jay wants to read Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford

Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford
In a city that never was, in an America that never was, on a snowy night at the end of …
Contains brainfog. I admire people who have a clear definition for what each number of stars means, but I give them out purely intuitively.
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In a city that never was, in an America that never was, on a snowy night at the end of …
wir fühlten immer noch wut, die alles glasierte. mit den pfoten, wurzeln, derben händen schlugen wir in das piezoelektrische plastik, das unsere zeltwand bildete, aus wind erzeugte, aus wut energie erzeugte und linseneintöpfe zum kochen brachte.
etwas flammte auf.
auf die berge hatten wir gewartet, aus den bergen kam feuer. und feuer.
die champagne, im klimawandel an den müggelsee gezogen, brannte.
blaugummibäume brannten. fichten brannten.
die schriftführerin: die jahreszeit feuer.
— wir zaudern, wir brennen by Tim Holland (Page 29)
Content warning Spoilers, plot of Convenience Store Woman
No, I'm done with this book. Yes, it's quirky and the prose of the translation is enjoyable, but the endless plot about Keiko needing to find a husband, and the reappearance of the frankly disgusting Shihara... I bailed as soon as the sham marriage was proposed. I don't care that—according to the synopsis I subsequently read—she dumps him in the end; by that point I'll want to smack them both.
Content warning Mood spoiler (no events spoiled) for Moominpappa at Sea and for Moominvalley in November
Whoops forgot to add this one; my current audiobook after Star Diaries. Listening to the Swedish version read by Alma Pöysti. Not part of the "pile of 26 books". Also not sure why I put myself through this one the most depressing of the Moomin books. It's that chafing awkward twilight anxiety of going to hell in a cozy fuzzy handbasket. I love Moominvalley in November which is full dark no stars. "One knows where one has that one" as the expression goes. This one, its predecessor (and the two really are sister books, a duology subset of the greater Moomin canon), is chafingly liminal by comparison. Am I gonna reco it and give it five starts when this reread is done? Heck yes it's a literary masterpiece and Janson is one of the greats for me up there among Shirley Jackson and Karin Boye and Irmelin Sandman Lilius and William Gibson. But when I have a shef full of moomins why did I have to pick this one the most eerie and anxiety-inducing and unfun one? Well because SR aired the audio book version for free a few months back and I snarfed it and didn't get around to it until now.
As a journalistic work this book is a strong reco (don't got confused by how the author's name is similar to a far right writer. It's one of those Naomi Klein or Naomi Wolf situations) I never read the back cover copy of books but this time that decision burned me since it'd've made clearer the throughline of this book as not only a larger essay on bot farms and propaganda machines but also synecdochically a biography of Willi Münzenberg.
The prose is hard to read with many ambiguously counterpunctual sentences, triply negated predicates, and skewedly applied similes. And politically I can get frustrated with Carlberg's initially trusting view of institutions like NATO.
But it's worth pushing through because the main point is great. How it sucks that there's so much secret propaganda and how the cure for that is never to fight fire with same but to instead stick …
As a journalistic work this book is a strong reco (don't got confused by how the author's name is similar to a far right writer. It's one of those Naomi Klein or Naomi Wolf situations) I never read the back cover copy of books but this time that decision burned me since it'd've made clearer the throughline of this book as not only a larger essay on bot farms and propaganda machines but also synecdochically a biography of Willi Münzenberg.
The prose is hard to read with many ambiguously counterpunctual sentences, triply negated predicates, and skewedly applied similes. And politically I can get frustrated with Carlberg's initially trusting view of institutions like NATO.
But it's worth pushing through because the main point is great. How it sucks that there's so much secret propaganda and how the cure for that is never to fight fire with same but to instead stick to being honest. Yes please.
It was sickeningly transparent how Åkesson when, a few years after this book was written, SD was revealed to have a troll factory and he called TV4's reporting of that a "påverkansoperation", like how 45 appropriated the appellation "fake news". It's scary that SD has already bounced back in polls after their blatant lies.
This is a book that has gotten a lot of hype here in Sweden and inexplicably it was published in two editions; one a text-only edition and the other a richly illustrated and cleverly laid out bigger hard cover. The latter version is so amazingly good. This is such a passion project for the author Bea Uusma. I usually do not like non-fiction but this on eis hard to review substaially without just heaping on the superlatives. It's poetic it's sad it's thought-through it's a deep dive into a failed 1897 North Pole expedition. This was a re-read for me. I don't remember when I first bought it; I have the third printing of the first (2013) edition. I remember kicking myself for not buying it when it was available then finding it again in a bookstore a few months (or maybe years? My 2010s area blur) later and reading …
This is a book that has gotten a lot of hype here in Sweden and inexplicably it was published in two editions; one a text-only edition and the other a richly illustrated and cleverly laid out bigger hard cover. The latter version is so amazingly good. This is such a passion project for the author Bea Uusma. I usually do not like non-fiction but this on eis hard to review substaially without just heaping on the superlatives. It's poetic it's sad it's thought-through it's a deep dive into a failed 1897 North Pole expedition. This was a re-read for me. I don't remember when I first bought it; I have the third printing of the first (2013) edition. I remember kicking myself for not buying it when it was available then finding it again in a bookstore a few months (or maybe years? My 2010s area blur) later and reading it right away that same night. But this reread had al the same magic. It was an "I ought to reread the first book since the sequel is finally out" duty reread but it wasn't a slog at all, just pure enthrallment from page one through the last page. I feel bad not being able to write a better review than how much I love it. I recommend it for fans of layout and graphic design since it's so unique and clever (Lotta Kühlhorn usually does a great job and here she knocked it all the way out of the park) as a book unlike any other book this side of" Building Stories". I recommend it for fans of adventure, of winter, of geography, and for people who hate all that but who want to see someone chasing the dream. But: it is very gruesome at parts.
One weird thing with the reread is that when I read it the first time I had no idea who Peter Wessel Zappfe was. I hadn't seen True Detective or read The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. He is in this book and he ends up doing some very weird things. This book as a whole ends up as a wonderful companion piece to Conspiracy.. It celebrates (and struggles against) bare-faced entropy. It washes you away in a wave of mutilation. Except this book is much better reasoned, argued, written, though-through than Conspiracy is. A book to return to again and again. It's like one of my top three books of all time. But only when I want to go bleak.
gold-brown skin
— The Mercy of Gods by James S.A. Corey (Page 24)
Aaaaaaahhhhh!
(Yeah, after several descriptions of people, that was the first time anyone's skin colour was mentioned.)
How humanity came to the planet called Anjiin is lost in the fog of history, but that history is about …
Darren Naish: Dinosaurs (2016)
Dinosaurs are one of the most spectacular groups of animals that have ever existed. Many …
Novellas are inherently short on characterizaton, but in my opinion the characterizaton of London/English lilfe of this time is well done here, it made quite the impression. I also really liked the descriptions of the supernatural happenings; concise and impressive always, grand and awe-inspiring where appropriate.
(I started it in the afternoon and stayed up very late to finish it.)
September 2025 #SFFBookClub
From one of Japan's most brilliant and sensitive contemporary novelists, this speculative fiction masterpiece envisions an Earth where humans are …