catbitesback

they/them. my tbr is my personality. talk to me about books!! my discord is pema007. no one is free until we're all free

3746 points

0% overlap

My Taste

The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together

Reading...

Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know®

Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders

27%

catbitesback started reading...

Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know®

Erica Chenoweth

A sweeping overview of civil resistance movements around the world that explains what they are, how they work, why they are often effective, and why they can fail.Civil resistance is a method of conflict through which unarmed civilians use a variety of coordinated methods (strikes, protests, demonstrations, boycotts, and many other tactics) to prosecute a conflict without directly harming or threatening to harm an opponent. Sometimes called nonviolent resistance, unarmed struggle, or nonviolent action, this form of political action is now a mainstay across the globe. It was been a central form of resistance in the 1989 revolutions and in the Arab Spring, and it is now being practiced widely in Trump's America. If we are going to understand the manifold protest movements emerging around the globe, we need a thorough understanding of civil resistance and its many dynamics and manifestations.In Civil What Everyone Needs to Know® , Erica Chenoweth -- one of the world's leading scholars on the topic--explains what civil resistance is, how it works, why it sometimes fails, how violence and repression affect it, and the long-term impacts of such resistance. Featuring both historical cases of civil resistance and more contemporary examples such as the Arab Awakenings and various ongoing movements in the United States, this book provides a comprehensive yet pithy overview of this enormously important subject.

catbitesback commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

Fiflydramalover

Demi-/half-/etc. Characterd

Does anyone else sometimes feel weird about the demigods, half demons, half fey, half w.e. in fantasy?

This is not a judgement zone, I'm not asking for moral purity or an ethics debate. I'm not one for censorship, so I'm not trying to argue the eradication of your favorite trope. This is just a curiosity on how people FEEL and whether or not I'm in the minority.

And if you fall into some sort of bi-/multi- identity (biracial, bisexual especially if you grew up in an envirnment where you were expected to choose, etc.), I would be curious about how that has influenced your perspective while engaging with this trope (if at all).

catbitesback made progress on...

16h

Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders

Vanessa Angélica Villarreal

27%

catbitesback TBR'd a book

Love, Gods and Sinners

Camille Chong

Against the glittering backdrop of alternate modern-day Singapore, two teens must choose between love and loyalty in this sapphic urban fantasy. Part enemies-to-lovers rom-com, part high-octane action, the chemistry of Mr and Mrs Smith meets the high-stakes action of Iron Widow. Harper Leong is an engineering intern at a famous tech company, but she’s also Raven: the flirtatious probationary leader of the feared Foxes, descended from Chinese Nine-Tailed Foxes. To successfully graduate her probation and achieve the leadership she promised her late parents, Harper’s been assigned to kill the Sentinel that’s been hindering Fox missions—Lune, the youngest, the brightest. But as Harper gets closer to her target, she finds herself looking past the icy facade the Sentinel often fronts, and begins struggling with her loyalties and, horrifically, her burgeoning feelings. Descended from moon goddess Chang'e, Lune's real name is Tia, and she's an engineering intern with an annoying partner-slash-flatmate: Harper. In her civilian identity, Tia begins falling for her arrogant rival—without realising that Harper is secretly the Fox that Tia’s been trying to defeat for years. Desperate to prove herself as the youngest Sentinel, Lune throws herself into destroying the Foxes—until she witnesses Raven during a vulnerable moment, tends to Harper’s mysterious wounds in her civilian life, and begins yearning for the miscreant on both sides of the mask. As Raven's mission to kill Lune unravels to include the mysterious moonstones that hint at unprecedented potential to aid Singapore's climate crisis, low-level tensions become life-threatening. Harper and Tia begin to realise that the concepts of right and wrong can be just as complicated—and dangerous—as falling in love.

catbitesback commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

soitently

Pets with book-related names?

I want to know what bookish names you’ve given your pets! Bonus points if you attach a photo of said pet 😁

My partner and I do pop culture related names for all of our pets, and we have many, but I realized recently that none of them are named after book characters! I’m a little embarrassed about it 😂

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Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders

Vanessa Angélica Villarreal

From award-winning poet Vanessa Angélica Villarreal comes a brilliant, singular collection of essays that looks to music, fantasy, and pop culture to excavate and reimagine what has been disappeared by the forces of migration and colonialism. In Magical/Realism, Vanessa Angélica Villarreal offers us an intimate mosaic of migration, violence, and colonial erasure through the lens of her marriage and her experiences navigating American monoculture. As she attempts to recover the truth from the absences and silences within her life, her relationships, and those of her ancestors, Vanessa pieces together her story from the fragments of music, memory, and fantasy that have helped her make sense of it all. The trauma of remembering gives the collection its unique Each chapter is an attempt to reimagine and re-world what has been lost. In one essay, Vanessa examines the gender performativity of Nirvana and Selena; in another, she offers a radical but crucial racial reading of Jon Snow in Game of Thrones; and throughout the collection, she explores how fantasy can provide healing when grief feels insurmountable. She reflects on the moments of her life that are too painful to remember—her difficult adolescence, her role as the eldest daughter of Mexican immigrants, her divorce—and finds a new way to archive her history and map her future(s), one infused with the hope and joy of fantasy and magical thinking. By engaging readers in her project of rebuilding narrative, Vanessa broadens our understanding of what memoir and cultural criticism can be. Magical/Realism is a wise, tender, and essential collection that carves a path toward a new way of remembering and telling our stories.

catbitesback TBR'd a book

Written in Bone: Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind

Sue Black

Our bones are the silent witnesses to the lives we lead. Our stories are marbled into their marrow. Drawing upon her years of research and a wealth of remarkable experience, the world-renowned forensic anthropologist Professor Dame Sue Black takes us on a journey of revelation. From skull to feet, via the face, spine, chest, arms, hands, pelvis and legs, she shows that each part of us has a tale to tell. What we eat, where we go, everything we do leaves a trace, a message that waits patiently for months, years, sometimes centuries, until a forensic anthropologist is called upon to decipher it. Some of this information is easily understood, some holds its secrets tight and needs scientific cajoling to be released. But by carefully piecing together the evidence, the facts of a life can be rebuilt. Limb by limb, case by case – some criminal, some historical, some unaccountably bizarre – Sue Black reconstructs with intimate sensitivity and compassion the hidden stories in what we leave behind.

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Level 2

100 points

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Aftershocks of Disaster: Puerto Rico Before and After the Storm

Yarimar Bonilla

No disaster is a singular event. Aftershocks of Disaster examines the lasting effects of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, not just the effects of the wind or the rain, but delving into what followed: state failure, social abandonment, capitalization on human misery, and the collective trauma produced by the botched response. The book links the devastation to colonialism.

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creamiemoon TBR'd a book

Broken Stars: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation

Ken Liu

LOCUS AWARD FINALIST FOR BEST ANTHOLOGYSixteen short stories from China's groundbreaking science fiction writers, edited and translated by award-winning author Ken Liu.In Hugo award-winner Liu Cixin's ‘Moonlight,’ a man is contacted by three future versions of himself, each trying to save their world from destruction. Hao Jingfang’s ‘The New Year Train’ sees 1,500 passengers go missing on a train that vanishes into space. In the title story by Tang Fei, a young girl is shown how the stars can reveal the future.In addition, three essays explore the history and rise of Chinese science fiction publishing, contemporary Chinese fandom, and how the growing interest in Chinese SF has impacted writers who had long laboured in obscurity.By turns dazzling, melancholy and thought-provoking, Broken Stars celebrates the vibrancy and diversity of SFF voices emerging from China.Stories include:“Goodnight, Melancholy” by Xia Jia “The Snow of Jinyang” by Zhang Ran “Broken Stars” by Tang Fei “Submarines” by Han Song “Salinger and the Koreans” by Han Song “Under a Dangling Sky” by Cheng Jingbo “What Has Passed Shall in Kinder Light Appear” by Baoshu“The New Year Train” by Hao Jingfang “The Robot Who Liked to Tell Tall Tales” by Fei Dao “Moonlight” by Liu Cixin “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe: Laba Porridge" by Anna Wu “The First Emperor’s Games” by Ma Boyong “Reflection” by Gu Shi“The Brain Box” by Regina Kanyu Wang“Coming of the Light” by Chen Qiufan “A History of Future Illnesses” by Chen Qiufan Essays:“A Brief Introduction to Chinese Science Fiction and Fandom,” by Regina Kanyu Wang, “A New Continent for China Scholars: Chinese Science Fiction Studies” by Mingwei Song“Science Fiction: Embarrassing No More” by Fei DaoFor more Chinese SF in translation, check out Invisible Planets.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

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Blood Suckers

Bronze: Finished 5 Main Quest books.

catbitesback commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

drpepper

Decision Paralysis

I sat down today to figure out what to read next and I am OVERWHELMED!! My TBR has 300+ books on it, and so many of them are unfinished series. Any tips for shaking off the paralysis? Do you wait till a series is completed to start it? Should I just full send and start them with no anticipated end?

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horrorholly

Indie Bookstore Day Hauls

I just got finished at my LBS and I finally got Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova and The Spirit Bares It's Teeth by Andrew Joseph White. They were doing a free book if you spent over $30 so I picked up To Have and to Hoax by Martha Waters for my friend, and then because they love me and I love them, they gave me Songs for Ghosts by Clara Kumagai!

catbitesback started reading...

Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders

Vanessa Angélica Villarreal

catbitesback wrote a review...

catbitesback

Apr 25, 2026

4.0

Enjoyment: 4.0Quality: 4.5Characters: 4.0Plot: 3.5

🙏

💉

🗡️

While there were parts of the book that I didn't entirely follow, the storytelling was very well done. The pacing was ideal and the characters were compelling. I plan on reading more by this author!

catbitesback finished a book

Hell Followed With Us

Andrew Joseph White

Prepare to die. His kingdom is near. Sixteen-year-old trans boy Benji is on the run from the cult that raised him—the fundamentalist sect that unleashed Armageddon and decimated the world’s population. Desperately, he searches for a place where the cult can’t get their hands on him, or more importantly, on the bioweapon they infected him with. But when cornered by monsters born from the destruction, Benji is rescued by a group of teens from the local Acheson LGBTQ+ Center, affectionately known as the ALC. The ALC’s leader, Nick, is gorgeous, autistic, and a deadly shot, and he knows Benji’s darkest secret: the cult’s bioweapon is mutating him into a monster deadly enough to wipe humanity from the earth once and for all. Still, Nick offers Benji shelter among his ragtag group of queer teens, as long as Benji can control the monster and use its power to defend the ALC. Eager to belong, Benji accepts Nick’s terms…until he discovers the ALC’s mysterious leader has a hidden agenda, and more than a few secrets of his own. A furious, queer debut novel about embracing the monster within and unleashing its power against your oppressors. Perfect for fans of Gideon the Ninth and Annihilation.

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ani24

Book Bingo!

So I work at my local library and for our summer reading programming we do summer reading bingos for our adult patrons! We have a regular mode and a hard mode that people can submit one of each filled out card for a chance to win some prizes from local businesses!

Anyway, I'm making the bingo cards and I need ideas for some hard mode prompts! I wanted to come on here and ask for your suggestions!

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