Published in 1998, The Parable of the Talents by Octavia E Butler, includes a Christofascsist who runs for and wins the US presidency on the slogan "Make America Great Again".
#nowreading "Czego nie pamiętamy" - hit w Niemczech, wczoraj wyszło pierwsze wydanie polskiego tłumaczenia. Christiane Hoffmann rusza w podróż śladami ojca, wypędzonego po wojnie z terenów, które weszły w skład Polski. Ale to tylko jeden z poziomów historii. W zasadzie nie zamierzałem czytać tej książki od razu, bo mam ileś jednocześnie otwartych wątków i sporą kupkę wstydu, ale ona jest tak napisana (i przetłumaczona), że z "tylko spojrzę" zrobiło się natychmiastowe wejście w lekturę.
I've read 51 books so far in 2023. That's fewer than last year, but still about a book a week: https://reading.chatterjee.net/
Some of my favorite reading memories this year include book festivals in Kolkata and Berkeley, exploring new-to-me indie bookstores (Champaca, Borderlands, and Perelandra), writing gushing reader fan mail, and so many long walks powered by audiobooks.
Of of the books I read this year, here are the ones that will stick with me…
"The Library Book" by Susan Orlean uses the mystery of a disastrous 1986 library fire as a jumping off point to tell a much larger story about the inner workings of the Los Angeles Public Library and the city it serves.
"The Last Heroes: Foot Soldiers of Indian Freedom" interviews surviving veterans of the Indian anti-colonial movement, via activist journalist P. Sainath.
It expands the scope of what resistance and resisters looks like (adivasis, Dalits, women, and children).
The Indian government may not have deemed them “official” freedom fighters, but Sainath pulls them into the canon.
After loving The Final Empire (#Mistborn Book 1), I am really struggling with The Well of Ascension. About halfway through and it feels like literally nothing has happened yet. This is the same problem I had when I tried reading Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive a few years ago. The first book was excellent and the second was enough of a drag that I bailed on the series.
It’s weird though because this kind of epic fantasy is normally my bag (I love The Wheel of Time for gods sake!)
Museum and art people will, I think, very much appreciate Patrick Bringley’s All the Beauty in the World (2023). Bringley worked for ten years as a guard at the Metropolitan Museum
of Art in New York City.
It’s a book about restoring ourselves through quiet contemplation and encounters with creative minds and hands. It’s also about how to see beneath the surface of things.
#NowReading Stephen King: Holly. Finished in two days. Exquisitely written (as always with King). Don't like #horror much (not a "harmless scare"), but this is definitely a #thriller.
Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, Satoshi Yagisawa (2009, trans. 2023)
Poignant tale of a young woman who, through a series of mishaps, ends up working for her eccentric uncle in his secondhand book shop. Captures the spirit of very dark days that gradually turn into light, and at the heart of it all, magic that only comes from rediscovering the things you love.
catching up on #print#zines, both with a packed balance of new music & archival features. maggot brain #14 has the promised harry smith delights, a hunt for the elusive tetsu inoue, lucy sante on mao-ania, & a bushel of andy zax music-head lifer tales (could listen to 'em all day). love the concept behind head voice as a tape op-style gear-leaning zine for the lo-fi/DIY #recording world. debut issue has fun talks with matt valentine & peter laughner archivist nick blakey. #NowReading
#nowreading Outrageous by Kliph Nesteroff. A history of censorship in entertainment. Both sobering and entertaining book citing examples when censorship went too far (ie "communist" related censorship) to examples when censorship was necessary (ie canceling things like blackface). Not a book for the "you can't be funny anymore" Joe Rogan set, as author makes the case there's more free speech today than ever.
Also the Nazis banned jazz in 1937. Listen to jazz.
Heard Frida Umuhoza speak on Tuesday - we've never really spoken but she recognised me. How lovely. ♡
Frida is a survivor of the 1994 Rwandan #genocide who now lives in Australia. Raised Catholic, she has held on to hope through her faith, and has forgiven the people who took her family away and left her for dead. She now reclaims power over her story by speaking and writing about it to counter genocide denial.
#NowReading - adored every damn page of steve waksman's "this ain't the summer of love," broadly about the unceasing #metal / #punk / #underground collision, but beautifully granular, connecting micro-scenes to #musicology. it equally brought alive conversations i know about in detail (punk), ones i don't (metal), & made me thirsty to read more #zines, listen to more #music, etc.. combined with his masterful "live music in america," i now wanna read everything waksman has written. @bookstodon
#NowReading - absolutely hoovered ahmed abdullah's new memoir about playing with @SunRaUniverse from the mid-'70s through the '90s, a wonderful/thoughtful insider complement to john szwed's bio. valuable documentation of the continuum from '60s #nyc through '70s loft #jazz (which overlapped with the arkestra more than i knew) & into '80s clubs, with some really hard dirt about the arkestra's struggles in the years around sunny's departure in '93. https://www.blankforms.org/publications/ahmed-abdullah-a-strange-celestial-road#books
#NowReading - john szwed's new harry smith bio "cosmic scholar" is absolutely inspiring, both as a life & a piece of research. insightful inside tour through american bohemia & its chaotic early undergrounds (#folklore! record collecting! #art! #nyc! #magick! #film! #drugs!) with a glorious & chaotic weirdo/polymath who connected them. i think any nonfiction reader would love this, no matter if they've heard of harry smith or not. #books