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darkpurpledawn · 2 years

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All the books I read in August

Arriving Today by Christopher Mims (nonfiction) Four stars

Really interesting overview of the history and current state of global shipping, which takes as its framing conceit the journey of a single USB charger from a factory in Vietnam to a doorstep delivery. I imagine this might be a bit repetitive to someone more familiar with shipping and logistics, but I was really fascinated, and came out of this read feeling like I simultaneously understand much more and much less about how the world works, which is always a fun feeling from a nonfiction book.

The book is focused pretty tightly (despite a lot of historical digressions) on the part of global trade that concerns the logistics of finished consumer products being delivered to consumers, and one of the big takeaways was ironically just how small a part that is of the whole, even as it is itself incredibly vast.

All in all, a great jumping off point for learning more about the unbelievably complicated puzzle that is modern trade.

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis (comedy/mystery) FIve stars

Well this instantly rocketed to my top ten books of all time! Time travel was discovered but, due to a lack of profitability, is mostly used by academics, including the group our story concerns who are repeatedly travelling to the late 19th and early 20th centuries to see how a cathedral that was destroyed in WWII originally appeared. Some accidents send our hero into the Victorian Era for recuperation but damage the timeline along the way, leading to a brilliant and complicated plot that is about one part twisty mystery, one part homage to the classic Three Men in a Boat, and one part zany upstairs/downstairs romance tribulations interspersed with seances.

And it’s hysterical.

You’ve Lost a Lot of Blood by Eric LaRocca (horror) One star

This started out so strong with a great, creepy first chapter, but most of this book is a novella-within-a-novella surrounded by some unconvincing fake audio transcripts, and the novella is just not all that interesting to start with and the interjection of the awkward dialogue sections really undermines whatever suspense it might have had. I might try the author’s more well known book since I did really enjoy the first section, but this one had pretty fatal structura issues.

How to Invent Everything by Ryan North (nonfiction) Five stars

Picked this up on a complete whim thanks to the posts of @st-just, and it’s utterly wonderful. If you have also often wondered “how hard was it to come up with all basic technology starting at square one with no previous knowledge?” this book is waiting for you (and it seems like the answer is really, really hard).

I don’t usually hold onto my physical books for long after reading them, but I’m going to keep this one around as a reference and a starting point for filling in knowledge gaps (which after reading this book really feel like knowledge black holes).

One thing I’d change about this one: despite a pretty clear attempt to focus on all of human history and not just Europe, the book kept noting when things were introduced to Europe even if invented elsewhere, but didn’t do the reverse for other large world regions, which seemed really unnecessary.

And the ones I read more than 100 pages of but decided not to finish:

Hide by Kiersten White (horror)

After mainlining so much Batman media, I was unable to resist the cover and the promise of a haunted amusement park story, but I went in expecting a really different style and was put off by the 20 or so characters the reader seems expected to 1. rapidly learn the names of and 2. despise. I don’t mind unlikeable characters but this had about as much subtlety as being hit in the face with a hardcover.

Rabbits by Terry Miles (thriller, I guess?)

Although I love the idea of a thriller novel about a sinister alternate reality game (Or Is It Just Reality??), and although I’ve intermittently enjoyed the scripted podcast this is based on, I don’t think the author really did enough work to successfully adapt a story from that world into the novel format. Characters saying “do you think this could be part of the game????” over and over is a lot easier to listen to in a multivoice podcast than it is to read on the page. I didn’t hate this, but it didn’t feel worth continuing when a similar story is available in a format it’s better suited for.

I’m floundering trying to find horror novels I like, help me out and rec me your faves!

#august reading wrap-up #august reads #arriving today #to say nothing of the dog #how to invent everything #you've lost a lot of blood #hide #rabbits #currently reading

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meirimerens · 7 months

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the pathologic Kin is largely fictionalized with a created language that takes from multiple sources to be its own, a cosmogony & spirituality that does not correlate to the faiths (mostly Tengrist & Buddhist) practiced by the peoples it takes inspirations from, has customs, mores and roles invented for the purposes of the game, and even just a style of dress that does not resemble any of these peoples', but it is fascinating looking into specifically to me the sigils and see where they come from... watch this:

P2 Layers glyphs take from the mongolian script:

while the in-game words for Blood, Bones and Nerves are mongolian directly, it is interesting to note that their glyphs do not have a phonetic affiliation to the words (ex. the "Yas" layer of Bones having for glyph the equivalent of the letter F, the "Medrel" layer of Nerves having a glyph the equivalent of the letter È,...)

the leatherworks on the Kayura models', with their uses of angles and extending lines, remind me of the Phags Pa Script (used for Tibetan, Mongolian, Chineses, Uyghur language, and others)

some of the sigils also look either in part or fully inspired by Phags Pa script letters...

some look closer to the mongolian or vagindra (buryat) script

looking at the Herb Brides & their concept art, we can see bodypainting that looks like vertical buryat or mongolian script (oh hi (crossed out: Mark) Phags Pa script):

shaped and reshaped...

#not sure how much. what's the word. bond? involvement? not experience. closeness? anyone in the team has with any of these cultures #but i recall learning lead writer is indigenous in some way & heavily self-inserts as artemy [like. That's His Face used for #the p1 burakh portrait] so i imagine There Is some knowledge; if not first-hand at least in some other way #& i'm not in the team so i don't know how much Whatever is put into Anything #[ + i've ranted about the treatment of the brides Enough. enough i have]#so i don't have any ground to stand on wrt how i would feel about how these cultures are handled to make the Kin somewhat-hodgepodge.#there is recognizing it is Obviously inspired by real-life cultures [with the words;the alphabet;i look at Kayura i know what i see]#& recognizing it Also is. obviously and greatly imagined. not that weird for you know. a story.#like there is No Turkic/Altaic/Mongolic culture that has a caste of all-women spiritual dancers who place a great importance on nudity #as a reflection of the perfect world and do nothing but dance to bring about the harvest. ykwim...#like neither the Mongols nor the Buryats nor the Tibetans dress the way the Kin does. that's cos the Kin is invented. but they're invented.#.. on wide fundations. ykwim......#Tengrism has a Sky Deity (Tengri) with an earth-goddess *daughter* whereas the kin worship an Earth-Goddess mother of everything #+ a huge bull. Buddhism has its own complete cosmogony & beliefs which from the little I know Vastly Differ from anything the Kin believes #like. yeah. story. but also. [holds myself back from renting about the Brides again] shhh...#neigh (blabbers)#pathologic #pathologic 2

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jim-jam-gem · 7 months

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Cheers to that!

#ok ok ok ok #girl how are you #because I'm still yelling #and there's still more to come #this bit made me crack up #I mean everything did #it was so GOOD #ofmd #ofmd spoilers #ofmd s2 #our flag means death #stede bonnet #rhys darby #what with this and loki and still recovering from good omens I don't have enough time to paint everything I want to #also who invented hands why are they so hard

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buck-yyyy · 1 year

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an introductory description of the greek club except it’s narrated like the meet the plastics scene in mean girls

#that one there? that’s bunny corcoran. he is one of the dumbest men you will ever meet.#i sat next to him in english last year. he asked me how to spell orange.#that little one? that’s francis abernathy. he’s totally rich because his dad invented toaster streusel.#francis abernathy knows everyone’s business he knows everything about everyone. that’s why his hair is so big it’s full of secrets.#and evil takes a human form in henry winter. don’t be fooled—cause he may seem like your typical selfish backstabbing slut-faced hoebag.#but in reality? he is so much more than that. he’s the queen bee—the star. the other four are just his little workers.#sorry to the twins. didn’t have room for them in the trio 💀#the secret history #tsh #bunny corcoran #henry winter #francis abernathy #charles macaulay #camilla macaulay #richard papen

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lemonisntreal · 1 month

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What'cha got there pal??? [loaded firearm]

[Bonus LMAO]

#naw I don't think he actually owns a gun #gun regulations are more strict in the sing universe #either that or they were just never invented due to the huge variation in how animal hands look #I'm gonna go with that one actually #sing movie #sing 2016 #sing 2021 #buster moon #fanart #furry #alternate universe #sketches #Tone Deaf #I drew him with a bowtie for once #I'm just such a sucker for little guy + big tie #oversized ties on this man are everything to me #I made these sketches a while ago I'll get back to you if I find any more 🥰#[I need to get back into digital art with this man I've been drawing nothing but robots]

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thefrogdalorian · 2 months

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Bo-Katan Kryze + Chapter 17: The Apostate

#bo-katan kryze #katee sackhoff #bo katan #the mandalorian #star wars #swedit #can't believe one year ago bo invented sitting #no heterosexual explanation for how she sat on that throne either #din is stronger than me if i would have collapsed foaming at the mouth if i arrived on kalevala and saw her sitting like that #ANYWAY i love her i love her I LOVE HER her redemption arc means everything to meeeeee #you can see how dead and hopeless she was here ugh i'm so proud of her #also primadonna by marina came on shuffle while i was making this djdjdkd fits her well i think #bo edits #my edits #my gifs #hopefully i'll make more of her now i have some scenepacks heheh

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lunarharp · 5 months

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Very important conferences.

#witch hat tag #orufrey #some real serious discussions goin on in this atelier today. dont u doubt it.#agott is the only one who has ever thought about this because she is a 12 year old lesbian and UMM..FRIEND? LIKE FRIEND? IS THAT..LEGAL???#this is all i drew today because silly things like this take hours lol. at least it's practice for poses -_-#i got the pattern of the girls' dresses wrong but i couldn't be bothered to change halfway through.#don't worry if you're like what is the naakiwan downs. is that name even mentioned in the main manga #ANYWAY i KEEP thinking about what if it's actually banned for professors and watchful eyes to date like that would make a lot of sense.#like maybe it should be banned. SO??? are they just low-key Aware of what the deal is and they're just Putting their feelings aside #until graduation??? take my tassel as an unspoken reminder of how i feel?? living together trial period?? this feels like it's truly it #When we're free to be together........ Sensei loves homophobia parallels without there actually being homophobia #Let's invent reasons why men cant be together. Ummm well whatever. i'm screaming in my head but it's fine.#this will probably form the theme of my orufrey for a while. i've thought of this before but for some reason today it's big for me.#i guess the tassels might not specifically be a part of that since they exchanged them before tower of books #and qifrey made his mysterious decision to be a teacher after that and..well whatever. I need more of backstory and just..everything?#But i also don't mind when vinanna interrupts my wishes with just a chapter of just being really dreamy? I love witch hat?

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enter-drfrog · 10 months

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I have extensive notes from Peter Pan Goes Wrong yesterday night, but here’s one of my favorites.

Jonathan Sayer said Dennis thinks he needs to wait in line with everyone else to get into the show. So every night he goes and waits in line to get into the theater. He said that production has told him that he doesn’t need to do it but he does it every night anyways. He also said that sometimes it genuinely takes him a long time to get into the theater

#anyways i love him #i don’t think I could physically love this show any more than I already do #broadway lottery is the best invention #i had such good freaking seats for so cheap #i could see literally everything and they were all so close to me #and i got to stagedoor and meet everyone #i’m never gonna stop gushing about how much i love this show #mischief theatre #mischief comedy #peter pan goes wrong #ppgw #jonathan sayer #dennis tyde #cornley polytechnic drama society #cornley drama society

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st-just · 2 years

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The legumes - or rather, the bacteria that infects them - are the glue that hold the whole 'three field crop rotation' thing together. Civilization lasts only as long as people are kept fed, and while three-field rotation allows you to increase your food output - thereby increasing the maximum size of your civilization and the number of human brains available to it - it also means that everything you do, from your smallest victories to your greatest accomplishments, will depend on a bunch of invisible single-celled microbes that live in the dirt.

How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler, by Ryan North

#quote #science #funny #how to invent everything #Ryan North

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beanghostprincess · 1 month

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Thinking about the acrilics nail thing with fem sanji and nami and as a person who also works with their hands a lot I hate when my nails get too long (and that for me is if I look at my palms and can see my nails I will cut them) but a friend of mine loves doing nail art and I love it when she does my nails bc she makes them short bc she knows that I hate them long

So back to my fave girlies, Nami sees that Sanji is stressed and sad bc of the nails so she asks her to let her do it again, Sanji apologizes for ruining them but Nami quickly shut it down saying that it doesn't matter that she wants to try a new thing and Sanji bein the simp she is lets her

Nami goes for a short nail length and decides to try and do these watercolor effect on her nails (look it up if you don't know they're really cool) since she doesn't have a lot of space to do anything with it and it ends up looking like the ocean, Nami tried to do the all blue for her

It really could be any ocean but Sanji is crying of pure happiness and love and just overwhelmed with her gf taking into account her discomfort over her nails but also doing something to accommodate her and representing something she loves

It's really cute and Sanji goes through this phase where you awkwardly do everything without really touching anything so you don't ruin your nails but after a while she does everything normally again and Nami couldn't be happier than seeing her gf happy with something she made

AWWWWWW This is so cute. I'm sure they love spending time together while Nami does her nails!!!! It's not always sea themed btw!!! Nami is good with nails but she is not the BEST at drawing cute tiny things there, so she ends up calling Usopp (Yes I am making this lesbian Sanusona honoring my name deal with me please) bc their other girlfriend is the best artist known to mankin (I don't accept other opinions srry). And Usopp is THRILLED because now she can like. Draw little eggs. And bread. And fishes. In Sanji's nails. Like. She just has a whole set of acrylic nails that's just food-themed. It's adorable. She is the cutest, prettiest cook in the world so she has to have the most beautiful nails!!!!!!!

Please, that phase is so funny. You have to learn how to do basic stuff-- Me too. I mean. It's actually the first time I get acrylic nails and the first day is weird but tbh it's not as bad as people make it seem. But Sanji would be okay because she has shorter nails and she learns that! Wow!!!!!!! You can live normally with them!!!!!! But the first days she is calling Usopp to do everything for her bc she is scared of something happening to her nails and Nami is there rolling her eyes like "If it happens we just fix it, sweetie, don't worry".

I am sure tho that in the middle of a fight she would end up somehow breaking one of the nails and she'd be. So dramatic and angry abt it to whoever is fighting with her. Because her hands are now even more precious to her!!!! She has art her girlfriends made for her!!!!!! So ofc she is angry. The guy she is fighting laughs at her like "Hahaha ofc a girl would get so whiny for breaking her nails!!!!" and she just. Beats the shit out of him with so much pent-up anger and the fury of the gods on her side.

When the fight ends she goes to Nami and Usopp like *teary eyes* "Please fix my nails, my dearest, my treasure, please-" and Usopp and Nami complain abt her being dramatic but it's actually so cute that she appreciates their work so much.

#this is adorable i am sobbing #also nami has a set of tangerine themed nails #what if they have match nails!!!!!!!!!! WHAT IF MATCHING NAILS!!!!!!!!#usopp also has short nails bc how is she going to fight and do her silly little inventions otherwise #nami is the one with long nails and the one who can do everything twice as better than them even with those #throuple activity have your two girlfriends do your nails while you gossip about your pirate crew #one piece #black leg sanji #usopp #cat burglar nami #fem sanji #fem usopp #sanuso #sanami #usonami #sanusona #fem sanusona #ask-bean!

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literary-illuminati · 2 years

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Books I Read In August

38. When the Tiger Came Down The Mountain by Nghi Vo

I’m an increasingly big fan of Vo’s work. The Empress of Salt and Fortune was good, but honestly didn’t really stick with me nearly as much as this did.

Part of that is just the increased centrality of the framing device, honestly. I mean first of all I don’t really tend to have much patience for wish-fulfillment characters, but very hard to overstate how much Chih is just living the dream life (and my university indoctrination was thorough enough that the association of the study/preservation/gathering of history and sacredness seems very right and fitting to me.

Also, I just absolutely adore when the story makes a thing of unreliable narrators. Like, when someone’s telling a story and as the scene’s ending someone else interrupts and goes “You’re telling it all wrong!” and gives a completely different version that’s at least as biased in another direction? Poetry.

The actual myth with the lesbian romance and the were-tiger warlord and stuff was also a lot of fun don’t get me wrong, but like, would have been a bit forgettable without the framing device stuff around it.

Anyway, give Chih a tv show. Or at least a half dozen more novellas like this.

39. Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky

This is the first actual full book of poetry I’ve read….I mean ever, probably, if we’re taking cover to cover. Certainly since I finished high school. So there’s some Culture achieved.

I was…not especially impressed, if I’m being entirely honest? Or, properly - “We Lived Happily During The War '' and “In A Time of Peace '' were both really affecting, but also I had already read both (posted here on tumblr, actually). They’re what sold me on the book. Everything between them did, well, not really live up to it?

I mean, I’m sure that there’s all manner of genius in craft and stuff that flew right over my head, but it just seemed so focused on being clever with line breaks that it failed to do much else. Like, most of the books on the list have plenty of lines that are more poetic by my (doubtlessly irredeemably philistine) definition than any of the poems that made up the middle of the book.

40. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon

I honestly forget where I first heard about this book, but it’s been very vaguely sitting on my mental tbr list for the last few years,and the library happened to have it in, so.

Anyway, the conceit (an alternate history where WW2 went slightly differently, and also Israel lost in 1947, and through a bunch of political compromises there ended up being an autonomous federal district carved out in Alaska as a temporary national home for the Jewish people - ‘temporary’ meaning expiring on the near year as the novel takes place) is just fascinating, and Chabon had a lot of fun with little offhand references to how different the rest of the world has gotten, too. The fact that everyone speaks Yiddish but with occasional catch phrases and curses called out as being said in American was cute, too.

The story itself was just incredibly, almost painfully noir - genius of a police detective with a ruined marriage, crippling alcoholism, and no future is woken up in the middle of the night because a heroin addict who boards in the same hotel as him was found dead by gunshot, discovers that the victim was the firstborn son of a prominent underworld/religious authority, disowned and ostracized for being gay, through this he stumbles into a sinister conspiracy involving the CIA and the death of his sister. He can’t stop the conspiracy but he might just be able to get justice for the murder, etc, etc. The commitment to the genre is fun,but the late night diners and descriptions of hangovers do begin to get old eventually.

It was also kind of dated, in an interesting way? Like, the Federal government spooks being clean cut bible college boys, all polite and well mannered and sincere Christian Zionists trying to get America into a war to help bring about the End Times, really feels like the sort of thing that only gets written during the Bush Administration. (The single tragic too-good-for-the-world dead heroine addict gay guy and the constant jokes about every less-than-perfectly-feminine woman being mistaken for a lesbian, also somewhat dated).

Anyway, think my vocabulary of random Yiddish words about doubled from reading this, and also many themes about Judaism that I am not even slightly qualified to comment on.

41: Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells

This books are so fun. And just about perfectly bite-sized, too.

Or tv episode sized, really - each has about the perfect amount of plot for an hour long episode of network tv, I think. Pity they’re basically unadaptable.

Anyway, not too much to say about this, really, except that Murderbot’s complete inability to understand their own emotions would probably be annoying by now if it wasn’t so funny, and reading it really left a grin on my face.

Or well, also, I do really enjoy all the little hints that the ‘corporate rim’ is actually kind of a galactic shithole, and Murderbot just treats it like the hegemonic default because its all they know. Certainly nowhere else seems to be nearly as bad about synthetic life (nowhere’s exactly good either, mind, but).

42. Radiance by Catherynne Valente

Oh I adored this book.

I mean in large part because I’m a big fan of Valente’s prose when she gets all grandiloquent, and also the basic aesthetic of the setting (High Victorian Space Age by way of the Golden Age of Hollywood on the moon) is just utter catnip to me. But the whole epistolary pretension, telling the story through interviews after the fact and remaining scraps of documentary footage and different drafts of a dramatization made a decade latter that are each completely different genres and occasional clips of Severin’s previous films?

It’s all just showing off to an incredible degree and I’m sure if I didn’t love the book I’d find it unbearably pretentious, but I do, so it’s absolutely great.

The amateur historian in me was kind of irked by the sort of political stasis - it does the fallout thing where the fin de siecle kind of just continues uninterrupted for another fifty years bit with stranger and more wondrous tech, the apocalypse of the Great War put off by all the virgin lands to colonize and everything just kind of continuing as it was (except for the development of the film industry). But that’s kind of a theme. (Much more minorly, the world only seems to have gotten weird in the late 19th century, except that there are sovereign and internationally significant Seneca and Iroquois nations that get mentioned several times, which kind of require a fundamental change to the nature of the American state significantly before then.)

The ending also didn’t really land for me - anything about infinite multiverses honestly makes it difficult for me to stay invested, and anything where the fictional setting tries to encompass/include the ‘real world’ almost always loses me instantly (qualified exception for actual portal fantasy, if it’s good. But introducing the real world in the third act has basically only ever worked for me exactly once).

Which is a pity, because aside from those bits the ending could have been designed to appeal to me in a lab. Was so close to perfection.

43. How to Invent Everything by Ryan North

I took a three week break in the middle, so this technically took me a full calendar month to read. Library was getting pretty angry.

Anyway, I think I said it before but I stand by it - this book would be a significant improvement over the majority of currently existing middle/high school science curriculums. (In the same way that Magic School Bus and Bill Nye taught me more than science class ever did until high school (and even then)).

Anyway, did pick up a lot of interesting trivia, and the author is apparently the dinosaur comics guy(?), which really shows through in the writing (not ALL the jokes come anywhere close to landing, but the ones that don’t are mostly dad-joke like enough that it’s kind of endearing).

Also learned the exact limits of my understanding in (in decreasing order of) mechanical engineering, electricity, and computers. (I really do need someone to gently take me by the hand at some point and explain how basic logic gates doing addition and subtraction ends up with, well, tumblr, or triple A video games, or any of it. Like on a mechanical level.)

Anyway, I should take up sewing. And write the half-essay floating around my head about how horrible mines are and how morally uncomfortable that is.

44. Stiff: The Curious Life of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach

Okay I forget who on here recommended this to me, but thanks! Was a ton of fun, great light morbid summer read.

Roach has a great sort of chatty style, and she does the thing I normally rather dislike working personal anecdotes and descriptions of people she interviewed into everything, but she honestly actually makes it work.

It came out in the early 2000s and was endearingly dated at times, and vaguely racist in a ‘the strange and exotic Orient!’ way at others, but like generally mostly holds up, I think?

It’s not nearly as difficult a read as you’d expect given the subject matter (‘the human corpse, how it decays, and things we do to it’, essentially). Or, well,that might me a be mostly a me thing, but I found it a trove of fun trivia, anyway.

(The one exception being the section on the history of the pursuit of the human head transplant, and specifically the animal experiments done on the subject. That made me more queasy than anything I can remember reading recently, which is I suppose a useful thing to know about myself.)

#monthly tally #book review #analysis/review #when the tiger came down the mountain #nghi vo #Deaf Republic #ilya kaminsky #The Yiddish Policemen's Union #michael chabon #rogue protocol #Murderbot #Martha Wells #Radiance #Catherynne Valente #How to Invent Everything #Ryan North #Stiff #Mary Roach

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