A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers. Illegally body-having AI tries to find her place in the world on a trade planet, living with a clone who escaped from a fringe weirdo human colony and her illegally gene-modded boyfriend.

Also A Bug Collection, a collection of short stories penned by my creative writing teacher’s late wife. He recommended it to me as we discussed my workshop submission in the Zoom meeting, because my protagonist was a fantasy bug race person who is really anxious and bad with people. It’s a collection of short stories about insects having little personal dramas, identity crises, mental health struggles, love problems, etc. It’s actually really touching so far.

Also started reading The Scar by China Mieville. I loved the last book in the Bas-Lag trilogy and loved it (hell of a downer ending though). This one’s great so far, but I just started.

On Lady Izdihar’s rec, I checked This Soviet World out from my library. It’s just downright inspiring. Gonna sound corny, but it really makes me feel a lot of emotions. Pride, wonder, awe, and a deep sadness also. The USSR was so fucking good, and its destruction was genuinely one of the worst things in human history. Of course, I know that we can make that happen again, but it’s hard to see it in the midst of :amerikkka:. I think it should be required reading, to give people a real perspective on what is possible.

Riding the Wave: Sweden’s Integration into the Imperialist World System by Torkil Lauesen

Good takedown of Sweden and other Scandinavian countries that get lauded among libs in North America.

My reading group just finished his book on imperialism, The Global Perspective, if you’re looking for good world systems/anti-imperialist literature, I highly recommend his work.

i recently finished the dragon fucking book, Fire & Blood by GRRM

Just started portrait of the artist as a young man as my fiction book. Current non-fiction is a reader on Spinoza, mostly from ethics plus some biography for context. Trying to make a better go of reading this year rather than being so online