approximately20books

[approximately20books]

started calling my executive dysfunction issues my board of dysfunctional executives and treating it like a room of frail old white men and it hasn't fixed everything but it sure is fucking funny

[approximately20books]

does everyone like my wizard idea

[approximately20books]

No joke, go read The Open Veins of Latin America before even trying to send me a political ask. Mandatory reading.

It's a cliché that every Latin American leftist has read it and quotes it, but that's because it's written in such a clear language with undeniable strenght on its facts. It presents the history of Latin America solidly just in the first few pages, and it only gets more engrossing the more it goes on. While it is now a bit outdated in the sense that it was first published in 1971, the historical, social and political issues presented are -in an unfortunate way- still current. It is a relatively short book, passionate and in a clear, poetic language.

Sometimes it's good to return to the basics, and this is THE basic book if you want to understand the effects of imperialism in Latin America, and our struggle for freedom and identity.

Instead of losing your time with half baked twitteroid takes, go read it. Here you go, for free, in Spanish, Portuguese and English:

[approximately20books]

PLEASE for the love of the universe read anti-colonial science fiction and fantasy written from marginalized perspectives. Y’all (you know who you are) are killing me. To see people praise books about empire written exclusively by white women and then turn around and say you don’t know who Octavia Butler is or that you haven’t read any NK Jemisin or that Babel was too heavy-handed just kills me! I’m not saying you HAVE to enjoy specific books but there is such an obvious pattern here

Some of y’all love marginalized stories but you don’t give a fuck about marginalized creators and characters, and it shows. Like damn

[approximately20books]

read in 2023: fey (or fey-adjacent)

That Self-Same Metal

Desdemona And The Deep

Hamra and the Jungle of Memories

Wander The Night

Road of the Lost

Unseelie

The Buried and the Bound

The Faerie Hounds of York

The Story of the Hundred Promises

[approximately20books]

I should make a list of books I've read this year

[approximately20books]

okay thr old format was too formal and I can't keep up with it but

I read What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher

it was my first horror novel besides Dracula and I don't know if Dracula really counts

but it was really fucking good

five stars no comments. mushrooms are horrifying

[approximately20books]

alright well after discussing it in class I gotta say I enjoy it a lot more! I don't know why but we did not research the book at all beforehand so I did not know it was actually about pesticide use in Argentina and now it both makes a lot more sense and reads as very, very meaningful. I would definitely recommend going into that book with that knowledge though because otherwise it's just incredibly confusing to read. and I would recommend reading it also :)

I finished Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin.

This book is weird. I had to read it for class. It lives up to its name that's for sure, I felt like I was dissociating the entire time I was reading it which only took me about an hour or two. I might add more to this post after we discuss this book in class but for now my immediate thoughts can be summed up with "weird creepy book with strong homosexual energy."

[approximately20books]

I have finished multiple books and have not posted about them which is sad

[approximately20books]

I finished Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin.

This book is weird. I had to read it for class. It lives up to its name that's for sure, I felt like I was dissociating the entire time I was reading it which only took me about an hour or two. I might add more to this post after we discuss this book in class but for now my immediate thoughts can be summed up with "weird creepy book with strong homosexual energy."

[approximately20books]

I Finished Dawnshard by Brandon Sanderson.

overall, I highly recommend this book! obviously, read Stormlight Archive up to Oathbringer before reading this, but it was really enjoyable. and I recommend Stormlight Archive as a whole anyway, so just read those books anyway if you haven't already /lh

but yeah I gotta say, this one was definitely another banger even if it was a super short read! it definitely felt a bit more fast-paced than the other books by Sanderson that I've read, but I'm not really complaining. I really liked seeing Lopen and Rysn interact with each other in this book, and the commentary on living with disability that is ensued from having these two as POV characters was amazing. I remember there being a wob from Sanderson where he talked about his strategy for representation, which was to always have more than one character from the demographic being represented, in order to prevent tokenization and let those characters play off each other. and I really think that strategy shone in Dawnshard. I think that wob singlehandedly took away a lot of fear about writing accurate representation in my own book and also probably changed the way I'll look at it permanently.

more thoughts with spoilers below the cut:

:readmore:

Another thing I really liked was that the climax of this book was basically a tense conversation. that was cool as hell! it was just as intense as any fight scene I've read by sanderson, and I felt like it really did a good job of wrapping up Rysn's character arc at the end too. It almost feels like a coming of age novel, but fantasy flavored, with Rysn kind of coming into her own as the story progressed.

but yeah. it was a good book lol. probably not gonna think too much more deeply about it tho, bc I was just reading this one for fun.

[approximately20books]

hello and welcome to my book blog!

this is mostly just so I can keep track of the books I am reading and for when I want to make thoughtful posts about them lol. I will probably continue to engage in fandom via my main blog, @approximately20eggs

in no particular order...

some of my favorite books:

Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson

The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Loveless by Alive Oseman

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher

Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky

I am currently reading:

(on pause) What to Say Next by Sarah and Larry Nannery

(on pause) The Case For Christ by Lee Strobel

(on pause) Vox Machina: Kith and Kin by Marieke Nijkamp

Journey Through Genius: The Great Theorems of Mathematics by William Dunham

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

I plan to read very soon:

Conversations With RBG by Jeffrey Rosen

Blood of Elves by Andrzej Sapkowski

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White

The Pain Eater by Kyle Muntz

Starsight by Brandon Sanderson

Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson

The Frugal Wizard's Guide to Surviving Medieval England by Brandon Sanderson

Yumi and the Nightmare Painter by Brandon Sanderson

The Dork of Cork by Chet Raymo

Killing the Black Body by Dorothy Roberts

my TBR list beyond these books:

A Concise Oxford Dictionary of Mathematics by Christopher Clapham

How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method by G. Polya

Let's Talk About Love by Claire Kann

The Case for Faith by Lee Strobel

Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

and the rest of Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere in general :)

recommendations are welcome!

[approximately20books]

hello hello I made that book blog I was talking about the other day