#anonymous books

[cassecorrea]

I’m selling Blind Dates with a Book on Etsy!! Each one comes with a short description, condition label, and a free bookmark!

[incognitopolls]

We ask your questions anonymously so you don’t have to! Submissions are open on the 1st and 15th of the month.

[arttsuka]

Perhaps Bill Cipher annoying Stanley or another member of the Pines family. (Or if you feel up to multiple, everyone e within the Pines family. Only if you want to though)

Have you ever seen that one handyman Bill au

[ckret2]

So, have you decided which one is red and which one is blue?

his dad is blue exclusively so that I can make this joke

[specialagentartemis]

godddddd i have disliked becky chambers' work since long way to a small angry planet and I agree that that fish scene is SO much of what is wrong with contemporary SFF especially queer SFF. refreshing take, great review, thank you. would love to hear what authors or works you think of as the antidote to that sensibility.

The thing is, I enjoyed The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet when I first read it - it was a fun, light adventure, clearly a debut novel but I was excited to see where Chambers would go from there. And I actually really do think the sequel, A Closed and Common Orbit, was good! It did interesting things with AI personhood and identity.

... and then Chambers just kinda. Did not get better. She settled into a groove and has a set number of ideas that I feel like she hasn't broken out of, creatively. And they I M O kind of rest on an assumption that "human nature" = "how people act in suburban California."

As an antidote to that sensibility, I'd say... books where people have a real interrelationship with the land they inhabit, a sense of being present, and reciprocal obligations to that land; books that recognize that some things can never be taken back once done; books with well-drawn characters, where people have strong opinions deeply informed by their circumstances, that can't always be easily reconciled with others, and won't be brushed aside; books where these character choices matter, they impact each other, they cannot be easily gotten over, because people have obligations to each other and not-acting is a choice too.

And it's only fair that after all day of being a Hater I should rec some books I really did like.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke - A man lives alone in an infinite House, over an equally infinite ocean. Captures the feeling that I think Monk & Robot was aiming for. Breathtaking beauty, wonder at the world, philosophy of truth, all that good stuff, and actually sticks the landing. The main character's love, attention, and care to his fantasy environment shows through in every page. (Fantasy, short novel)

Imperial Radch by Ann Leckie - An AI, the one fragment remaining of a destroyed imperial spaceship, is on a quest for revenge. Leckie gets cultural differences and multiculturalism, and conversely, what the imposition of a homogeneous culture in the name of unity means. (Space sci-fi, novel trilogy)

Machineries of Empire by Yoon Ha Lee - An army captain's insubordination is punished by giving her a near-impossible mission: to take down a rebelling, heretical sect holing up in a space fortress and defying imperial power. She gets a long dead brain-ghost of a notorious criminal downloaded into her head to help. Very, very good at making you feel like every doomed soldier was a person with a past, with a family, with feelings, with hopes and dreams and frustrations and favorites and preferences and reasons to live, right before they brutally die in a space war. Also very much about the imposition of homogeneity of culture as a force of imperialism. (Space sci-fi, novel trilogy)

The Fortunate Fall by Cameron Reed - Maya Andreyevna is a VR journalist in high-tech dystopian future Russia, and she decides to investigate the truth that the government doesn't want her to. She might die trying. It's fine. Also has digital brain-sharing, this time in a gay way. It's bleak. It's sad. It feels real. Not making a choice is a choice. Backing out is a choice. And choices have consequences. Choices reverberate through history. About responsibility. (Cyberpunk, novel)

The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez - Nia Imani is a spaceship captain, a woman out of time, a woman running from her past, and accidentally adopts a boy who has a strange power that could change the galaxy. Spaceship crew-as-found-family in the most heartbreaking of ways. Also about choices, how the choices you make and refuse to make shape you and shape the world around you. How the world is always changing around you, how the world does not stay still when you're gone, and when you come back you're the same but the world has moved on around you. About how relationships aren't always forever, and that doesn't mean they weren't important. About responsibility to others. It's a slow, sad book and does not let anyone rest on their laurels, ever. There is no end of history here. Everything is always changing, on large scales and small, and leaving you behind. (Space sci-fi, novel)

Dungeon Meshi / Delicious in Dungeon by Ryoko Kui - A D&D style fantasy dungeon crawl that stops to think deeply about why there are so many dungeons full of monsters and treasure just hanging around. Here because it's an example of an author thinking through her worldbuilding a lot, and it mattering. Also because of the characters' respect for the animals they are are killing and eating, their lives and their place in the ecosystem, and the ways that humans both fuck up ecosystems with extraction and tourism, but also the ways that you can have reciprocal relationships of responsibility and care with the ecosystem you live in, even if it's considered a dangerous one. (Fantasy, manga series)

Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang and How Long 'Til Black Future Month by N. K. Jemisin and Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel by Julian K. Jarboe - Short story anthologies that were SO good and SO weird and rewired the way I think. If you want the kind of stuff that is like, the opposite of easy-to-digest feel-good pap, these short stories will get into your brain and make you consider stuff and look at the world from new angles. Most of them aren't particularly upbeat, but there's a lot of variety in the moods.

"Homecoming is Just Another Word for the Sublimation of the Self," "Calf Cleaving in the Benthic Black," and "Termination Stories for the Cyberpunk Dystopia Protagonist" by Isabel J. Kim - Short stories, sci-fi mostly, that twist around in my head and make me think. Kim is very good at that. Also about choices and not-making-choices, about going and staying, about taking the easy route or the hard one, about controlling the narrative.

The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells - Security robot with guns in its arms hacks itself free from its oppressive company, mostly wants to half-ass its job but gets sucked into drama, intrigue, and caring against its better judgement. This is on here because 1) I love it 2) I feel like it does for me what cozy sff so frequently fails to do - it makes me feel seen and comforted. It's hopeful and compassionate and about personal growth and finding community and finding one's place in the world, without brushing aside all problems or acting like "everybody effortlessly just gets along" is a meaningful proposal. also 3) because it is one of the few times I have yet seen characters from a hippie, pacifistic, eco-friendly, welcoming, utopian society actually act like people. The humans from Preservation are friendly, helpful, and motivated by truth and justice and compassion, because they come from a friendly, just, compassionate society, and they still actually act like real human beings with different personalities and conflicting opinions and poor reactions to stress and anger and frustration and fear and the whole range of human emotions rather than bland niceness. Also 4) I love it (space sci-fi, novella series mostly)

[fun-with-god-p]

interest.

[raining-anonymously]

why did he handwrite this

[somerabbitholes]

do you have any book or essay recs that are eye-opening or ones that challenges your thought process if u get what I mean

100%, here is writing that shifted something inside me:

Books

Figuring by Maria Popova: about how genius and creativity is a human project; she looks at all these ways in which ideas connect with each other; the book is just a really beautiful exploration of how the search for truth and beauty is a human project. She also runs a blog which is very good

The Lonely City by Olivia Laing has forever changed how I think about loneliness for the better, and I can only hope to have something as beautiful to say someday

Invisible Women by Caroline C Perez: I'm putting this here more because it could put in numbers and quantify the levels of gender disparity, and to my mind, give a sharper edge to the conversation that was feeling very abstract and theoretical to me

Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellman: this is a difficult read, mostly because the book is a 1,000-page stream of consciousness that is basically one long sentence. I loved it, and at the end of it I remember going wow, you thought this book up

A similar feeling came from reading The Indian Ideology by Perry Anderson, but I want to point out that this is a book that requires a reasonable level of familiarity with the discourse on secularism, democracy and social justice in India

The Tribe by Carlos Manuel Alvarez: essays, part-memoir, part-notes from journalism, about Cuba in the 2010s and especially after Castro died. It was such an excellent glimpse into what living during and through this shadow of the Cold War could be like

I'm currently reading Second-Hand Time by Svetlana Alexievich, which does a similar thing with Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union and until the mid-2010s. It's very very interesting and heartbreaking and emotive and informative all at once seeing how the Russian people thought about the end of the Cold War

Essays (there are definitely more, but I’m the worst at remembering names)

Geographies of knowing, geographies of ignorance by Willem van Schendel

The Trouble with Wilderness by William Cronon

Marrying Libraries by Anne Fadiman (if this is not what love is, I don't want it)

Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical by John Rawls

Fences by Zadie Smith (I read this in her collection, Feel Free but I think you can find it online too)

[racheldrawsthis]

Ngl. the PNG files don’t solve anything. we fans brought the book because we wanted an art book. Now the book is meaningless. If I wanted PNG files, I would have paid for a subscription service.

please remake the book & check the product before you send out dodgy products to ur loyal customers

This has already been addressed in other socials/the official discord server, but us the studio wasn't responsible/involved with the actual physical production of the book; our job was to gather all the art, sketches & write blurbs of text we wanted included in the book and organize it then send the files to them online and the rest of the printing and shipping process was Juniper (the merch company we were collaborating with) and their manufacturer's responsibility, and sadly reproduction would also be their call and we don't have any authority to initiate or overlook that. This was our first time collaborating with Juniper and making a print-based product with them & we didn't receive the final sample from them before they were shipped out so we had no idea about the quality, and we're definitely taking this as a lesson to always make sure to double ask our collaboration partners to send us the sample before they get shipped out + rethink about doing print-based products in the future in general considering our files were inherently small and we couldn't calculate how they'd look on print.

The full 286 page PDF file of the book was the best solution we could offer, and they should be sent out via email to everyone who ordered the art book by this week.

Sorry for the inconvenience and if you wish for a refund or if you had any other inquiries about the book please feel free to contact Juniper themselves! https://junipercreates.com/docs/contact

But again we didn't handle the production and we had no way of overlooking that :(

[librarycards]

hi, do you happen to have any writings about gender written by transfem butches and/or transfem poc that you'd recommend?

Yes! first, I recommend checking out this post, where I recommend / crowdsource some readings on butch trans womanhood / TMA subjectivity. I also highly recommend Emi Koyama's blog/body of work, b. binaohan's numerous writings and books, and the Trans Woman Writer's Collective (founded by Jamie Berrout, a powerhouse author/editor in her own right). My friend Valerie (@grimesapologist) has an excellent pamphlet out with them!

Some transfem/trans woman/TMA (acknowledging that there is as much variation in gender among TMA people as TME people, though the former group are systemically foreclosed from gender creativity in ways TME people are, within queer and trans circles, marginally permitted) writers of color I recommend include

micha cárdenas

Meredith Talusan

Vivek Shraya

jia qing wilson-yang

Ryka Aoki

Jules Gill-Peterson

Kai Cheng Thom

Trish Salah

[I've linked to my personal favorite/most influential work by most of the listed authors]

There are some great, relevant readings in the anthology Trap Door: Trans Cultural Projection and the Politics of Visibility. Lastly, this paper, A Tranifesto For the Dolls in Transgender Studies Quarterly is something of a who's who in this cohort of junior scholars in trans/feminist of color theory. Very exciting piece based off a very exciting conference roundtable that I actually attended back in 2022!

hope this helps :)

[mysweetsinfulobsessions]

HIJAB BUTCH BLUES by LAMYA H.

Alright, changing it up a bit with my book stuff but this one hit home with me. The author draws very interesting parallels between stories in the Quran and her experiences as a gay muslim woman that are very interesting. And if you think you can’t be muslim and gay, or wear a hijab and be gay, or even tackle muslim culture and queerness in one, then you’re bound to be pleasantly proved wrong with this one.

[incognitopolls]

Vote based on the publication year of the physical copy that you own, not the book's first edition.

Publication/print dates can usually be found in the first 2–3 pages of a book, where title and/or copyright information is printed. If you own an old book that does not have a publication date printed on it, make your best estimate.

We ask your questions anonymously so you don’t have to! Submissions are open on the 1st and 15th of the month.

[illuminatedferret]

About TGCF Canon: I just realized that the missions Jun Wu gives to Xie Lian are very disadvantageous for Xie Lian.

He immediately butted heads with Pei Ming on Mt. Yu Jun (PM's own territory) and on Ban Yue missions, both striking where it's most personal: PM's ex-lovers and family matters.

Next is Ghost City, and I'm certain it's to sour the relationship between him and Hua Cheng with LQQ's loud righteousness right in the middle of Ghost City, infamous for its inhumane atmosphere. Additionally, "Ming Yi" was already 'a spy for the heavens' in Ghost City, so the risk of offending HC and/or Ghost City is very, very high.

I think JW's refusal to banish XL (Fangxin Guoshi) was also partially to stoke more fire between XL and LQQ (or, potentially, with everyone else as this puts distinction between XL and other gods by this point; LQQ already thought it doesn't matter if XL was banished again or not anyway)

And then Brocade Immortal; JW told XL to go with Quan Yizhen, infamous for not playing well with other gods / not sociable / fights even his own followers. I also don't doubt that this is to have XL and Ling Wen's "good coworkers" relationship go downhill.

Which means, JW tried to pit XL against literally all the major martial gods (other than FX and MQ who, logically from outside PoV, already have a strained relationship with XL), The major civil goddess, and the most powerful ghost king/supreme.

...Insane.

(Bonus: if Shi Wudu's impending heavenly calamity timing was also by Jun Wu's design, JW also managed to pit XL against SQX (friends) and SWD, both major elemental gods and also Black Water (the other calamity) in one fell swoop...

I count this separately bc we don't know if the timing is actually by JW's design. Plus HX has nothing against XL, and SQX/SWD has no prior connection to XL. In short: if Black Water Arc had happened before XL's third ascension, it'd just happen the exact same way without XL... which makes the timing suspicious, especially the closeness to Mt Tonglu's reopening. I have a headcanon about this but that's kind of a different topic)

-🍁

Yes to all of this! Jun Wu was definitely angling to create conflict between Xie Lian and his peers in the heavens, and I think he had two goals in doing so. The first was to isolate him by sabotaging his relationships, and the second was, I believe, to show Xie Lian the worst of the heavens and to encourage resentment towards them.

I don't think the /timing/ of Shi Wudu's Heavenly Tribulation is suspect, just because we're never given any suggestions in-novel that it's possible to manipulate the timing of Tribulations like that (and I think it would have come up), but He Xuan finding out about the fate swap was definitely Jun Wu's machinations! Hualian talk with Mei Nianqing a little about this- holding onto that piece of information until he wanted to get rid of Shi Wudu, then letting He Xuan discover it. In the end it's getting rid of two birds with one stone- remove the Water Tyrant, who was getting a bit too big for his britches, and Shi Qingxuan, who was Xie Lian's only friend in the heavens.

Also, you may not want to go into the opening of Mount Tonglu, but I do! Jun Wu absolutely timed that. I don't care how bad of luck Xie Lian has, that the ghost rut started right when Xie Lian was alone with a Supreme ghost?? He was definitely hoping Xie Lian would get hurt in some way, and his relationship with Hua Cheng would be ruined. No way that wasn't him. There's this ongoing reflection I have with TGCF after reading it for the first time where I look back and realize how much of Xie Lian's 'bad luck' is actually Jun Wu. When you learn about the second shackle, you think it's just that, but no, it's the all-powerful man in the sky who's obsessed with you and wants you to suffer and be his Junior. It's fucked up.

[ckret2]

What does Evil Ford do when he finds TBOB?

oh Bill doesn't have to waste ANY time on the "slowly seducing the human reader into wanting to join him" song and dance he goes through in canon, they can just cut right to the chase. First page Ford flips open, bam

only AU where TBOB has a happy ending because Ford springs him outta Theraprism.

On the other hand, this might mean their spirits trade places, and now the very confused Theraprism staff have a random human in what used to be Bill's cell.

[muzaktomyears]

(...) Not all of Paul's cards to me were friendly but no matter. That was all a long time ago. One of the messages, 'Up Yer' - a fairly brutal term of youthful abuse in Liverpool - was the 'working-title' of As Time Goes By. That was certainly what I felt at Apple's lowest points. 'Up the lorruvya!'

(k) From the depths of Let It Be in Twickenham. From Paul. Not a happy time... but it's all over now, baby blue.

Fifty Years Adrift, Derek Taylor (1984)