Literature

OK, y'all. I'm trying to find a book I read many moons ago. I feel like it was by Diana Wynne Jones, but it's not in her bibliography. Massive spoilers incoming, obviously, but I can't remember what the spoilers are for.

The book starts on an island nation in the south of the world, with a rigid code of conduct which one of the main characters is being disciplined for breaking. The main characters leave on a quest to the oppressive and powerful kingdom in the north, and its revealed that one of the other main characters is the crown prince of the evil kingdom in the north, and can use their magic. If I recall correctly, his use of that magic makes dark veins stand out under his skin, and he has to fight against it controlling him. There's some kind of time limit, I think if he uses the magic too much, it'll take him over and he'll become the new ruler.

To gain some advantage over the evil kingdom, they visit an abandoned city, break into some kind of temple, and have an encounter with some kind of deity, which might then take over one of the characters?

Later in the story they make it to the evil palace, and there's a plotline about multiple children of the evil king trying to kill this guy, so they can inherit the throne. I think the evil palace is embedded in a mountain somehow.

Anyone who can set me on the right track, it'd be much appreciated!

Perelandra Bookshop’s reader-in-residence commits to reading at the store for two hours per week in exchange for a small coffee and book stipend

I’m not saying that all self-help is bad. There’s always been an audience for short and snappy self-improvement books (there’s a reason why there are only 7 Habits, not 70), and that’s just fine. But I do worry about a larger phenomenon that I’ll call the bulletpointification of books and media.

[...]The popularity of book summary services like Blinkist and Shortform is a perfect encapsulation of what gets lost (nuance) in the bulletpointification of books, in which every bit of information is served in digestible bite-sized portions that you can upload right to your brain. A recent Blinkist post titled “7 Blinks To Understand the Conflict Between Israel and Hamas,” may give you some idea of the scale of such bullet point derangement, as if a blink was a proper unit of measurement to use to understand a genocide happening before the world’s eyes.

I have seen many VC-funded book startups come and go, usually led by well-intentioned people who think they have a good idea about how to “save” books. Remember all of the startups saying that they would be the Netflix of books? The latest bunch of startups that are for sure going to “fix” what’s wrong with books are focused on AI.

Something you thought you would love that turned out to be awful, or vice versa? A great plot twist that blew your mind?

What was the last book that surprised you in some way?

Archive link

I don't read many book reviews, but this one came on my RSS feed and was an interesting read.

newest to oldest

• White Hot Hate: A True Story of Domestic Terrorism in America’s Heartland
• The Storm Is Here: An American Crucible
• I'm Glad My Mom Died
• Depart, Depart!
• The World As We Knew It: Dispatches From a Changing Climate
• The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War
• The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
• Radicalism in the Mountain West, 1890-1920: Socialists, Populists, Miners, and Wobblies
• The Red Corner: The Rise and Fall of Communism in Northeastern Montana
• Zapatista Spring: Anatomy of a Rebel Water Project & the Lessons of International Solidarity
• The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet
• Fire, Storm Flood: The Violence of Climate Change
• The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
• The Sphinx: Franklin Roosevelt, the Isolationists, and the Road to World War II
• Sea of Tranquility
• The Revivalists
• The Fated Sky
• The New Wilderness
• Project Hail Mary
• The Greatest Polar Expedition of All Time: The Arctic Mission to the Epicenter of Climate Change
• I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer
• Denial (by Jon Raymond)
• America City
• The 2084 Report: An Oral History of the Great Warming
• The Best of Times, The Worst of Times: Futures from the Frontiers of Climate Science
• The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World
• Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith
• Megafire: The Race to Extinguish a Deadly Epidemic of Flame
• Modern Sudanese Poetry: An Anthology
• Columbine (by Dave Cullen)
• The Vortex: A True Story of History's Deadliest Storm, an Unspeakable War, and Liberation
• California Burning: The Fall of Pacific Gas and Electric--and What It Means for America's Power Grid
• I Hate You-Don't Leave Me: Understanding the Borderline Personality
• The Man Who Caught the Storm: The Life of Legendary Tornado Chaser Tim Samaras
• Sandy Hook (by Elizabeth Williamson)
• Roll Red Roll: Rape, Power, and Football in the American Heartland
• Fire and Flood (by Eugene Linden)
• Nomad Century: How Climate Migration Will Reshape Our World
• The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration
• Choked: Life and Breath in the Age of Air Pollution
• Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History
• The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption

Any format counts (audiobook, physical book, ebook, graphic novel, article, essay, etc).

I haven't had any luck in finding sci-fi books recently. I'm looking for a longer story that takes its time to establish the world/universe and the characters living in it. I like the idea of exploring space or futuristic cities/landscapes and being on a journey together with the protagonist. The story doesn't have to have a happy end or flawless characters, but I also don't like it when everything is hopeless/dystopic and all the characters stumble from one flawed decision to the next one. Some examples of what I enjoyed so far are:

• Dune
• Project Hail Mary
• The Expanse Series
• Hyperion Cantos Series
• Bobiverse Series
• The Murderbot Diaries Series
• Tuf Voyaging
• Night's Dawn Series (Might not be for everyone... contains excessive violence and some smut, but also some very interesting ideas)
• Vatta's War Series (I usually don't like military sci-fi, but this one wasn't bad)
• The Interdependency Series
• Falling Free

If you enjoyed some of these stories and have any similar suggestions, feel free to share them here. If not, maybe consider checking out the list above... I highly recommend each of these entries.

Hopefully. Join Bookwyrm!

Two of Deleuze's essays read by Acid Horizon.

"The Grandeur of Yasser Arafat": https://deleuze.cla.purdue.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/the-grandeur-of-yasser-arafat.pdf

"Stones" can be found in the compilation of essays entitled 'Two Regimes of Madness': https://mitpress.mit.edu/9781584350620/two-regimes-of-madness/

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/4720329

Institution: Yale
Lecturer: Paul H. Fry
University Course Code: ENGL 300
Subject: #lit #literature
Description: This is a survey of the main trends in twentieth-century literary theory. Lectures will provide background for the readings and explicate them where appropriate, while attempting to develop a coherent overall context that incorporates philosophical and social perspectives on the recurrent questions: what is literature, how is it produced, how can it be understood, and what is its purpose?