that bookstore downtown

text from novel the memory police 1/2: "The dark green trucks with canvas covers appeared more often on the streets. Sometimes they would race by, covers rolled up, sirens blaring, and at other times they would trundle heavily along, covers down. In the gap between the canvas and the bed of the truck, you could catch a glimpse of someone's shoe or a suitcase or the hem of a coat. The methods used by the Memory Police were becoming more and more brutal. No longer were there advance warnings of their visits, like the one my mother had received. Everything happened by surprise, and they now carried heavy battering rams capable of breaking down any door. They invaded houses in search of any space where someone could be hidden-storage rooms, under beds, in the back of closets. If there was enough space for one human body, it was unlikely to escape their atten-tion. They dragged out anyone they found, along with those who had hidden them, and loaded them all in the covered trucks. There had been no further widespread disappearances since the roses, but it became increasingly common to hear that some-one had suddenly vanished a friend from the next town, an..."

text from the memory police continued 2/2: "...acquaintance from school, a distant relative of the fishmonger. You never knew whether they had been taken away or had been fortunate enough to find a place to hide-or if the place they'd been hiding had been discovered and they'd been arrested. Nor did anyone try very hard to find out. Regardless of what had happened, it was almost certainly an unfortunate event, and, moreover, simply talking about it could put you in danger. If on occasion a whole household suddenly went missing with no warning at all, the neighbors would simply pass their house with a furtive glance at the windows, hoping that the former inhabi-tants were safe somewhere. The citizens of the island were by now quite accustomed to these losses."

yoko ogawa, the memory police

"BEFORE I SAY ANYTHING ELSE, I have an announcement to make. I want all of you, and your wives and your children and your brothers-in-law and everyone you know, to resolve as of this moment that you will buy no presents for Christmas. And when I say no presents, I mean not a nail file, not a toothbrush, and I want you to tell your children, as of this moment and on Christmas Day, that the reason there is no Santa Claus this year is because we have lost the right-by the murder of our brothers and sisters to be called a Christian nation. And until we regain that right, we cannot celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace. And I am very serious about this for two reasons: (a) morally, I think this nation should be, for the foreseeable future, in mourning, (b) one must face the fact that this Christian nation may never have read any of the Gospels, but they do understand money."

#jamesbaldwin #merrychristmas #freepalestine

so many people try to tell me siren is a maine coon or a russian blue. bullshit. she's a gutter muppet.

screenshot of npr article headlined "renowned poets and black arts movement icon nikki giovanni dies at 81"

"when i die i hope no one who ever hurt me cries
and if they cry i hope their eyes fall out
and a million maggots that had made up their brains
crawl from the empty holes and devour the flesh
that covered the evil that passed itself off as a person
that i probably tried
to love"

nikki giovanni

do you ever just stop and think how lucky you were to briefly share the earth with ursula k le guin and octavia butler?

book club hardback(s)

related, taylorism influenced one the greatest and earliest dystopias, zamyatin's we

there are only a handful of people keeping me on twitter now, cory doctorow in particular

"The fact that AI can't do your job, but that your boss can be convinced to fire you and replace you with the AI that can't do your job, is the central fact of the 21st century labor market..."
"The techbro's overwhelming conceit is that nothing is a crime, so long as you do it with an app..."

5 foot christmas book tree

cat sleeping on unfinished book tree

got bored on a rainy day, made a book tree. siren helped.

i quit goodreads the day am*zon bought them. i wish something comparable to what they used to be existed.

don't forget to turn your book ahead one chapter before going to bed.

"...it looks like they're about to launch a ground invasion on rafah. i turn left, on a road that sends me far from all of gaza and the things that will befall it..."

#minordetail #adaniashibli #amreading #palestine #gaza #rafah

"...the heaviness of the sound translates my distance from the place being bombed. it's far, past the wall. in gaza, or maybe rafah..."

#minordetail #adaniashibli #amreading #palestine #gaza #rafah

"...people have to deal with enough misery in the world today; there's no reason to go searching for more and digging into the past..."

#minordetail #adaniashibli #amreading #palestine

"...it's the barrier of fear, fashioned from fear of the barrier..."

#minordetail #adaniashibli #amreading #palestine

"...sometimes it's inevitable for the past to be forgotten, especially if the present is no less horrific..."

#minordetail #adaniashibli #amreading #palestine

"...i do not love my life in particular, nor life in general, and at present any efforts on my part are solely channeled toward staying alive..."

#minordetail #adaniashibli #amreading #palestine

"...and the situation has been like this for such a long time that there aren't many people alive today who remember little details about what life was like before all this..."

#minordetail #adaniashibli #amreading #palestine

front cover, minor detail by adania shibli

the evening's reading...

#minordetail #adaniashibli #amreading

i am six of these simultaneously

whoa, that is so much more effort. they win.

achievement unlocked: cracked up one of the funniest authors out there

matt leblanc with fremen blue eyes, captioned "how you dune?"

front cover, breed to come by andre norton

close-up of same

back cover blurb

andre norton, breed to come, ace, 1985
.
cover artist unknown
.
#books #bookstore #bookstagram #macon #maconga #downtownmacon #bookcover #bookcoverdesign #bookcoverart #scifi #sciencefiction #scifiart #sciencefictionart #andrenorton

"To Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. Sirs: I have just seen the film Lifeboat, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and billed as written by me. While in many ways the film is excellent there are one or two complaints I would like to make. While it is certainly true that I wrote a script for Lifeboat, it is not true that in that script as in the film there were any slurs against organized labor nor was there a stock comedy Negro. On the contrary there was an intelligent and thoughtful seaman who knew realistically what he was about. And instead of the usual colored travesty of the half comic and half pathetic Negro there was a Negro of dignity, purpose and personality. Since this film occurs over my name, it is painful to me that these strange, sly obliquities should be ascribed to me. John Steinbeck"

found flipping thru _john steinbeck: a life in letters_

siren blep for your #caturday