Now is your best chance to find my books, Troll Song and Forgotten Legends, available for 50% off at Smashwords as part of their 2023 End of Year Sale! Find my book and many more at https://www.smashwords.com/shelves/promos/
The Best of All Possible Worlds: Mathematics and Destiny
Optimists believe this is the best of all possible worlds. And pessimists fear that might really be the case. But what is the best of all possible worlds? How do we define it? Is it the world that operates the most efficiently? Or the one in which most people are comfortable and content?
Chaotic Harmony: A Dialog About Physics, Complexity and Life
This fascinating book written by Ali Sanayei and Otto E. Rössler is not a classic scientific publication, but a vivid dialogue on science, philosophy and the interdisciplinary intersections of science and technology with biographic elements.
12/19/23 — Open 6-9p. Mask recommended. No open containers, please.
Table-top role-playing games, and entertaining books of knowledge, secrets, & pop-ups can entertain kids of many ages for the holidays, but... be cautious with the fancier books, to keep them in good order.
Over the past five months I've read a lot of stories, and three novels, by Adam-Troy Castro, most involving Andrea Cort. They were not written in order of the chronology of her life. I've come to the end of the available stories, and might one day rearrange the page, but that will wait for now. The link will take you to the top of the page, the first published. Other related links at the bottom of the page.
"Eurowhiteness: Culture, Empire and Race in the European Project" helps us understand why the emergence of the EU, far from putting an end to nationalism, has led to a new form of exclusivist European nationalism. I review Hans Kundnani's latest book (published by Hurst and Co.). @bookstodonhttps://www.juancole.com/2023/12/whiteness-european-perspective.html
After fleeing inside an inconspicuous tunnel, Luca and Cody fall from the sky and find themselves in a world unlike anything they’ve seen before. Flying whales, monstrous cats, and a certain green rabbit to help our heroes face danger.
Chapter 3 of Moonlight Blade is live. Chapter 4 debuts on December 29th, 2023.
I have so many more unread books on our shelves than I'll ever read. Each of those books is somewhere on my TBR
list. I'm thinking that I might complement my #TBR list with a #NTBR list. There are so many (and more and more)
books, and I have so little (and less and less) time in front of me when I might read them. Obviously, winnowing
the collection would help to declutter our small space, but might it also declutter my mind? https://johnrakestraw.com/post/from-the-tbr-pile-to-the-ntbr-pile/. @bookstodon#reading#books
You said in your article "one has to be very careful when one considers getting rid of books that one urgently needs to read... I have to admit that there’s something freeing about it."
I'm currently reading Walking on Water by Anthony De Mello. He mentions detachment often in regard to freedom, including spiritual freedom. He gives this exercise: Take these books (hard to separate from) and say to them "How precious you are and loved, but you are not my life. I have a life to live and a destiny to fulfill different from you." That seems to be a way to get rid of something with care.
Sheila Barker's Artemisia Gentileschi (2022) (part of a new series on #renaissance#women#artists) is a well presented synthesis of current #arthistory scholarship, without getting bogged down in the detail of disagreements about attribution(s). While there are more comprehensive books on Gentileschii, as a nuanced introduction to a major artist's career & achievement (leavened with biographical detail) this will be hard to beat.
Nostalgia tastes like toffee. Like butterscotch. Like caramel. And that’s the danger of it. It’s confection. It’s empty calories. All sugar and no substance. The longing for something that isn’t real.
For all the Italian-speaker users that somehow join @bookstodon i tried to create an Italian localization for it at @bookstodon_italia
If interested follow and share also on this when you think you need to share in Italian 😊
“Farewell Miss Julie Logan: A Wintry Tale”, by J.M. Barrie
Written in diary form & telling of an uncanny romance in a remote winter glen, “Farewell Miss Julie Logan” evokes J.M. Barrie’s fascination with longing, death & loss in one of the most unnerving & tenacious examples of #Gothic fiction ever to come from #Scotland
Listen to the story online, courtesy of Romancing the Gothic: