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David Farnell

godsnbunnies@books.solarpunk.moe

Joined 2 years ago

I'm a Japan-based English professor, researching & writing on utopia, dystopia, ecotopia, solarpunk, hopepunk, antiracism, LGBTQ+ themes, ecocriticism, and monster theory, with a focus on writers such as Octavia Butler, Kim Stanley Robinson, Ursula Le Guin, Miyazaki Hayao, Terry Pratchett, Margaret Atwood, HP Lovecraft, Paolo Bacigalupi, Herman Melville, and more.

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David Farnell's books

To Read

Babel (EBook, 2022, Harper Voyager)
Ruthanna Emrys: A Half-Built Garden (EBook, 2022, Doherty Associates, LLC, Tom)

Read (View all 15)

Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash (Paperback, 2008, Bantam Spectra)
Ada Palmer: Too Like the Lightning (Hardcover, 2016, Tor Books)
Hilary Mantel: The Mirror & the Light (Paperback, 2021, Picador)

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avatar for godsnbunnies David Farnell boosted

reviewed The Just City by Jo Walton

Jo Walton: The Just City (2015) 5 stars

Created as an experiment by the time-traveling goddess Pallas Athene, the Just City is a …

What if you could get the finest minds to establish Plato's ideal city?

5 stars

Considering that these "finest minds" mostly come from an era where slavery is not a problem, and that Plato's ideas on personal relationships—as logical as they might be—have nothing to do with how humans relate to each other, well, the experiment would be interesting to watch.

Jo Walton pushes the thought experiment by giving us well written characters, a fantastic setting (Atlantis was real!) and sci-fi musings (do robots have souls?), and uses the rules of the experiment to make us question it (thanks, Sokrates).

I really enjoyed this book, but I'll wait a couple of weeks at least before opening the second volume of the series—I don't want to burn out on it.

reviewed The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel

Hilary Mantel: The Mirror & the Light (Paperback, 2021, Picador) 5 stars

With The Mirror & the Light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy …

Is there a word for that grief you feel when you've finished reading an amazing book?

5 stars

(my first book review here) I've just recently finished this magnificent book, with is the 3rd in the recently deceased Hilary Mantel's Thomas Cromwell trilogy, which began with Wolf Hall. It is historical fiction, and reading the series has led me to reading more about Henry VIII's period; while I read a lot about Shakespeare's period when I was in school, I had never read much about the history just a few decades before that. As with the first two books, the writer's/main character's voice is perfect throughout, letting us see his world and his own complex character. Like Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, this is a remarkably feminist book for one that keeps women largely to the periphery--we see how hard women's lives are more by inference than by direct statement, because even though Cromwell is a brilliant man, he is still blinkered by his culture. I …

reviewed Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer

Ada Palmer: Too Like the Lightning (Hardcover, 2016, Tor Books) 4 stars

"The world into which Mycroft and Carlyle have been born is as strange to our …

I need to reread

4 stars

This is a gorgeous setting, with a vast cast of characters, extremely ambitious. I enjoyed it but I was often confused. I want to reread, though, and then tackle the other books in the series. I had the good fortune to be on a couple of panels with the author--moderating one panel on utopias--at Kansas City's Worldcon in 2016, when the book was being launched. As an academic and writer, she is so much smarter and sharper than I've ever been.