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Ember Hearth Locked account

ember@books.solarpunk.moe

Joined 2 years, 7 months ago

Gay crow, I h8 cops, not a girl

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finished reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Robin Wall Kimmerer: Braiding Sweetgrass (Hardcover, 2020, Milkweed Editions)

Updated with a new introduction from Robin Wall Kimmerer, the special edition of Braiding Sweetgrass, …

This is one of those books that's been hugely influential on modern leftist discourse, and you'll probably recognize a lot of its tenets if you read it. I think it's best treated as a 101 on reciprocity, the gift economy, animism, and indigenous worldviews.

If you do read this book, I strongly recommend AGAINST trying to read it cover-to-cover. Pick a couple chapters you think are interesting and read them. Read something else. If you liked it the first time around, come back and read a few more chapters.

A couple of chapters I liked: - Learning the Grammar of Animacy ― A really cool look on the embeding of animist worldviews into indigenous language - The Consolation of Water Lilies ― A little philosophically boring, but a very cool plant metaphor - Mishkos Kenomagwen: The Teachings of Grass ― An excellent anecdote exploring the importance of braiding new worldviews …

finished reading Gearbreakers by Zoe Hana Mikuta (Gearbreakers, #1)

Zoe Hana Mikuta: Gearbreakers (Hardcover, 2021, Feiwel & Friends) No rating

We went past praying to deities and started to build them instead...

The shadow of …

What it says on the tin, an angsty lesbian slow burn enemies to lovers mech story. The addition of the titular gearbreakers is definitely a really cool twist, and shines at a couple of different points, though it has the side effect of turning some of the mech combat to human-scale combat with nameless "guards" set inside the mech.

Still, it has some excellent action sequences, and it was engaging enough that I stayed up late to keep reading more chapters.

I might recommend it if you're into mech yuri, but keep in mind that it's meant for teen audiences, with all the tropes and caveats that come with that, including so much angst. A side effect of this that I appreciated is that it's a romance story that doesn't use the language of sex to communicate beats in the relationship, which can sometimes be hard to find.

finished reading The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion by Margaret Killjoy (Danielle Cain, #1)

Margaret Killjoy: The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion (Paperback, 2017, Tor.com)

Searching for clues about her best friend’s mysterious suicide, Danielle ventures to the squatter, utopian …

This was good!! The kind of punk that's clearly grounded in lived experiences, made just magical enough to be able to discuss themes of power in a very cool way! It's a very short book, but engaging and worth it the whole way through.

Recommended for the other anarchist and punk organizers and activists in my life

finished reading There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm

qntm: There Is No Antimemetics Division (Paperback, 2021, Independently Published)

An antimeme is an idea with self-censoring properties ; an idea which, by its intrinsic …

Oh it's so good. Just as mind bending as it ever was. Some of the rougher edges have been sanded off, and the earlier chapters are simplified a bit to ease readers unfamiliar with SCP into the world a bit. The second half of the book has seen the most work, and in a direction that I believe improves considerably on its earlier work.

Fans of SCP may still enjoy reading the original, but I'm delighted to have something that won't be incomprehensible to other audiences, and I don't think it lost any of its genius in the process.

STRONGLY recommend to anyone who enjoys weird sci-fi and mind-bending concepts and wants fiction that realigns how you look at the world for the rest of your life.

finished reading A Safe Girl to Love by Casey Plett

Casey Plett: A Safe Girl to Love (2014, Topside Press)

Eleven unique short stories that stretch from a rural Canadian Mennonite town to a hipster …

Plett's writing style doesn't really jive with me, and unfortunately I struggle to engage with short stories. Overall, I had some difficulty getting through this book, and I didn't enjoy it very much. Several stories just felt a little flat, and I often struggled to connect with the characters.

That said, I enjoyed both "Twenty Hot Tips to Shopping Success", a small fake-tutorial about the experience of buying clothes when newly experimenting with gender, and "Portland, Oregon", a short story about a girl trying to care for a cat as a metaphor for taking care of yourself when the outside world is often uncompromising.

finished reading Iris Kelly Doesn't Date by Ashley Herring Blake (Bright Falls, #3)

Ashley Herring Blake: Iris Kelly Doesn't Date (2023, Little, Brown Book Group Limited) No rating

Everyone around Iris Kelly is in love.

And she's happy for all of them, truly. …

Okay so apparently this book is the third in a series, and I only figured that out when I literally turned to the Acknowledgements page after finishing the entire book. A couple of the side characters which appear in this novel are coupled up in previous entries in the series, and I suppose that would make the whole thing a bit more impactful. BUT I still enjoyed it.

The cozy-queer small-business-owner-core vibes can be a little overwhelming, and the main character's anxiety feels a little cliche. The fake dating trope falls a little flat — to the point that I think it could be removed entirely and the core of the novel would be unchanged.

But all that said, it's still very cute, and I enjoyed it, despite not really being a regular romance reader. I probably won't be recommending it to people, but that doesn't mean I didn't have …

finished reading Any Other City by Hazel Jane Plante

Hazel Jane Plante: Any Other City (2023, Arsenal Pulp Press) No rating

Any Other City is a two-sided fictional memoir by Tracy St. Cyr, who helms the …

Content warning Trivial spoilers. Back-of-the book level stuff.

reviewed The Hades Calculus by Maria Ying

Maria Ying: The Hades Calculus (Paperback)

Decadent cyberpunk cities. Greek mythology and giant mechs. Hades and Persephone as you've never seen …