity, of cultural roots . . .”

Ned Blackhawk, The Rediscovery of America: American history retold from a Native perspective, where interactions with/fears of Indians led to many of the most consequential decisions, and Native lands were used to solve (and create) conflicts among white settlers.

Sophie Gilbert, Girl on Girl : How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves: ( Read more... )

Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message: Short but not very worthwhile book about Coates navel-gazing and then traveling to Israel and seeing that Palestinians are subject to apartheid.

Thomas Hager, Electric City: The Lost History of Ford and Edison’s American Utopia: While he was being a Nazi, Ford was also trying to take over Muscle Shoals for a dam that would make electricity for another huge factory/town. This is the story of how he failed because a Senator didn’t want to privatize this public resource.

Asheesh Kapur Siddique, The Archive of Empire: Knowledge, Conquest, and the Making of the Early Modern British World: What is the role of records in imperialism? Under what circumstances do imperialists rely on records that purport to be about the colonized people, versus not needing to do so? Often their choices were based on inter-imperialist conflicts—sometimes the East India Company benefited from saying it was relying on Indian laws, and sometimes London wanted different things.

Thomas C. Schelling The Strategy of Conflict: Sometimes when you read a classic, it doesn’t offer much because its insights have been the building blocks for what came after. So too here—if you know any game theory, then very little here will be new (and there’s a lot of math) but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t vital. Also notable: we’ve come around again to deterring (or not) the Russians.

comments

Fiction

2025-06-20T21:52:48Z

Sarah Langan, Pam Kowolski Is a Monster!: ( self-obsessed in the apocalypse )

Stephen King, Never Flinch:( Holly Gibney )

Shannon Chakraborty, The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi: ( piracy and magic )

Olivie Blake, Gifted and Talented: ( for fans of Succession )

Ai Jiang, A Palace Near the Wind: Natural Engines: ( marriage and conquest )

John Scalzi, When the Moon Hits Your Eye: ( moon made of cheese )

M. L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven: ( white women's guilt )

Emily Tesh, The Incandescent: ( magic school administrator! )

comments

Nonfiction

2025-05-09T12:12:42Z

Ivan Ermakoff, Ruling Oneself Out: A Theory of Collective Abdications: ( how do democracies die? )

James Tejani, A Machine to Move Ocean and Earth: The Making of the Port of Los Angeles and America: ( land grabs )

Henry Jenkins, Where the Wild Things Were: Boyhood and Permissive Parenting in Postwar America: ( boyhood, media, and race )

comments

Nonfiction

2025-05-08T23:08:44Z

Athena Aktipis, A Field Guide to the Apocalypse: A Mostly Serious Guide to Surviving Our Wild Times: ( cursing and prepping )

Sarah Hook, Moral Rights, Creativity, and Copyright Law: The Death of the Transformative Author: ( a non-American against moral rights )

Andrea Long Chu, Authority: Essays: ( not here to make friends )

Tom Segev, 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year That Transformed the Middle East: ( tragedy )

Adam Hochschild, To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918: ( also tragedy )

Jordan S. Carroll, Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right: ( alt-right sf readers )

Sianne Ngai, Theory of the Gimmick: Aesthetic Judgment and Capitalist Form: ( what's a gimmick for? )

Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism: ( the book Meta didn't want you to read )

William Neuman, Things Are Never So Bad That They Can't Get Worse: Inside the Collapse of Venezuela: ( where we might be heading )

Omar el Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This: ( justified rage and walking away )

comments

Fiction

2025-05-07T21:52:50Z

Francis Spufford, Red Plenty: ( Soviet SF? )

Dean Koontz, The Husband: ( Kidnap thriller )

Rosie Danan, Fan Service: ( Romance with a fannish twist )

Rosie Danan, ( duology romance with porn performers )

Django Wexler, Everybody Wants to Rule the World Except Me: In this sequel, the accidental Dark Lord tries to lead her new people to peace with the humans, against strenuous opposition from parties on both sides. Flippancy and lesbian lust guide her way. If you liked the first book, the second continues perfectly well in that vein.

comments

rivkat @ 2025-04-06T17:02:00

2025-04-06T22:04:36Z

Seth Dickinson, The Tyrant Baru Cormorant: ( not for me I fear )

Katherine Addison, ( New Goblin Emperor works )

Erik J. Brown, All That's Left in the World: ( apocalypse YA )

Lavie Tidhar, Central Station: ( Israel/Palestine as spaceport )

Matt Dinniman, ( up to date on dungeon crawler Carl )

comments

Weird shit

2025-04-01T01:59:25Z

My tumblr was just deleted. Why? I don't know. Have submitted a support request, but wild how unpersoned I feel.

ETA: Restored! No communication from Tumblr. But I am personed again.

comments

Nonfiction

2025-03-23T18:24:55Z

Peter Beinart, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: ( wrongs in our name )

Enrico Bonadio & Andrea Borghini, Food, Philosophy, and Intellectual Property: Fifty Case Studies: ( short stories )

Yongyan Li, Perspectives on Plagiarism in China: History, Genres, and Education: ( interesting overview )

Hadeel Al-Alosi, The Criminalisation of Fantasy Material: Law and Sexually Explicit Representations of Fictional Children: ( the precautionary principle )

Kathy Bowrey, Copyright, Creativity, Big Media and Cultural Value: Incorporating the Author: ( authors in a world they tried to shape )

Bryan Caplan, The Case Against Education:( a terrible book )

Errol Morris, The Ashtray: ( against )

Gary J. Bass, The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide: ( Nixon probably was as bad as Trump, just more constrained )

Carl Elliott, The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No: ( on whistleblowing )

Cynthia A. Kierner, The Tory’s Wife: A Woman and Her Family in Revolutionary America:( lost histories )

comments

Fiction

2025-02-21T21:12:41Z

John Scalzi, Constituent Service: Lightweight novella about a human doing civic service in a district made mostly of nonhumans.

Matt Dinniman, Dungeon Crawler Carl: ( I discover litRPG )

Rachel Haimowitz, Anchored : ( m/m romance in slavery )
Xiran Jay Zhao, Heavenly Tyrant: ( lots more bastards to kill )
Ursula Whitcher, North Continent Ribbon: Series of short stories set on or around a planet colonized by humans and still struggling with the human relationship with machines and machine intelligences, as well as what happens when you put human minds in nonhuman bodies. Fine, though the short story form makes it hard for me to really bond with characters. I noted that one story was actually published as an Original Work on AO3, which is the first time I’ve seen that particular credit!

Raquel Vasquez Gilliland, ( romances with witches )

James Alan Gardner, They Promised Me the Gun Wasn’t Loaded: Second in a hoped-for series about newly superpowered university students, this time from the perspective of Jools, the screwup of the bunch, who now knows everything that a human can do and can do anything that the best human can do. When Jools becomes entangled with an attempt to auction off—and then steal—a supervillain weapon, she’ll have to fight her insecurities as well as a bunch of villains and self-styled heroes, including one whose Robin Hood schtick includes a glamor that gets women to want to have sex with him.

A.D. Sui, The Dragonfly Gambit: Novella about sapphic fighter pilots in a collapsing space empire. The protagonist was in a horrific accident that left her without a lover or the ability to fly, and left her a rebel; she’s forced back into service, where she finds her former lover now splitting her affections between the Third Daughter (head of the military) and the intelligence officer who’s forcing the protagonist to work for the empire. But the Third Daughter is really hot, oh no—will that complicate the protagonist’s desire for revenge?

comments

Nonfiction

2025-02-12T20:51:26Z

David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology: ( speculations and thoughts )

Nick Seaver, Computing Taste: Algorithms and the Makers of Music Recommendation: ( matching music )

Rachel Hope Cleves, Lustful Appetites: An Intimate History of Good Food and Wicked Sex: ( Read more... )

Daniel J. Sharfstein, The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White: ( passing strange )
William Manchester, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: ( a big biography of a big man )

comments