#what are some of the best books to read?

[thedirtiwalkoniswet]

Getting sucked into star wars is evil. You just want to watch the movies and end up watching a collective 22 seasons of various shows and then you consider reading the comics or books but have to find out that there are 480+ and 380+ and you reconsider why you ever even began to care.

[egophiliac]

buckle up lads we're going BACK INTO THE BOOK

[musubiki]

danmarch 🐉💎

[idontmindifuforgetme]

i think i really need to learn how to cold quit things... one habit i have that really bothers me is checking my phone first thing in the morning bc it's "just for 5 minutes" "just to see if anyone sent me anything important" no bitch literally nothing on your phone requires you to check your phone first thing when you open your eyes!!! stop it

[batcavescolony]

A Batfam AU where instead of going to get Dick to be Robin again Tim uses necromancy to bring Jason back from the dead. He just leaves Jason on the Wayne doorstep with a 'do better this time' sticky note. Batman can't find out who did it and Tim stays his little latchkey self with semi ok but distant parents (cus canonical they weren't really abusive just not there which isn't good but they could be worse). His parents bring him along on trips but again they love him but they just leave him to do as he pleases. so in Paris he ends up still getting trained by Lady Shiva. This keeps going and Tim just keeps reviving batfam members, if they fake their deaths and Tim tracks them down to check on them. They still have no idea who their shadow is, they can't find him, Tim likes it this way. Bruce goes MIA and Red Robin happens just minus Tim actually being Red Robin. The JLA doorstep gets a passed-out Batman with a 'I can't believe I have to keep doing this shit' sticky note on his head.

[the-plantman-is-queer]

I’m going insane rn

Doing one of my never-ending rereads and... even when Neil hated Andrew and fully believed all the worst rumors, he still expected someone to be in Andrew’s corner... and then in book three we see him decide to be that person:

something about the way Neil, a perfect stranger to the concepts of friendship and teamwork, still expected better from Andrew’s team and family... I know that’s the entire core of their relationship but it still knocks a hole in my chest to see it laid out so baldly

[luxe-pauvre]

NOVEMBER 2024

Read:

against brute forcing

What the Left Keeps Getting Wrong

Why Democrats Are Losing the Culture War

How not to freak out about the US election

How not to freak out about the US elections, part two

Toleration is an impressive virtue that’s worth reviving

Learning and Not Learning Abortion

Objects of Despair: Mirrors

What Counts as Seeing

Why Power Brings Out Your True Self

Group think: why art loves a crowd

Real peer review has never been tried

The big idea: is convenience making our lives more difficult?

What Is Masterclass Actually Selling?

Feeling overwhelmed? How art can help in an emergency

the divine discontent*

How to Be Polite

Yes, Social Media Really Is Undermining Democracy

Chemistry: The Human Science

Astronomical Cake

Watched:

what can you ACTUALLY learn from video essays??

The Diplomat (S2)

Sweetpea

Silo (S1)

Listened To:

Charli xcx’s brat and it’s the same but there’s three more songs so it’s not**

Challengers (Original Score)**

Went To:

More meetings than I've ever had in a month. Why everyone has decided they want to do everything everywhere all at once this November, I do not know.

A meditation retreat (aka a 4hr exam that I invigilated).***

[deanmarywinchester]

best sf/f/horror I read in 2024

hello esteemed colleagues. here’s stuff I read in 2024 that I liked, in no particular order outside of the ranking tiers. find previous years of this reclist here

top 5

the bright sword by lev grossman: “lev grossman wrote a shockingly melancholy, hopeful, and expansive novel that hurts a little to read, about a young man who dreams of the age of heroes but finds that that age is over” and other unsurprising statements. this one is a take on Arthurian legend that happens after Arthur is dead, and is really interesting to me for how it portrays England as abandoned once by Rome’s great architects and then once more by the magic of Arthur’s court. with the age of legends twice dead, can anyone bring it back for real or can they only try to make it RETVRN?

the traitor baru cormorant + sequels by seth dickinson: there was a version of this post, before I went back and checked my list of what I read this year, where the top 5 was only Seth Dickinson books. these books are about how far you’ll descend into evil (ie how many war crimes you’ll commit as an imperial operative) to save your colonized home. they’re all good but the first one goes CRAZY. the author was a police bias researcher and it shows. portrays lesbian desire really really well. “hard fantasy” isn’t REALLY a thing but it’s this, they’re barely fantasy and more political drama

exordia by seth dickinson also: what if a reality-warping anomaly was hotly pursued by the US military while they were hotly pursued by aliens with planet-killing power? what if you got your whole village killed as a child and now you’re in a romcom with an alien? the Acknowledgements say, nearly word for word, “i wrote this between Barus for fun because those really take it out of me. anyway I’d like to thank the researchers who helped me with astrophysics, nuclear weapon functions, Kurdish feminism and history, and translation into five languages.” read if you like meticulously researched thrillers, Annihilation, and Challengers situations.

everything for everyone by eman adelhadi and m. e. o’brien: told with a framing device whereby the authors mention their own experiences with activism and revolution after the 2020s and compile an oral history of the future anarchist New York Commune, each chapter of this book is an interview with someone about a different aspect of how they contributed to revolution and setting up a new society. my gripe with this book is that I wish it talked more about problems that will still (or newly) exist in utopia, but I still loved it.

we have always lived in the castle by shirley jackson: I finished this book and immediately went to that blog that was running the literary incest tournament earlier this year because I was certain that Merricat and Constance had placed and lo and behold they had. those gothic themes are gothic themeing. read if you want jackson’s theme of small-town distrust and paranoia and isolation taken to the extreme

honorable mentions

the raven tower by ann leckie: what I love about ann leckie is her ability to write non-human protagonists without sci-fi jargon and with totally alien concerns and viewpoints that you can nonetheless buy into. this protagonist is a rock living on a hill that is a local god. read if you like folktales, loners, and twist endings.

the sapling cage by margaret killjoy: even though this is middle grade, all you had to say to me was “Margaret From Podcasts does transfem anarchist Song of the Lioness” and I was in. in a medieval fantasy world without a concept of transness, a trans girl swaps places with her friend so her friend can become a knight and she can become a witch and discover who is leaching the life from the forests for their own gain. the witch politics/interpersonal drama is done with the eye of someone who’s lived in communes most of her life and the way it straddles lingering love of knight tales and distrust of armed people with the legal right to kill you is refreshing

do you dream of terra two by temi oh: the most elite graduates of a cutthroat boarding school are selected for a mission to explore a potentially habitable planet in this character-driven meditation on what it takes to believe in something you can’t see and may have to give up your whole life for

monstrilio: a piece of flesh from a woman’s dead son grows into a person of its own, initially shaped like a monster but molded by his parents into a more-or-less normal-looking young man with a taste for human flesh. cringe moment but this is what Jack Supernatural could have been. to me. litfic with themes of monstrousness/normality, grief, and the various meanings of consuming flesh.

long live evil by sarah rees brennan: listen I know how it sounds but I’m putting this book so high up this list because I had a blast. a teenage cancer patient gets isekai’d into a book series that her sister loves but that she only half remembers, and has to use her vague memory of the plot to avoid execution long enough to obtain a magic item that’ll cure her in the real world. it has something to say about how it feels to live in a body that’s healthy after being desperately sick but it’s also just catnip for your inner teen fangirl daydreaming about getting your first kiss from a tortured prince

the terraformers by annalee newitz: in three different stories of people at different times in the planet’s political development, the story of a privately-owned planet terraformed to be habitable is told. this is for you if you like future politics about privatization and the rights of non-human persons a la Murderbot

silver under nightfall by rin chupeco: this book was selected for me by my friend and favorite bookseller @literally-irreverent because i like romance IN things but I don’t usually like when romance is the whole plot. anyway this is about solving a dangerous strain of vampirism while having a vampire/vampire/vampire-hunter romance that is. mwah. chef’s kiss. read if you like politically disastrous polyamory and The Witcher

the adventures of amina al-sirafi by s. a. chakraborty: i read the daevabad trilogy and I liked it but didn’t love it, but I liked this book a lot. mostly I think it’s really fun to have a seagoing adventurer who’s a mom, and it was done with a lot of care for her perspective.

runners up

to shape a dragon’s breath by monquill blackgoose: in an alternate history New England, an indigenous teenager finds a dragon egg and must become the first non-European to attend a school for dragon riders near her island. YA with prose that skews young and easy to read but with a good story. themes of colonialism and resistance.

things have gotten worse since we last spoke by eric larocca: I don’t love larocca’s prose but I felt like this book succeeded because it’s written in internet dialogue + therefore hid larocca’s tendency to get purple prose with it. horror about the quick rabbithole that is getting socialized/groomed mostly online.

the lion will slaughter the lamb & the barrow will send what it may by margaret killjoy: novellas where a group of wandering punk-house dwellers find out what’s raising supernatural horrors and how to stop them from killing again

running close to the wind by alex rowland: this felt like an attempt to bottle the Our Flag-type chaos and comedy pirate romance vibes without feeling like straight-up fanfiction. a pathetic meow meow of an ex-intelligence agent tries to sell state secrets without getting caught aboard his ex’s ship, while the two of them bet on who can break a hot monk’s vow of chastity first

the gone world by tom sweterlitch: this felt like christopher nolan writing a detective novel, as government agents travel to parallel realities to solve a murder

autonomous by annalee newitz: in a future society, this follows a scientist on the run from the governments and pharma companies that are out to get her for her work to make patented medications available on the black market, as she tries to fix a mistake she made in making an addictive treatment available to the public. this book is broadly about intellectual property and about the concept of property at all

the deep sky by yume kitasei: weirdly this book is a very different take on the same concept as another book on this list, do you dream of terra-two, where graduates of an elite school are sent on a generation ship to start a new colony. the twist is that all the characters are expected to bear two children to carry on the generation ship, which leads to some wild mostly-unexplored gender dynamics. this one is much more sci-fi/mystery to Terra-Two’s character-driven drama.

the atlas six by olivie blake: well-written dark-academia thriller that is obvious booktok fodder. with the vibes of the mortal instruments (everyone is so hot and powerful and tortured!) meets the secret history, a group of young magicians is recruited to learn the secrets of the library of alexandria

Ursula, kill this clown: dishonorable mentions

I don’t have enough dishonorable mentions for their own post this year but HOLY FUCK. THE FIVE BOOKS OF ROBERT MOSES. this book is FOURTEEN hundred pages of absolute dogshit that I should have DNFed but I liked the concept so much that I wanted to find something to like in the execution. Nope! the pitch is “a dirty bomb turns NYC into a wasteland and the city is picked up and moved wholesale, with the maps of the five boroughs remaining more or less the same, into a Nevada desert refugee camp guarded by the army, and a major character is Robert Moses’ disaffected younger brother.” on a petty level, this is the New Yorkiest pitch possible for someone who absolutely doesn’t give a shit about developing the new desert New York with any interest or fidelity. on an unpetty level, this is a slop “political” “thriller” that doesn’t develop a strong political perspective and moves at a sloth pace. skip.

[the-dragon-girl-27]

"I don't know everything, I just know what I know."

So Monogatari is back and nobody told me??????

Haven't watched the new season yet but cuz i'm in a Monogatari mood I drew Hanekawa

[mostlyvoid-partiallyflowers]

The most recent episode of Interview with a Vampire let's us see Lestat's side of the story and see how it compares to Louis' accounting of their relationship. As a result, it reaffirms just how unreliable of a narrator Louis is, but it also further illuminates elements of his character that the director and writers have been playing with since the beginning of the show.

There's this part in the episode where Lestat turns to Louis and apologizes and it's framed with Lestat turned to Louis on one side and Claudia on his other side. They're the angel and devil on Louis' shoulders, but who is the angel and who is the devil? And as my friend said, Armand and Daniel are placed into that same dynamic with Louis later on. We are being asked to decide who to trust, who's telling the truth, who's the good guy, but the fact of unreliability robs us of that decision.

This whole story is about Louis, he's the protagonist, though not the narrator, and he is constantly being pulled in two directions, no matter when or where he is in his story. He's a mind split in two, divided by nature and circumstance. He's vampire and human, owner and owned, father and child, angel and devil. He's both telling the story and being told the story. His history is a story he tells himself, and as we've seen, sometimes that story is not whole.

Louis is the angel who saved Claudia from the fire but he's also the devil who sentenced her to an life of endless torment, the adult trapped in the body of a child. He's the angel who rescued Lestat from his grief and also the devil who abandoned him, who couldn't love him, could only kill and leave him.

He's pulled in two directions, internally and externally at all times and so it's no wonder that he feels the need to confess, first to the priest, then Daniel, and then Daniel again.

He's desperate to be heard, a Black man with power in Jim Crow America who's controlled by his position as someone with a seat at the table but one who will never be considered equal. He doesn't belong to the Black community or the white community, he can't. He acts as a go-between, a bridge, one who is pushed and pulled until he can't take it anymore. He's a fledgling child to an undead father, he's a young queer man discovering his sexual identity with an infinitely experienced partner. He's confessing because he wants to be absolved, that human part of him that was raised Catholic, that child who believed, he wants to be saved. He wants to be seen.

Louis wants to attain a forever life that is morally pure, but he can't. He's been soiled by sin, by "the devil," as he calls Lestat, and he can never be clean again. Deep down, I think he knows this, but he can't stop trying to repent. He tries to self-flagellate by staying with Lestat and then tries to repent by killing him, but can't actually follow through. He follows Claudia to Europe to try and assuage his guilt. He sets himself on fire, attempts to burn himself at the stake, to purify his body, rid himself of the dark gift.

Louis is a man endlessly trying to account for the pain he has caused and he ultimately fails, over and over again, because he can't get rid of what he is. A monster. He's an endlessly hungry monster. He's hungry for love, for respect, for power, for forgiveness, for death. He's a hole that can never be filled. He can never truly acquire any of those things because he will always be punishing himself for wanting and needing them in the first place. He will never truly believe he deserves them and as a result, can't accept them if they are ever offered. He can never be absolved for he has damned himself by accepting the dark gift and thus has tainted himself past the point of saving.

[eldritchamy]

I'll tell you what I want what I really really want

I wanna- (my adhd interrupts me with a new idea) I wanna- (my adhd interrupts me with a new idea) I wanna- (my adhd interrupts me with a new idea) I wanna- (my adhd interrupts me with a new idea)

[mllenugget]

Hey remember when Baghera adopted Dapper like 8 months ago or did I make that up ? ────────────────────────────────────────── Support all the admins that spoke out (& do your daily click) ──────────────────────────────────────────

[long-suffering-little-spoon]

i survived the gatsby slime tutorial and all i got was a breathtaking show with beautiful costumes and sets and lighting and amazing performances and a banger score. and this second hand suit.

[lessnowon]

anyways, i'm just dropping by to say fuck jk rowling and that snape being romantically in love with lily is really stupid when it would be more narratively and thematically consistent (and, frankly, more compelling) if his love for her was familial

[lucienarcheron]

This fandom is getting weirder and weirder and that is not a compliment.

[batcavescolony]

I feel like people aren't getting it. In. The. Books. Perseus. Jackson. Is. An. Unreliable. Narrator. This goes for everything he thinks. Percy loves his mother, so he writes her praises. In the show we get to see what Sally does from an outside POV not filtered through a child that idolizes his mother. It's not ooc for Sally to act like she does in the show. she's a single mother raising a neurodivergent, Demigod, and she's scared that when the Gods get to him they'll corrupt him. She's not suddenly a girl boss we're getting to see her for how she is.