
Cassius finished a book
15w

Blitz
Daniel O'Malley
In this historical fantasy, a new recruit to the most powerful supernatural intelligence agency on Earth is accused of going rogue—and must go on the run to clear her name. September, 1940. Three women of the Checquy, the secret organization tasked with protecting Britain from supernatural threats, stand in the sky above London and see German aircraft approach. Forbidden by law to interfere, all they can do is watch as their city is bombed. Until Pamela, the most sensible of them, breaks all the rules and brings down a Nazi bomber with her bare hands. The three resolve to tell no one about it, but they soon learn that a crew member is missing from the downed bomber. Charred corpses are discovered in nearby houses and it becomes apparent that the women have unwittingly unleashed a monster. Through a city torn by the Blitz, the friends must hunt the enemy before he kills again. Their task will take them from the tunnels of the Underground to the halls of power, where they will discover the secrets that a secret organization must keep even from itself. Today. Lynette Binns, a librarian with a husband and child, is a late recruit to the Checquy, having discovered only as an adult her ability to electrify everyday objects with her touch. After completing her training, she is assigned to examine a string of brutal murders and quickly realizes that all bear the unmistakable hallmark of her own unique power. Unable to provide an alibi and determined to prove her innocence, she flees, venturing into the London underworld to find answers. But now she is prey, being tracked by her own frighteningly capable comrades. As Lyn fights off powered thugs and her own vengeful colleagues, she will find that the solution to the murders and to the mystery of her own past lies in the events of World War II, and the covert actions of three young women during the Blitz.

Cassius started reading...
15w

Blitz
Daniel O'Malley
In this historical fantasy, a new recruit to the most powerful supernatural intelligence agency on Earth is accused of going rogue—and must go on the run to clear her name. September, 1940. Three women of the Checquy, the secret organization tasked with protecting Britain from supernatural threats, stand in the sky above London and see German aircraft approach. Forbidden by law to interfere, all they can do is watch as their city is bombed. Until Pamela, the most sensible of them, breaks all the rules and brings down a Nazi bomber with her bare hands. The three resolve to tell no one about it, but they soon learn that a crew member is missing from the downed bomber. Charred corpses are discovered in nearby houses and it becomes apparent that the women have unwittingly unleashed a monster. Through a city torn by the Blitz, the friends must hunt the enemy before he kills again. Their task will take them from the tunnels of the Underground to the halls of power, where they will discover the secrets that a secret organization must keep even from itself. Today. Lynette Binns, a librarian with a husband and child, is a late recruit to the Checquy, having discovered only as an adult her ability to electrify everyday objects with her touch. After completing her training, she is assigned to examine a string of brutal murders and quickly realizes that all bear the unmistakable hallmark of her own unique power. Unable to provide an alibi and determined to prove her innocence, she flees, venturing into the London underworld to find answers. But now she is prey, being tracked by her own frighteningly capable comrades. As Lyn fights off powered thugs and her own vengeful colleagues, she will find that the solution to the murders and to the mystery of her own past lies in the events of World War II, and the covert actions of three young women during the Blitz.

Cassius finished a book
18w

There Is No Antimemetics Division
qntm
An antimeme is an idea with self-censoring properties; an idea which, by its intrinsic nature, discourages or prevents people from spreading it.Antimemes are real. Think of any piece of information which you wouldn't share with anybody, like passwords, taboos and dirty secrets. Or any piece of information which would be difficult to share even if you complex equations, very boring passages of text, large blocks of random numbers, and dreams... But anomalous antimemes are another matter entirely. How do you contain something you can't record or remember? How do you fight a war against an enemy with effortless, perfect camouflage, when you can never even know that you're at war? Welcome to the Antimemetics Division. No, this is not your first day.This ebook is an official release by me, qntm from the SCP Foundation wiki! PM me if you require confirmation. This ebook collects all of my Antimemetics Division SCP-055, SCP-2256 and the complete serials There Is No Antimemetics Division and Five Five Five Five Five.

Cassius TBR'd a book
18w

Valuable Humans in Transit and Other Stories
qntm qntm
qntm has been writing science fiction for most of this millennium. His works start from elegant, deep hypotheticals and wind entire universes around them, pushing science, technology, time and logic to breaking point and far beyond. This volume collects the highlights of his short fiction, including "The Difference", "I Don't Know, Timmy, Being God Is A Big Responsibility" and the acclaimed "Lena".

Cassius TBR'd a book
18w

Ra
qntm qntm
Magic is real. Discovered in the 1970s, magic is now a bona fide field of engineering. There's magic in heavy industry and magic in your home. It's what's next after electricity. Student mage Laura Ferno has designs on the future: her mother died trying to reach space using magic, and Laura wants to succeed where she failed. But first, she has to work out what went wrong. And who her mother really was. And whether, indeed, she's dead at all...

Cassius TBR'd a book
18w

Mimeograph
Eira A. Ekre
What if the future isn’t malfunctioning… it’s unfolding exactly as predicted? Talia spends her days untangling the strange objects produced by Mimeographs, machines that seem to know more about their owners than they should. But when one of them prints an anomaly that can’t be explained, her entire world begins to collapse. Faced with the incomprehensible, Talia must confront the possibility that the Mimes aren’t malfunctioning at all. They’re evolving. Mimeograph is a haunting tale of unravelling, desire colliding with dread, and a future that may already be written.

Cassius TBR'd a book
18w

Annihilation
Jeff VanderMeer
Area X has been cut off from the rest of the world for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; the second expedition ended in mass suicide, the third in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another. The members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within weeks, all had died of cancer. In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition. The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself. They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers—but it’s the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything.

Cassius started reading...
18w

There Is No Antimemetics Division
qntm
An antimeme is an idea with self-censoring properties; an idea which, by its intrinsic nature, discourages or prevents people from spreading it.Antimemes are real. Think of any piece of information which you wouldn't share with anybody, like passwords, taboos and dirty secrets. Or any piece of information which would be difficult to share even if you complex equations, very boring passages of text, large blocks of random numbers, and dreams... But anomalous antimemes are another matter entirely. How do you contain something you can't record or remember? How do you fight a war against an enemy with effortless, perfect camouflage, when you can never even know that you're at war? Welcome to the Antimemetics Division. No, this is not your first day.This ebook is an official release by me, qntm from the SCP Foundation wiki! PM me if you require confirmation. This ebook collects all of my Antimemetics Division SCP-055, SCP-2256 and the complete serials There Is No Antimemetics Division and Five Five Five Five Five.

Cassius finished a book
18w

OtherLife (Last Reality, #3)
Jason Segel
Return to the series BuzzFeed compared to Ready Player One with the third book in the fast-paced trilogy from New York Times bestselling authors Jason Segel and Kirsten Miller that's perfect for fans of HBO's Westworld. Simon, Kat, Busara, and Elvis are on the run with the tech super-villains at the Company hot on their heels. The new VR gaming experience the Company created, OtherEarth, will change how the world experiences video games. Paired with the hardware the Company developed, it has the potential to change the world as we know it, altering our reality forever. The Company is on its way to becoming the world's newest superpower. And Simon is determined to shut them down forever. But to do that, he'll have to survive OtherLife--the next phase of gaming, and a complete reality reboot.

Cassius TBR'd a book
19w

A Man Called Ove
Fredrik Backman
Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon, the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him the bitter neighbor from hell, but must Ove be bitter just because he doesn't walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time? Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove's mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents' association to their very foundations.

Cassius finished a book
20w

My Friends
Fredrik Backman
#1 New York Times bestselling author Fredrik Backman returns with an unforgettably funny, deeply moving tale of four teenagers whose friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a complete stranger’s life twenty-five years later. Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an aspiring artist herself, knows otherwise, and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures. Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant seaside town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days on an abandoned pier, telling silly jokes, sharing secrets, and committing small acts of rebellion. These lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream, a reason to love. Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be placed into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. She embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn how the painting came to be and to decide what to do with it. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more nervous she becomes about what she’ll find. Louisa is proof that happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this stunning testament to the transformative, timeless power of friendship and art.

I have a kindle tablet that I’ve had for years now and I’ve been using it more often but it doesn’t fit my reading style very well. In general, it’s on the older side so I need to use my phone to transfer my books on from libby and the kindle app doesn’t always update very well between the devices. I’ve tried jailbreaking it because I’m not a huge fan of what Amazon as a conglomerate has been up to (I also don’t have any particular ties to Amazon because I don’t pay for kindle unlimited). I also don’t like the interface for highlighting and annotating and I’ve heard good things about the kobo. My kindle is also giving me a ton of trouble to read using audiobooks so I’ve been researching an alternative.
So far what I’m thinking is: is the price worth it or should I just buy the physical books and write on them? That would be a bit of a hassle though because where I live a book is like 100 dollars and the range isn’t really good. I also prefer e-books anyways. Is the subscription fee worth it? Ten dollars a month feels like a lot but idk. Should I just repurpose my old iPad and pirate pdfs to annotate? I’m only leaning away from this because it feels ethically wrong especially to the authors that I really appreciate.
I also know that a kobo allows you to use audiobooks and that’s a big plus for me because I listen to books pretty often.
I might be gaslighting myself into thinking it’s useless too. Because in all technicality my phone can do most of the same functions if I need it to but I don’t want to fall into the hole of opening my phone and then not even opening my book.

Cassius started reading...
20w

My Friends
Fredrik Backman
#1 New York Times bestselling author Fredrik Backman returns with an unforgettably funny, deeply moving tale of four teenagers whose friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a complete stranger’s life twenty-five years later. Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an aspiring artist herself, knows otherwise, and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures. Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant seaside town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days on an abandoned pier, telling silly jokes, sharing secrets, and committing small acts of rebellion. These lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream, a reason to love. Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be placed into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. She embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn how the painting came to be and to decide what to do with it. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more nervous she becomes about what she’ll find. Louisa is proof that happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this stunning testament to the transformative, timeless power of friendship and art.

Cassius finished a book
20w

Golden Son
Pierce Brown
With shades of The Hunger Games, Ender’s Game, and Game of Thrones, debut author Pierce Brown’s genre-defying epic Red Rising hit the ground running and wasted no time becoming a sensation. Golden Son continues the stunning saga of Darrow, a rebel forged by tragedy, battling to lead his oppressed people to freedom from the overlords of a brutal elitist future built on lies. Now fully embedded among the Gold ruling class, Darrow continues his work to bring down Society from within. A life-or-death tale of vengeance with an unforgettable hero at its heart, Golden Son guarantees Pierce Brown’s continuing status as one of fiction’s most exciting new voices.

A few months ago I bought a 4th gen kindle, the one with all the buttons all over it, and I do love it dearly. This kindle was a bit busted up when I got it. The person who sold it to me says they're not certain but they're pretty sure it used to be a display device in a store, which would explain the scratches on the casing and the one on the screen that cut deep enough to damage a little bit of the e-ink. These don't affect my reading experience at all so they're pretty easy to ignore, but sometimes it does make me wonder how long it has til the e-ink gets stuck, or until one of the more essential buttons fails to work (esp since the right side experiences 'sticky page' issues, where when you go to flip the page it will load two pages at once and end up skipping the one you were turning to. Sometimes it takes a few tries of back-and-forth for it to settle on the correct page, but the left side buttons do not have this issue yet). But one thing I've come to understand about this kindle is that you can under no circumstances have the device on when charging, which is something I didn't expect since this isn't an issue for my 11th gen paperwhite. Both of my kindles are jailbroke and run on KOReader, so even though they functionally work the same (besides one being a touchscreen and the other using buttons) the thing about using it while charging is the only difference in usability and it scares me every time I forget. If you try it, it will cause the screen to completely freeze and none of the buttons will work. Whenever this happens, holding down on the power button the first time just causes the screen to go completely white, and then you have to hold down again for 30 seconds, let go, and then press down again for around 5 seconds for it to reboot. After that it works like normal, but every time this happens it gets harder and harder to successfully get the reboot screen to trigger and I have a moment of resigned acceptance like "this might be the one. This might be the day it finally kicks the bucket." But so far that has just been a bit of over-reaction on my part. This old thing is a tough little cookie and remarkably resilient (side-eyeing most of my past phones as I say this) and I am always acutely aware of how precious it is to own an old piece of technology that still works and has full functionality, so to everybody old there who also has a senior e-ink device... remember to cherish it while you still can 🥹🥺