I'm currently reading "The Coming Insurrection" by "The Invisible Committee"
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How are you liking it?
I am loving it. It is written in a very poetic language and really makes you reflect. In my case, it also generates a nihilistic feeling towards society and the possibility of change. It is a call to insurrection; it shows you, in an aesthetic and philosophical way, that there is no other way out but rebellion.
October by China Mieville
Perfect month to read it in!
Radicalized by Cory Doctorow. It's an anthology of four short stories that all share a common theme of dystopian applications of technology. So in other words... Pretty much on brand for the author and it's well done so far.
Kind of like Black Mirror (TV show)?
Nah the stories are a little more hopeful. Like one about toasters that work like a Keurig machine and this refugee community learning how to hack them to work on unauthorized products after the company whose servers that authorize the bread goes bankrupt.
Interesting. Will check it out.
Just started listening to the audiobook version of Robert Caro's "The Power Broker," about Robert Moses and New York. Will also check out the book from library in case it has pictures or diagrams.
99% Invisible did a 10-part series on the book this year, so will be toggling back and forth to hear the commentary as well.
The audiobook is around 60 hours. Guessing this all will keep me busy for a couple of months.
Just finished "The Message," by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Highly recommended.
I just finished listening to We Are Legion (We Are Bob). It was a fun one to listen to and easy to follow even whilst working which meant I blitzed through it.
Now I’ve gotta wait almost a month for my next credit :( Not sure what I’ll try next though, I don’t usually bother with sci-fi but I’ve been on the lookout for something after finishing The Three-Body Problem trilogy. Nothing is really hitting the mark currently.
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. The prose is beautiful and mesmerizing. It forces me to read it at the speed of speech, to let it flow. I'm a sucker for long and winding sentences (when they're done well), and this doesn't disappoint.
It's also quite disgusting, just as everyone says about it. If you can't handle brutal senseless violence, don't pick this up. It's pretty interesting to see the racism/xenophobia of today reflected in American history (1850-ish). It reminds me of the Dark Forest theory from Three Body Problem: these guys go around killing not just out of a love of violence, but because it's the only guaranteed way to come out on top. If you aren't the killer, someone else will be. Capitalism and greed work like this too.
Just finished the latest Jack Reacher novel. Standard Reacher Murder She Wrote with a giant as protagonist plot template. I find the Reacher novels helpful if I’m having a rough week and need a low cognitive load book. Working on Candle & Crowe now, which is the third book in Kevin Hearne’s Ink & Sigil series set in his Iron Druid universe. It’s also good for a bit of cheerful escapism, but not a pulp novel.
I recently started the Jack Reacher series and got the first 3 books (though have only read the first one yet). They are much longer than I expected them to be. Are all books in the series like that?
It didn't get boring so I don't mind the length, just curious about it.
I haven’t considered them to be very long, but maybe I’ve read too many Sanderson novels. They all tend to have the same pacing and plot devices. It’s been long enough since I read the first few that I can’t remember if they get shorter or longer. The more recent ones where Andrew Child co-authors seem shorter to me.
Currently reading Venomous Lumpsucker and enjoying the hell out of it. It's ~350pgs of snark sniping at our ecological apathy and "market based solutions" to the problem. It's so on point it hurts sometimes: Imagine if Wall St financialized species extinction so that the invisible hand of the market could solve the problem, but the solutions all end up being fraud and fraud derivatives.
Recently finished James S.A. Corey's new Captive's War books The Mercy of Gods and the novella Livesuit. Both good, though Livesuit was the more engaging. Looking forward to more in the series when main events kick off on the human side.
Finally read Blindsight last month after seeing it endlessly recommended over the last few years. It's good, definitely worth the read, but I enjoyed Freeze-Frame Revolution and the Sunflowers short stories a bit more. I think I'd have been more impressed with Blindsight if I read it back when it was released, I feel like the shocking big idea has diffused into other works over the last decade and a half so it's not quite as arresting now as it would have been then.
Read Linda Nagata's Pacific Storm as a palate cleanser between Blindsight and the Captive's War books. This one was interesting, Nagata writes a good near future thriller and I'll probably recommend it to family members who are into those sorts of things.
Read the anthology Shine in an afternoon at some point as well - while I appreciate the optimism it feels forced at this point. It was published just over a decade ago now and it feels distinctly out of place in the current timeline.
Am I the only one irked by the improper grammar on this weekly post going back months? How has it not been corrected yet? In a community full of readers.