I'm usually months late posting reviews, remembering only the vibes of the book and little else, but I couldn't wait to review Darkness Come Alive by Paul Stephenson. The vibes are impeccable and the story is so much fun

https://www.sebrinaeden.com/reviews/darkness-come-alive-by-paul-stephenson/

#Revew Giving up on "The 100th Time’s the Charm: She Was Executed 99 Times, So How Did She Unlock “Super Love” Mode?!"

Too clunky, too much adolescent girl wish fulfillment, too much patriarchy, too much OP, too superficial. Half way through volume 1 and it's not going to get better.

New review: Uncovering Dinosaur Behavior is a concise, well-structured, and beautifully illustrated book that transcends being "merely" good popular science by also addressing professional palaeontologists.

https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2025/03/09/book-review-uncovering-dinosaur-behavior-what-they-did-and-how-we-know/

#Books #BookReview #Bookstodon #AnimalBehavior #Ethology #Fossils #Evolution #Paleontology #Palaeontology #Dinosaurs #Scicomm princetonupress@mastodon.social @princetonnature @serpenillus @bookstodon

blog! “Book Review: Machine Readable Me by Zara Rahman”
★★★★☆

404 Ink's "Inklings" series are short books with high ideals. This is a whirlwind tour through the ramifications of the rapid digitalisation of our lives. It provides a review of recent literature and draws some interesting conclusions.

It is a modern and feminist take on Seeing Like A State - and…

Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/03/book-review-machine-readable-me-by-zara-rahman/
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#BookReview #technology

WAYNE'S 2025 BOOKS: BOOK 5

Picks and Shovels
by Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic)

Huzzah! A new Martin Hench book! I was a proud backer of Cory Doctorow's Kickstarter to publish this work without the anti-consumer and anti-writer practises of the usual purveyor of the written word: our old frenemy Amazon. I chose the epub version (which I read using Calibre on my Android phone), and the only reason I didn't buy a physical copy is that I'd like to get all the Hench novels in paperback, and this book isn't in that format yet.

Anyway, Picks and Shovels takes Martin Hench wayback to the late 80s, when computers had to be programmed without monitors (the horror), when mobile phones were something seen only on Star Trek, and when Martin - sorry, Marty - is a boo-boo baby proto-accountant feeling his way into the big bad world of finance by way of the silicon highway introduced by personal computing.

It's an origin story both for Hench and Silicon Valley, and a great read. With a company whose founders read like the opening to a bad joke (a rabbi, a priest and a Mormon elder) and a rival company locked in a battle for dominance, Picks and Shovels shows us that consumer capture, enshittification, and hostile design has always been around, even when computers were beige and bulky.

As with all of Cory's works, you read and you learn and you have fun, all at the same time. He has a way of distilling some bigbrain ideas into smaller morsels for the rest of us to understand, and be entertaining at the same time. I smashed this book in a few days as it was eminently readable, and I just wanted to see what happened!

You don't have to read the first two Hench books (Red Team Blue and The Bezzle) to enjoy this one, but you really should anyway as they're all neat and Cory is the kind of writer that we should all be supporting in these uncertain pre-technofeudal times.

Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World
by Naomi Klein

So I'll start by saying what this book isn't. It isn't the story of a woman who had her identity cloned and went on a wild ride through the dark web trying to discover the identity of the person that stole her persona. That's what I thought this book was. I'm not sure how I arrived at that misconception, but it didn't take long for me to work out I was egregiously self-misinformed.

What it is: a story of a woman (Naomi Klein, you may have heard of her feminist ecoleftist works) who finds herself frequently mistaken for another Naomi: Naomi Wolf, whose viewpoints rapidly diverge from those of Naomi #1. This mistaken identity, exacerbated by the social madness that ensued during COVID, forms the spine of the book, which examines the mirror world that exists between left and right politics. The diagonalism that has emerged in recent years, seeing strange bedfellows like fascists and wellness cultists, is another strong theme, and one that I found the most fascinating.

It's a powerful work. Flawed in some ways - I found myself disagreeing at times and finding some sections particularly self-absorbed - but it is in many ways a memoir, so some allowances need to be made. Klein works through a handful of major topics, presenting her own personal experiences as well as the emerging and changing battlegrounds between authoritarians and progressives. Doppelganger is well worth a read for anyone who cares about the threats to democracy de jour.

Here are a few thoughts on Everyone Who Can Forgive Me Is Dead, 2024, by Jenny Hollander, a twisty murder mystery set in the New York magazine industry #bookstodon #BookReview #Storygraph#audiobook @bookstodon https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/9f536aba-e026-4a3f-ac0e-0c742ec46b2c

Radical by Nature is out in paperback! This is an in-depth, intimate, and tremendously enjoyable biography of the long and remarkable life of Victorian naturalist #AlfredRusselWallace.

https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2023/11/01/book-review-radical-by-nature-the-revolutionary-life-of-alfred-russel-wallace/

#Books #BookReview #Bookstodon #Evolution #HistoryOfScience #ScienceHistory #HistSci #Scicomm @bookstodon @princetonupress @princetonnature

This week I read Space Dragons: Luxorian's Crew by @vicorva and I loved it so dang much.
My short review is: it's great, go read it.
My medium review is: It's got #space it's got #dragons, it's great, go read it.

Space Dragons has affected my brain chemistry in some delightful way. I did spontaneous fanart on my whiteboard in the middle of working because I couldn't stop thinking about Space Dragons. I've not been able to start another book yet because I just get disappointed that they're not Space Dragons.

But more than just loving the premise (have I mentioned I love the premise?), I found the story really captivating and well-told. It was heartwarming and hopeful, though not without a little drama! I really loved the way crumbs of worldbuilding and character details were trailed around the story. Not over-explaining, but enough to bring the world to life. I can't wait for the next one!

Uhhh some tags:
#Books #BookReview #IndieBooks #Bookstodon

https://vicorva.itch.io/space-dragons-luxorians-crew

Had to take the car in for service today, and ended up waiting at the dealership most of the day while they worked out just how many dollars to pluck from my wallet.

While waiting I started, and fished, reading April Daniel's "Dreadnaught". This too was a recommendation from @Impossible_PhD , which I've been a bit slow in getting to (something about life turning chaotically busy when you suddenly find yourself transitioning, I guess?).

I'd wondered whether it was a sane choice to be reading in public (it barely was), but it was the one I'd been meaning to read next so I did. And dear stars, what a read. And what an odd experience to be reading it when two major name sakes already exist in my mind as real living people with whom I interact.

I don't know whether it's a good thing I hadn't read it until now as it may have made me even more scared to transition, or whether if I had encountered it earlier it might've forced my shell to crack... And stars above, what a trans cry to heaven this book is! Some parts were not easy reading for me, despite me having been fortunate enough to not be subjected directly to much of the transphobia and transmisia that so many of us do.

If there is one way I'd like to summarise this book, it's to say that it's full of heart. So, so full of heart. Amidst the onslaught of everyday news, this read was such a warm, welcoming break. I closed the book feeling uplifted.

I hope many a young trans girl finds a copy of this book, and learns that she is not alone in the world after all. Stars know I could've done with that myself, most of a lifetime ago.

Here are a few thoughts om Orbital, 2024, by Samantha Harvey, a contemplative and poetic novella about life for astronauts on the International Space Station #bookstodon #BookReview #Storygraph #Braille @bookstodon
https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/9d831307-3945-4836-b52e-b0c4d2a5af34

*Drumroll*... review #500! The Future of Dinosaurs is a fresh take on pop-palaeo that flips the script by charting the limits of our knowledge.

https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2025/02/28/book-review-the-future-of-dinosaurs-what-we-dont-know-what-we-can-and-what-well-never-know/

#Books #BookReview #Bookstodon #Fossils #Evolution #Paleontology #Palaeontology #Dinosaurs #Scicomm @bookstodon