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DejahEntendu

@DejahEntendu@dice.camp

TTRPG gamer, geek, life-o-phile
Parent of an adult person.
I try to be nice and I can be taught.
Leaper before looker...
I love books that explore how people and societies react to/change with circumstances.
I have no patience for stories that celebrate prejudice.
I fall asleep listening to historical romances and never review them.

10th level office worker with the IT archetype and a specialization in Active Directory. Multi-classed into management.

Storygraph: https://app.thestorygraph.com/profile/dejahentendu

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

DejahEntendu, to books
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#JustFinished 1984, by George Orwell

I had never read this before. And that was a hole in my reading, given I'm in my 6th decade.

1984 is one of those books everyone should read. Yes, it's heavy-handed. No, it's not spectacular writing. Yes, we all need to be aware of giving up too much power to our government. But there are other things too.

Orwell's discussions of the proles clearly speak to not leaving them with no safety net. (Winston's youth,
🧵
#books #bookstodon #classics @bookstodon

DejahEntendu, to books
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Blood in the Machine by Brian Merchant

This has been an absolutely fascinating book to read and is perhaps the most important book I'll read all year. Merchant is spot on with his commentary about the parallels between the first Industrial Revolution and now. We have not learned a thing about protecting our populations and economies from mass unemployment during technological upheaval.

🧵

@bookstodon

DejahEntendu, to history
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Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

I feel like he spent too much time working at being cutesy and not enough at internal consistency. It was an amusing book, however. Taken as a light historical fiction about the run-up to modern life, it's good enough.

One example of the issues with the book follows:
He sets up the straw man of biological essentialism, then knocks it down with social consctructs.

1/
@bookstodon

DejahEntendu, to books
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Revevger by Alistair Reynolds

The world is a strange mix of space-faring and Victorian, but not steampunk. The plot twists were actually pretty surprising and more macabre than I was expecting, even given the name of the book is Revenger. The book was creative, and it was delightful to read YA without a romance involved and to just see this young woman grow into who she needed to be. That woman is quite engaging and powerful.

@bookstodon

DejahEntendu, to books
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Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

This one didn't hold up well. There were many slurs and some very asinine assumptions.

His dystopian utopia bred people into levels of intelligence and (presumably) drive. Then, forcibly infantilized them during their off-hours with drugs and abundant sex. (I'm not going into the whole squick of the sex games for toddlers and calling having sex all the time a way of infantilizing people...)

🧵

@bookstodon

DejahEntendu, to Horror
@DejahEntendu@dice.camp avatar

I think I need to get back to studying up on and again. I'm betting we'll be done with the in a month or so, which will make it my turn to run.

Any hints on running ? I don't actually like the genre, and am running this system by request for a dear friend. I have a co-worker on Montréal, so I'm getting a feel for the weather at least!

DejahEntendu, to scifi
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Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente

"Take me to your lead singer."

What if proving sentience to the other inhabitants of the universe was just like Eurovision?

This is the first goofy scifi I've read that actually comes close to living up to Adams' Hitchhikers without overdoing it the whole way through. Parts are wryly cutting, lambasting those who deserve it, like officious governmental cogs too full of...

1/

@bookstodon

DejahEntendu, to books
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Pushing Ice by Alistair Reynolds

Pretty long, kinda slow, but compelling. A crew of miners are called on to chase an alien spacecraft to the edge of the solar system in order to find out what they can about it before returning home. This is the story of how they survive when things inevitably go wrong. Reynolds gives us a realistic and yet optimistic view of humanity and our foibles.

@bookstodon

DejahEntendu, to Anthropology
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The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow.

This was a great book! Graeber and Wengrow integrate new archeological discoveries with anthropology and turn common belief on its side. In the same way that we used to think that evolution was a progressive march to new and improved species, we also thought that human development was on an upward arc to better things, with capitalism and

🧵

@bookstodon

DejahEntendu, to scifi
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All Systems Red by Martha Wells.

Very clever premise and well-delivered. I loved the balance of android/robotic mind with the self-awareness of the main character's position in the universe. MurderBot never seemed angry but was often mildly disappointed in the actions of those around him. Just the right touch.

Short, interesting, and wry.

@bookstodon

DejahEntendu, to scifi
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Where Peace Is Lost by Valerie Valdes.

Very different from her series starting with Chilling Effect, Where Peace Is Lost is much more serious. It reads as a quest to save a world, a journey or personal forgiveness, romance, and anti-capitalist philosophy. That's a lot to cram into 12 hours. It's all well done though, not seeming patchwork at all. Thus I zoomed through the story in two days.

1/2

@bookstodon

DejahEntendu, to scifi
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#JustFinished APsalm for the Wild Built, by Becky Chambers

A sweet novella about a human looking for their purpose in life and the robot who helps them find it. A little bit of kismet, a little bit of "the path is the destination," and a lot of kindness along the way. The audio book clocks in at 4 hours. It's a small investment and well worth your time.

#SciFi #books #bookstodon @bookstodon

DejahEntendu, to random
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@rivetgeek That's beautiful! But is that scale right? Is Hom really less than a kilometer long?

DejahEntendu, to scifi
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The Humans, by Matt Haig.

The narrator leads us through a look at Earth and posh English culture from the eyes of an alien. Humorous without stepping too far, it leads into a serious story as the narrator grows. By the end, it's poignant and we're left with the warm fuzzies. Truly a lovely arc of a story.

@bookstodon

DejahEntendu, to scifi
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Julia, by Sandra Newman

This is a diificult book for me to review, as I had mixed feelings throughout the book. It was written as an update to 1984 told from the main female character's point of view.

Initially, I thought it was a great reimagining of the story. Newman makes Julia more intelligent than she was cast in 1984, which does make the character more interesting. As the book went on, Julia is so cynical

🧵

@bookstodon

DejahEntendu, to books
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Before the Coffee Gets Cold, by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Similar in format to How High We Go in the Dark (Sequoia Nagamatsu), in that it's a collection of stories tied together with a framework, I don't feel it was executed quite as well. It is a lovely story of romance and hope, but I felt a little too distant from the characters, as if the writing held a layer of remove for me. I did enjoy it. I just preferred the other.

@bookstodon

DejahEntendu, to 13thFloor
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Before the Devil Breaks You by Libba Bray

A ghost story/mystery set in the 1920's in NYC. As the third in the series, it wraps up some storylines while bringing others to the forefront. It ranges across the city and involves a cavalcade of characters living their lives with psychic abilities. They save the city from the ghost invasion, but there is sadness and loss along the way.

1/3

@bookstodon

DejahEntendu, to books
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Axiom's End by Lindsay Ellis

First contact! Conspiracies, government agents, conspiracy theories, warring alien factions - this book has them all in spades. And yet, the story almost seems languid for much of it. This was not a drawback for me. I liked the slow burn for much of the novel, with the reveals coming slowly.

1/2

@bookstodon

DejahEntendu, to books
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Today, I started reading How to Hide an Empire by Daniel Immerwahr. I will admit that I'm a bit raw because my sister is in the hospital, but JFC, this is brutal!

Between what we weren't told as kids and details on things that we were sort of told, it's incredibly informative and interesting, but I can't stop crying about things in it.

Like, I never knew the Philippines had been an American territory.

#books #bookstodon #nonfic #USHistory @bookstodon

DejahEntendu, to scifi
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Moon of the Turning Leaves by Waubgeshig Rice.

Rice weaves a gorgeous follow-up to Moon of the Crusted Snow. About 12 years have passed since the power went out, and the Anishinaabe in what was the northern Ontario province are in need of a new home as local resources are dwindling. Moon of the Turning Leaves follows a group south and east as they search for a better place, preferably in their ancestral lands.

1/2

@bookstodon

DejahEntendu, to books
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How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu.

This is a gorgeous book. A collection of short stories tied together into a history of plague among humans interconnected through time. Non-linear, lyric, emotional. I cried and I soared with the stories.

In the very last story, Nagamatsu succumbs to some Marty Stu-ish writing, which I found very disappointing. But that was my only quibble. I found it well worth my time.

@bookstodon

DejahEntendu, to history
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How to Hide an Empire by Daniel Immerwahr

It is an incisive economic analysis of empire, focus on the U.S., but touching on other modern empires. Starts around the mid-1800s and goes through the fall of that type of empire building and the reasons behind that as well. Late in the book, he gets into the current military-based empire we run. The author used a nice mix of personal stories and facts in accessible prose.

1/
@bookstodon

DejahEntendu, to books
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Truth of the Divine by Lindsay Ellis

It was an interesting book, and a decent sequel. I never felt the main human romance was really believable or rooted in anything other than plot though. The interactions between the main female character and her alien companion were much deeper.

The politics were rather heavy handed, but the societal impacts were, sadly, quite well done. Humans would be a shit show of xenophobia and power...

1/2

@bookstodon

DejahEntendu, to random
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Well, I found a gorgeous house here with enough room AND sun rooms for the cats (and us)! We're closing in 10ish days. I'm very excited about the house and having all this crap behind me. I'm also kind of surprised that this whole thing has basically been FTL as far as moving goes.

My house in Texas went on the market March 15 and is sold already. I'm closing on the new house April 15.

DejahEntendu, to books
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Eversion by Alastair Reynolds.

This is a lovely, slow book. Reynolds takes us through the time of a life lived on repeat, through the unraveling of the mystery, and to the hope of happy endings. Quite masterfully done.

@bookstodon

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