Abigail Nussbaum

דודה שלי גם מועדת לנפילות וקיבלה הפניה למרפאת שיווי משקל. לא חושבת שפתר את הבעיה לגמרי אבל היא אומרת שזה עזר.

היה לנו מצב דומה עם הכלבה הקודמת, שהיתה מאוד חולה (הורידה משהו כמו חצי משקלה) וכל יום ציפיתי שלא תתעורר, ואיכשהוא היא משכה את זה ואפילו היו לה ימים טובים. בסוף אחי הוא זה שאמר שצריך לעשות לזה סוף, ואני חושבת שזו היתה החלטה נכונה, אבל לדעתי היא היתה ממשיכה עוד כמה שבועות לפחות, אולי יותר.

שלא לדבר על כך שאנחנו בתקופה שבה העשירים מנסים למוטט עד היסוד לא רק את מדינת הרווחה אלא את כל מוסדות המדינה, ומתרצים את זה באמונה (המוטעית) שלהם שהם הצליחו רק בכוחות עצמם. אלון מאסק מראה לנו בדיוק מה קורה כשלא מאתגרים את התפיסה הזו.

כל הייטקיסט במדינה מסתמך על מאות אנשים שלא הלכו להייטק לתחזק את החיים שלו. אז מה, הם כולם כשלונות?

A captivating review of a captivating book (that I now want to reread again)! 📚

It really rewards a reread. So comforting and yet so thought-provoking at the same time.

Abigail is one of the best and most thoughtful critics writing in today (in SFF and otherwise)! She covers one of my favorite books in this review.

I was planning to reread this book later this year but it may have just gotten moved up my TBR. :D

Excellent review and a wonderful introduction to both the reviewers works AND this author. As I often cry WHY WAS I NOT TOLD? 1/2

Thinking about it some more, I did shamefully forget that Sinners was this year. So that's one genuinely great, not IP-based SFF movie from 2025. And Mickey 17 is a silly mess, but it's fun, and entirely its own thing.

By this time last year, we had already had Furiosa, I Saw the TV Glow, and Dune 2. That's a bumper crop by anyone's standards, but halfway through 2025 it's a little depressing that this year's comparable highlights, SFF movie-wise, are a bunch of slightly-better-than-average superhero movies.

What an amazing review of an excellent book. More an essay really. Definitely worth a read.

#booksky

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison - Lawyers, Guns & Money [This review was requested by reader Greg Sanders, winner of the LGM fund drive auction. Thank you to Greg for the contribution, and for selecting an excellent book!] In the middle of the night, in a ...

A lovely @lawgunsmoney.bsky.social reader won an auction for a review by me, and requested Katherine Addison's The Goblin Emperor. It was a delight to return to this novel with a critical eye, to talk about the things that make it special & set it apart. www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/07/the-...

I would look out for the Women's Prize and Carol Shields Prize, both of which are usually an interesting snapshot of what's going on in literary fiction.

It seems focused not just on literary fiction, but on a specific subset of it that's telling family and relationship stories. It's what I used to find in the Booker shortlist before they started nominating people like Daisy Johnson, Martin McInnes, or Samantha Harvey.

Yes, it's clearly a throwback list, and I'm a lot less intrigued by it than I have been by any Booker ballot in the last 5-10 years.

Great review of a great book; I think this gets at one of the things that made it stand out so much, that it's a political drama about recognizable characters with recognizable moral values who, nevertheless, do not simply act as avatars for a 21st century reader.

If the past is any guide, you'll do it to yourselves without us needing to lift a finger.

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison - Lawyers, Guns & Money [This review was requested by reader Greg Sanders, winner of the LGM fund drive auction. Thank you to Greg for the contribution, and for selecting an excellent book!] In the middle of the night, in a ...

A lovely @lawgunsmoney.bsky.social reader won an auction for a review by me, and requested Katherine Addison's The Goblin Emperor. It was a delight to return to this novel with a critical eye, to talk about the things that make it special & set it apart. www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/07/the-...

I don't know, guys. Maybe don't spend years crying "criticism of Israel is not anti-semitism!" and then rush to embrace America's most famous anti-semite the minute she says something you approve of.

Way too many people on my feed are quick to believe that Marjorie "Jewish Space Lasers" Taylor Green is saying critical things about Israel for any reason other than anti-semitism.

It does feel very much like a throwback list, not only very litfic-y but focused primarily on stories of family and individual struggle. In previous years the award branched out not only into more speculative territory, but a broader subject matter and focus.

A Granite Silence – Nina Allan I don’t always take notes when I read; it’s usually a thing for when I start a book with the intention of reviewing it. But despite having absolutely no such intention with A Granite Si…

A review of A Granite Silence by Nina Allan, which prompted a notebook full of questions I won't ever get answers to, and that's both ok and absolutely the point.

I guess I don't see this as goofy. It all seems very calculated and focus-grouped. "Jake and Nog go on a picaresque adventure to buy Sisko a rare baseball card" is goofy. "Muppet episode" is a trope designed to get clicks.

לא רק נתניהו. אחת הסיבות להתפוררות נורמות ציבוריות בכל העולם היא שפוליטיקאים הפנימו שכשתופסים אותך במשהו מביך או שערורייתי או לא-מוסרי, אסור להתגונן. במקום זה, הם תוקפים חזרה, או משקרים, או אפילו מתרברבים, ובסוף כולם מתרגלים שזו הנורמה החדשה.

Yeah, I don't have a category for that in my records so I ended up putting it in non-fiction, but this is the most accurate description.

This is a very good point. I often feel, with modern streaming shows, that they're weirdly insubstantial, with whole seasons going by without really developing the characters or setting. Using up 10-20% of a season on gimmicks like this is a big part of why.
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Basically the same place I stand on "Spock Amok" and most of Lower Decks: it's a Star Trek story first, a gimmick second.

Even Lower Decks, a show that often crossed the line into too-cute, too-meta territory, understood that you had to underpin all that stuff with a rock solid understanding of what Star Trek is - which SNW seems to be moving away from more and more.

The SNW musical episode was bad. It was bad because it was a bad musical, but it was also bad because Star Trek is an inherently earnest show. Metafictional, genre-savvy gags don't suit it, and it's depressing to see so much energy directed towards them in some pursuit of clicks and headlines.

I'm sorry, I just find this sort of thing really fatiguing. How about, instead of repeating gimmicks that Joss Whedon came up with twenty years ago, this show tries to focus on telling good Star Trek stories?