kenthompson

kenthompson, 4 days ago to books

In Search of Lost Time (book 1: Swann’s Way), by Marcel Proust.
You are thinking a lot about your (late 18th century) childhood, in an astounding amount of detail, where love of various kinds happens all around you, but to your recollection not satisfactorily for you, at least per your memories.
@bookstodon #bookstodon #books #reading #france #madelaines

kenthompson, 13 days ago to books

Artist compiles 1,984 copies of Orwell’s 1984 on the small island where he wrote it, commemorating 75 years of publication.
That this story is timeless tells us something about our world.
Via @guardian
@bookstodon #bookstodon #books #reading #fascism

https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/may/05/scottish-artist-receives-hundreds-of-copies-of-orwells-nineteen-eighty-four-in-the-post

kenthompson, 21 days ago to books

James, by Percival Everett.
You are a runaway slave, your escape attempt joined by a white child named Huckleberry, and as the Mississippi River (and various white people) try to kill you, it gets harder to keep your truth from Huck.
4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈.

@bookstodon #bookstodon #books #reading #slavery #race #ushistory #civilwar

kenthompson, 25 days ago to books

Y/N, by Esther Yi.
You are a K-pop fan fixated on one band member, but you try hard NOT to meet him (as you are vaguely self-aware enough to know that would ruin everything); meanwhile everyone you meet is vaguely connected to him and vaguely tries to help or hinder your quest to either meet or not meet him.
3 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈.

@bookstodon #bookstodon #books #kpop #reading

kenthompson, 28 days ago to LGBTQ

Librarians in several states can now be jailed for years for making “pornography” available. Let’s be clear about intent here - it is to limit descriptions of the lives of LGBTQ people, where possible down to the level that we even exist.
@bookstodon #bookstodon #lgbtq #books #censorship #libraries #librarians

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/04/16/library-legislation-restrictions-protections/

kenthompson, 1 month ago to books

Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro.
You grow up in a home for people that some consider sub-human, but your proscribed life is not that different, filled as it is with love, pettiness and acceptance, and an aching hope that there is a secret meaning to it all, if you could just figure it out.
5 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈

@bookstodon #bookstodon #books #humanity #inhumanity

kenthompson, 1 month ago to books

“The most challenged books in the United States in 2023 continued to focus on the experiences of L.G.B.T.Q. people or explore themes of race…”
Time to buy these books, and/or request your public library purchase if they don’t have them.
#bookstodon #books #libraries #censorship #race #lgbtq @bookstodon

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/08/books/banned-books-2023.html

kenthompson, 1 month ago to books

The Trial, by Franz Kafka.
You are a young man with an important bank job, but one day you are told you are accused of a generic crime, and you must navigate an opaque justice system never knowing what you are accused of, along the way discovering the many who work in or can influence the system to your benefit or detriment, but you are unable to tell if anyone is telling the truth about the system.
Warning: misogyny
3 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈

@bookstodon #bookstodon #books #justice

kenthompson, 1 month ago to books

A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess.
You are a near future Beethoven-loving teen hoodlum doing some horrorshow ultraviolence on the local villagers until upstanding citizens show up with their own sort of un-personing thumbscrews to try out on yourself. Warning: extreme misogyny and violence.
4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈

#bookstodon @bookstodon #books #reading #violence #justice

kenthompson, 1 month ago to books

Shards of Earth, by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
There is a horrible unstoppable unknowable alien force, which 50 years ago you somehow got to stop destroying worlds by doing a mind meld with their moon-sized ship, but not before it destroyed Earth and disappeared, and now factions of humans and other aliens are at each other’s throats when the superbad alien ships return.
3 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈
@bookstodon #bookstodon #books #reading #scifi #spaceopera

kenthompson, 2 months ago to books

Candide, by Voltaire.
You are an optimistic 18th century young gentleman that cheerfully endures many tragedies to himself and friends at the hands of various clerics, philosophers and monarchs.
3 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈.
Warning: antisemitism

@bookstodon #bookstodon #books #religion #philosophy #reading

kenthompson, 2 months ago to books

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams.
Quite improbably, you are rescued from Earth minutes before its destruction, only to find the galaxy poorly mismanaged and under the influence of intradimensional rodents, and everyone looking for meaning where there is none, which rather gets in the way of having a good time.
4 of 5 library cats 🐁 🐁 🐁 🐁.

#bookstodon @bookstodon #books #reading #humor #mice #SciFi #humor #towels #life #dontpanic #encyclopedias

kenthompson, 2 months ago to books

The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
You are a young woman, unfortunately accused of adultery - unfortunate because you’re in a Puritan village in 1642 - and so you raise a daughter alone from the world while contending with the devilish acts of the godly.
5 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈

@bookstodon #books #bookstodon #reading #religion

kenthompson, 2 months ago to books

Long Division, by Kiese Laymon.
You are one, or maybe two, Black teens named City, living with your Grandma in Alabama, when you find a book (or maybe two) with no author, called Long Division, which when you read it is sort of about your life but not the one you thought you were living.
4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈.
@bookstodon #bookstodon #reading #books #alabama

kenthompson, 2 months ago to books

The Magician’s Nephew, by C.S. Lewis. You are a nearly orphaned pre-teen multiverse traveler who unleashes an egotistical tyrant from their world, who tries to take over ours but you divert her to a brand new world created by a singing cat, thus creating a multi-generational (and multi-book) conflict in Narnia.

3 of 5 library cats 🦁 🦁 🦁.

#bookstodon #reading @bookstodon #fantasy #books #lion #witch #wardrobe #magic

kenthompson, 3 months ago to books

Blackouts, by Justin Torres. You are a youngish gay man who finds an elderly, dying gay man who was also in the asylum you were put in as a teenager, and as you talk about his life and yours, you are guided by a poetically erased volume of mid century scientific case studies of homosexuals, which helps him die and you live, though fact and fiction here are intertwined as lovers.
5 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈.
@bookstodon #bookstodon #books #gay #queer #death

kenthompson, 3 months ago to books

The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner. You are part of a deteriorating Southern family, whose remaining unredeemable members pick over the bones or try to plot their escapes. 1 of 5 library cats 🐈. Warnings: racism, antisemitism, hate speech.

@bookstodon #bookstodon #books #reading

kenthompson, 3 months ago to books

#enshittification, anyone? Perfect example from publishing. A publisher is using AI to write crappy nonfiction, then assigning author names that almost match leading experts in that field (to trick search engines). No doubt other AIs will now search those texts as authoritative. This is done solely to make money and only makes the world a worse place.
#books #reading #ai #bookstodon @bookstodon @pluralistic

https://www.washingtonpost.com/newsletters/book-club/

kenthompson, 3 months ago to books

The Bee Sting, by Paul Murray.
You are an Irish family, falling out of the middle class, but that’s the least of your problems seemingly, because the house of cards the parents have built was based on a foundation of self-deception. 3 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈.
#bookstodon #books #reading @bookstodon

kenthompson, 3 months ago to books

Dayswork, by Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel. You are a writer fascinated with Melvillians and the many biographers of the famous author and the ways their own lives, and marriages may all be echoing each other across the centuries. 4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐳.
@bookstodon #bookstodon #reading #melville #books #mobydick #marriage

kenthompson, 3 months ago to books

Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert. You are an early 19th century Frenchwoman, a farmer’s daughter who becomes the wife of a boring doctor, but when you want more to life than that offers, your options are limited (by men). 2 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈.
#bookstodon @bookstodon #reading #books #france #sexism

kenthompson, 3 months ago to books

The Famous Magician, by Cesar Aira; trans. by Chris Andrews. You are an older writer of some renown, who is convincingly offered omnipotence in exchange for never writing, nor reading anything again; unfortunately you are not good at making decisions. 3 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈.
#bookstodon @bookstodon #reading #writing #argentina #novella

kenthompson, 3 months ago to books

System Collapse, by Martha Wells. You are a sentient construct that can pass as human, but you really don’t like humans much (other than their TV shows) but nonetheless endeavor to keep them from dying at each other’s hands in the f***ed up world they created. 4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈. (Series)
@bookstodon #bookstodon #books #murderbot #scifi #reading #novella

kenthompson, 3 months ago to books

The Tusks of Extinction, by Ray Nayler. You wake up to find 100 years have passed and your conscience put in a de-extincted mammoth to lead a new herd and deal with some very human problems. 4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈.
#bookstodon @bookstodon #extinction #novela #reading #books

kenthompson, 3 months ago to books

Lost in the Moment and Found, by Seanan McGuire. You start out as a 6 year old girl where things go rapidly wrong at home; you escape to a world for lost things, but at an unknown cost. 4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈.
@bookstodon #bookstodon #books #reading #fantasy