#nowreading @letterformarchive

#NowReading - Behind Enemy Lines: The True Story of a French Jewish Spy in Nazi Germany
by Marthe Cohn

Marthe Cohn was awarded France's highest military honor, the Mdaille Militaire, age 80. At its heart, this remarkable #memoir is the tale of an ordinary human being who, under extraordinary circumstances, became the hero her country needed her to be.

Thanks to @MNSpy for bringing her story to my attention via
https://mastodon.online/@MNSpy/114330963941166330

042/2025
Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
by Daniel C. Dennett

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2067.Breaking_the_Spell?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=NNsboTK99u&rank=1

I’ve just finished reading the 1893 novel “Dodo: a detail of the day”, the first novel by E.F. Benson, who was the son of the archbishop of Canterbury. It’s not the sort of thing I normally read (sf/fantasy/science) but rather a novel about the idle youth of the British upper classes. I heard a reference to the novel that made it sound interesting, so I downloaded it from Project Gutenberg for free.

Dodo the story of a very pretty and charming-in-a-vacuous-way young woman, and the various men who chase after her. Contemporaneous reviewers described her character as “vulgar and heartless” — in today’s terms she might be thought of as aromantic or sociopathic or both. She chooses men for self-interest, and faces the consequences.

I suspect that a lot of the social commentary and humour is lost on a modern reader without the same cultural reference points, so although I enjoyed it, I probably wouldn’t recommend the book unless that’s a time period you are interested in. I will add a warning that there is casual racism in a few places, including one use of the n-word (to describe a style of music, not a person).

As long as I’m promoting solarpunk books, I want to shout out a pair of books I read as a kid/teen in the 1970s that gave me the same sense of hope and optimism: “Enchantress From the Stars” and it’s sequel “The Far Side of Evil”, by Sylvia Louise Engdahl. They are about people from an enlightened civilization who intervene on less developed worlds under threat — in the first book the threat is extractive colonization, and in the second it is outright fascism. (Which might be why it popped into my head lately.) If you are looking for some uplifting science fiction, I really recommend them — they sit on my ‘favourites’ shelf at home.

I just finished reading “A Prayer for the Crown-Shy”, the second-and-last book in the Monk and Robot series by Becky Chambers. Like the first book, it’s a cozy little solarpunk novella, clocking in at just 160 pages or so. I stopped reading post-apocalyptic novels some time ago, and I love reading protopean fiction, that imagines a more sustainable world with better people in it.

Although, having read the book, I still have no idea where its title comes from.

More solarpunk recommendations welcome!

Currently reading: On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder. “History does not repeat, but it does instruct.”#nowreading #bookstodon #storygraph #OnTyranny #TimothySnyder #currentlyreading #currentevents

#NowReading: The Cuckoo’s Egg:
Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage

by Clifford Stoll

I've seen this book referenced many times over in books about #cybersecurity. The true story that's “as exciting as any action novel”, an astronomer-turned-cyber-detective begins a personal quest to expose spies that threaten national security.

Find a copy at your local #library : https://openlibrary.org/books/OL2189508M/The_Cuckoo%E2%80%99s_Egg

The Cyber-Anarchist Manifesto

- https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anarchist-federation-of-cyber-communes-the-cyber-anarchist-manifesto

I've got a taste of Stephen and it's of the King order

Just finished the next (in chronological order) Vorkosigan saga book, Barrayar. Despite them fading into the background from here on (IIRC), Cordelia and Aral are two of my favourite characters of the whole series.

#BookologyThursday #NowReading 'Raising Hare' by Chloe Dalton, which quotes a 1575 poem by George Gascoigne written from the point of view of a hare to a human hunter by Rob Barnes

My latest read was "The Teller of Small Fortunes" by Julie Leong. It's a tale set in a fantasy world, based loosely on Elizabethan England and China, only with magic and fantasy beasts.

What I really appreciated about the book was that it held friendship as the uniting theme, rather than great romance or grand world-saving quests. It was a nice change from the usual.

It is a first novel, but a well-crafted one and I'm looking forward to seeing more by Leong. Recommended if you like reading cozy fantasy while curled in an overstuffed chair and drinking your favourite hot beverage.

Batman Dark Patterns #2
#NowReading #ReadComics

Started reading this.

this week I'm reading Human Factors in Systems Engineering

there are so many gems I've highlighted already but really vibed with how the author clearly and simply expressed the impact of writing docs "early" here

I just finished reading “Murder Your Employer” by Rupert Holmes, which was recommended to me by someone on the Fedi after I reviewed a murder mystery. So naturally I was expecting this book to also be a murder mystery, but it isn’t. Instead it’s a sort of intermingled triptych of stories about people seeking to murder their employers, written kind of like a caper movie. The whole mystery and tension is about how they are going to pull it off, and will they succeed?

The author uses some mystery tropes, such as making the intended victims so awful that no sympathy is wasted on them. But he also has the task of making three murderers relatable and sympathetic, and I found it interesting how he approached it in each story.

I thought it was a good solid read, and a really unique take on the genre.