There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

@CommonMugwort@social.coop cover
@CommonMugwort@social.coop avatar

CommonMugwort

@[email protected]

Literary translator and under-employed actor - at the crossroads, looking for ways to survive the coming collapse of industrial civilisation. Generally in Athens.
(@amaenad from Twitter only older and less irate)

Photos: https://pixelfed.social/CommonMugwort

I don’t content warn food, nor anything else you might see on any newsstand.

Most posts auto-delete in 2 months.

More professional on Bluesky.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

Lsquare28 , to bookstodon
@Lsquare28@mstdn.social avatar

“Rome and Persia:
The Seven Hundred Year Rivalry”

by Adrian Goldsworthy


@bookstodon https://bookwyrm.social/user/LarryS/generatednote/4611537

CommonMugwort ,
@CommonMugwort@social.coop avatar

@Lsquare28 @Merlo51 @bookstodon I guess the U.S. publishers don’t think much of their audience

NerdsofaFeather , to bookstodon
@NerdsofaFeather@wandering.shop avatar

First Contact: Foundation by Isaac Asimov
@ergative has our entry in the First Contact series

http://www.nerds-feather.com/2024/05/first-contact-foundation-by-isaac-asimov.html

@bookstodon

CommonMugwort ,
@CommonMugwort@social.coop avatar

@Runyan50 @NerdsofaFeather @ergative @bookstodon Poor old Isaac. It’s mean to point out his failings. They probably didn’t have psychology in the 1950s, nor women.

CommonMugwort , to bookstodon
@CommonMugwort@social.coop avatar

Anyone else having trouble posting to @bookstodon ? Is it an instance thing, or…I dunno. Not technologically-minded. Book-minded. Which is why I’m sad to lose their boost. Especially when pure self-promotion posts seem to have it.

Da_Gut , to bookstodon
@Da_Gut@dice.camp avatar

The Many Colored Land by Julian May.... from back in 1982.

How is it?

@bookstodon

CommonMugwort ,
@CommonMugwort@social.coop avatar

@Da_Gut @bookstodon I read a a coupe books in the series at the time, and enjoyed them - but I was a much more forgiving reader in my tweens and tees than I am now. Sprawling, large cast of characters, I even still remember some bits… but I know I didn’t finish the sequence, so maybe not that enjoyable…?

CommonMugwort , to bookstodon
@CommonMugwort@social.coop avatar

@bookstodon Can anyone recommend an entry point to Wuxia for a middle-aged European steeped in Western Historical Fantasy - a great story, well-translated and easily available?

CommonMugwort OP ,
@CommonMugwort@social.coop avatar

@BillySmith @bookstodon Thank you. I’m not sure what a web-novel is. I’d really like something I can download, ideally.

CommonMugwort , to bookstodon
@CommonMugwort@social.coop avatar

@bookstodon I really enjoyed Starling House, by Alix E. Harrow - all the genre beats are there, sure, but her skill and psychological astuteness make the most of them. Her each novel is better than the last, and they were pretty good to begin with. You will probably get the John Prince song stuck in your head, though.

CommonMugwort , to bookstodon
@CommonMugwort@social.coop avatar

@bookstodon Darling English audiobook readers, the ss sound at the end of ‘coup de grâce’ is pronounced. When you leave it off, it sounds like ‘coup de gras’ - not the blow of grace (mercy), but the blow of grease (fat).

stephanie , to bookstodon
@stephanie@ottawa.place avatar

I was curious as to why Sarah J. Maas had some many fans and is so highly rated on .

I read the first Crescent City and quite enjoyed it. Kinda badly written and full of stereotypes, but entertaining.

The second one though?! It's just... trashy and boring. Wow.

@bookstodon

CommonMugwort ,
@CommonMugwort@social.coop avatar

@stephanie @bookstodon I ended up reading three on a beach holiday once - I’d run out of books and hers were all I could find. Each was worse than the previous one. Now I can’t even browse online bookstores because half the Fantasy space is given over to this dreck.

evanpeterjones , to bookstodon
@evanpeterjones@mstdn.social avatar

Dan Brown only sucks if you're more pretentious about his books than his books are, lol. They're just corny and fun little adventures and I'm convinced it's just jealous authors who drive the Dan Brown hate.

Not every book has to drive you into an existential crisis to be enjoyable.

@bookstodon

CommonMugwort ,
@CommonMugwort@social.coop avatar

@evanpeterjones @bookstodon Nah. I read and enjoy lot of potboilers, in all kinds of genres and he’s a poor craftsman. The characters are paper cut-outs, the plots are grandiose absurdities, the places are clichés, and the whole edifice of each is implausible. He does know how to create suspense - the pacing is all.

CommonMugwort ,
@CommonMugwort@social.coop avatar

@negative12dollarbill @bookstodon @evanpeterjones A delightful post-morterm of the dead paragraph with which his most famous book begins. Thanks!

CommonMugwort , to bookstodon
@CommonMugwort@social.coop avatar

@bookstodon No, historical romance author, your heroine’s skirt hem did not skim over the bluebells, nor did lilac petals fall onto her bright unbound hair.

What kind of details bring your suspension of disbelief plummeting to the ground, fellow readers? For me, it’s often mistakes about plants, or food.

CommonMugwort OP ,
@CommonMugwort@social.coop avatar

@bookstodon So, for example, the book in which Julius Caesar was served a meal including stuffed peppers was abandoned, and the one where shipwrecked Odysseus munched olives off the tree, went, book-lover that I am, straight into the recycling box.

CommonMugwort OP ,
@CommonMugwort@social.coop avatar

@eyrea @bookstodon there’s also the laundry question - either nothing is ever cleaned, or our heroine wears a different outfit every day, possessing a dozen or more while living in genteel poverty

CommonMugwort OP ,
@CommonMugwort@social.coop avatar

@bookstodon @mutinyc It depends on the period. There’s this https://archive.org/details/cbk?tab=collection, but for earlier, or outside the English-speaking world you’d have to work a bit harder, searching for articles on material culture or looking at texts actually from the period for clues. The main thing, I think, is to check your assumptions. Seasonality before refrigeration never seems to occur to some, or storage. I’ve never seen it done better than by Nicola Griffith in Hild.

CommonMugwort , (edited ) to bookstodon
@CommonMugwort@social.coop avatar

@bookstodon I don’t read a lot of horror, almost none. But Beasts of Burden never disappoints

1dalm , to bookstodon
@1dalm@deacon.social avatar

Need a good new character driven mystery book recommendation for a road trip.

@bookstodon

CommonMugwort ,
@CommonMugwort@social.coop avatar

@bookstodon @1dalm How can we recommend mystery books without knowing what you’ve read? 😊Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad books? In The Woods is the first one, I think. Anne Cleeves Shetland books?

didgebaba , to random
@didgebaba@c.im avatar

"Female 'Samurai'

While 'samurai' is a strictly masculine term, the Japanese bushi class (the social class samurai came from) did feature women who received similar training in martial arts and strategy. These women were called “Onna-Bugeisha,” and they were known to participate in combat along with their male counterparts. Their weapon of choice was usually the naginata, a spear with a curved, sword-like blade that was versatile, yet relatively light.

Since historical texts offer relatively few accounts of these female warriors (the traditional role of a Japanese noblewoman was more of a homemaker), we used to assume they were just a tiny minority. However, recent research indicates that Japanese women participated in battles quite a lot more often than history books admit. When remains from the site of the Battle of Senbon Matsubaru in 1580 were DNA-tested, 35 out of 105 bodies were female. Research on other sites has yielded similar results."

CommonMugwort ,
@CommonMugwort@social.coop avatar

@Benfell @hazelnot @didgebaba @gorfram We are nowhere near equality yet. Maybe if more men tried to be as low-key, community-minded, responsible about reproductive labour, and nonviolent as women, we might achieve it sooner and in less destructive ways.
For example, a member of the dominant class might consider keeping his opinion of how the subordinated class works towards equality to himself.

courts , to bookstodon
@courts@infosec.exchange avatar

I'm reading mostly and . Next up will be sci-fi. What are your must-read hard sci-fi books? I don't really like space operas.

I have recently read Butler's Parable books, Suarez's Delta-V, and before that the Expanse series and Stephenson's Seveneves, from the top of my head.

Something like that.

Edit: Since it gets recommended a lot (and rightfully so!): I already read the Three-Body trilogy. :)

Edit2: I created a Bookwyrm list with all the recommendations I added and those I would recommend myself that were mentioned here:

https://bookwyrm.social/list/1799/s/bookstodon-72023-hard-sci-fi-recommendations

@bookstodon

CommonMugwort ,
@CommonMugwort@social.coop avatar

@courts @bookstodon The Starfarers series, by Vonda N McIntyre, and the Chanur novels, by C.J. Cherryh

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • random
  • lifeLocal
  • goranko
  • All magazines
    •