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CommonMugwort

@[email protected]

Literary translator and under-employed actor - at the crossroads, looking for ways to survive the coming collapse of industrial civilisation
Generation X curmudgeon - occasionally earnest, frequently grumpy - allergic to cutesy.
(@amaenad from Twitter only older and less irate)

StoryGraph: https://app.thestorygraph.com/profile/artemisia_vulgaris

I don’t content warn food, nor anything else you might see on any newsstand.

Most posts auto-delete in 2 months.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

evanpeterjones, to bookstodon
@evanpeterjones@mstdn.social avatar

Dan Brown only sucks if you're more pretentious about his books than his books are, lol. They're just corny and fun little adventures and I'm convinced it's just jealous authors who drive the Dan Brown hate.

Not every book has to drive you into an existential crisis to be enjoyable.

@bookstodon

CommonMugwort,
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@evanpeterjones @bookstodon Nah. I read and enjoy lot of potboilers, in all kinds of genres and he’s a poor craftsman. The characters are paper cut-outs, the plots are grandiose absurdities, the places are clichés, and the whole edifice of each is implausible. He does know how to create suspense - the pacing is all.

CommonMugwort,
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@negative12dollarbill @bookstodon @evanpeterjones A delightful post-morterm of the dead paragraph with which his most famous book begins. Thanks!

CommonMugwort, to bookstodon
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@bookstodon No, historical romance author, your heroine’s skirt hem did not skim over the bluebells, nor did lilac petals fall onto her bright unbound hair.

What kind of details bring your suspension of disbelief plummeting to the ground, fellow readers? For me, it’s often mistakes about plants, or food.

CommonMugwort,
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@bookstodon So, for example, the book in which Julius Caesar was served a meal including stuffed peppers was abandoned, and the one where shipwrecked Odysseus munched olives off the tree, went, book-lover that I am, straight into the recycling box.

CommonMugwort,
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@eyrea @bookstodon there’s also the laundry question - either nothing is ever cleaned, or our heroine wears a different outfit every day, possessing a dozen or more while living in genteel poverty

CommonMugwort,
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@bookstodon @mutinyc It depends on the period. There’s this https://archive.org/details/cbk?tab=collection, but for earlier, or outside the English-speaking world you’d have to work a bit harder, searching for articles on material culture or looking at texts actually from the period for clues. The main thing, I think, is to check your assumptions. Seasonality before refrigeration never seems to occur to some, or storage. I’ve never seen it done better than by Nicola Griffith in Hild.

CommonMugwort, to bookstodon
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@bookstodon I don’t read a lot of horror, almost none. But Beasts of Burden never disappoints #comics

CommonMugwort, to bookstodon
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@weebdeluxe @bookstodon I couldn’t tell you. I read every day. As my main leisure activity. I read for myself, and I listen yo audiobooks when walking. I just don’t notice how many pages. Hours? At least two, I guess?

szilviavirag, to bookstodon
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What's the best novel you've read so far this year? I'd love some recommendations. Thank you.
@bookstodon

CommonMugwort,
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@szilviavirag @bookstodon
The best novel I read this year was Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver, but it messed me up, so I issue my recommendation with caution.

didgebaba, to random
@didgebaba@c.im avatar

"Female 'Samurai'

While 'samurai' is a strictly masculine term, the Japanese bushi class (the social class samurai came from) did feature women who received similar training in martial arts and strategy. These women were called “Onna-Bugeisha,” and they were known to participate in combat along with their male counterparts. Their weapon of choice was usually the naginata, a spear with a curved, sword-like blade that was versatile, yet relatively light.

Since historical texts offer relatively few accounts of these female warriors (the traditional role of a Japanese noblewoman was more of a homemaker), we used to assume they were just a tiny minority. However, recent research indicates that Japanese women participated in battles quite a lot more often than history books admit. When remains from the site of the Battle of Senbon Matsubaru in 1580 were DNA-tested, 35 out of 105 bodies were female. Research on other sites has yielded similar results."

CommonMugwort,
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@Benfell @hazelnot @didgebaba @gorfram We are nowhere near equality yet. Maybe if more men tried to be as low-key, community-minded, responsible about reproductive labour, and nonviolent as women, we might achieve it sooner and in less destructive ways.
For example, a member of the dominant class might consider keeping his opinion of how the subordinated class works towards equality to himself.

ChrisMayLA6, to bookstodon
@ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us avatar

As an avid reader I find research suggesting over 50% of 8-18yr olds do not 'enjoy reading' in their spare time particularly depressing!

Part of this is a Q. of them having a quiet space to read, but in part must also be related to sucking up their time & also (possibly) to the way that reading is framed as instrumental (not enjoyable) for ?

As someone who has benefitted immeasurably from , I so hope this can be reversed

@bookstodon
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/sep/04/half-of-uk-children-do-not-read-in-spare-time

CommonMugwort,
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@ChrisMayLA6 @bookstodon Judging by my son and his friends, they play games and watch videos. Social media takes up relatively little time, and that is mostly chats with friends.

CommonMugwort, to bookstodon
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@bookstodon Somebody here reminded me of them and I remembered I liked one or two back in the last century, so I guess I’m reading the whole Liaden universe series now

skaeth, to bookstodon
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@bookstodon I need #BookRecommendations please! I’m looking for low #fantasy recommendations. Romance can be there but I want plenty of adventure & banter to go along with it. Nothing epic- magic should take a back seat and it’d be amazing if the main character did not have magic at all. Best if MC is not royal/deity/etc.

The closest thing I’ve read to this is Intisar Khanani’s The Dauntless Path series (which is amazing and I highly recommend). Anything else like it?

#Bookstodon #FantasyBooks

CommonMugwort,
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@bookstodon @Da_Gut @skaeth Piping up with love for The Steerswoman books, a perennial favourite - there’s a link to a review of the first one pinned to my profile and to say don’t be put off by the word “wizard” that appears in them ; )

CommonMugwort,
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@skaeth @Da_Gut @bookstodon More theology than magic, I feel. The whole 5 gods universe, of which the Penric stories are the…lightest, I guess? They all feel like they’re grappling with death and what it would feel like to have gods who were palpably involved in the question of the afterlife

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CommonMugwort,
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@CuriousMagpie @weebdeluxe @bookstodon I found it underwhelming myself. I wonder if all the fuss was by people who have never read a court intrigue jostling for the throne type book before, because it just seemed a bit thin, really.

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CommonMugwort,
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@bananasmug @bookstodon

Currently reading (and loving) Point of Hopes by Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett.

I always take the opportunity to recommend The Steerswoman books, by Rosemary Kirstein.

Karen Lord’s The Best of All Possible Worlds is great, and I’ve been meaning to read more of her Science Fiction.

Vonda McIntyre’s space opera Starfarers will blow you away with how she was writing love and sexuality back 30+ years ago.

For horror, try Tananarive Due

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CommonMugwort,
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@seanbala @bookstodon @xarvh thinks about the events of The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet and A Close And Common Orbit quite a lot happens in some of her books

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CommonMugwort, (edited )
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@bookstodon By “fictional” songs, I mean songs that exist in the universe of the novel, and not outside it (unless set to music as a fan or adaptation practice), like The Road Goes Ever On” in The Hobbit

CommonMugwort,
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@bookstodon @negative12dollarbill @Kay I don’t see how a song about a real shipwreck by a real singer qualifies - am I missing something?

CommonMugwort,
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@bookstodon @Studio_Gal It’s not just the usual “gratia plena..” etc?

CommonMugwort,
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@afewbugs @bookstodon It’s true, I am terribly sophisticated 😏 https://social.coop/@CommonMugwort/110904361223513074

NickEast, to bookstadon
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I'm usually chaotic neutral in alignment charts, but this time I'm chaotic evil all the way 😈

@bookstodon @reading @bookbubble @bookstadon @books

#Book #Books
#AlignmentChart #ChaoticEvil #Bookmark
#Bookworm #Bookwyrm #Bookstodon #BookLove #BoostingIsSharing

CommonMugwort,
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@reading @NickEast @bookstadon @bookstodon @books @bookbubble
Chaotic good, neutral evil, chaotic evil.

Consistency is no hobgoblin of mine

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CommonMugwort,
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@lunalein @bookstodon I can’t stand most fantasy aimed at the generation below mine, the people in their 30s and 20s. Ditto historical novels.
All the protagonists have the opinions of young US very online people, all the antagonists are some form of oppressor. There’s no texture to world or characters.
And it’s always hung on a very thin love story where the young woman just needs to gain self-confidence and accept she is lovable.

CommonMugwort,
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@andreaslindholm @lunalein @bookstodon I know those well! They always had Soviets in Space, or some clear analogy thereof.

I suspect the reason you’ve not come across the books I’m talking about is they are heavily marketed at women.

CommonMugwort,
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@lunalein @andreaslindholm @bookstodon

And the whole point of science fiction, surely, is to try to think beyond that. While the era and culture of origin always show (and in U.S. books, where they’re easy for me to discern, often the politics too), there are science fiction books that make a heroic effort to imagine beyond their origins.

More of that, please!

CommonMugwort,
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@stephenwhq @bookstodon

I didn’t say it was universally true, but it’s mostly true of a largesection of the market, aimed at young women.

I also didn’t say the answer was to write as people did 80+ years ago, thoughI think the books that have survived in print that long might have more to them than the flavour of the time, and that there was less cultural homogeneity before the mass media consolidation of the 21st Century.

And I admit to liking Gen X writers best.

CommonMugwort,
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@bookstodon @andreaslindholm @lunalein I still find the Vernor Vinge books now marketed as Zones Of Thought mind-blowing. They are not a series and don’t have to be read in order, but A Fire Upon the Deep is the first. Octavia Butler, Ursula LeGuin, and CJ Cherryh, in their different ways, all really tried hard to think past their own cultures.

(I’ve just told someone else I like my generation’s writers best, but these are all from the one above me)

CommonMugwort,
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@bookstodon @sentient_water Having recently re-read Earthsea, which I loved as a child for the islands and the magic, I’ve decided the true subject of the series is death.
Have you read her Annals of the Western Shore? I only discovered them recently and love them. The subject there, I think, is liberty.

courts, to bookstodon
@courts@infosec.exchange avatar

I'm reading mostly and . Next up will be sci-fi. What are your must-read hard sci-fi books? I don't really like space operas.

I have recently read Butler's Parable books, Suarez's Delta-V, and before that the Expanse series and Stephenson's Seveneves, from the top of my head.

Something like that.

Edit: Since it gets recommended a lot (and rightfully so!): I already read the Three-Body trilogy. :)

Edit2: I created a Bookwyrm list with all the recommendations I added and those I would recommend myself that were mentioned here:

https://bookwyrm.social/list/1799/s/bookstodon-72023-hard-sci-fi-recommendations

@bookstodon

CommonMugwort,
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@courts @bookstodon The Starfarers series, by Vonda N McIntyre, and the Chanur novels, by C.J. Cherryh

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