Recs if you like The People in the Trees...

Fiction about hyperspecific stuff that'll get you lost in Wikipedia if you're not careful — the more niche the better. Suggestions welcome, but to make the cut, there MUST be a corresponding Wikipedia page!! Links in the comments to get you started.

Books that play with the "book" as a medium or are otherwise self-reflexive/meta.

My current criteria for this list are (1) does the book highlight its own textuality consistently or (2) do the metafictional elements add significantly to the themes explored or (3) does the book's use of discourse and form (e.g., narrative situation, layout) significantly differ from the norm?

Make sure to comment your suggestions with a small explanation even if you're not 100 % sure if they fit!

ANTI: fascism, ai, nfts, Big Tech, billionaires, surveillance states, optimization, algorithms, bot farms, technofeudalism, enshittification, exploitation, extractionism, planned obsolescence PRO: organized labor, punk, analog, solidarity, free speech, friction, degrowth, experimentation, right to privacy, right to repair, diy, material process, mutual aid, ecological living, the human hand, the human mind

*Short stories welcome. Looking for nonfiction? Check out The Big Bad Luddite List.

For when you need to wallow in melancholy and misery: a collection of pessimistic, cynical, downbeat, depressing, doom and gloom fiction for my disillusioned friends.

More to come!

Got the holiday blues? Check out my list Christmas with the Cranks!

into your house into your bed into your streams into your streets into your drink into your bread upon your cattle on your sheep upon your oxen in your field into your dreams into your sleep until you break until you yield

Gruesome, transgressive, & affronting books with thematic and intellectual substance!

Fiction and nonfiction about expedition, exploration and cultural anthropology

from a good girls guide to murder to hanya yanagihara’s true masterpiece here are some of the greatest novels which are set apart from the crowd by their ground breaking structures which make reading them even more invigorating