cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2191647

Anyone else keep up with BookTok or BookTube?

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4150047

Just helping someone out.

Looking for recommendations for books about off grid living, and ideally, earthship biotecture.

The book starts out with a girl with magic eye on a flying ship to catch magic sand only she can see. She has no memory of how she grew up. At the start of the journey a man destroys the ship, but safes her. During the book(s) it is reveled that the man and she herself are basically here to destroy humanity because humanity threatens magic. Instead she decides to destroy all magic herself at the end of the last book.

Edit:

Humanity retreated to safe parts of the world where magic isn't as strong. I think these parts are mostly cities and used completely by humans. Because the magic found in the wild and the land itself is deadly to humans, they can only traverse it using flying ships. Further they use these ships to gather magic gathered in storms to power their machinery. There is also a part where she travels with the demon boy through the wilderness which is super magical and beautiful.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2129517

I really, really suggest this audio-book version of A Song of Ice and Fire over Roy Dotrice's official version (which sucks, btw).

Listen to this version.

Not to the official version.

Dewit, if you like A Song of Ice and Fire.

Hi everyone, I've always had a special interest in linguistics and have informally studied a couple of different languages from all around the world. The different writing systems such as radicals in Chinese, Kurdish scripts and reading from right to left, to Inuit glyphs are all fascinating in themselves.

The IPA has been something fascinating, but I've yet to find a good resource that I could make sense of and hold my attention long enough to internalize the concepts.

I'm looking for books and authors that have a unique background. For example, seeing Chomsky's name in an automata formal language theory book was weird to think... But all the NLP stuff had foundation in older linguistic theory and ways people thought about the human brain, right?

Language and Information by Zellig Harris is an interesting read. John Sowa is another author I'd recommend for the whole way of ontology and computer systems. The particular book by him that I'm thinking is Conceptual Structures, I believe...? Would love to hear your thoughts, especially with all the AI hardware being released.

Been on a theology kick for the past year and looking to read more into the philosophy because that’s the interesting part for me. I would say I’m not a beginner but not an intermediate. Would love some recommendations

I am looking for some neat book reading apps. Bonus points if it lets me know if a sequel is released.

How is the plot ? I can't stand plot holes . Also in what order should i read ? I have watched season 1 and 2 of the series and thought it was average and won't be bothering with season 3 as cavil is sacked after this anyway . Also i like the harry potter series as they have fleshed out characters and good plot with very minimal holes (why didn't you break the fucking wand harry your going to be an auror).

Also any good english translation which will cover the whole book ?

(Here You can listen to audio version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCdlph835qc )

Today I’m going to tell you about a necromancer… Not just any necromancer, but the Necromancer… The one who was the first to make a pact with Death, who was the first to learn its dark secrets, who coined the creed of the ancient brotherhood of graveyard sorcerers….

But let’s start at the beginning. Centuries ago… No, more than centuries, thousands of years ago. It’s hard to say how long ago, because there are no chronicles so old as to date back to that time… In some country in the East; the name of that land, the name of the people who inhabited it, the language that people spoke, the names of the cities they inhabited. All this is lost in the darkness of oblivion….So, as I say, thousands of years ago, in some country in the East, there lived a man. An ordinary craftsman. He made pots out of clay. He couldn’t be called rich, but he certainly wasn’t poor. Well, he earned enough to provide a decent living for himself, his wife and two sons. And he could even afford small pleasures from time to time, such as a jug of wine for dinner or a small trinket for his beloved….

But, although his wife was beautiful and diligent, and his sons were healthy and diligent too, this man was deeply unhappy. What was the reason for this?… His profession.

First of all, when a man sits at the potter’s wheel performing monotonous and familiar motions by heart, he often does so in passing, while his mind is sunk in contemplation. Secondly, the potter’s life and work provided him with plenty of material for musings that were not very cheerful.

But before I go any further, you should know something : the people among whom the man lived have always been afraid of wraiths( the cursed corpses that walk the earth to harass the living). Ironically, the people feared the undead at a time when there was still no necromancer who could summon them from beyond the grave…. Therefore, they did not bury the corpse as we do today. Each body went to a pyre made of dry wood, which the priests set on fire. The pyre burned until all that was left of the deceased was ash, at which time the assembled family praised the merits of the deceased and raised a lament. The conflagration ritual was meant to ensure that the dead would not take revenge on the living, and the annihilation of the body was meant to prevent them from doing so, should the rite itself not be enough. When the fire was extinguished, the priests would collect the ashes and pour them into a clay urn, which was then buried in the ground.

We should remember that the future Necromancer was engaged in the processing of clay. But, as you already know, his creations were not only used to store wine, beer, water or milk… They were also a resting place for the dead members of his community. So, the Necromancer was not only a simple potter, but also a bit of a mortician. Every time someone died, the family of the unfortunate person would come to the potter’s workshop to order a new vessel in which the ashes would be placed. Therefore, the craftsman was aware of every death occurring in the area.

(Text is too long for characters limit, the rest You can read here: https://adeptusrpg.wordpress.com/2022/12/14/tale-of-the-necromancer/ )

Are people using Bookwyrm? Who are some people to follow on Bookwyrm?

Hello,

I’ve been trying to keep my anxiety and negativity in check and have been looking for short novels that lean toward positive feelings. Something like “Star Trek The Next Generation”: inspiring, encouraging; even though there are difficulties we learn, adapt and make mistakes. But at the end we’ll make it and we’ll get out of it better than we got into it. 😅

Possibly sci-fi or scientific, or adventure (eg the Hornblower saga)

(Sorry couldn’t find a better way to describe it 😅)

Thank you for any suggestion!

ETA: I have read and downloaded many of your recommendations and have had lots of fun reading them! You are such a welcoming enthusiastic bunch. Thanks a lot! Still looking for more suggestions in case someone wants to add to the ever growing list. So far this year I have read twenty seven books.

Looking for some good mystery novels/short story compilation, etc. Preferably no sci fi or futuristic stuff, no Stephen King. TIA.

FWIW just finished reading "We have to talk about Kevin" by Lionel Shriver. It was OK.

I really like the lore behind the vaults in the Fallout games. The only book I know that's somewhat similar is Wool, are there any others?

Hello, everyone! More often than I wish to, I act as a leader for groups of people. I act as the de-facto manager organising a group of friends, uni projects etc. due to the usual lack of innecitive on the side of other members. Not really into this role, to be honest, but since this is happening often enough, I might as well get better at it.

Bonus points for the book, if:

• It was written by a regular manager. As I can see, a lot of books on this topic were written by CEOs, top-managers, rich owners etc. and the main component for their success was not the abilities, but the giant budget or luck.
• It avoids the survivorship bias and reflects on the negative experience.
• Has concrete examples of the author implementing their advice.
• Is fairly short.

I’ve basically been ordered to pick up any fiction book and read, after a friend discovered I’ve not read anything but non-fiction for a decade.

The ones I’ve enjoyed in the past have been short, fantastical or sci-fi (think Aldous Huxley, Ian McEwan), but crucially with amazing first person descriptive prose - the kind where you’re immersed in the writing so much you’re almost there with the character.

I liked sci-fi as the world’s constraints weren’t always predictable. Hope that makes sense.

Any recommendations?

Edit: I’m going to up the ante and, as a way of motivating myself to get off my arse and actually read a proper story, promise to choose a book from the top comment, after, let’s say arbitrarily, Friday 2200 GMT.

Edit deux: Wow ok I don’t think I’ve ever had this many responses to anything I’ve posted before. You’ve given me what looks like a whole year of interesting suggestions, and importantly, good commentary around them. I’m honouring my promise to buy the top thing in just under 4 hours.

Everything takes place over a few hours, or entirely set during the immediate aftermath of an automobile crash, for example?

I'd like to avoid "and it was all a dream", time travel, or similar plot devices if possible.

I'm curious what a novel of any length purposely confined to a strict time window in-story reads like.

Maybe I should be reading more plays.

Thanks.

I have compiled various works on smell, fragrance, and perfumery for anyone seeking more in-depth information on the matter. The following are links to titles themselves or podcast episodes from the New Books Network wherein a host interviews the author of a new book whose topic relates to fragrance or scent.

Books

Internet Archive

This search pulls up works freely available on the Internet Archive with the subject "Perfume". To read many of the listed books, you need to have an account on the Internet Archive to check them out from the digital library. It is free to register! I would highly recommend making an account since it'll allow you access to so much free multimedia.

• Perfume: Joy, Obsession, Scandal, Sin: A Cultural History of Fragrance from 1750 to the Present by Richard Howard Stamelman
• The Artifice of Beauty: A History and Practical Guide to Perfumes and Cosmetics by Sally Pointer
• The Scent Trail: How One Woman's Quest for the Perfect Perfume Took Her Around the World by Celia Lyttelton

Other Sources

• The Perfume Lover: A Personal History of Scent by Denyse Beaulieu
• Fragrance and Wellbeing: Plant Aromatics and Their Influence on the Psyche by Jennifer Peace Rhind
• The Case Against Fragrance by Kate Grenville
• Scent: A Natural History of Fragrance by Elise Vernon Pearlstine
• Sacred Luxuries: Fragrance, Aromatherapy, and Cosmetics in Ancient Egypt by Lise Manniche
• Perfumery: The Psychology and Biology of Fragrance by D. M. Stoddart, Steve Van Toller, George H. Dodd
• An Ethnography of Fragrance: The Perfumery Arts of ʿAdan/Laḥj by Dinah Jung

Academic Works

• Fundamentals of Fragrance Chemistry by Charles S. Sell
  • Great overview of fragrance as an industry
• Perspectives in Flavor and Fragrance Research by Philip Kraft and Karl A. D. Swift
  • Some neat-sounding chapters include
    • "New Woody and Ambery Notes from Cedarwood and Turpentine Oil"
    • "Pyrazines and Pyridines from Black Pepper Oil (Piper nigrum L.) and Haitian Vetiver Oil"
    • "New Alicyclic Musks: The Fourth Generation of Musk Odorants"
• Common Fragrance And Flavor Materials: Preparation, Properties And Uses by Johannes Panten and Horst Surburg
  • This work speaks on sourcing and processing of various compounds used in fragrance
• Science and Technology of Aroma, Flavor, and Fragrance in Rice by Srivastav, Prem Prakash, and Deepak Kumar Verma
  • For anyone who enjoys a good rice note. Here's a quote from the preface:

Aroma is one of the diagnostic aspects of rice quality that can determine acceptance or rejection of rice before it is tested. It is also considered as an important property of rice that indicates its preferable high quality and price in the market. An assessment of all known data reveals that more than 450 chemical compounds have been documented in various aromatic and non-aromatic rice cultivars. The primary goals were to identify the compounds responsible for the characteristics and rice aroma. Many attempts were made to search for key compounds for rice aroma, but no single compound or group of compounds could be reported that are fully responsible for rice aroma.

Multimedia Materials

Here are some results from the George Mason University Open Educational Resource Metafinder on perfume and fragrance, which will bring up multimedia on the searched topic, including photos of antique bottles, vintage ads, articles, and more. The metafinder searches from various archives, including the Digital Public Library of America, the Library of Congress (of the U.S.), and JSTOR, for materials mentioning the search term(s) in their metadata (e.g., titles, content, or tags).

Podcast (on Books)

I have found that the New Books Network podcast has a great range of episodes related to sense of smell, fragrance, spices, and other scented items, going beyond the human species' experiences of this sense. As far as the format, the episode host simply interviews the author of a new book on its subject matter.

Below are the episodes I found just by searching the network's site for "fragrance" and "perfume". The types of books below range from monographs to biographies to literature. The pages linked below include a description of the book's subject, information on the author and host, and an embedded audio player with the episode so you can listen from the web page.

Science

• The Secret Perfume of Birds: Uncovering the Science of Avian Scent by Danielle J. Whittaker, hosted by Galina Limorenko
• Smellosophy: What the Nose Tells the Mind by Ann-Sophie Barwich, hosted by Joseph Fridman
• Sensory Experiments: Psychophysics, Race, and the Aesthetics of Feeling by Erica Fretwell, hosted by Chad Valasek

Biographies (of celebrities who had fragrance lines)

• Elsa Schiaparelli: A Biography by Meryle Secrest, hosted by Oline Eaton
• On Elizabeth Taylor: An Opinionated Guide by Matthew Kennedy, hosted by Daniel Moran

History

• The Scent of Empire: Chanel No. 5 and Red Moscow by Karl Schlögel, hosted by Jana Byars
• Vanilla: A Global History by Rosa Abreu-Runkel, hosted by Amir Sayadabdi
• Scent: A Natural History of Fragrance by Elise Vernon Pearlstine, hosted by Miranda Melcher
• Scents of China: A Modern History of Smell by Xuelei Huang, hosted by Miranda Melcher
• The Scent of Ancient Magic by Britta K. Ager, hosted by Miranda Melcher
• Victims of Fashion: Animal Commodities in Victorian Britain by Helen Louise Cowie, hosted by Miranda Melcher
• Histories of Health and Materiality in the Indian Ocean World: Medicine, Material Culture and Trade, 1600-2000 by Anne Gerritsen and Burton Cleetus, hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
• Fragrant Frontier: Global Spice Entanglements from the Sino-Vietnamese Uplands by Annuska Derks, Jean-François Rousseau, and Sarah Turner, hosted by Julia Heinle

Literature

• Bombay Hangovers by Rochelle Potkar, hosted by Sharonee Dasgupta
• Wissen um Stimmung: Diskurs und Poetik in Robert Musils Die Verwirrungen des Zoglings Torless und Vereinigungen by Sergej Rickenbacher, hosted by Julia Stetter

Disclaimer: there is no English translation of this book

The setting is 14th century Syria witnessing a stand-off between the usurping Mameluke Sultanate, and the Mongol Ilkhan whose forefathers invaded from the East, and who, having converted to Islam, is seeking to govern the holy sites of Mecca and Medina.

However, amid the grusomeness of the scenes delicately described and narrated, there is an overarching theme which the author fixated on: that is History.

The author does not accept history at face value. There are political ramifications at play that go largely unnoticed by positivist scholarship in the field. For the production of history is neither an objective nor symmetrical process: not everyone has the privilege of writing history, not even one's own history for that matter. The historian's discretionary power in selectively choosing what to convey and what to silence from the past precludes him from being a disinterested observer. History does not merely transmit events and happenings, but rather imposes lessons, ideologies, philosophies and entire worldviews. More precisely, the production of history translates, depending on the context, into the reproduction of the status quo.

The Mongol invasion is exemplary of this particularity of History. This event went down in history as the most horrific massacre in the premodern age; indeed, some historians go as far as to equate it with the Holocaust. This evaluation has been widely accepted and deemed uncontroversial by the scholarship of the last few decades, both in the East and the West.

However, since the twenty-first century, there have been efforts by some scholars to dissect those ramifications of history mentioned earlier within the widely-accepted narrative of “Mongol genocide.” Anja Pistor-Hatam for instance argues that the collective memory of the societies which experienced the invasion has to a certain extent exaggerated the degree of violence commited by the Mongols. What the premodern historians have transmitted secondhand in their books do not conform to archaeological evidence. Though if the extent of the destruction brought by the Mongols is not as significant as it was thought to be, “the trauma was very real” (Lane, 2008). The idea of foreign invasion was more fatal than the act itself, sending the affacted civilisations into existential crisis. The paranoia of the Foreign, the Other, is very well evinced by Al-Zahabi when the novel's characters who pondered on many occasions about the nature of the Monhol soldiers, concluding every time that they were not humans but mythical animals.

While endless literature is dedicated to the Mongol invasion itself, its aftermath and the cultural legacy of the Mongols in Iran and Iraq is rarely acknowledged. The Ilkhanids in fact contributed a lot to the enrichment of art and architecture, one of the perks of the cosmopolitan and diverse constituencies of the Mongol courts. Among the rulers' servants and elite were not only Muslims, but also Christians, Zoroastrians and Buddhists; for the Mongol rulers were more concerned about one's loyalty to the empire rather than religious or ethnic affiliation. Yet, especially in the Muslim world, this perspective remains ignored.

Reviving the bygone past, Al-Zahaby vividly shows the Ilkhan's fear of history, or more accurately his concern over the image that will be left of him by the chroniclers to the later generations:

History is an invincible enemy, for when life creeps into it one would be buried in the ground, stripped of awe and undesired.

The Mameluke Sultan knew of the Ilkhan's weakness and thus surrounded himself with historians and chroniclers, his strongest soldiers against the imminent invasion. He gasps and declares:

O God, may History be my friend and not my enemy.

Bibliography / Further Reading

Al-Zahaby, Khairy. “The Trap of Names” (2009).

Lane, George. “The Mongols in Iran” (2008).

Pistor-Hatam, Anja. “History and its meaning in the Islamic Republic of Iran: The case of the Mongol invasion(s) and rule” (2012).

Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. “Silencing the Past:Power nd the Production of History” (1995).

Trying to find a book - remember the story vaguely, read it maybe 20-30 years ago. People are living/working on assigned weekdays and sleep in others, a couple are interested to move to the same day and somebody arranges it to fail in some way.

The attached image is the number of books I have read this year with their page and audio length stats.

If you read audiobooks, ebooks, or library books, the satisfaction of owning tall stack of books that you have read will not be possible for you.

To help you with that, I wanted you know that I pulled a random foot of book shelf and added up the pages. There are 4336 pages in my random foot of paperbacks with one hard cover.

Now you could put together a spreadsheet that tells you how many audio weeks and shelf feet of books you have read without owning the physical books.

If there is interest in this, I could release a template.

14509 books in 5 bullet points. Browse summaries of thousands of books and add new items to your reading list.

I came across this website that focuses on highlighting books that are out if print but still worthy of reading, if you can find them. The most recent post (Feb. 29 2024) talks about the various reasons books become neglected.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/7150449

Fanfiction Community Rocked By Etsy Sellers Turning Their Work Into Bound Books

Etsy sellers are turning free fanfiction into printed and bound physical books, and listing them for sale on online marketplaces for more than $100 per book. It’s a problem that’s rattling the authors of those fanfics, as well as their fans and readers.

Several sellers, easily found on Etsy and very popular, each with hundreds of five-star reviews, are selling copies of fanfiction taken from sites like Archive of Our Own (Ao3) and reselling them as bound books. The average price of these bound copies is around $149. Some sellers claim that they’re simply covering the cost of materials, while others just sell the books, usually with the fanfiction writers’ Ao3 username on the cover.