elbow
Sheet music seller, playwright, and qualified acoustical engineer. 27. She/her. Demi/Panđłď¸âđ Londoner. Wild swimmer. DVD collector. Genuine lover of excel spreadsheets.
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elbow is interested in reading...
8h
The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi
Shannon Chakraborty
Shannon Chakraborty, the bestselling author of The City of Brass, spins a new trilogy of magic and mayhem on the high seas in this tale of pirates and sorcerers, forbidden artifacts and ancient mysteries, in one womanâs determined quest to seize a final chance at gloryâand write her own legend.
Amina al-Sirafi should be content. After a storied and scandalous career as one of the Indian Oceanâs most notorious pirates, sheâs survived backstabbing rogues, vengeful merchant princes, several husbands, and one actual demon to retire peacefully with her family to a life of piety, motherhood, and absolutely nothing that hints of the supernatural.
But when sheâs tracked down by the obscenely wealthy mother of a former crewman, sheâs offered a job no bandit could refuse: retrieve her comradeâs kidnapped daughter for a kingly sum. The chance to have one last adventure with her crew, do right by an old friend, and win a fortune that will secure her familyâs future forever? It seems like such an obvious choice that it must be Godâs will.
Yet the deeper Amina dives, the more it becomes alarmingly clear thereâs more to this job, and the girlâs disappearance, than she was led to believe. For thereâs always risk in wanting to become a legend, to seize one last chance at glory, to savor just a bit more powerâŚand the price might be your very soul.
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8h
Greta & Valdin
Rebecca K. Reilly
An irresistible and bighearted international bestseller that follows a brother and sister as they navigate queerness, multiracial identity, and the dramas big and small of their entangled, unconventional family, all while flailing their way to love.
Itâs been a year since his ex-boyfriend dumped him and moved from Auckland to Buenos Aires, and Valdin is doing fine. He has a good flat with his sister Greta, a good career where his colleagues only occasionally remind him that he is the sole MÄori person in the office, and a good friend who he only sleeps with when heâs sad. But when work sends him to Argentina and heâs thrown back in his former loverâs orbit, Valdin is forced to confront the feelings heâs been trying to ignoreâand the future he wants.
Greta is not letting her painfully unrequited crush (or her possibly pointless masterâs thesis, or her pathetic academic salary...) get her down. She would love to focus on the charming fellow grad student she meets at a party and her friendships with a circle of similarly floundering twenty-somethings, but her chaotic family life wonât stop her mother is keeping secrets, her nephew is having a gay crisis, and her brother has suddenly flown to South America without a word.
Sharp, hilarious, and with an undeniable emotional momentum that builds to an exuberant conclusion, Greta & Valdin careens us through the siblingsâ misadventures and the messy dramas of their sprawling, eccentric Maaori-Russian-Catalonian family. An acclaimed bestseller in New Zealand, Greta & Valdin is fresh, joyful, and alive with the possibility of love in its many mystifying forms.
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21h
Thoughts Be Bloody
Auden Patrick
A struggling student, a resident golden boy, and the curse that will bring them this queer, trans retelling is Hamlet as youâve never read it before Exploring classism, identity, and the true meaning of revolution, this dark academia novel is perfect for fans of R. F. Kuangâs Babel and S. T. Gibsonâs An Education in Malice The summer before his sophomore year, Horatio Bithersea walks into the university library to find Carson Hamlett, resident golden boy and master magician, cradling his fatherâs dead body. Life at Elsinore, one of the most prestigious universities in the secretive magical world, simply goes on when the professorâs death is ruled an accidentâdespite the mysterious circumstances and the bloody scene. A year later, Horatio is keeping his head down, attempting to graduate without his out-of-control magic harming his classmates. That changes when the ghost of Hamlettâs father appears and places a curse on Horatio and avenge his death by destroying Elsinore and its heart, lest the ghost robs them of their minds, memories, and their very souls.Elsinore has given Horatio everythingâknowledge of his magical ability, an escape from his abusive family, and freedom to pursue his life as a transgender manâand now heâs to be its doom. As the two uncover more of Elsinoreâs secrets Horatio finds himself becoming more and more ensnared in Hamlettâs dark but charismatic web. The question is not if Horatio will manage to destroy Elsinore. The question is if Hamlett will destroy him first.
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elbow TBR'd a book
1d
Wild Dark Shore
Charlotte McConaghy
A family on a remote island. A mysterious woman washed ashore. A rising storm on the horizon.
Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the worldâs largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers. But with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants, packing up the seeds before they are transported to safer ground. Despite the wild beauty of life here, isolation has taken its toll on the Salts. Raff, eighteen and suffering his first heartbreak, can only find relief at his punching bag; Fen, seventeen, has started spending her nights on the beach among the seals; nine-year-old Orly, obsessed with botany, fears the loss of his beloved natural world; and Dominic canât stop turning back toward the past, and the loss that drove the family to Shearwater in the first place.
Then, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman washes up on shore. As the Salts nurse the woman, Rowan, back to life, their suspicion gives way to affection, and they finally begin to feel like a family again. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting her heart, begins to fall for the Salts, too. But Rowan isnât telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers the sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own dark secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, the characters must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before itâs too lateâand if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.
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elbow is interested in reading...
1d
The End We Start From
Megan Hunter
The universally acclaimed debut novel. âExtraordinary . . . a spare, futuristic fable about a brand-new mother navigating a flooded world.ââVogue.com Pre-empted by publishers around the world within days of the 2016 London Book Fair, The End We Start From heralds the arrival of Megan Hunter, a dazzling and unique literary talent. Hunterâs debut is a searing original, a modern-day parable of rebirth and renewal, of maternal bonds, and the instinct to survive and thrive in the absence of all thatâs familiar.  As London is submerged below flood waters, a woman gives birth to her first child, Z. Days later, she and her baby are forced to leave their home in search of safety. They head north through a newly dangerous country seeking refuge from place to place, shelter to shelter, to a desolate island and back again. The story traces fear and wonder, as the babyâs small fists grasp at the first colors he sees, as he grows and stretches, thriving and content against all the odds.  Written with poise and poeticism, The End We Start From is an indelible and elemental first bookâa lyrical vision of the strangeness and beauty of new motherhood, and a portentous tale of endurance in the face of ungovernable change. âStrange and powerful, and very apt for these uncertain times. I was moved, terrified, upliftedâsometimes all three at once. It takes skill to manage that, and Hunter has a poetâs understanding of how to make each word count.ââTracy Chevalier, New York Times bestselling author of The Girl with a Pearl Earring
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elbow is interested in reading...
1d
Dengue Boy
Michel Nieva
The year is 2272 and the last of the polar icecaps have melted. New York and Buenos Aires were submerged years ago and the Patagonian Archipelagos have been radically transformed into the only habitable lands on Earth. Here, in the unbearable heat of Victorica, Argentina, our child protagonist is a humanoid mosquito. Carrier of the deadly dengue virus, his monstrous appearance not only makes him a target for his cruel classmates - led by the little tyrant El Dulce - but also elicits disgust from his own mother.As the world spirals to its end, Dengue Boy searches for the meaning of his life and his true origins. Elsewhere, adults negotiate the value of pandemics on the Stock Exchange and waste the last of Earth's resources, while children more privileged than Dengue Boy plug into virtual realities and constant streams of violent video games. In delirious prose that brings together the picaresque, manga, body horror and cyberpunk, Dengue Boy delivers an extraordinary and bizarre portrait of a demented future.
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elbow is interested in reading...
1d
I Cheerfully Refuse
Leif Enger
Set in a not-too-distant America, I Cheerfully Refuse is the tale of Rainy, an aspiring musician setting sail on Lake Superior in search of his departed, deeply beloved, bookselling wife. An endearing bear of an Orphean narrator, he seeks refuge in the harbors, fogs, and remote islands of the inland sea. After encountering lunatic storms and rising corpses from the warming depths, he eventually lands to find an increasingly desperate and illiterate people, a malignant billionaire ruling class, a crumbled infrastructure, and a lawless society. As his guileless nature begins to make an inadvertent rebel of him, Rainyâs private quest for the love of his life grows into something wider and wilder, sweeping up friends and foes alike in his wake.
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elbow commented on a post
1d
Should I read the book or watch the movie first?
I know nothing about Pride and Prejudice and have never consumed anything regarding it and I want to both watch the movie and read the book but I'm unsure what to do first. I like to read without knowing the ending but I also find it hard to imagine the characters and locations so I find it easier to read books after watching the movies. Does anyone have any advice?
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elbow is interested in reading...
1d
The Water Outlaws
S.L. Huang
Inspired by a classic of martial arts literature, S. L. Huang's The Water Outlaws are bandits of devastating ruthlessness, unseemly femininity, dangerous philosophies, and ungovernable gender who are ready to make historyâor tear it apart.In the jianghu, you break the law to make it your own.Lin Chong is an expert arms instructor, training the Emperor's soldiers in sword and truncheon, battle axe and spear, lance and crossbow. Unlike bolder friends who flirt with challenging the unequal hierarchies and values of Imperial society, she believes in keeping her head down and doing her job.Until a powerful man with a vendetta rips that carefully-built life away.Disgraced, tattooed as a criminal, and on the run from an Imperial Marshall who will stop at nothing to see her dead, Lin Chong is recruited by the Bandits of Liangshan. Mountain outlaws on the margins of society, the Liangshan Bandits proclaim a belief in justiceâfor women, for the downtrodden, for progressive thinkers a corrupt Empire would imprison or destroy. Theyâre also murderers, thieves, smugglers, and cutthroats.Apart, they love like demons and fight like tigers. Together, they could bring down an empire.
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elbow is interested in reading...
2d
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Carl Sagan
How can we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology-driven lives if we donât understand the difference between the myths of pseudoscience and the testable hypotheses of science? Pulitzer Prize-winning author and distinguished astronomer Carl Sagan argues that scientific thinking is critical not only to the pursuit of truth but to the very well-being of our democratic institutions.
Casting a wide net through history and culture, Sagan examines and authoritatively debunks such celebrated fallacies of the past as witchcraft, faith healing, demons, and UFOs. And yet, disturbingly, in today's so-called information age, pseudoscience is burgeoning with stories of alien abduction, channeling past lives, and communal hallucinations commanding growing attention and respect. As Sagan demonstrates with lucid eloquence, the siren song of unreason is not just a cultural wrong turn but a dangerous plunge into darkness that threatens our most basic freedoms.
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elbow commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum
4d
Plankton
Edited
Resources for hope, resilience and action in times of climate disasters
Hi fellow Boundlings!
I hope everyone who is experiencing droughts or other extreme events right now is safe and has a cool place to be! Due to being in the midst of a historical drought in Europe, I've recently been trying to find small and big ways of action that help me feel less despairing and give me a sense of hope.
One of the resources that has helped me a lot, was the book đBraiding Sweetgrass. A fellow PB user also made me aware, that the book's author Robin Wall Kimmerer has also started a grass-roots movement called đPlant Baby Plant that "invites us to reimagine our shared future through acts of care for the living world". Both this movement as well as the book have helped me find hope in small acts such as using our garden's produce as best as possible or supporting NGO campaigns.
I would love for this thread to be a place where we can share resources about climate action, social justice action, maybe books that inspired you or gave you important tools, infos about local initiatives or whatever else gives you hope in times like these!
I'm sure that many of us might want to do something, but might not have the resources or energy to do so.
So I invite you to share your stories, ideas, and hopefully we can all learn a bit more and work towards tackling the climate crisis and all the connected issues that come with it.
Edit: P.S.: I collected all the books recommended in this thread in my shelf called "(Climate) Activism" ^^
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elbow is interested in reading...
5d
Midnightâs Children
Salman Rushdie
Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of Indiaâs independence. Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this coincidence. His every act is mirrored and magnified in events that sway the course of national affairs; his health and well-being are inextricably bound to those of his nation; his life is inseparable, at times indistinguishable, from the history of his country. Perhaps most remarkable are the telepathic powers linking him with Indiaâs 1,000 other âmidnightâs children,â all born in that initial hour and endowed with magical gifts.
This novel is at once a fascinating family saga and an astonishing evocation of a vast land and its peopleâa brilliant incarnation of the universal human comedy. Twenty-five years after its publication, Midnightâ s Children stands apart as both an epochal work of fiction and a brilliant performance by one of the great literary voices of our time.
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elbow TBR'd a book
5d
The God of Small Things
Arundhati Roy
The year is 1969. In the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India, a skyblue Plymouth with chrome tailfins is stranded on the highway amid a Marxist workers' demonstration. Inside the car sit two-egg twins Rahel and Esthappen, and so begins their tale. . . .
Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, they fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their familyâtheir lonely, lovely mother, Ammu (who loves by night the man her children love by day), their blind grandmother, Mammachi (who plays Handel on her violin), their beloved uncle Chacko (Rhodes scholar, pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom-pincher), their enemy, Baby Kochamma (ex-nun and incumbent grandaunt), and the ghost of an imperial entomologist's moth (with unusually dense dorsal tufts).
When their English cousin, Sophie Mol, and her mother, Margaret Kochamma, arrive on a Christmas visit, Esthappen and Rahel learn that Things Can Change in a Day. That lives can twist into new, ugly shapes, even cease forever, beside their river "graygreen." With fish in it. With the sky and trees in it. And at night, the broken yellow moon in it.
The brilliantly plotted story uncoils with an agonizing sense of foreboding and inevitability. Yet nothing prepares you for what lies at the heart of it.
The God of Small Things takes on the Big ThemesâLove. Madness. Hope. Infinite Joy. Here is a writer who dares to break the rules. To dislocate received rhythms and create the language she requires, a language that is at once classical and unprecedented. Arundhati Roy has given us a book that is anchored to anguish, but fueled by wit and magic.
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elbow TBR'd a book
5d
The House of the Spirits
Isabel Allende
In one of the most important and beloved Latin American works of the twentieth century, Isabel Allende weaves a luminous tapestry of three generations of the Trueba family, revealing both triumphs and tragedies. Here is patriarch Esteban, whose wild desires and political machinations are tempered only by his love for his ethereal wife, Clara, a woman touched by an otherworldly hand. Their daughter, Blanca, whose forbidden love for a man Esteban has deemed unworthy infuriates her father, yet will produce his greatest joy: his granddaughter Alba, a beautiful, ambitious girl who will lead the family and their country into a revolutionary future.
The House of the Spirits is an enthralling saga that spans decades and lives, twining the personal and the political into an epic novel of love, magic, and fate.
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elbow is interested in reading...
5d
Beauty Is a Wound
Eka Kurniawan
The epic novel Beauty Is a Wound combines history, satire, family tragedy, legend, humor, and romance in a sweeping polyphony. The beautiful Indo prostitute Dewi Ayu and her four daughters are beset by incest, murder, bestiality, rape, insanity, monstrosity, and the often vengeful undead. Kurniawan's gleefully grotesque hyperbole functions as a scathing critique of his young nation's troubled past: the rapacious offhand greed of colonialism; the chaotic struggle for independence; the 1965 mass murders of perhaps a million "Communists," followed by three decades of Suharto's despotic rule.
Beauty Is a Wound astonishes from its opening line: "One afternoon on a weekend in May, Dewi Ayu rose from her grave after being dead for twenty-one yearsâŚ" Drawing on local sourcesâfolk tales and the all-night shadow puppet plays, with their bawdy wit and epic scopeâand inspired by Melville and Gogol, Kurniawan's distinctive voice brings something luscious yet astringent to contemporary literature.
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