The secret (and very illegal in my town) little free library around the corner had a book to my taste for the first time! I leave books there from time to time, but it's my first take!

Right on time for my birthday, I just received the fifth volume of this long term art/book project “reproducing“ the notebooks of future Martian ecologist Imago Sékoya as he studies what is left on flooded earth and terraformed Mars in the 2450s. The notebooks were found in the archeological dig of the wreak of his dirigible whale. I got the 1994 first volume back when I lived in France. I've bought all the volumes since.

Whatdoyouknow I'm reading for fun again. Only took five years since the pandemic. This is a horror/suspense danmei Chinese webnovel, that is over 1200 pages long, and so far it's mostly horror. I'm only 3% in, but I like it. There's a censored cdrama that came out last year, that has 78 episodes and I've promised myself that I can go watch it only when I'm done with the book.

I'm in this! 🎉 More stuff for the CV!

I finished this chapter in 2020. There's only one chapter from pandemic times that's not published yet. And I,ve moved on from this topic so much, I find myself completely detached from it.

Forward and onward.

#bookhaul 15 Star Trek books for 40$. It's a great find!

#day3 Epactase is a person's thrust toward god but also what you call it when someone dies from huh physical pleasure...

#day2 Coniller in French is to flee or hide like a rabbit, much like the verb to rabbit in English.

#sharethislist #octoberartchallenge2024 #octoberartchallenge #octoberdaily #inktober #inktober2024
#artprompts #artchallenge #drawtober #promptlist #prompts #promptlist2024 #obscurewords

#day1 of my October Art challenge.

The word is Gouleyant (like a light, sweet and flavourful wine).

As I am very underprepared for this, I have taken heavy inspiration from the internet for this one. Mea culpa.

#octoberartchallenge2024 #octoberartchallenge #octoberdaily #inktober #inktober2024 #obscurewords
#artprompts #artchallenge #drawtober #promptlist #prompts #promptlist2024

Ready for October.

Today's thrift store #bookhaul

It's all for research purposes *cough* It's Star Trek Day today, on the 57th anniversary of Amok Time, from which slash emerged.

#whatsnewwednesday @alwaysbeenaloverofbooks @read4life @tiedyedude

The tagged book took about as long as mine to come out of the pandemic. I missed the launch: It beat mine by 2 months. Looks like a really good collection of academic essays on the Chinese danmei novel Founder of Diabolism and its many many adaptations, including the 227 scandal. Going to the top of the pile!

(it's an academic book so the price is usurious)

Being back on here means that I am sharing the prompt list for the October Art Challenge formally known as Inktober. The person who made the prompt list I preferred no longer makes one, so here is mine. If you make your way to my insta, you can see the same list in French, if you prefer.

Steal, pilder, share!

(ETA: fixed the typo in the slide; fixed a typo in the text)

Haven't been reading this weekend. I finally finished these two pieces that I'd promised to the two tagged friends a year and a half ago.

Nerds of the world, unite!

#arting #doctorwho #fanart #tardis #notreading

@SilversReviews

I prefer paper books, but with my painful hands I can't really hold them for long anymore. I have a Kobo Libra Color (which is amazing!!!!) and a Kindle. (a cheap one, for DRM crippled academic books).

Thank you @eggs
* not able to see colours
* know when (if I knew how, I'd worry about when)
* see the future (preferably Star Trek 😜)
* passion
* winter
* fly

#wondrouswednesday

Yesterday's second-hand #bookhaul !

The most expensive was the tagged book, which was 7$. The trivia book's battery still works! I'd call that a score! And any Vonda McIntyre is an insta buy in this house. I scored!

On BoingBoing this morning, a reminder that Library Extension will tell you in any of the libraries you have access to has copies of the books you're looking at. Has access to thousands of libraries in Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.
https://boingboing.net/2024/08/18/download-this-extension-if-you-love-books.html

From yesterday's Habitat for Humanity and thrift store haul! This entire pile cost me 20$CA. It was a score.

#bookhaul

#FirstLineFridays

I don't know why the database lists this book as being written by that Goodman guy. It was written by Una McCormick, an excellent writter, a even better academic and an all around delight. Restarted it three years after first trying it. Covid ate my brain.

“It has long been my custom, before embarking upon a great voyage, to set my affairs in order.“

“Narration proceeds along postmodern lines, without precise direction, and according to the principle that no tale is impossible, as long as we delude ourselves that Europe or any other continent can be the centre of the world. The same can be said as to the gods.“

I love this so much, folks!

This book written for me!

It's almost certainly not for you. Written by an academic philosopher who's also a Sylvian fan. Packing a lot of deep reflection in 55 tight pages, he mentions Nietzsche as often as the Bhagavad-Gita. I loved every page of it. One caveat, the author is Italian and writes English like an Italian. The text would have been more legible in Italian. It's everything that my previous book should have have been. 🤯

Finally (restarted and) finished this one. It's good. I had been worried because as much as The Logogryph is my favourite book of all time, I frankly hated his other novels. This one is very good. An end of the human world narrative, about a different kind of climate change. The narrative is as fractured as the world therein. Poetic and oneiric, the last third of the novel in recounted from the point of view of a bird, which is brilliantly done.

A very good introduction to the major issues and characteristics of utopias in the West (centered on French works). It's a quick read. Bellagamba is a specialist on science fiction and utopias, but here offers a easy reading experience with bite sized entries to cover the topic. Were it not for the fact that kobo ate my annotations I'd have used for the book I'm writing.

As a lifelong fan of David Sylvian and to ease back into book reading for pleasure, I decided to finish the books I had started before the pandemic ate my brain. I didn't learn much. Young is journalist, not a literary critic. This is a well researched but somwhat shallow book that needed a professional editor, He is trying hard at exegesis, but he can't quite pull it off. He did not read Sylvian's main influences, so he misses things (next)

It is in my hands! Out on July 1st (Canada Day) from McFarland. 16 essays on Star Trek novels and their authors. So happy! It's been in the works since 2019!

I'm in this! I am very excited for this book to come out, early Summer 2024. It's been a long road (getting from there to here... *snort*) but publication is in sight. What I like the most about this is that the chapters are written in plain language, even for an academic book.

It can be pre-ordered from the McFarland website already.

I just started this, and I think what I like the most is that his drabbles are real drabbles. 100 words exactly. In fact it's a 100x100, which is fantastically fanfictional. Love it.

Thomas Wharton was great, read from the epic poem that closes the The Book of Rain (spoiler, but that's ok) and I was able to thank him for The Logogryph. It was a good night.

Waiting for the session with Jaroslav Kaflar, who I do not know at all, and Thomas Wharton, who wrote my favourite book of all time, The Logogryph. He will he talking about his latest book, tagged, which I am enjoying so far. I will note Wharton also wrote one of the books I have hated to most in my life, so I can say with confidence he stirs my feelings somewhat. Talking about the end of the world.

#writersfestival #authors #writing #novels

Drive by post:

I'm in this! Out this Fall from McFarland (not the one tagged, but with same editors).

I know I've been scarce on here in the last year and a half, but I've had good reasons, especially this one. I'm working on two separate academic books, one of which is in the final manuscript stage.

Announcing Strange Novel Worlds: Star Trek Novels and Fiction Collections in Popular Culture. 125 000 words, 15 chapters and an introduction. I am very happy of this one. I've been working on this since Spring 2019.

Drive by post: great list by BookRiot of their 42 best SSF books of the last decade. I agree with this 💯

https://bookriot.com/best-fantasy-novels-from-the-last-10-years/

The academic book market is extortionist in the extreme. This price is pornographic. It makes me so mad! I am beyond words. That's why people pirate textbooks. 😤

This is hysterically funny only because it's so sad. Watch Margaret Atwood take a flamethrower to an unburnable copy of her novel.

Video: https://youtu.be/zpsMsAMY4eM
Article: https://boingboing.net/2022/05/25/watch-margaret-atwood-take-a-flamethrower-to-a...

Fly by review. This is really good. Written with cartooning students in mind, but certainly accessible for everyone, it is both a 15-week self-directed course and a deep reflection on what makes good cartoons, comics or graphic novels. Spoiler alert: it's not drawing ability. Not even close. Quick read at 78 pages too.

We have a winner (but not my favourite, tagged). The winner of the Combat national des livres is L'Averti by Vanessa Léger. The one I liked the least won. Boo. It's not a bad book, just the least interesting to me.

La combat national des livres, day 3. Two eliminations today in preparation for the final vote tomorrow. [There were no eliminations yesterday]

My favourite, tagged, is still in the running! [For what it's worth, I did not like L'Averti by Vanessa Léger, so there]

Tagged was eliminated yesterday. It's a very nice novella, but not as poignant as Ingratitudes, and that's why the other books were preferred. Second book set to fall this afternoon.

#CombatNationaldesLivres

It's that time of the year: Le combat des livres on Radio-Canada Première, the French-language version of Canada Reads. Can't wait to see who wins. I like tagged best. 2-6 May, 13h-15h ET

https://ici.radio-canada.ca/fiches/3897/combat-national-des-livres-2022

Indigenous territories: tagged
West: Ying Chen, Rayonnements
Ontario: Daniel Poliquin, Le vol de l'ange
Québec: Paul Serge Forest, Tout est ori
Atlantic: Vanessa Léger, L'Averti

A good one, especially if you are in the history business. Can't say I'm in agreament with everything, but the idea that a house museum must root its importance in the local but become relevant in the broader to remain relevant and survive in the longterm, I can support. Also that not all historic house museums must have inherant perenial value. Thought provoking.

#bookmail

Professional development! Thinking about viz think and how yo draw it! 76 pages long only!

The whatever's subservient female relation whose own story is meaningless without the guy's existence.

I am so tired of these book titles (and the basic premise of most of them). Stop recommending these to me. Authors, do better.

#Two4Tuesday
@TheSpineView

❶ Yes, though I read news and fanfic most on my phone
❷ My Kobo or my Kindle, depending on availability.

In Covid Standard Time, we are not winning.

https://covidstandardtime.com/

#wonderouswednesday @eggs Thanks @eadieb for the kind tag!

💛 Of course. Is it a kissing book? Why so much yellow? Does this overt Settler national history book have Indigenous peoples on it? I will judge you. Hard!
💙 Minimalist and sparse. Subtle graphics, smart use of fonts, kerning, and colour. No avalanche of blurbs (I do not trust blurbs).
💜 It used to be “La vie est un long fleuve tranquille.“ Since 2017, no longer.

For @writerlibrarian Hockey player paper snowflake how-to.

https://hockeyenjoyer.gumroad.com/l/ayhem

#two4tuesday @TheSpineView

1️⃣ From the 1950s and 1960s, especially from The Three Suns. Google them, it's musak before Musak the band was founded. But it's actually very good. Gling gling gonslg bing!
2️⃣ Cookies!!!

#two4tuesday @TheSpineView

1️⃣ That my elderly father, sister or cousins not catch covid despite not respecting the 10 or fewer, no more that two household limit for holiday gatherings. Because I know they won't respect the limits. My sister told me as much last night.
2️⃣ There's 15 cm of snow on the ground and it's -12⁰C outside so I'm hopeful.

🎵 Christmas Gorn is here 🎶
🎶 Big dagger and fear🎵
🎵Fight for all that Trekkers call 🎶
🎶 He comes back every year🎵

Funniest thing in the new English edition is the character guide. Everyone's weapon is described, even if the character has a none. The book has a rather disconcerting heterosexual soup motif, which is funnily acknowledged here.