Right-wing authors (whose works must surely be almost 100% ghostwritten or LLM slop-generated) trumpet their bestselling titles but all such #sales figures on #books are completely cooked. A zillion right-wing organizations buy up books in massive lots in order to create the impression that "the people" are rushing out to read virulent trash like Joshua Lisec's Unhumans, supposedly written by ultra-Catholic pervert Jack Posobiec, a conservative darling.

(cont'd)

" The Definitive History of Sci-Fi (A 4-Hour Bookshelf Masterclass) "

#scifi #books

Orson Scott Card (1951-) was born on this day. Bibliography: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?15

L, John Harris, 1986; R, Lucinda Cowell, 1980
#scifi #sciencefiction #books

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Cover for Speaker for the Dead. A central monolithic cityscape looms upward. Various small crafts fly about. Causeways emerge from the central spire.

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Cover for Songmaster. Man looks upwards and sings. His soundwaves spread outward. Below him are people asleep or dead.

On Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and the Particular Cruelty of Goodbye

August 23, 2026

My second Kazuo Ishiguro novel was Never Let Me Go. The first was The Remains of the Day, a book I admired more than I loved. I thought it was beautifully written, impeccably controlled, but Stevens and his regrets never quite got under my skin. I appreciated the novel. That is not the same thing as being moved by it. There is a difference, sometimes an enormous one.

So I did not come to Never Let Me Go expecting to weep. I did not even know what it was about. Perhaps that was the ideal way to read it. Perhaps not, because I nearly failed to read it at all.

The first hundred pages were a struggle for me. Not because Ishiguro writes badly. Quite the opposite. His prose is smooth, almost unnervingly smooth. The sentences move easily. The pages do not present the kind of linguistic resistance I encountered in, say, Blood Meridian, where I felt as though I needed a machete and a dictionary merely to get through a paragraph. Never Let Me Go is perfectly readable. And yet I could not get through it.

I was in a reading slump, or, as I called it at the time, a reading slop. I would pick the book up, read a few pages, put it down. Days passed. Then weeks. The story did not seem to be going anywhere sufficiently interesting for me. Kathy H. was telling me about her childhood, about school, about friendships, about little resentments and jealousies and romances. Fine. All right. But where was this going?

Then there were these words. Carer. Donor. Guardian.

They appeared with a peculiar casualness, as though I were supposed to understand what they meant. The characters certainly did. Nobody stopped to explain them to me. Ishiguro does not put up a sign saying, Attention, reader. Here is the premise of the novel. Instead, he lets the vocabulary of this world drift past you, almost innocently.

I was confused. And, regrettably, I cheated. I asked Google.

There are moments when one should exercise more patience as a reader. This was one of them. Google, that great destroyer of narrative surprises, promptly informed me what was going on. The plot was revealed. I knew what Hailsham was. I knew what Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were. I knew what “donations” and “completion” meant. I cannot blame Ishiguro for this. This was entirely my own impatience. And yet, even knowing what was coming, Never Let Me Go devastated me.

That, I think, says something about the novel’s power. A plot twist can be spoiled. The emotional experience of a story cannot always be. Knowing that a person is going to die is not the same as watching him or her walk toward death. Knowing the destination does not spare you the journey. Sometimes it makes the journey worse.

The strangest thing about Never Let Me Go is that the horror of its premise is almost never presented as horror. There are no laboratories filled with cackling scientists. No dystopian rebellion. No grand revelation followed by revolution. No protagonist standing on a barricade, screaming that the system must be destroyed. The characters simply live. They go to school. They make friends. They quarrel. They fall in love, or think they do. They become jealous. They remember small humiliations with astonishing clarity. They cling to objects and songs and private jokes. They misunderstand one another. They want to be special. In other words, they are human.

That is the terrible joke of the novel, if one can call something this sad a joke. The society of Never Let Me Go has created human beings for a purpose, assigned them a fate, and then proceeds as though that fate settles everything. But the novel itself quietly asks a more difficult question: if these people can love, grieve, desire, remember, envy, hope, and fear, then what exactly are we denying them when we deny them a future?

The answer is almost too obvious to say. Everything.

Kathy’s narration is central to why the novel works so well. She tells her story retrospectively, in a voice that is calm, conversational, occasionally meandering. She doubles back. She corrects herself. She remembers one incident and then suddenly recalls another that complicates it. At times, her narration feels almost like someone talking to you during a long drive, saying, “Actually, before I get to that, I should probably explain something else.” I loved this. It is a deceptively simple style. Ishiguro makes memory feel like memory. Not memory as a perfectly organized archive, with neat labels and chronological order, but memory as something porous and unruly. One recollection opens another. A trivial detail acquires importance years later. Something that seemed insignificant becomes, in retrospect, unbearable. Kathy does not narrate like a person delivering a thesis on her own life. She narrates like someone trying to make sense of it. And perhaps that is all any of us are doing.

There is also something heartbreaking about the limits of her rebellion, if rebellion is even the right word. Kathy is not stupid. Neither are Tommy or Ruth. They understand, eventually, what their lives are. But understanding does not necessarily produce resistance. That is one of the novel’s most uncomfortable truths. You like to imagine that knowledge makes you free. If you knew the truth, you would act. You would fight. You would refuse. Wouldn’t you?

The characters in Never Let Me Go are shaped by the world before they are old enough to question it. Their vocabulary, expectations, ambitions, even their fantasies have been constructed within the boundaries of their existence. They do not dream of becoming kings or astronauts or old men and women surrounded by grandchildren. Their hopes are smaller because the world has made them smaller. This is not entirely science fiction. It is not even entirely dystopian. Most people live inside assumptions they did not choose.

You inherit ideas about success, beauty, love, work, family, nation, morality. You are born into systems already functioning, rules already established, expectations already waiting for you. Perhaps some people escape them. Others do not. Most of us, probably, spend our lives negotiating with them and congratulating ourselves for choices that were not as free as we would like to believe.

The tragedy of Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy is extreme. That is why it reveals something more ordinary. They know they are going to die. So do you. Their lives have an expiration date attached to them. So do yours. The difference is that their deaths have been organized into a system, given a sequence, a purpose, and polite euphemisms. They will become carers. They will become donors. Eventually, they will “complete.”

Complete. What a monstrous word.

There is a particular cruelty in euphemism. To “complete” is not to die, at least not linguistically. Language tidies up what reality would otherwise force you to confront. And the people in the novel have inherited this language. They use it because it is the language available to them.

Ishiguro understands something important about cruelty: it does not always announce itself with violence, yet when it arrives, it is final. Sometimes it becomes most efficient when everyone has learned how to speak about it gently. But for all the philosophical implications of the novel, what destroyed me was not the premise. It was the people. I felt their friendship. I felt the love between them. I even felt the ugliness of their relationships, because friendship is not always noble. Ruth can be infuriating. She manipulates. She lies. She creates little fictions around herself. She wounds people because, perhaps, she senses that there is so little available to her that she must possess whatever she can, even if only emotionally. She can be a cunt, and yet I could not hate her.

That is another thing Ishiguro does brilliantly. He allows his characters their pettiness without reducing them to their pettiness. Ruth is not merely the villain standing between Kathy and Tommy. She is frightened. She wants to be loved. She wants to believe that she matters. She wants a life that she cannot have, though she does not always know how to articulate this desire.

Tommy, too, is more than the awkward boy with the temper. Kathy is more than the sensible, observant narrator. Their relationships shift because people shift. Love arrives too late. Understanding arrives too late. Apologies arrive too late. That is life, unfortunately. A great deal of life consists of timing.

There are things you could have said earlier. There are people you could have loved better. There are apologies that become meaningful precisely because there is no longer enough time for them to repair anything.

Ishiguro’s restraint makes these things hurt more. He does not wrench emotion out of you through grand speeches. He does not shout. The novel is often almost quiet. And because it is quiet, the sadness has room to accumulate. Then, suddenly, you realize what you have been reading. A story about people being prepared, from childhood, to say goodbye. A story about people who are told, in one way or another, that they do not belong to themselves. A story about how love cannot save everyone.

That last part is important. Love does not save Kathy and Tommy. It does not produce the miracle they hope for. There is no hidden loophole in the machinery of the world. No exception granted because their love is especially pure. The world is not moved by the fact that two people finally understand what they mean to each other.

How could I not be devastated by that?

I have always been susceptible to goodbyes in stories. Apparently, I can fancy myself stoic. I can imagine that I have been desensitized by enough books, enough films, enough fictional deaths. Then a story places two people before me and tells me, quietly, that this is the last time. That they have to part. That one of them will go on and the other will not. And I am finished.

There is something especially painful about the goodbyes in Never Let Me Go because the characters have so little control over them. Every goodbye is connected to the larger goodbye waiting ahead. Even happiness becomes fragile because you know, or eventually know, that it cannot last. But then again, whose happiness can?

Perhaps this is where the novel becomes more than its premise. Strip away Hailsham. Strip away cloning. Strip away the donations. What remains is recognizably human. We all live among people we will lose. We all experience periods of life without knowing, while we are living them, that they will one day become memory. A school. A room. A song. A friend you assume you will always know. Then time moves. The thing is over. And nobody announces the final moment while it is happening.

Kathy’s memories are painful because they are all she has left. But perhaps memories are all any of us have left eventually. You move forward, and the past becomes increasingly inaccessible. People disappear. Places change. The version of yourself who inhabited a particular moment ceases to exist, too. There are many deaths in a life before the body finally catches up.

This may sound excessively gloomy. It probably is. But Never Let Me Go does not leave me with despair exactly. I would not call it hopeful either. Hope is too easy a word to throw at a book like this. The novel leaves me with something more complicated: an awareness of the terrible value of ordinary life. The characters are not remarkable because they are destined for greatness. They are remarkable because they care about ordinary things. A cassette tape. A gesture. A memory of a field. A person sleeping beside them. The possibility of more time. Is that not enough?

Perhaps the novel’s deepest cruelty is that it makes you understand the preciousness of life through people who have been systematically denied the right to live one fully. Their tragedy illuminates your own good fortune, if that is what you should call it. You are not guaranteed anything either, but you are at least permitted the illusion that the future is open. Kathy and Tommy are not. And still they love. Still they hope. Still they try to imagine a little more time together.

I had misgivings about Never Let Me Go when I began it. I thought the story would not move me much. I nearly abandoned it in the first hundred pages. I spoiled the plot for myself because I was impatient and confused. Honestly, this was not my finest hour as a reader. But once I returned to it, the novel kept me turning the pages. The storytelling is patient and deliberate, and Ishiguro’s writing is wonderfully smooth. Of the two Ishiguro novels I have read, this is the one that reached me. The Remains of the Day made me admire Ishiguro. Never Let Me Go made me feel him. And feeling, I suppose, is the more dangerous thing. By the end, I wept.

Then, apparently deciding that I had not suffered enough, I went ahead and watched the 2010 film adaptation. And I wept some more.

Perhaps watching the film immediately after finishing the novel was not the wisest decision. I had barely recovered from the book, if “recovered” is even the appropriate word, before willingly subjecting myself to the same story all over again. There is something different about seeing those goodbyes made visible, about watching Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth embodied rather than merely imagined. The film could not replace the novel, nor should it. Ishiguro’s voice, Kathy’s digressive memories, that gradual accumulation of dread, these belong especially to the book. But the film gave the tragedy another form, and I was apparently susceptible to that too.

So there I was, devastated by the novel, and then devastated again by the adaptation. I really should learn to leave well enough alone.

But perhaps that second round of tears confirmed something for me. The story was not merely effective because Ishiguro had surprised me, and certainly not because I did not know the plot. I knew exactly what was going to happen by then. I had read it. I had watched the characters walk toward the inevitable. The inevitability remained inevitable. And it still hurt.

Not because Ishiguro tricks you into sadness. Not because the novel manipulates you with cheap tragedy. I wept because I had come to care about these people, their ridiculous little jealousies, their memories, their failed timing, their affection for one another. I wept because they had to say goodbye.

Because ultimately Never Let Me Go is a novel about letting go, about goodbyes. The goodbye to childhood. The goodbye to friendship as it once was. The goodbye to the person one loves. The goodbye to the fantasy that there will always be more time. And finally, the last goodbye, the one waiting for everyone.

Ishiguro gives his characters a world in which death is scheduled and unavoidable, then asks you to watch what they do with the little life allowed to them. The answer is almost unbearably simple. They live it. They love badly and well. They remember. They lose one another. They say goodbye. And apparently, no matter how stoic I fancy myself, that is still enough to break me.

#bibliophilia #bookReview #books #fiction #KazuoIshiguro #literaryFiction #literature #NeverLetMeGo #novels #reading

For some reason I am recalling Katherine Kurtz's Deryni books. Years ago I read the first three, and tried some of the others, but faded out on the series.

Wonder if they are worth checking out again.

#bookstodon #books #deryni #fantasy

In which 'Winnie-the-Pooh' turns 100

by Samantha Balaban

https://www.npr.org/2026/08/22/nx-s1-5697049/how-a-bear-became-a-book-annette-bay-pimentel-faith-pray

Winnie-the-Pooh at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/67098

#books #literature

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On the cover of Winnie-the-Pooh there are two drawings. Below the title and the author's name, there's a picture of a boy and four rabbits trying to pull a small bear out of a hole on a grassy slope. The boy has taken hold of the bear's paws. He leans back and tugs. The rabbits line up behind him, pulling at the boy's waist. Above the title, in the upper right corner of the cover, is the second picture. It shows the same bear hanging from a string that's attached to a balloon, which is floating off into the sky. The bear is surrounded by a swarm of insects.

"Hallo" said Piglet, "What are you doing?" "Tracking something" said Winnie-the Pooh very mysteriously. "Tracking what?" said Piglet, coming closer. "That's just what I ask myself. I ask myself, What?"

Winnie-the-Pooh

~A. A. Milne (18 January 1882 – 31 January 1956)

#books #literature

New additions to the SFF library! Joe Haldeman, Jack C. Haldeman II, Zenna Henderson, Thomas Burnett Swann, and Edwin Corley

Cover artists, my initial thoughts, discussion: https://sciencefictionruminations.com/2026/08/22/updates-recent-science-fiction-purchases-no-ccclii-joe-haldeman-jack-c-haldeman-ii-zenna-henderson-thomas-burnett-swann-and-edwin-corley/
#scifi #sciencefiction #books

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Jim Burns’ cover for the 1st edition of There is No Darkness. Spaceman, looking a bit like an airman, stands outside of his pod. He seems to be on a barren planet.

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Cover for Corley's Siege. An African American militant stands with gun. The cityscape of New York is in front of him.

Je repars sur l'idée d'adapter le #yoga à tou‧te‧s et de s'éloigner du yoga "historique/traditionnel" pour une approche beaucoup plus fonctionnelle qui prime ces dernières décennies : je vous conseille fortement ce bouquin qui est vraiment une perle https://www.babelio.com/livres/Clark-Votre-corps-votre-yoga/1200726
Je cite littéralement la 4ème de couverture "En prenant conscience de la grande variété de la morphologie humaine, vous accepterez mieux votre individualité et vos limites, ou celles de vos élèves, ce qui vous permettra d'être davantage à l'écoute des sensations et d'accueillir tous les bienfaits que vous offre votre propre pratique du yoga."
Tout est dit.

Le yoga ne doit pas être une torture ou une souffrance...Je vomis le précepte de certain‧e‧s sportifs/sportives qui consiste à dire qu'il faut souffrir pour progresser (précepte qui peut prévaloir pour, par exemple, des exos de muscus). Ce n'est pas ma conception du sport ou d'une discipline comme le yoga.

#book #books #bookstodon #mastobook #vendredilecture

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Snoopy et son ami Charles (et le piaf) allongés et heureux sur des tapis de yoga, en plein Savasana, posture méditative qui clôture la fin d'une pratique

Tant qu'on est dans les conseils bouquins sur le #yoga, je vous conseille "pèlerinage sur soi" du chorégraphe Sidi Larbi Cherckaoui qui se lit vite et qui évoque l'apport du #yoga dans sa vie
extrait : https://tokyosonata.vivaldi.net/2025/05/19/lenjeu-du-yoga/
#book #books #bookstodon #mastobook #vendredilecture

«Questing for Camelot»

Continuing a lifelong fondness of King Arthur’s court.

https://takeonrules.com/2026/08/22/questing-for-camelot/

#books #KingArthur #Pendragon #Arthuriana #Camelot #Myth

Ursula K. LeGuin's "Earthsea" cycle is an excellent thing to re-read in your early 40ies, to see how different and still the same it feels in the middle of your life instead of the first quarter.

And this particular edition - hard to hold in your hands, impossible to carry with you, but containing quiet a few extra texts - is something I definitely recommend, too.

#VicisBooks #UrsulaKLeGuin #books #Earthsea

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"The Books of Earthsea" illustrated edition

This was gripping. Moving. Entertaining. Good insights into masculinity, both the toxic and normal kind. And into precarity, rootlessness and the Troubles. And into the relationship between generations who've lived through different events in the same place in a short space of time. And the dialogue is pure joy. Trainspottingly good. You think you know all the regional swear words in Ireland, then you read this and find your vocabulary enriched and improved.

#Books
#Fredagsbog
#Bookstodon

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Short version: Close to Home by Michael Magee. Fuller description: my Penguin paperback edition on a green cushion. A white border and two squares. Top half, a pale blue sky with wispy clouds, the colours kind of washed out, like the colours in a 1970s or 80s photo. Bottom half, two young m en, facing away from each other, under a similar sky. Both close-shaven hair cuts, wearing tee-shirts, looking down. Hard to interpret their moods - sad, contemplative, suppressed anger, a bit lost. Cover text: title; author name; praise quotes from The Guardian, Sunday Times and Irish Times, and a 'Winner Nero Book Awards 2023' stamp.

Darksight Dare, Lois McMaster Bujold #Books #Fantasy #BlogFiredrakeOrg https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2026/08/Darksight_Dare__Lois_McMaster_Bujold.html

#QuestionOfTheDay post a screenshot/picture from a piece of media that you're into where everybody who knows the thing will know exactly what impending moment you're referring to but those who don't will not understand what is happening

#fiction #books #tv #television #movies #film #anime #manga #comics #comicbooks #videogames #gaming #ttrpg #ccgs

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screenshot from Babylon 5 showing John Sheridan looking up as a light falls onto his face and Anna Sheridan walks in the corridor behind him

#reading #books #bookstodon

Adrian Tchaikovsky - Spiderlight

Decided to try a quick fantasy novel by an author who is really more known for their high-end sci-fi. Enjoying this so far, it’s a fun and engaging read. Probably not ideal if you don’t like spiders.

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Front cover shows a party of characters in combat surrounding a giant spider that is descending down a large tree.

Personal favorites.

I spend a lot of time organizing and reorganizing the library. These four shelves of "serious lit", a few shelves of "lesser lit" (Jack London, Wells, etc.), two sci-fi (Lem, Strugatsky, PKD, LeGuin, Bradbury, Wul), "20s trash" (Lovercraft, Rohmer, Doc Savage), children's lit (Oz, Moomin, Pippi, folklore, & myth), CS (mostly 50s/60s), art hist (Bauhaus), music (Bowie, Bertei, Lester Bangs), etc., etc.

#Books #Library

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A bookshelf: Fuentes, Laxness, Vesaas, Isherwood, Hamsun, Grass, Dostoevsky, Wilde, Lagervkist, Schulz, Meyrink, Harbou, Pilnyak.

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A bookshelf: Desai, Mahfouz, Saadawi, Eberhardt, Markham, Colette, Wittig, Babitz, Genet, Moliere, Sartre, Brecht.

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A bookshelf: Borges, Don Marquis, Alfred Jarry, Ionesco, Beckett, Martin, Tse, Kharms, Cummings, Ginsberg, Barnes, Voltaire, Kosinski, Gogol, Calvino.

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A bookshelf: collected ancient Egyptian lit, Petronius, Flaubert, Xenophon, Yurick, Himes, Caldwell, Vidocq, Black, Burroughs, Southern, Pynchon, Burgess, Huxley, Orwell, Hsun, Hua, Jin, She, Zilong, Meng, Hua.

Brian W. Aldiss (1925-2017) was born on this day. Bibliography: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?131

L, Eddie Jones, 1971; R, Bruce Pennington, 1975
#scifi #sciencefiction #books

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Cover for Hothouse. A man and a woman climb a massive root structure.

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Cover for The Dark Light Year. Man on crutches walks along a cliff edge. In the distance there's a volcano. A flock of birds fly with two sets of wings.

Major Scobie asks Yusef the Syrian why he calls him a friend, and Yusef replies:

"Friendship is something in the soul. It is a thing one feels. It is not a return for something."

💚

Graham Greene - The Heart of the Matter

#books #nowreading #friendship

BUM FODDER. Soft paper for the necessary house or torchecul.

A selection from Francis Grose’s “Dictionary Of The Vulgar Tongue” (1785)

--
#books #literature #dictionaries #history #society #language #slang @histodons

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Image imitating a page from an old document, text (as in main toot): BUM FODDER. Soft paper for the necessary house or torchecul. A selection from Francis Grose’s “Dictionary Of The Vulgar Tongue” (1785)

Cold Days at Castle Drax, Charlotte E. English #Books #Fantasy #Horror #BlogFiredrakeOrg https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2026/08/Cold_Days_at_Castle_Drax__Charlotte_E__English.html

I was delighted this week to receive an advance copy of my new book, Train Europe - a collection of twenty rail itineraries devised by me.

Very happy with the look and feel of it: with lots of colour and images to accentuate the text.

Train Europe will be in bookshops on 29 September 2026. To pre-order a copy online, follow this link: https://hardiegrant.lnk.to/traineurope

#train #trains #Europe #book #books @bookstodon

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Cover of Train Europe, featuring a fast red train.

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Interior pages of Train Europe, featuring a Scandinavian itinerary.

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Interior pages of Train Europe, featuring a section about Britain and Ireland.

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Interior pages of Train Europe, featuring a section about Christmas markets.

Big news! HYPERSCALE made the longlist for the FT/Standard Chartered Business Book of the Year Award.

They call it a “a polemical on-the-ground investigation into the rapid spread of data centres and their impact on the environment and the communities where Big Tech is building them.”

#tech #datacenters #ai #generativeai #artificialintelligence #reading #books

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Hyperscale is on the longlist for the Financial Times and Standard Chartered Business Book of the Year Award 2026

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FT and Standard Chartered Business Book of the Year Award 2026 — the longlist Hyperscale: Ambition, Power and the Relentless Rise of Data Empires by Paris Marx is a polemical on-the-ground investigation into the rapid spread of data centres and their impact on the environment and the communities where Big Tech is building them. Due to be published in October, the book takes issue with AI developers’ hype and focuses on the people and places affected by their ambitious plans.

404 Media: We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility

"...We placed a tracking device in a shipment of rare books to see which AI company was buying it, and found an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books...."

https://www.404media.co/we-tracked-a-shipment-of-rare-books-it-ended-at-an-amazon-ai-training-facility/

#aipocalypse #books

This group promo ends soon! If you're looking to add to your TBR, check it out. Free Scifi and Fantasy from some great indie authors!

#books #scifi #fantasy @reading @bookstodon

Libraries remain an essential service — even in the digital age and especially so as generative AI makes information online even less reliable.

On #TechWontSaveUs, I spoke to Hannah Cyrus and Alison Macrina to discuss how libraries are helping patrons gain a critical view on tech and AI.

Listen to the full episode: https://techwontsave.us/episode/338_librarians_are_helping_the_public_ditch_ai_w_hannah_cyrus__alison_macrina

#tech #library #libraries #books #ai #artificialintelligence #generativeai #politics

A reminder that in addition to blatant piracy of author and publisher's works, the AI tech bros are absolute barbarians, right up there with the book-burning bastards https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp3rprx2wl4o

I hope the ghost of Ray Bradbury haunts these wankshafts on a nightly basis.

#books #livres #bookstodon #AI #Tech #wankers

Preorder your Dark Fairytale reads now - and get really cool stories to read in September! :D Buy for cheap, share this post, and gain lots of positive Karma as you support a bunch of indie authors. <3

https://books2read.com/u/bw6WJ9

#Books #Preorder #Bookstodon #NoAI #FuckAI #Fantasy #DarkFantasy #GrimDarkFantasy #indieauthor #Book #eBook

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An adverticement picture made by me (hiisikoloart/Mara Reboi) for book named: Once Upon a Fairytale: A collection of original fairytales. Background is well lit bed of moss (a hint which will be clear if you read my story in the book), and topped with flecks of gold. The texts around the eBook cover shown in a phone says, "A Collection of Original Fairytales - PREORDER NOW! Dark Fantasy Stories from Human Authors, NO AI, Only 99 cents." The cover is photoedited (NO AI) by artist: D'arte Oriel, and shows a dark forest, thorns around the edges of the cover, and a thorny, red rose at the middle. Golden filigrees framge the cover among smaller roses, and magic particles. The subtitle "a collection of original fairytales" reads at the top" while the main title reads at the bottom on bold, golden font "Once Upon a Fairytale". Note: By buying this book you support human work - each story was written by a human author, edited by human(s), formatted by human(s), and the cover was also made by a human. All authors and the cover artist (who is not me) are against use of AI in any part of the creative work.

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Adverticement graphic for "Once Upon a Fairytale - a collection of original fairytales". Texts are on moss and paper backgrounds and adorned with golden flakes. Ad texts read in decending order, "collection of original fairytales, Preorder now! only 99 cents, Dark Fantasy Stories from Human Authors, NO AI". Blurb is on the paper next to the cover and it reads, "Once Upon A Fairytale could quickly become your worst nightmare... A prince imprisoned in a tower, a stolen child, a young woman determined to walk her own path, a mysterious hunter stalking the forest, a jealous enchantress, two girls torn apart by fate - these are not the fairytales you grew up with. Venture into a world of original fairytales, where magic causes chaos, villains threaten entire kingdoms and the hero is in for the fight of their life. Will they prevail? Or is their future looking grim?" The cover is of a red, magic rose on a dark forest background, and golden filigree frame around the photomanipulated art. NO AI was used in its creation. Artist: D'arte Oriel

Alexei Panshin (1940-2022) was born on this day. Bibliography: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?44

L, Diane and Leo Dillon, 1969; R, Paul Alexander, 1983
#scifi #sciencefiction #books

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Cover for Rite of Passage. Cover illustrates a woman's head. Her head is filled with other faces, gears, trees, and geometric shapes.

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Cover for Intergalactic Empires anthology. A spaceship -- sort of like aircraft carrier. Other smaller spaceships land on it. There are a multiplicity of domes and observation decks.

Today’s blog post at my patreon - on the Quantum Theory of journalists (and comedians too?)

https://www.patreon.com/RobinInce

#blog #politics #physics #books

The Moth Catcher, Ann Cleeves #Books #Mystery #BlogFiredrakeOrg https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2026/08/The_Moth_Catcher__Ann_Cleeves.html

I'm a combo of Neutral Good, Chaotic Neutral, and Lawful Evil, a little bit of everything 🤔 Nerds are gonna nerd I guess 😂

@reading @bookstodon @books @fantasy
@humor@fedigroups.social @humor@lemmy.world @aiop

#GeekMemes #Geek #Meme
#Science #Books #Theatre #Math #History #Gaming #Computer #Sport #Anime #Humor #Humour #Funny
#Alignment #Chart

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Nerd Alignment Chart LAWFUL GOOD: Science Nerds NEUTRAL GOOD: Book Nerds CHAOTIC GOOD: Theatre/Art/Music Nerds LAWFUL NEUTRAL: Math Nerds TRUE NEUTRAL: History Nerds CHAOTIC NEUTRAL: D&D/Gamer Nerds LAWFUL EVIL: Computer Nerds NEUTRAL EVIL: Sports Nerds CHAOTIC EVIL: Anime Nerds

I work in #infosec and consider myself pretty well educated on what’s happening with #AI.

But I’m about 33% of the way through @emilymbender and Alex Hanna’s book, “The AI Con”, and I’ve really learned a lot more.

If you’re skeptical or curious about AI, this is a must-read. I’m recommending it to everyone I know.

“The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want”, by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna

Edit: Added text in this post with the title and authors. It's also in the image's ALT text. Sorry!

#books #bookstodon #reading #AI #technology #nonfiction

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“The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want”, by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna

AI vendors destroying rare books to feed the chatbot - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC3SwofuMt0

Blog post:
https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/07/23/ai-vendors-are-destroying-rare-books-to-feed-the-chatbot/

by @davidgerard

#AI #GenAI #Anthropic #Books #Capitalism

Radiant Star, Ann Leckie #Books #ScienceFiction #BlogFiredrakeOrg https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2026/08/Radiant_Star__Ann_Leckie.html

My current reading lineup. #reading #books #bookstodon

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Three non-fiction books sit side-by-side on a dark, textured surface. On the left, a white book titled "THE DARKEST TIMELINE: Living in a World with No Future" by Bram E Gieben features simple black line art of a drone next to lily flowers, along with a review quote at the bottom from Darren McGarvey and a purple bookmark peeking out from the top edge. In the middle, a blue cover titled "BULLSHIT JOBS: A THEORY" by David Graeber shows a miniature catapult crafted out of yellow pencils and colorful rubber bands. On the right, a black book titled "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" by Cory Doctorow features a cartoon poop emoji with a censor bar over its mouth filled with symbols.

You can create your own alternative to Amazon Goodreads by self-hosting BookWyrm. It federates with other BookWyrm servers so you can share reviews etc, and BookWyrm accounts can also be followed from Mastodon etc. More info at:

🌱 https://joinbookwyrm.com

You can follow the project account at:

🌱 @bookwyrm

BookWyrm is available through YunoHost at https://apps.yunohost.org/app/bookwyrm and a manual installation guide is in the documentation at https://docs.joinbookwyrm.com

#SelfHosting #Books #Fediverse

Hank Searls (1922-2017) was born on this day. Bibliography: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?1717

L, uncredited, 1962; R, William Teason, 1960
#scifi #sciencefiction #books

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Cover for The Astronaut. An astronaut zooms down towards earth and a bikini clad woman with sun umbrella.

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Cover for The Big X. Man with helmet stands imperiously. Behind him is a jet.

Short Book Reviews: George Alec Effinger’s The Wolves of Memory (1981) and J. J. Connington’s Nordenholt’s Million (1923) https://sciencefictionruminations.com/2026/08/09/short-book-reviews-george-alec-effingers-the-wolves-of-memory-1981-and-j-j-conningtons-nordenholts-million-1923/

#scifi #sciencefiction #books

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Cover for The Wolves of Memory. Man holds woman aloft. There's a small house in the distance. And low-lying clouds... his eyes are closed and mournful.

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Cover for the Dec. 1948 issue that reprinted Connington's Nordenholt's Million. Man holds a hand towards the skull of death. The skull looms over a crushed and burning city. The skeleton's other hand holds a bunch of bodies.

"The Books that saw it coming"

Bookstores and librarians ❤️

#Books #bookstodon

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This is a Books-A-Million display, often curated to feature classic dystopian literature and "banned books". The top shelf showcases George Orwell's "1984" and "Animal Farm" alongside Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World". Middle shelves feature works by Octavia E. Butler and Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale". The bottom shelf includes "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury and "Red Rising" by Pierce Brown.

John Varley (1947-2025) was born on this day. Bibliography: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?59

L, Jim Burns, 1978; R, Tim White, 1981
#scifi #sciencefiction #books

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Cover for Varley's famous collection The Persistence of Vision. Man and woman cavort in a sparky water with spheres around their hands.

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Cover for Wizard. Humanoid figure approaches a bridge seemingly made of wood that goes towards a conglomerate of spheres and tubes in the distance. Alien trees populate the surface of the nearside.

Frank M. Robinson (1926-2014) was born on this day. Bibliography: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?1266

L, Paul Lehr, 1981; R, uncredited, 1977
#scifi #sciencefiction #books

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Cover for Robinson's collection A Life In the Day of... A Paul Lehr-style head with goggles. There's a futuristic city in the background.

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Cover for The power. Man with flowing eyes. City in background.

William Greenleaf (1948-) was born on this day. Bibliography: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?5798

L, James Gurney, 1984; R, James Gurney, 1987
#scifi #sciencefiction #books

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Cover for The Pandora Stone. Man approaches a metal cone with a flowing crystal-type thing on top. A ray emerges from his hand and goes towards the stone.

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Cover for Starjacked! Various spaceships fly around the pat of a large cylindrical space contraption. There are planets in the distance.

Daniel Keyes (1927-2014) was born on this day. Bibliography: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?1576

L, Tibor Csernus, 1976; R, Ed Emshwiller, 1959
#scifi #sciencefiction #books

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Cover for the French edition of Flowers for Algernon. Mouse stands on its hind legs. There's a maze behind it.

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F&SF cover (April 1959) illustrating Keyes' short story version of Flowers for Algernon. There's a boy's head in the upper left, a mouse in the bottom left a book with cheese in the middle, and a syringe in the bottom right.

Lucas Ruiz wrote a book in his native Spanish. Professional translator Ditte Brand translated it into Danish. She interviewed him at LiteratureXchange Aarhus Literary Festival. They happen to be married. This made the conversation about writing & translation even more interesting & entertaining. They live in Denmark. He speaks Danish. They discussed translation & editorial issues along the way but he chose not to read the final translated work as a whole. That is hers.

#Books #LitX #Translation

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Short version: two people on stage. Fuller description: Bad photo of translator Ditte Brand Gadegaard (left) and author Lucas Ruiz (right) in yellow armchairs in front of an orange LiteratureXchange banner. She has her head tilted towards him, listening while he looks out at the audience. He is answering a question about his latest book, Svømmerne fra Urubamba. (The Swimmers From Urubamba.) She is white, Danish, brown-blonde hair, wearing orange. He is white, Spanish, greying hair, wearing glasses, wearing black. They are middle-aged-ish. The wall behind them is covered in a huge black curtain. Several big bulbous white lamps hang down to the right above a small shelf with books and plants. This is an event room at Aarhus Main Library Dokk1 during the International Literary Festival in Aarhus in June. The back of the top of the heads of some audience members are in frame, not because it’s artistic, just because it’s a bad photo but the only one I’ve got from that event.

After their informative, witty and insightful conversation on stage, audience questions were invited. A middle-aged man asked the author: ”In future, would you not use AI language machines to translate your books instead?"

I take heart from the fact that a negative reaction instantly flew through the room. People gasped. One man literally booed. Many groaned and mumbled. One person may or may not have said OhForFucksSake aloud. That person may or may not have been me.

#AI
#Books
#Translation

I know I'm super behind the times, but I finally watched _Good Luck Have Fun dont Die_

Friends, that movie is a HOOT. Highly recommended. Not even remotely what I expected it to be.

In reading the notes, apparently Gore Verbinsky really drew on The Ware series by Rudy Rucker. I've never heard of this, so it's been added to the reading list.

#movies #sf #books #dystopia

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/6665901-the-ware-tetralogy