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I’m reading Tash Hearts Tolstoy by Kathryn Ornsbee. The main character is heteromantic asexual and there are minor characters who aren’t straight. I’m about a third of the way done and it’s very enjoyable.

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Confessions of a D-List Supervillain

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My New Life as a Villainess: All Roads Lead to Doom vol 2

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Purple Red Panda

Magic as a Political Crime by Francis Young. It's an historical analysis of magical treason in England from the middle age through to the early modern period. Very interesting.

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Currently reading 'How to Stop Time' by Matt Haig.  It's about a man who ages a lot slower than most people and therefore lives longer- he was born in the 1500s but story is set in the modern day.  An interesting look at history and changes over time.  Quite sad though.

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Luftschlosseule

Two things, both arcs (advanced reading copies):
- Sharing a House with the Never Ending Man: Biography from a guy who worked at Studio Ghibli. He has interesting stuff to say, but can't write. Also, his opinion on Harvey Weinstein is more than just a little bit iffy.

- Who's That Earl?: Historical fiction rom com. I was in the mood and wanted to give the genre a try after ignoring it for a long time. Last time I read something like that I was on vacation with my family, ran out of books and read my mother's picks.

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Phantasmal Fingers

"The Red Chapels of Banteai Srei" by Sacheverell Sitwell. Travels around Thailand, Cambodia, India, Nepal and Ceylon in the early 60s, before the hippies and travellers arrived. Mainly concerned with architecture and his own reactions - as usual - but with some very interesting observations. 

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I'm reading Tool-Being by Graham Harman. A philosophical treatise on the nature of objects. Haven't got too far but I'm interested, so I believe I will keep going.

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Phantasmal Fingers
2 hours ago, MovieMadman said:

I'm reading Tool-Being by Graham Harman. A philosophical treatise on the nature of objects. Haven't got too far but I'm interested, so I believe I will keep going.

Sounds very interesting indeed! 🙂 Keep us posted!

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32 minutes ago, Kathryn.exe said:

Wayward son by Rainbow Rowell

I love that book so much!!!!!! I can’t wait for #3 Any Way the Wind Blows.

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everywhere and nowhere

Just started: "This is war. Women, fundamentalists and the new middle ages" by Klementyna Suchanow. She's a specialist in Spanish and Polish literature and an active participant of the protests against tightening of abortion law (which is already very limited) who, this way, became an investigative journalist too: she started researching the whole international of right-wing fundamentalists who are pushing for a full abortion ban, cancelling any LGBT+ rights (and in Poland, anyway, pretty much the only right LGBT+ people have ir protection against discrimination in employment - no marriage equality, no civil partnerships, not even protection against hate speech on grounds of sexual orientation) or even a divorce ban.

 

By the way, just recently someone wrote an ironic comment (first I even used the word "funny", although the situation is, of course, far from being funny) about Ordo Iuris, Poland's main organisation which is active in this area - and highly dangerous.

Quote

I have to warn you. Often, when I would meet a friend downtown and they asked me what's up, I would answer that the Foundation Ordo Iuris Institute for Juridical Culture are fundamentalists financed by the Kremlin. Now we can no longer say it, because the court has decided to ban disseminating the following information: "the Foundation Ordo Iuris Institute for Juridical Culture are fundamentalists financed by the Kremlin". So if we meet someone by chance or are talking to someone on the phone, we need to take care to not let it slip from under our face masks that the Foundation Ordo Iuris Institute for Juridical Culture are fundamentalists financed by the Kremlin. I'm not sure if we can still say that they are a sect, barbarians and enemies of Poland and its sovereignity, that the Catholic Church in Brazil condemned their mother organisation and ours distanced itself from them as well, but rather very quietly. (...) Also better not to read the book by Klementyna Suchanow or Tomasz Piątek's articles, because they include a lot of facts and details which give a broader perspective, information about some "family congresses" in Moscow, some Agenda Europe movement et caetera. And it's very interesting to read, but it may happen that something gets stuck in your head and, excited by the material, you start shouting in a public place: "the Foundation Ordo Iuris Institute for Juridical Culture are fundamentalists financed by the Kremlin!", and it's forbidden to say that, because the court said so.

(The court, obviously, did it on application from Ordo Iuris themselves, which only shows that they are very dangerous, ruthless and influencial people who are trying to stiffle any criticism.)

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everywhere and nowhere

Finished the previous one (and it was a thick book, over 600 pages - but not a lot of text on one page, the margins are relatively large. In comparison, I would estimate that that anthology of Chinese literature I had been reading earlier had more than twice as much text in a slightly larger format and about 1,25x as many pages).

Now reading: Mariusz Kowalewski - "TVPropaganda. Behind the scenes of Polish TV". By a journalist who used to work at TVP and has now written a book showing how it looks from the inside.

No post-communist country has yet reached the level of a full democracy, they all struggle with problems such as low level of political culture, political and financial corruption... So, in Poland the state TV, TVP, has always been more or less biased and one-sided, under every government. But it was never as bad as now. Really, what the TV now shows is blatant, brazen, shameless propaganda, as bad as in communist times. People joke that Jacek Kurski, the head of TVP, "would make Goebbels feel like a noob".

Real examples of TVP newstickers:

"Total hysteria of total opposition" (a remarkable aspect is their tendency to use fixed phrases. PiS claims that the opposition is a "total opposition" because it supposedly criticises every single idea by PiS - the phrase "total opposition" becomes obligatory in TVP)

"The opposition wants to block the law on Supreme Court, created with the aim of eliminating corruption and abuse" (not true - the real effect is subordination of judges to political power. Also, the phrase "the law on Supreme Court, created with the aim of eliminating corruption and abuse" was used in five similar newstickers - someone commented "Why work, when you can use crtl-C, ctrl-V")

"Polish society appraises the government for fighting pathologies"

 

By the way, just today Campaign Against Homophobia scored an important preliminary victory: TVP has, for a period of at least one year, been banned from circulating the manipulatory pseudo-documentary "Invasion" (for example, they will have to take it off YouTube). TVP sent a journalist as a supposed volunteer to Campaign Against Homophobia, she tried to provoke the activists into negative statements about Catholics or conservatives - and failed, tried to prove the thesis that pride marches in smaller towns are not spontaneous, but organised by Campaign Against Homophobia to artificially tout their ideas - the organisation denied any such claims and yet the "documentary" still claims to have proven it... The "documentary" is really extreme, it accuses LGBT+ people of insult to religion, of demoralisation, of intendng to legalise pedophilia... This is pogrom-level instigation!!!

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FallingStar

I'm currently reading On Beauty by Zadie Smith. I can't quite decide how I feel about this book, it's intriguing but sometimes I get bored by the lack of much actual plot and/or feel like I don't understand what I'm reading. 

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An unlocked mind by K.C. Wells and Peter Williams. If you want to check it out...This is a nonfiction erotic book involving BDSM and hurt/angst with a happy ending. Reading the series right now, so far this is the second book and I like the series. 

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Mysearchbroughtme_here

Confessions of a Yakuza, by Junichi Saga. My Google News Feed featured Bob Dylan's top 40 books and this book featured in it. Junichi Saga was a Doctor who was consulted by the subject of the book. The Doctor was so interested that he began to record the anecdotes that form the basis of the book. 

 

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everywhere and nowhere

Currently I'm again reading a children's book: "Two teddy bears on takeout, please!" by Marcin Przewoźniak. It's a story of a toy rabbit who is thrown away, saved by animals working for Santa Claus and - as he becomes "animated" - he discovers that he was born to run and is employed as a courier at Santa's toy factory. Sounds a bit silly, but it's rather funny and sometimes a little crazy.

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Siimo van der fietspad

The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde. Libraries closed the day before I planned to go and look for one of his books (although I did already have A Short History of Trains on loan which was lucky). I managed to get it via a friend who bought a copy online so excitedly pedalled there earlier this week and borrowed it. (NB I have no idea if this was technically legal, but a) that statement has been true for everyone in the UK about everything since March, b) we kept a sensible distance apart at the door and c) the few police I've ever seen don't even register my existance riding a very distinctive cargo bike through the middle of the city, let alone a black hybrid on sleepy roads in the suburbs).

Also had the audiobooks of The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass and American Gods.

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Siimo van der fietspad
On 6/11/2020 at 2:27 PM, Nowhere Girl said:

Currently I'm again reading a children's book: "Two teddy bears on takeout, please!" by Marcin Przewoźniak. It's a story of a toy rabbit who is thrown away, saved by animals working for Santa Claus and - as he becomes "animated" - he discovers that he was born to run and is employed as a courier at Santa's toy factory. Sounds a bit silly, but it's rather funny and sometimes a little crazy.

Coupled with your previous posts, I couldn't help but comment that Jasper Fforde is about to release a novel about anthropomorphic rabbits that's about prejudice, nationalism and especially immigration (although it's also fantasy and likely a lot of quirky humour)

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everywhere and nowhere
34 minutes ago, Siimo van der fietspad said:

Coupled with your previous posts, I couldn't help but comment that Jasper Fforde is about to release a novel about anthropomorphic rabbits that's about prejudice, nationalism and especially immigration (although it's also fantasy and likely a lot of quirky humour)

What's the title? But, anyway, it surely won't be available in Varsovian libraries right now.

Do you know the children's movie "Zootropolis"? It's, basically, a film about racism.

Too bad I have a damaged DVD which hangs up every few minutes. It's enough to rewind a few seconds, but watching the film this way isn't very comfortable.

 

Now I started reading new book: Małgorzata and Michał Kuźmińscy - "The Secret of Kroke" (Kroke is the Yiddish name of Cracow). A historical mystery and... not super creative, I would say: the idea of a secret medieval manuscript sought by spies just rings a bell too loudly*. In this case, both the Vatican and the Nazis are trying to hunt down the manuscript. ;) But let's see how it works out. Their books are, generally, too pop and too heteronormative for me, but at least the sex scene in the prologue was not a serious one, but funny instead.  :P

*But I haven't read Dan Brown. I have anti-trendy instincts, even in case of much better literature. As I mentioned elsewhere: for example Olga Tokarczuk since she received the Nobel prize, and by all means I think she deserved it. But she has become popular, and I feel that reading her now would create an impression that I'm doing it just because she's popular. And in fact, I have been reading Tokarczuk since high school.

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fooledbysecrecy

the lost world by arthur conan doyle

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I got a copy of Good Omens and The Martian Chronicles awhile back but haven't really made progress in them yet.  Still need to finish Ranger's Apprentice: The Siege of Macindaw.  It takes a while for me to get around to reading but once I start a book, I don't want to put it down 😂

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Finished reading my English translation of Flowers of Evil, whatever edition it's based on (didn't have all the poems that some other edition(s) has or whatever).  It was pretty good.  I only know English so wasn't going to be reading it in the original French-- still rhymed though.  I think it inspired me (very briefly?).....

Still sort of reading the novel The Brothers Karamazov and it's still basically all right if in its rambling sort of way.  Quite the argument against God presented in it (I'm atheist, I believe the author was Christian but he could see my side of things, heh....).

Checked out Five Moral Pieces by Umberto Eco online as well (reading all of these online, library's being safe and not opening physical locations yet).... I'd started this before.  It's essays, five in number, as you may have guessed.  They're sort of interesting, maybe?  I've now read 2 of them anyway.  Well-written or at least gives off the impression of being smart, pretty basic, really, maybe a little over my head (aren't I paradoxical?).....

  I mean, he talks about the press in one essay, this, I think, when the internet was just starting, and he's talking primarily about newspapers or whatever and some of the concerns may be a little unique or different from what I've heard, some the same, and a little I'm not sure I understood and mostly this may be outdated (what with the internet now having been around a while).

May read some comics too.

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