#book: rules of engagement

[ale-arro]

been going a little bit insane about this sentence from Ace by Angela Chen for the past week

[trek-tracks]

Trek novels when an alien race is talking to or about Bones: Makoi, Mack-koy, Makhoi, Ma-Koy, Makhoy

Me, clapping my hands in delight because I love that trope: Boy, I could sure go for some

[shyjusticewarrior]

Jason crossing his arms at his little brothers

[choices-binglebonkus]

Which older Choices series are kind of a comfort series to you?

For me it’s The Freshman books 1-3 and The Royal Romance. Rules of Engagement is also kind of a comfort series for me but not on the level of the other two.

[wutheringmights]

I am about 40% of the way through "The Count of Monte Cristo" (so over 500 pages in) and while there are plenty of areas where I think Dumas could have trimmed back, I have to admit that I have never once been bored with this book so far-- and that's one hell of a feat

[the-everqueen]

For the book asks: 3, 6, and 23 📚

3. what were your top five books of the year? álvaro enrigue, you dreamed of empires. to say i'm obsessed is an understatement. the way enrigue plays with tone so that he keeps the reader on their toes but also humanizes these characters that have taken on mythical proportions. i felt such grief, reading this book, that the history i'd learned erased so much about the mexicoh-tenochtitlan - in many ways cortés and moctezuma's encounter was a meeting of two imperial powers. but also enrigue brings the ancient city to life. i *screamed* when i saw that enrigue named cortés "el malinche," and malintzin went by her given name or else the name she adopted after her baptism, malinalli (doña marina). the whole book spans...basically a day, and it's a slim novel, but it's *rich.*

hanif abdurraqib, there's always this year: on basketball and ascension. hanif weaves together a love for basketball with a love for his city in ohio with meditations on god and time and faith. the technique where we are always following the countdown of the clock, suspended in those precious seconds between one play and the next, which could make all the difference - i finished this book and felt that awful fragility where you think you've brushed up against something More and been left in its wake.

juana maria rodriguez, puta life: seeing latinas, working sex. rodriguez discusses the historic and present-day conditions of the "puta" in mexico - how the category came to exist under spanish colonial empire, how it became another tactic of racialization, and how sex workers have wrestled it back as an identity that bears dignity and respect.

indra das, the devourers. a reread for me, but it hooked me. still thinking about the visceral descriptions of pre- and post-colonial india. thinking about the ways that whiteness is monstrosity. but also being the child of two cultures, the product of those encounters.

jeff vandermeer, absolution. okay so i didn't actually expect to like this one as much as i did. i thought the southern reach ended fine. but it's a prequel and it brings us full-circle and it's ALSO about that blurred moment of encounter and the ripple effects. peak creepy-and-wet, very much like the most alien parts of annihilation with all the mind-bending corridors of authority.

6. was there anything you meant to read but never got to? there's always so many things on my tbr that i forget about or say "i'll get to that later" and then later arrives and i realize i never reached for them. i meant to read the new sally rooney (which would have been my first rooney), out of a morbid curiosity if nothing else. i meant to read kaveh akbar's martyr! (and i still want to - i missed my local bookstore's copy so ordering one online has been what's preventing me.) i meant to read the new murakami but then when it arrived at the local bookstore it wasn't the mood.

23. what's the fastest time it took you to read a book? 4-5 days? it was probably the enrigue. i try not to put pressure on myself about reading as much/fast as possible - i've accepted in some areas i can be a slow reader and that's fine. i do have a fairly dedicated bit of time every day carved out for reading in the mornings while i'm playing with merri. books that REALLY grab me, i start sneaking bites every time i have a free minute.

(end of year book asks!)

[altschmerzes]

you know you read entirely too much of a book before bed when it very clearly influenced your dreams.

and when you didn’t go to sleep until 4 am. also that.

[yourqueenb]

I’ve always loved this dress and now I actually have the diamonds to get it!

[aldieb]

tbh after finishing i kind of retract the enthusiasm of my recommendation (but not necessarily the recommendation itself) for he who drowned the world. i still found some of the themes it covers really refreshing in the fantasy genre (for ex the descriptions of recognizing yourself in others across queer identities felt v real), but the way it covered them ended up feeling incoherent/unfocused in an area that imo especially needs precision in order not to blunder into insensitivity. (i also in the middle of reading saw people saying it treats eunuchs ahistorically, and frankly i know nothing on the topic and wasn’t drawn to the book for its historical elements—“real-world setting with tiny magical component” isn’t my jam—but that does match up with the whole slew of weirdness i’m feeling overall.) i’m glad i read it and the overall plot kept me interested but i’m hoping it’s the start of a trend in the genre rather than something to point to as “hell yeah, they did it”?

[badscienceman]

forever annoyed by the inability to have constructive conversations involving media criticism anymore. I feel bonkers because it's like everything immediately dissolves into reactionary, all-or-nothing arguments that leave me baffled and usually uncomfortable

[estherdiehl]

The world won’t stop telling the same story.

Shaun Perkins, “Rules of Engagement”

[choices-binglebonkus]

I am so conflicted on my feelings about RoE…like on one hand the writing is kind of shit, but on the other hand it’s nostalgic and I dunno, it’s one of the stories you don’t have to think too hard about.

[chronicbitchsyndrome]

i have been in community with profoundly developmentally disabled peers and peers with brain damage my whole life, bc i had a childhood diagnosis. i have also been leftist my whole life; my mother was a marxist and raised me that way, and while their politics were absolute dogshit, they were lefty dogshit.

my entire life, i have seen leftist educators throw mentally disabled people away as "lost causes" because they couldn't engage with the material the way it was being presented. leftist outreach and education does, genuinely, have a massive lack of accessible material. to be blunt, people are not interested in retrofitting their leftist outreach to be accessible to people who learn best through episodes of sesame street.

as in, i have repeatedly faced outright laughter and cruelty over the idea that this could be a priority. or even something that we consider doing at all.

"people who are that mentally disabled don't need to know about these things," the kindest interpretation goes. ("people who are that mentally disabled don't interact with the world, anyway, they're all in institutions or monitored 24/7 by their parents," the uncharitable underlying assumptions go. "they wouldn't be a worker who needs a union. or a library attendee. or a member of the community garden. or a volunteer at the food bank. or or or")

the people i have seen this hurt the worst, over and over again, are profoundly mentally disabled people of color whose lack of access to accessible antiracist education is causing real danger in their lives. institutionalized disabled people of color who have learned racist ideology and behaviors from white authority, whether they were adopted by white families or incarcerated in care institutions run by white staff. who are treated lower than garbage by leftist educators, who view them as "lost causes," as unworthy of time and effort and attention, as deserving of their abuses because they... what... internalized the abuses that make up every aspect of their lives since birth?

i see people saying things in this conversation like "disability isn't an excuse for racism or transphobia or whatever, people have the obligation to improve themselves." oh, believe me, i have seen again and again how many privileged disabled people utilize their disabilities to punch down on others, try to escape accountability for their punching down by citing disability. but individual weaponization of identity is just that: weaponization of identity.

the power structures at play are what they are. it is a noble and admirable goal to want leftist outreach and education to be more accessible to all. if that is truly your goal, you must eventually reckon with the existence of people who do, actually, really need it presented in a picture book. or an episode of bluey. or a conversation where you only use examples of people they know in real life, using things that happened to them personally. the existence of people who cannot grasp forms of abstract reasoning, who need information presented as rules, or as guidelines, or as categories. the idea that yes, fully grown adults who need daniel tiger to explain racism to them are human beings who not only deserve access to that very thing, but who also deserve to be a part of leftist spaces and benefit from leftist organizing. are people for whom it might be INTEGRAL they get to be a part of leftism. are victims of racism themselves and suffering without access to antiracist spaces and community and support.

and you will need to reckon with the abject cruelty of your peers who laugh and mock the very idea of this. you need to reckon with the fact that a lot of people you respect, a lot of leftists doing genuinely good work, will respond to this by making fun of the people you're serving, even outright telling you their violent fantasies about these people. that is the experience of organizing in leftist spaces for profoundly disabled people. that is why so many of us burn out so fast. there IS a structural problem with mentally disabled people being seen as disposable and not a part of community. and it is EXTREMELY present in leftist organizing and outreach efforts.

[iightwoodbane]

not to be an AI defender but genuinely who cares?

So it looks like NaNoWriMo are happy to have AI as part of their community. Miss me with that bullshit. Generative artificial intelligence is an active threat to creativity and the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people in creative fields.

Please signal boost this so writers can make an informed choice about whether to continue to take part in such a community.

[we-fucked-up-evolution]

i'm starting a second d&d campaign where i'm the dm (i am, fortunately, a player in two other games) and one of my potential players hasn't sent me his background yet

we made his character sheet together two months ago.

i lit up the group chat with my frustration and all he had to say was basically "sorry not sorry, i've been busy, sure i could have done this two months ago when i was less busy but oh well i didn't"

can't wait for monday (which is the cutoff i declared) to yeet him outta there and find a nicer player who's more respectful of my and other players' time

[yourqueenb]

Yayyy 🥳🎉🥂