theshelftype

🔹sci-fi🔹fantasy🔹historical🔹literary🔹 ▪️void supervisor▪️ 🐈‍⬛

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The Fractured Dark (The Devoured Worlds, #2)

theshelftype TBR'd a book

Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler

Susana M. Morris

A magnificent cultural biography that charts the life of one of our greatest writers, situating her alongside the key historical and social moments that shaped her work. As the first Black woman to consistently write and publish in the field of science fiction, Octavia Butler was a trailblazer. With her deft pen, she created stories speculating the devolution of the American empire, using it as an apt metaphor for the best and worst of humanity—our innovation and ingenuity, our naked greed and ambition, our propensity for violence and hierarchy. Her fiction charts the rise and fall of the American project—the nation’s transformation from a provincial backwater to a capitalist juggernaut—made possible by chattel slavery—to a bloated imperialist superpower on the verge of implosion. In this outstanding work, Susana M. Morris places Butler’s story firmly within the cultural, social, and historical context that shaped her the Civil Rights Movement, Black Power, women’s liberation, queer rights, Reaganomics. Morris reveals how these influences profoundly impacted Butler’s personal and intellectual trajectory and shaped the ideas central to her writing. Her cautionary tales warn us about succumbing to fascism, gender-based violence, and climate chaos while offering alternate paradigms to religion, family, and understanding our relationships to ourselves. Butler envisioned futures with Black women at the center, raising our awareness of how those who are often dismissed have the knowledge to shift the landscape of our world. But her characters are no magical martyrs, they are tough, flawed, intelligent, and complicated, a reflection of Butler’s stories. Morris explains what drove She wrote because she felt she must. “Who was I anyway? Why should anyone pay attention to what I had to say? Did I have anything to say? I was writing science fiction and fantasy, for God’s sake. At that time nearly all professional science-fiction writers were white men. As much as I loved science fiction and fantasy, what was I doing? Well, whatever it was, I couldn’t stop. Positive obsession is about not being able to stop just because you’re afraid and full of doubts. Positive obsession is dangerous. It’s about not being able to stop at all.”

theshelftype entered a giveaway...

Knopf Doubleday giveaway

Shady Hollow

Juneau Black

The first book in the Shady Hollow series, in which we are introduced to the village of Shady Hollow, a place where woodland creatures live together in harmony--until a curmudgeonly toad turns up dead and the local reporter has to solve the case. Reporter Vera Vixen is a relative newcomer to Shady Hollow. The fox has a nose for news, so when she catches wind that the death might be a murder, she resolves to get to the bottom of the case, no matter where it leads. As she stirs up still waters, the fox exposes more than one mystery, and discovers that additional lives are in jeopardy. Vera finds more to this town than she ever suspected. It seems someone in the Hollow will do anything to keep her from solving the murder, and soon it will take all of Vera's cunning and quickness to crack the case.

print • 10 copies • US only

theshelftype commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

teddydee

Edited

"Whatcha Get?" Weekend

Howdy, friends :) It's time to share what books you got in the last week!

Did you check out a big stack from the library?
Did you visit a new LFL and find something exciting?
Did someone give you a book for your birthday?
Did you go splurge at the bookstore?
Did you stuff your Kindle?
Did all your Libby holds come in at once?
Did you go wild at a zine festival?
Did you find a book in the dumpster?
???

IT ALL COUNTS so tell me...whatcha get??? 👀

theshelftype joined a quest

A Quest For The Future: Climate Fiction ☀️🌍⛈️

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The climate is intrinsic to life on Earth. What happens when it changes? These books examine our reality and imagined futures, both dystopian and utopian, to offer us words of warning, but also hope.

theshelftype joined a quest

The Kaleidoscope of Time: A Time Travel Quest ⏳🕰️🚪

🏆 // 1376 joined

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From stolen centuries to days that echo themselves, these books breathe time travel into the weave, unraveling the seams of time and lingering in the threads that slip free.

theshelftype is interested in reading...

Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction

Jeff VanderMeer

This all-new definitive guide to writing imaginative fiction takes a completely novel approach and fully exploits the visual nature of fantasy through original drawings, maps, renderings, and exercises to create a spectacularly beautiful and inspiring object. Employing an accessible, example-rich approach, Wonderbook energizes and motivates while also providing practical, nuts-and-bolts information needed to improve as a writer. Aimed at aspiring and intermediate-level writers, Wonderbook includes helpful sidebars and essays from some of the biggest names in fantasy today, such as George R. R. Martin, Lev Grossman, Neil Gaiman, Michael Moorcock, Catherynne M. Valente, and Karen Joy Fowler, to name a few. Praise for “Jammed with storytelling wisdom.” — Fast Company ’s Co.Create blog “This is the kind of book you leave sitting out for all to see . . . and the kind of book you will find yourself picking up again and again.” — Kirkus Reviews online “If you’re looking for a handy guide to not just crafting imaginative fiction like sci-fi, fantasy, and horror, but to writing in general, be sure to pick up a copy of Steampunk Bible author Jeff Vandermeer’s lovingly compiled Wonderbook ." —Flavorwire “Jeff Vandermeer and Jeremy Zerfoss have created a kaleidoscopically rich and beautiful book about fiction writing.” — Star Tribune “Because it is so layered and filled with text, tips, and links to online extras, this book can be read again and again by both those who want to learn the craft of writing and those interested in the process of others.” — Library Journal

theshelftype started reading...

The Fractured Dark (The Devoured Worlds, #2)

Megan E. O'Keefe

Dying planets, dangerous conspiracies, and secret romance abound in the second installment of the Devoured Worlds trilogy by award-winning author Megan E. O'Keefe. Naira and Tarquin have escaped the pull of a dying planet, and are now bound together to find the truth behind the all-powerful Mercator family and the blight that has been killing habitable planets. But the Mercator secrets are buried deep, and Tarquin’s father, the head of Mercator, knows the revolutionaries are on his tail. When Tarquin’s father disappears, taking the rest of his family and the universe’s remaining supply of starship fuel with him, chaos breaks loose between the universe’s ruling families. And Naira’s revolution must be put aside for the sake of humanity’s immediate survival.

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theshelftype

Aug 26, 2026

The Blighted Stars

4.0

Enjoyment: 4.0Quality: 4.0Characters: 4.0Plot: 4.0

theshelftype finished a book

The Blighted Stars

Megan E. O'Keefe

Stranded on a dead planet with her mortal enemy, a spy must survive and uncover a conspiracy in the first book of an epic space opera trilogy by an award‑winning author. She’s a revolutionary. Humanity is running out of options. Habitable planets are being destroyed as quickly as they’re found and Naira Sharp thinks she knows the reason why. The all-powerful Mercator family has been controlling the exploration of the universe for decades, and exploiting any materials they find along the way under the guise of helping humanity’s expansion. But Naira knows the truth, and she plans to bring the whole family down from the inside. He’s the heir to the dynasty. Tarquin Mercator never wanted to run a galaxy-spanning business empire. He just wanted to study rocks and read books. But Tarquin’s father has tasked him with monitoring the settlement of a new planet, and he doesn’t really have a choice in the matter. Disguised as Tarquin’s new bodyguard, Naira plans to destroy the settlement ship before they make land. But neither of them expects to end up stranded on a dead planet. To survive and keep her secret, Naira will have to join forces with the man she’s sworn to hate. And together they will uncover a plot that’s bigger than both of them.

theshelftype started reading...

The Blighted Stars

Megan E. O'Keefe

theshelftype commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

pintainho.reads

Books you wished you DNF'ed but didn't?

I have a few books I really wished I had DNF'ed but ended up reading until the very end. Do you also have any books you wish you had DNF'ed sooner or after you've already finished the book? If yes, why? And what books? 👀

114

theshelftype commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

keyaunna

what books do y'all believe should be adapted into films/tv shows?

title says it itself! there are a plethora of books out there and i randomly had this idea to ask while at work today and so i want to ask it to you all!

share books or book series that you think soul make a great adaptation as a movie or tv show! bonus points if you explain why!

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theshelftype

Aug 13, 2026

Hamnet

5.0

Enjoyment: 5.0Quality: 5.0Characters: 5.0Plot: 5.0

theshelftype finished a book

Hamnet

Maggie O'Farrell

Two extraordinary people. A love that draws them together. A plague that threatens to tear them apart. England, 1580. A young Latin tutor—penniless, bullied by a violent father—falls in love with an eccentric young woman: a wild creature who walks her family's estate with a falcon on her shoulder and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer. Agnes understands plants and potions better than she does people, but once she settles on the Henley Street in Stratford she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband. His gifts as a writer are just beginning to awaken when their beloved twins, Hamnet and Judith, are afflicted with the bubonic plague, and, devastatingly, one of them succumbs to the illness. A luminous portrait of a marriage, a shattering evocation of a family ravaged by grief and loss, and a hypnotic recreation of the story that inspired one of the greatest literary masterpieces of all time, Hamnet is mesmerizing and seductive, an impossible-to-put-down novel from one of our most gifted writers.

theshelftype commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

LivMayRead

A bad reading year, fighting a reading slump and The Murderbot diaries related recs.

Every time I begin to get in a reading slump a write here and suddenly I am finishing one book after another. At this point, it is my superstition.

So, it's been a bad year when it comes to reading for me. I am not reading as much as I wish I was, regardless of the fact I had a lot of time last month. Not even a really anticipated reread of my favorite book has been able to actually keep me hooked. I have been dealing with that feeling of wanting to read but failing, you know? This whole reading slump also made me a bit apprehensive of reading some books I know I might like because I have a feeling that my terrible mood won't allow me to actually enjoy them. Plus, I have been DNFing so many books in a row, that I might end up going into these reads with an unfair mindset. I might taint my experience with my terrible mood lol.

As someone does, I ran into the arms of that one series that always saves me, in my case, "The Murderbot Diaries" (I hope it works). And that brought me to the question: Are there any equivalents to The MBD in other genres? Like something with adventures and fun characters, short but not a stand-alone. I want something that will capture me in the first book but not make me feel like I am abandoning a story in the middle of the climax because I might not immediately pick up the next volume.I am already in the middle of a bunch of series that I can't bring myself to continue because there is a huge chance I might drop the book in the middle of it.

I am sure you guys know what I mean. If you know of anything like that, please feel free to drop them here. I have a vague memory of someone comparing "Someone You can build a nest in" to "The Murderbot diaries", saying it gives similar vibes. Let's see, probably, at some point. I FEEL IN THE PURGATORY waiting for something to click so I can go back to devouring books.

Also, tell me your slump saver book/series. I would love to know.

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