#ve schwab bones

[antaripirate]

i will not apologise for the person i will become when we get these. i will be going FERAL for every.single.one.

[canalettova]

JUST got over the kanej hangover and then i met kell and lila

[thenightshadowqueen]

Listening to ‘My Tears Ricochet’ by Taylor Swift and thinking about Victor and Eli

[freddycartr]

i’ve said this once and i’ll say it again. freddy carter gives serious kell maresh vibes

[stardustandrockets]

Do you consider September 1st the start of Spooky Season™ or do you want until October?

Personally, the season officially starts September 1st, but unofficially, it starts when stores start putting out decorations. I couldn't care less about summer, so here are some book recs that are perfect for Spooky Season™ (regardless of when it starts for you)!

This is by no means an exhaustive list or even exhaustive themes. I grouped things into broad categories and am happy to go into more detail if needed/wanted.

All books are listed below the photos.

Photo 1: Perfect Books for Spooky Season

Photo 2: Dark Academia: Vicious by V.E. Schwab, If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio, A Lesson in Vengeance by Victoria Lee, Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson, The Whispering Dark by Kelly Andrew, The Library of Shadows by Rachel Moore

Photo 3: Witches: Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas, The Near Witch by V.E. Schwab, Mooncakes by Suzanne Walker and Wendy Xu, Crumbs by Danie Stirling

Photo 4: Horror: Alice Isn't Dead by Joseph Fink, Gallant by V.E. Schwab, The Gathering Dark edited by Tori Bovalino, The Honeys by Ryan La Sala

Photo 5: Middle Grade: City of Ghosts by V.E. Schwab, The Devouring Wolf by Natalie C. Parker, The Supernatural Society by Rex Ogle

Photo 6: Pre-orders: In these Hallowed Halls Anthology (out Sept. 12), A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid (out Sept. 19), All that Consumes Us by Erica Waters (out Oct. 17)

[goodoldfashionednerd]

Please reblog if you're interested, it will allow this post to reach more people!

[jruthphipps]

Me dropping everything and running to pre-order the newest V.E. Schwab book.

[shsenhaji]

📚 September and October Reading Round-Up 📚

November is here - what happened to summer?

I wasn't able to post my September reading round-up, so here are the books I read these past two months.

I was able to read some really great and emotional books! I embarked on a re-read of one of my favourite series, the Protector of the Small quartet by Tamora Pierce, and read some new favourites as well.

In September, I read:

- Heaven Official's Blessing Volume 2 by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (amazing! spectacular! heartwrenching and bittersweet, my first time reading the official English translation of this part of the story)

- Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh (very good, listened to the amazing audiobook, was very immersed in the story and engaged in trying to figure out what would happen next, kept thinking about the story even when I wasn't listening to it, very emotional throughout - especially the ending)

- Gallant by VE Schwab (First VE Schawb book but not the last, beautiful writing and engaging themes, wrote a book review)

- An Artificial Night by Seanan McGuire (enjoyed it a lot more than the two previous books, especially loved the ending, some really good themes and great character growth)

- Sisters of the Vast Black by Lina Rather (really liked it, was very invested in the story by the second chapter, loved the themes, the characters, and the reveals, did want a bit more of slice-of-life with "regular" humanitarian missions, lovely prose)

- The Remarkable Retirement of Edna Fisher by E.M Anderson (very good, wasn't sure if the premise would live up to itself at first but was immediately compelled by the story and writing, a lot of heart, not really a deconstruction of the Chosen One trope, figured out one of the main twists a chapter earlier and was very excited to be proven right, didn't love denouement as much but the ending was still heartfelt, some of the themes surrounding the squires gave parallels to my subsequent Protector of the Small quarted re-read)

In October, I read:

- A House With Good Bones by T. Kingfisher (the audiobook was amazing and I loved the narration, a very good story, interesting ending, loved the characters and the themes, liked the slow build-up of tension and the fact that it wasn't too scary for my tastes)

- Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert (great, funny, definitely cried during the last part of the book, lovely characters and relationships and themes)

- First Test and Page by Tamora Pierce (listened to the audiobooks this time, found the narrator okay, definitely teared up at a lot of parts, kind of depressing to listen to this book while knowing that certain things in the real world which the themes reference have gotten worse since the book was published, felt that Page wasn't as impactful when listening to it, but still an overall good experience)

- Squire by Tamora Pierce (very good, nice and enjoyable re-read, not as heart-wrenching as First Test and Page in some ways, loved seeing Kel's growth)

- Batman: Wayne Family Adventures Volume 2 by CRC Payne and StarBite (lovely, heartwarming, funny, a great read, loved having the physical copy to hold in my hands)

- Bleach Vol. 1 by Tite Kubo (funny, fast read, found it a bit hard to follow the actions sometimes, funny character interactions, some deep and important themes about grief and souls)

- The Game of Courts by Victoria Goddard (loved it, so fun having Conju's perspective on certain events as well as getting to know him better, loved the tale of friendship and finding purpose after grief and the end of the world as you knew it)

- The Stars Change by Mary Anne Mohanraj (very good and gripping, absolutely loved the audiobook, hopeful and heart-wrenching with a lovely ending, wrote a book review)

- Kingdom of the Wicked by Kerri Maniscalco (very good, second time trying to read the book and ended up re-reading the beginning, enjoyed the story and the characters and the themes a lot, that ending!)

[scare-ard--sleigh]

i wrote 3k words today (an immense feat for me; i'm never able to write more than 2k in a day) on my original project which put me over the 10k word mark for it and i'm sooooooooo happy fjmbgjkbmg when i first started writing this story i was so worried it would sound really stupid but i feel like it's really coming together and i'm so hype about it

[samglyph]

would love a list of your horror novels with women leads recs 👀

Yippee let me go find things so I can add a fun cover picture. These are all books that I’ve read in the last year! Definitely not an exhaustive list

*two of these technically aren’t horror books but I’m including them because I think they’re horror adjacent enough that if you like lighter horror, you’ll enjoy em.

A House With Good Bones by T Kingfisher: I just finished this! It was good! Not too scary imo, but great exploration of generational trauma, and a majority female cast. Also good if you are a bug enjoyer.

Family Business by Jonathan Sims: hey look it’s that guy that did that horror podcast that everyone likes. Family business is fun because Jonny really excels at “lulling you into a false sense of security” and also building a believable cast of characters. I think I’ve seen fewer people talk about this one compared to thirteen storeys, and I know that’s partially cause it just came out in paperback (in the US) but please! It’s good!

My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones: this one is for certified weird girls. Jade’s special interest is slashers. She is now in a slasher. I love her so much. Part of a trilogy that I will conquer eventually.

The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw: (I talked about this one when I was reccing some queer books but I will repeat myself cause it’s good) I support women’s wrongs (eating people) and women’s rights (having situationships with agender plague doctors). Also this one is really short so if you don’t want to commit to a long read like chainsaw Id say try this one out. Very poetic.

Next two aren’t sorted into horror but honorable mentions:

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia: mushroom horror, good female lead, and a supporting wet cat of a man. I know some of you are going to devour this book so what are you even waiting for. Also I think the author has a new book out that’s actually sorted into horror but I haven’t read yet called Silver Nitrate. Frankly I think Mexican gothic should be counted as horror but I think it squeaks by on some technicalities. I love the descriptions in this book.

The Near Witch by VE Schwab: good folk horror, good quick read, I’m going to be honest I didn’t like the romance and I thought the lead should’ve been aromantic but otherwise pretty good book.

[christophernolan]

Fantasy books by female authors that deserve more praise and recognition and are so SO MUCH better than whatever SJM writes.

The Sun Sword series | Michelle West

A hundred thousand kingdoms | NK Jemisin

The killing Moon | NK Jemisin

An ember in the Ashes | Sabaa Tahir

Shatter Me | Taherah Mafi

Furyborn | Claire Legrand

The bone season | Samantha Shannon

Darker shade of Magic | VE Schwab

The invisible life of Addie LaRue | VE Schwab

Realm of the Elderlings | Robin Hobbs

Sands of Arawiya | Hafsah Faizal

The Daevabad Trilogy | SA Chakraborty

Year of the Reaper | Makiia Lucier

The bear and the Nightingale | Katherine Arden

The Night Circus | Erin Morgenstern

Descendent of the Crane | Joan He

The bridge Kingdom | Danielle Jensen

Dark Shores | Danielle Jensen

Falling Kingdoms | Morgan Rhodes

Range of Ghosts | Elizabeth Bear

Children of blood and Bone | Tomi Adeyemi

The Wrath and the Dawn | Renee Ahdieh

Lumatere Chronicles | Melina Marchetta

The Alchemists of Loom | Elise Kova

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Down in the (link)dumps

On September 27, I'll be at Chevalier's Books in Los Angeles with Brian Merchant for a joint launch for my new book The Internet Con and his new book, Blood in the Machine. On October 2, I'll be in Boise to host an event with VE Schwab.

Back when I was writing on Boing Boing, I'd slam out 10-15 blog posts every day, short hits that served as signpost and public notebook, but I rarely got into longer analysis of the sort I do daily now on Pluralistic. Both modes are very useful for organizing one's thoughts, and indeed, they complement each other:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

The problem is that when you write long, synthetic essays, they crowd out the quick hits. Back in May 2022, I started including three short links with each edition of Pluralistic, in a section called "Hey look at this" (thanks to Mitch Wagner for suggesting it!):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/01/reit-modernization-act/#linkdump

But even with that daily linkdump, I still manage to accumulate link-debt, as interesting things pile up, not rising to the level of a long blog-post, but not so disposable as to be easy to flush. When the pile gets big enough, I put out a Saturday Linkdump:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

All of which is to say, it's Saturday, and I've got a linkdump!

First up, a musical interlude. I've been listening to DJ Earworm's amazing mashups since 2005 and while I've got dozens of tracks that shuffle in and out of my daily playlist, the one that makes me wanna get up and dance every time is "No One Takes Your Freedom," a wildly improbable banger composed of equal parts Aretha Franklin, The Beatles, George Michael and Scissor Sisters:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaboIeW1A_4

I defy you to play that one without bopping a little. I think it's the French horn from "For No One" that really kills it, the world's least expected intro to a heavy dance beat.

Moving swiftly on: let's talk about fonts. I remember when Wired magazine first showed up at the bookstores I was working at in Toronto, and my bosses – younger men than I am now! – complained that the tiny, decorative fonts, rendered in silver foil on a purple background, was illegible. I laughed at them, batting my young eyes and devouring the promise of a better future with ease, even in dim light.

Now it's thirty years later and I'm half-blind. Both my my decaying, aging eyes are filmed with cataracts that I'm too busy to get removed (though my doc promises permanent 20:20, perfect night-vision, and implanted bifocals when I can spare a month from touring with new books to get 'em fixed).

Which is to say: I spend a lot more time thinking about legibility now than I did in the early 1990s, and I've got a lot more sympathy for those booksellers' complaints about Wired's aggressively low-contrast design today. I'm forever on the hunt for fonts designed for high legibility.

This week, Kottke linked to B612, a free/open font family "designed for aircraft cockpit screens," commissioned by Airbus. It's got all the bells and whistles (e.g. hinting) and comes in variable and monospace faces:

https://b612-font.com/

B612 arrived at a fortuitous moment, coinciding with a major UI overhaul in Thunderbird, the app I spend the second-most time in (I spend more time in Gedit, the bare-bones text-editor that comes with Ubuntu, the flavor of GNU/Linux I use). A previous Thunderbird UI experiment had made all the UI text effectively unreadable for me, causing me to dive deep into the infinitely configurable settings to sub in my own fonts:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/UserChrome.css

The new UI is much better, but it broke all my old tweaks, so I went back into those settings and switched everything to B612, and it's amazeballs. I tried doing the same in Gedit, but B612 mono was too light for my shitty eyes, so I went back to Jetbrains Mono, another free/open font that has 8 weights to choose from:

https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/mono/

Love me a new, legible font! Meanwhile, a note for all you designers: the received wisdom that black on white type is "hard on the eyes" is a harmful myth. Stop with the grey-on-white type, for the love of all that is holy. This isn't 1992, you aren't laying out type for Wired Issue 1.0. Contrast is good, actually.

Continuing on the subject of software updates: Mastodon, the free, open, federated social media platform that anyone can host and that lets you hop between one server and another with just a couple clicks, has released a major update, focusing on usability, especially for people unfamiliar with its conventions:

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/09/mastodon-4.2/

Included in this fix: a major overhaul to how you interact with posts on servers other than your home server. This was both confusing and clunky, and the fix makes it much better. They've also changed how sign-up flow works, making things simpler for newbies, and they've cleaned up the UI, tweaking threads, web previews and other parts of the daily experience.

There's also a lot of changes to search, but search still remains less than ideal, with multi-server search limited to hashtags. This is bad, actually. Thankfully, we don't have to wait for Mastodon devs to decide to fix it, because Mastodon is free and open, which means anyone with the skills to code a change, or the money to pay techies to do it, or the moral force to convince them to do it, can effect that change themselves:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/23/semipermeable-membranes/

Case in point: Mastoreader, a great new thread reader for Mastodon:

https://mastoreader.io/

Every time that guy who owns Twitter breaks it even worse, a new cohort of users sign up. Not all of them stay, but the growth is steady and the trendline is solid:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/11/of-course-mastodon-lost-users/

It's the right call: while there are other services that promise that they will be federated someday, promises are easy, and there's world of difference between "federateable" and "federated." As GW Bush told us, "Fool me twice, we don't get fooled again":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/06/fool-me-twice-we-dont-get-fooled-again/

One big difference between the kind of blogging I used to do in my Boing Boing days and the long-form work I do today is the graphics. When you're posting 10-15 times/day, you can't make each graphic a standout (or at least, I can't). But I can (and do) devote substantial time to making a single collage out of public domain and Creative Commons graphics every day:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/25/a-year-in-illustration/

I am not a visual person – literally, I can barely see! – but my daily art practice has slowly made me a less-terrible illustrator. I got in some good licks this week, like this graphic for the UAW's new "Eight-and-Skate" work-to-rule program:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/21/eight-and-skate/#strike-to-rule

That graphic was fun because all the elements were from the public domain, or fair use. I love it when that happens. I've spent years amassing a bulging folder of public domain clip art ganked from the web and this week, it got a major infusion, thanks to the Bergen Public Library's Flickr album of high-rez scans of antique book endpapers. 86 public domain textures? Yes please! (Also, the fact that Flickr has one-click download of all the hi-rez versions of every image in a photoset is another way that it stands out as a remnant of the old, good web, not so much a superannuated relic as an elegant weapon of a more civilized age):

https://www.flickr.com/photos/bergen_public_library/albums/72157633827993925

Speaking of strikes: there are strikes! Everygoddamnedwhere! After 40 years in a Reagan-induced coma, labor is back, baby. The Cornells School of Industrial and Labor Relations' Labor Action Tracker is your go-to, real-time observation post as hot labor summer turns into the permanent revolution. As of this writing, it's listing 968 labor actions in 1491 locations:

https://striketracker.ilr.cornell.edu

There's no war but class war and it was ever thus. Brian Merchant's forthcoming book Blood In the Machine is a history of the Luddites, revisiting that much-maligned labor uprising, which has been rewritten as a fight between technophobes and the inevitable forces of progress:

https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/brian-merchant/blood-in-the-machine/9780316487740/

The book unearths the true history of the Ludds: they were skilled technologists who were outraged by capital's commitment to immiseration, child slavery, and foisting inferior goods on a helpless public. You can get a long preview of the book in Fast Company:

https://www.fastcompany.com/90949827/what-the-luddites-can-teach-us-about-standing-up-to-big-tech

Merchant also talked with Roman Mars about the book on the 99 Percent Invisible podcast:

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/blood-in-the-machine/transcript/

If that's piqued your interest and if you can make it to Los Angeles, come by Chevalier's Books this Wednesday, where Brian and I are having a joint book-launch (I've just published The Internet Con, my Luddite-adjacent "Big Tech Disassembly Manual"):

https://www.eventbrite.com/o/chevaliers-books-8495362156

Where is all this labor unrest coming from? Well as Stein's Law has it, "anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop." 40 years of corporate-friendly political economy has lit the world on fire and immiserated billions, and we've hit bottom and started the long, slow climb to a world that prioritizes human thriving over billionaire power.

One of the most tangible expressions of that vibe shift is the rise and rise of antitrust. The big news right now is the (first) trial of the century, Google's antitrust trial. What's that? You say you haven't heard anything about it? Well, perhaps that has to do with the judge banning recording and livestreaming and not making transcripts available. Don't worry, he's also locking observers out of his courtroom for hours at a time during closed testimony. Oh, and also? The DoJ just agreed that it won't post its exhibits from the trial online anymore. You can follow what dribbles of information as are emerging from our famously open court system at US v Google:

https://usvgoogle.org/trial-update-9-22

If the impoverished trickle of Google antitrust news has you down, don't despair, there's more coming, because the FTC is apparently set to drop its long-awaited suit against Amazon:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ftc-poised-sue-amazon-antitrust-163432081.html

Amazon spent years blowing hundreds of millions of dollars of its investors' cash, selling goods below cost and buying up rivals until it became the most important channel for every kind of manufacturer to reach their customers. Now, Amazon is turning the screws. A new report from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance details the 45% Amazon Tax that every merchant pays to reach you:

https://ilsr.org/AmazonMonopolyTollbooth-2023/

That 45% tax is passed on to you – whether or not you shop at Amazon. Amazon's secretive most favored nation terms mean that if a seller raises their price on Amazon, they have to raise it everywhere else, which means you're paying more at WalMart and Target because of Amazon's policies.

Those taxes are bad for us, but they're good for Amazon's investors. This year, the company stands to make $185 billion from junk-fees charged to platform sellers. As David Dayen points out, Amazon charges so much to ship third-party sellers' goods that it fully subsidizes Amazon's own shipping:

https://prospect.org/power/2023-09-21-amazons-185-billion-pay-to-play-system/

That's right: as Stacy Mitchell writes in the report, "Amazon doesn’t have to build warehousing and shipping costs into the price of its own products, because it’s found a way to get smaller online sellers to pay those costs."

Now, one of the amazing things about antitrust coming back from the grave is that just the threat of antitrust enforcement can moderate even the most vicious bully's conduct. Faced with the looming FTC case, Amazon just canceled its plan to charge even more junk fees:

https://www.reuters.com/legal/amazon-drops-planned-merchant-fee-ftc-lawsuit-looms-bloomberg-news-2023-09-20/

But despite this win, Amazon is still speedrunning the enshittification cycle. The latest? Unskippable ads in Prime Video:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-22/amazon-prime-video-content-to-include-ads-staring-early-2024

Remember when Amazon promised you ad-free video if you'd lock yourself into shopping with them by pre-paying for a year's shipping with Prime? The company has fully embraced the Darth Vader MBA: "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it further."

That FTC case can't come a moment too soon.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/23/salmagundi/#dewey-102

[blueinkedpoppies]

months ago, when I had just started the invisible life of Addie Larue and it had been more than 100 pages since nothing had happened, I spent my days cursing Ve Schwab. Now, with 20 pages to go, I find myself with an almost obsessive desire to read all the books she has written and get to know her characters to the bone.

meridyan_art

[medievalthymes]

is fools fate part if that book series you post about? honestly you have made me really really really wanna get into it i think i may bite the bullet and get thr series if/when i have the money but even if its not omg. ur taste is sooo cool do you have any other reccomendations that are near and dear to you? sorry thats 2 questions u dont have to answer both lol idk but thank u for introducing me to rote ⚔️🌿

it is!!!! omg i hope you can get your hands on it, that series is so dear to my heart.

i also really like anything by samatha shannon if you haven’t picked up her stuff yet (roots of chaos and the bone season), the winternight trilogy by Katherine Arden, ninth house by leigh bardugo, a dowry of blood by st Gibson, anything by VE Schwab but vicious is my fav. Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head but I’m sure there’s more. Enjoy friend!! ❤️❤️

[evenstarfalls]

Thinking about bones ve schwab again

[asexualbookbird]

May wrap up time! After 254 hours I finished Breath of the Wild. Found 899 korok seeds and do not care enough to find the last. A little disappointed that you beat Ganon and that's it, no after game, but I guess that's what Tears of the Kingdom is for? I bought a few books I said I wouldn't, but it was my bookstores birthday and I must support them it's the Law. Would have liked to do more art, but I liked the stuff I accomplished! While the books were many, they were not as fun as last month. Though last month was so good it was hard to live up to it. I did manage to put a couple of reviews up on Goodreads though! That's exciting!

A Sky Beyond the Storm by Sabaa Tahir ⭐⭐⭐⭐A good ending to the series! Hit all the right nerves! Wish it didn't focus so much on the sexual relationships but whatever it was a satisfying conclusion!

A House With Good Bones by T Kingfisher ⭐⭐⭐⭐FUN! CREEPY! VULTURES!

A Gathering of Shadows by VE Schwab ⭐⭐A glorified prologue to book three. Laia would not fucking wear that.

Witchmark by CL Polk ⭐⭐⭐What the fuck was that ending lol somehow the romance was the only thing I truly liked and even that I had questions about.

Black Wings Beating by Alex London ⭐Birds wouldn't fucking do that. They climbed a mountain. They were thrown off the mountain. I wish they'd died.

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo ⭐Why was THIS the most hyped book on tumblr in 2019, I KNOW there were better options. This review actually covered a lot of the problems I had. I don't think sexual assault should be used as shock value and this has too much of it lmao why the hell was Mercy cured of her trauma in like twelve hours what the fuck Bardugo

As I said in another post, I'm including Ninth House here because I can <3 And I read most of it in May so it feels weird including it in June. Time is fake anyway. Glad to have Black Wings Beating in the past hope it fades from my memory so I never have to think about it again. My favorite was probably A House With Good Bones, it seems T Kingfisher really knows exactly what I want in a book. Love me a good underground horror.

Don't forget to vote in my Best Book In May poll! I want to know what others think!