Tak! quoted The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler
This society—what we call modern society, what we always think of as the most important time the world has ever known, simply because we are in it—is just the sausage made by grinding up history.
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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jay
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This society—what we call modern society, what we always think of as the most important time the world has ever known, simply because we are in it—is just the sausage made by grinding up history.
Some real gems in there. For example the one by N.K. Jemisin.
jay
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A horrifying realistic account of an everyday Western country being gradually consumed by an authoritarian regime. Every moment of encroaching terror is disturbingly relatable. Writing style felt like a monotone ramble, which masked its poignancy.
@tofuwabohu wenn Du noch mehr Lust auf das Thema hast probier mal Issa.

In a city that never was, in an America that never was, on a snowy night at the end of …
jay
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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)
jay
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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.
jay
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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.
jay
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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 …
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.