I just finished book 6 of the expanse. I live this series so much! I love great hard magic systems which this is, and the author is a bit Frederick Backman esk with how well his writing gets me to feel the emotions and moments of the characters.

I've tried to watch the TV show and quit after the first season. I was just so confused. Once I finish the books later this year I'm gonna watch the series to the end of it.

The Golden Notebook is a blueprint, a dazzling experiment, and its flaws are life’s flaws – there to be interrogated and worked though. That is the take-it-or-leave-it dichotomy that Lessing explores. Looking back on the book’s initial reception, in her preface to the 2007 edition, Lessing acknowledged: ‘Apparently what many women were thinking, feeling, experiencing came as a great surprise.’ However, she repeatedly distanced herself from any claim on the novel as a foundational feminist text; as she told The Guardian in 2007: ‘I’m not interested in being a feminist icon. If you are a woman and you think at all, you are going to have to write about it, otherwise you aren’t writing about the time you are living in.’

At least, that’s what I assumed happened. It’s a first edition copy from 1999 as well.

If you know what NAMI is you can imagine the hard time my wife and I are having with our youngest, who turns out has BPD. They are med non compliant as is their partner the best we can tell.

The Skeptics Guide to the Universe, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, and I Hate You - Don't Leave Me would all have made the top list if I didn't have an arbitrary limit of only two top books a month.

That said most of the books I read in February I loved. For the complete list:

Top:

• Rules of Estrangement by Joshua Coleman PhD
• Stop Walking on Eggshells for Parents by Randi Kreger and Christine Adamec

Great:

• Stop Walking on Eggshells by Paul T. Mason MS, Randi Kreger
• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
• The Skeptics Guide to the Universe by Steve Novella, Bob Novella
• A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders
• The Bipolar Disorder Survival Guide by David J. Miklowitz
• I Am Not Sick I Don’t Need Help! by Xavier Amador
• How To Become CTO by Aleks Kudic (Recommended by: Aleks Kudic (Asked to read for review purposes by the author)
• Babylon’s Ashes by James S. A. Corey
• I Hate You - Don't Leave Me by Jerold J. Kreisman, Hal Straus
• Nemesis Games by James S. A. Corey

Good:

• Notes on a Small Island by Bill Bryson
• Spook by Mary Roach

Okay:

• Traction by Gino Wickman

Bluntly, I can spend my days sorting “book club” spam, or I can write books. One pays me money. The otherff does not. So until further notice, I’m not entertaining book club invitations from anyone, and I likely won’t respond to your invitation at all. I’m sorry but this is the reality of the moment.

From sci-fi thrillers to LitRPG and progression fantasy – these are books we could not put down!

We’ve got 15 books and series here, so there should be something to love for almost every reader (although we need some traditional fantasy page turners – send us some recommendations in the comments please)! Plus, at the end of the episode we each rank our personal top 3.

We intentionally excluded YA and military sci-fi books, although those are often also page-turners - look out for episodes about each of those soon!

Brent’s brother, Alex, joined us for this episode, and brought us a whole new batch of books (and frankly a couple new subgenres) to enjoy. LitRPG / progression fantasy just keep getting more popular, and we can see why – the books we’ve picked up have all been so, so fun to read (although it probably helps we’ve been reading Alex’s recommendations so far, the best of the best from the hundreds of LitRPG books he’s read).

No spoilers anywhere in this episode.

Join the book club on discord:   / discord  
To listen on the go search 'Hugonauts' on your podcast app of choice  

This episode is sponsored by Quinto’s Challenge by Peter McChesney: https://www.amazon.com/Quintos-Challe...

Timestamps 00:00 Intro
02:48 Sponsor – Quinto’s Challenge by Peter McChesney
03:26 Silo by Hugh Howey
5:06 Mother of Learning by Domagoj Kurmaic
7:19 Murderbot by Martha Wells
9:10 Beware of Chicken by Casualfarmer
12:26 Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton
14:49 Mark of the Fool by J.M. Clarke
18:18 Project Hail Mary and The Martian by Andy Weir
19:40 Iron Prince by Bryce O'Connor
22:33 Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
24:04 He Who Fights With Monsters by Shirtaloon
28:47 Daemon by Daniel Suarez
31:07 The Perfect Run by Maxime J. Durand
33:39 The Bobiverse by Dennis E. Taylor
36:24 Eight by Samer Rabadi
38:37 Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman
46:18 Rankings: Top 3 page turners

The best argument I can make for why I like reading fiction in translation is because it facilitates the psychedelic experience of encountering someone else's subjectivity twice over. The translator must act as a prismatic filter, faithfully attempting the impossible task of replicating someone else's experiences and ideas. To read in translation is to read two stories in harmony with each other: The one the author wants to tell and the one the translator has brought into your linguistic world.

The second-best argument is that I can't read Yoko Tawada in the original. Tawada is among the finest and most singular authors working today. Over the past four decades, she has published nearly two-dozen books, the majority of which have been translated into English by Margaret Mitsutani or Susan Bernofsky and published by New Directions. She's won enough major literary awards that experienced Nobel Prize-watchers consider her a near-future contender.

...

So while it's possible to constellate Tawada within both the German and Japanese literary scenes, her bilingualism is what truly distinguishes her, especially to an English-reading audience for whom all this work is necesarily going to be read in translation. Tawada has spoken about how the practice of swapping from one language to another allows her to see each language from the outside, and "prevent her from taking things for granted." She insists upon the ecstatic sense of possibility that comes with feeling foreign. Being thrust into an unfamiliar language or country can be scary, but in Tawada's hands, that very disjointedness is a source of profound art, striking beauty, and novel connections invisible to native speakers. "I feel more as though I am between two languages," she told the Paris Review in 2018. "To study that in-between space has given me so much poetry."

We did a bonus podcast episode discussing three of the stories from Susanna Clarke's short story collection The Ladies of Grace Adieu - the stories are all set in the Jonathon Strange & Mr Norrell universe but its not vital you've read the novel before reading these stories.

As ever, no ads, no subscriptions, no sponsors or any of that type of shit. Available wherever you get your podcasts from.

Hey guys I explore this book "A Celebration of Vulva Diversity" on every platform i know. But didn't find. If anyone can provide it, that's helpful for me. Thanks advance.

The next book posted from this account will be Edith Wharton's Summer.

Per Wikipedia:

Summer is a novel by Edith Wharton, which was published in 1917 by Charles Scribner's Sons. While most novels by Edith Wharton dealt with New York's upper-class society, this is one of two novels by Wharton with rural settings. Its themes include social class, the role of women in society, destructive relationships, sexual awakening and the desire of its protagonist, named Charity Royall. The novel was controversial at the time of its publication and is one of the less famous among her novels because of its subject matter.

This will happen over 37 days, starting tomorrow at 8am US Eastern (1300 UTC).

Read along! #tomesclub

I created the bot that does this because I was having a hard time setting aside time for reading novels, feeling like I had to make the time "special". But I was happy enough to read articles and long threads that came across my feed. This bot (inspired, too, by the old DailyLit service) is a way to get that reading in where I already am.

It posts around 1,600 words a day, given a 10,000 character limit and trying to honor chapter and section breaks.

If you want to read along, follow @tomes@phantasmal.work

I just finished Mrs Dalloway, if you'd like to see what posts look like in practice, here's its thread .

Some of Ireland’s top authors today reflect on the power of reading – and the books that inspired them.

Marian Keyes, Sarah Webb and broadcaster Oliver Callan are among the ambassadors supporting Ireland Reads, the national campaign encouraging people to ‘get lost in a good book’ this month.

Led by Libraries Ireland and culminating in a nationwide celebration of reading on February 28th, it encourages the public to explore recommendations from libraries nationwide, where special events will also take place to mark Ireland Reads 2026. Learn more at irelandreads.ie.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/43549159

A feature-complete and elegant app

Until now, every reading app I've found has been a compromise. There are closed source apps like Moon+ Reader with plenty of features and beautiful design. Some people don't mind the one-time purchase. There are beautiful apps like Book's Story with a clean, modern design and simple library management, but with little beyond the core features. There are apps like KOReader designed for e-readers with little design consideration for tablets or phones, and a somewhat cluttered design. Each of these apps are beloved by their users for different reasons.

Then there's Anx Reader. It's FOSS. It's beautiful on a phone or ereader. It's chock full of thoughtful features and customizations.

Design

It opens to a perfectly pleasing and intuitive library screen. You can import books easily, supporting most common formats including PDF. The library features smart categories of finished, reading, and not started. You can sort titles by recently read, progress, alphebetical, and more. You can also add personalized tags to keep your library organized. Group titles together by pressing and dragging into a collection.

Each book has a detail screen that shows a basic overview including tags and statistics. You can also view your overall reading statistics in a nice layout that shows things like your reading time, daily streak, etc. These are shown on cards that can be rearranged or removed as you wish.

Reading

The full screen reader can be customized in all sorts of ways according to your preference. I like to read books in a continuous scroll. That's an option in addition to a couple page turning modes. It comes with fairly limited fonts, but they are easy to download and add if you have a preference.

Adjust the line spacing, letter spacing, paragraph spacing. Adjust the Intents and all margins. Of course you can adjust the font size, but also the weight. Choose the color scheme and image background (with a couple sensible options built in). Even use custom CSS if you have particular preferences.

You can read in uninterrupted full screen, or add tasteful headers and footers with your progress or chapter title, etc. Choose exactly how you want page turning to work, with screen areas.

Reading is seamlessly smooth as expected. Oh, and the whole app has an e-reader mode.

Library management

Anx uses a syncronizing method I haven't seen before. No OPDS, KOReader, or the like, but you can sync over WebDAV between devices. Has anyone else ever come across this? Is it a feature shared by other apps or devices? I don't know. Maybe more options will be developed in the future.

It works perfectly between devices running Anx in any case.

You can save, search, and share notes and highlights (in colors or underline).

Other things

Anx Reader has a number of helpful intelligent features. It is very AI forward, which is not a selling point for me at all. Shortcuts to AI options can be switched off in some places, but not everywhere. In any case, if you want you can connect it to an LLM of your choice to summarize previous passages or chat interactively about the book. If you choose not to connect one, it doesn't do anything without your permission.

Some of the features that come built in are useful and may interest users who want a smarter reader. It can read aloud (using your on-device reader), or automatically translate. I haven't tested these features as I don't have any interest, but I can appreciate their usefulness to others.

I've noticed that while menus and reading are incredibly snappy, opening a book sometimes takes a few seconds, especially if you haven't opened it in a while. It's enough to be noticed but not quite enough to bother, especially since everything else works so seamlessly.

Conclusions

Anx Reader has a fantastic design that is a joy to use. It has piles of features, no matter what kind of reader you are. The interface gets out of your way and lets you just read and enjoy. Everything is intuitive and designed with care and intention. For me, it's the one.

Anx Reader is available on Android, iOS, Mac, Windows, and Harmony OS.

Website

F-Droid

GitHub

For those unaware, they take public domain books and create really high quality, free versions that can be read on any ereader or online. Every book also has an oil painting that is also public domain chosen to be its cover.

I have discovered a lot of amazing lesser known literature over the years from here, and wanted to suggest it in case anyone had not heard of it. The people running it do amazing work and there seems to be a steady stream of three or four new releases almost weekly.

Hello all! I am just coming to the end of the fantastic Culture series by Iain M Banks and I am looking for recommendations for similar books/authors. I have also enjoyed James S A Corey's The Expanse books so if anyone has a good recommendation for similar sci-fi books it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hey, im searching for a (character driven) fantasy book written by a female author with a female lead, who despite being strong doesnt loose her feminity over it. So absolutely no "not like the other girls" characters pls. I want a strong mc whos feminity is part of her, which she's proud of. The book also would preferably not be solely romantasy. I love love love interpersonal relationships in books a whole lot but i would prefer the romance not being the sole focus.