#finishedreading — Public Fediverse posts

Just finished: Catch Me If You Can
The True Story of a Real Fake

[1980]

#FinishedReading #Audiobooks #Books #NonFiction #Biography #Memoir #TrueCrime #Crime

Just finished: Catch Me If You Can
The True Story of a Real Fake

[1980]

#FinishedReading #Audiobooks #Books #NonFiction #Biography #Memoir #TrueCrime #Crime

Just finished: Catch Me If You Can
The True Story of a Real Fake

[1980]

#FinishedReading #Audiobooks #Books #NonFiction #Biography #Memoir #TrueCrime #Crime

Just finished: Catch Me If You Can
The True Story of a Real Fake

[1980]

#FinishedReading #Audiobooks #Books #NonFiction #Biography #Memoir #TrueCrime #Crime

Just finished: The World Without Us

[2007]

#FinishedReading #Audiobooks #Books #NonFiction #Science #Envionment #Nature #History

Just finished: The World Without Us

[2007]

#FinishedReading #Audiobooks #Books #NonFiction #Science #Envionment #Nature #History

Just finished: The World Without Us

[2007]

#FinishedReading #Audiobooks #Books #NonFiction #Science #Envionment #Nature #History

Just finished: The True Believer
Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

[1951]

#FinishedReading #Audiobooks #Books #NonFiction #Philosophy #Politics #Psycology #Sociology

Just finished: Caesar

[2006]

#FinishedReading #Audiobooks #Books #NonFiction #History #Biography #Politics

Finished reading India Is Broken, A People Betrayed, Independence to Today by Ashoka Mody

#FinishedReading #Book #Books #India #Politics #Corruption #Democracy #Oligarchy

Hardcover #ISBN9781503630055
Paperback #ISBN9781503642010
Ebook #ISBN9781503634220

Finished reading India Is Broken, A People Betrayed, Independence to Today by Ashoka Mody

#FinishedReading #Book #Books #India #Politics #Corruption #Democracy #Oligarchy

Hardcover #ISBN9781503630055
Paperback #ISBN9781503642010
Ebook #ISBN9781503634220

Finished reading India Is Broken, A People Betrayed, Independence to Today by Ashoka Mody

#FinishedReading #Book #Books #India #Politics #Corruption #Democracy #Oligarchy

Hardcover #ISBN9781503630055
Paperback #ISBN9781503642010
Ebook #ISBN9781503634220

Just finished: If Russia Wins
A Scenario

[2025]

#FinishedReading #Audiobooks #Books #NonFiction #Politics #History #War

#FinishedReading a cosy organic farming postapocalypse is visited by a sinister figure in a giant nuclear powered vehicle... and what a great cover by #DexterMaurer . Book was fine but running with a passive and disengaged main character was an odd choice. #JonathanLethem #Bookstodon @bookstodon #SciFi

#FinishedReading a cosy organic farming postapocalypse is visited by a sinister figure in a giant nuclear powered vehicle... and what a great cover by #DexterMaurer . Book was fine but running with a passive and disengaged main character was an odd choice. #JonathanLethem #Bookstodon @bookstodon #SciFi

#FinishedReading a cosy organic farming postapocalypse is visited by a sinister figure in a giant nuclear powered vehicle... and what a great cover by #DexterMaurer . Book was fine but running with a passive and disengaged main character was an odd choice. #JonathanLethem #Bookstodon @bookstodon #SciFi

#FinishedReading a cosy organic farming postapocalypse is visited by a sinister figure in a giant nuclear powered vehicle... and what a great cover by #DexterMaurer . Book was fine but running with a passive and disengaged main character was an odd choice. #JonathanLethem #Bookstodon @bookstodon #SciFi

#FinishedReading a cosy organic farming postapocalypse is visited by a sinister figure in a giant nuclear powered vehicle... and what a great cover by #DexterMaurer . Book was fine but running with a passive and disengaged main character was an odd choice. #JonathanLethem #Bookstodon @bookstodon #SciFi

In 1985 French agents bombed the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour to prevent its travel to Polynesia to protest against nuclear testing, killing one person. #MichaelKing , who I know best as an iconic New Zealand historian, published this journalistic account a year later, detailing the French operation and police investigation. The book is extremely detailed at times but still a vital record of a sleazy and contemptible, but historically important, operation. #bookstodon @bookstodon #finishedReading

#FinishedReading #MichaelKing 's biography of Te Puea Herangi, indefatigable organiser of the Māori King movement in the first half of the 20th century. Her forceful charisma, flaws and all, pops off the page in the hands of NZ's most iconic historian. The scale of change in her lifetime for Waikato Māori and NZ is fascinating, as are the insights into other prominent figures like Apirana Ngata and Gordon Coates. #Bookstodon @bookstodon #NZHistory

#FinishedReading this rather large novel of interlocking stories, set in 15th century Constantinople, 20th-21st century Idaho, and aboard a spaceship fleeing a ruined Earth, bound together by the characters' fascination with a half-preseved Ancient Greek comedy. I didn't love the whole book - the character of Seymour never rang true to me - but it does wrap together beautifully in the end. #Bookstodon @bookstodon #AnthonyDoerr

Just finished: How to Sell a Genocide
The Media's Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza

[2026]

#FinishedReading #Audiobooks #Books #NonFiction #Politics #History #War

#FinishedReading #PGWodehouse 's 1915 farce of the unflappably loquacious toff Psmith tangling with New York street gangs. It should be entertaining froth, but it's so, so racist. Read one of his (many) other books instead. #Bookstodon @bookstodon

#FinishedReading a biography of #JohnConway by @sioroberts while laid up sick in bed. To be frank, Conway is a rather full-on and exhausting character to spend a full book with while under the weather, but the book gives a great sense of his key ideas (not just Life, which he grew to resent), particularly in the search for finite simple sporadic groups, his style, and millieu. #AmReading

#FinishedReading #DanielKehlmann 's linked stories of German folk character Tyll Ulenspiegel during the Thirty Years War. Kehlmann presents it as a time of illogic, from witchfinding to politics, sometimes darkly funny but usually tragic in its results. Not a book I'll list as a favourite, but certainly an interesting read. Seems unfilmable, so intrigued to see how the creators of Dark and 1899 on Netflix handle it. Translated by #RossBenjamin . #Bookstodon @bookstodon #HistoricalFiction

#FinishedReading a trilogy of #Batman collections by #TomKing and artists #DavidFinch and #MikelJanín . King is full of invention and technical tricks to keep things lively, but this was still the least interesting Tom King I've read; especially towards the end, its themes put me in mind of Alan Moore's famous self-criticism of The Killing Joke, pictured (substituting Bane for The Joker). #Bookstodon #Comics @bookstodon

Like everyone else, humans co-evolved with other species, from microbes to intestinal worms to large predators, but many of those species are no longer with us in meaningful numbers. #RobDunn looks at the often negative effects of living around a species mix that is so different from those we evolved with: we might not miss being hunted by leopards, yet parts of our biology do. Fascinating #PopScience but a little prone to wandering off topic. #FinishedReading #bookstodon @bookstodon

#FinishedReading Nobel winner #GeorgeSmoot 's story of the search for structure in the cosmic background radiation, with co-author #KeayDavidson . A quite accessible story of the challenges of conducting experiments in increasingly ludicrous and expensive places: high altitude balloons, U-2 spy planes, the South Pole and, of course, outer space, in an attempt to get a clear view of the echo of creation. #Bookstodon #PopScience @bookstodon

@bookstodon #FinishedReading this engaging #popScience look at the (mostly microscopic) life that shares our houses. There are gross parts of course, but this is largely a celebration of the value of living amidst invisible biodiversity, which makes me feel better about my well loved but very far from sterile home! #RobDunn #Bookstodon @bookstodon

#FinishedReading this surrealist psychological novel, in which a delusional amnesiac is hospitalized, with a narrative flicking back and forth between his elaborate fantasies and the attempts of doctors to treat / pacify him. This strange novel swings widely in tone and sometimes has very strong 'person describing their dream to you' energy. At its best, as in the 'briefing' of the title, it is a weirdly compelling blend of environmental panic, mysticism, extreme scepticism about science, and many more things that #DorisLessing throws into the mix. I didn't love it and it is not exactly a book that tries to be loved - at times deliberately repetitive, alienating, or deflating - but it was definitely interesting. #Bookstodon @bookstodon

#FinishedReading book 1 of #AlexPheby 's Cities of the Weft trilogy, picked up on a random recommendation through #Bookstodon , thanks @oarditi. This #NewWeird #Fantasy of baroque metaphysics and bizarre worldbuilding sometimes reads more like a dark grisly fairy tale or myth than a conventional novel. It is a bit unsatisfying how passive the protagonist is, mostly following the (sometimes magical) orders of others rather than driving the narrative. Highly memorable. @bookstodon

#FinishedReading this remarkable nature writing by #NanShepherd about her walks in the #Cairngorms in Scotland. In the 40s, well before anyone was talking about mindfulness, this book is an ode to minute observation both of the world around you and of its effect on your senses and body. There is a whole chapter on the feeling of falling asleep and waking on a mountain. Read the perceptive foreword by #RobertMacfarlane and avoid the facile afterword by Jeanette Winterson! #Bookstodon @bookstodon

#FinishedReading this (pop science) biography of #Erdős . I laughed out loud several times, as Erdős was both a unique individual and almost the archetypal obsessed / absent-minded mathematician. My favourite story was when surgery on one of his eyes was delayed because he was adamant he wanted to read a mathematics journal with his other eye during the operation. The mathematical content is very accessible but fortunately not completely absent. #Bookstodon @bookstodon

Just finished: There Is No Antimemetics Division
A Novel

[2020]

#FinishedReading #Audiobooks #Books #Fiction #ScienceFiction #Horror #Fantasy

Just finished: Cynical Theories

[2020-10-18]

#FinishedReading #Audiobooks #Books

#FinishedReading a fascinating and well written history of the science of black holes, from its pen and paper prediction by Karl Schwarzchild as he lay dying from an autoimmune condition, to its astronomical discovery by Louise Webster (a Canberra connection!) and Paul Murdin, to the extraordinary images patched together by the Event Horizon Telescope team, including of the monster at the centre of our own galaxy. Superior pop science. #Bookstodon @bookstodon #MarcusChown

#FinishedReading this truly original story of 19th century magicians and the strange legacies they leave for their 20th century descendants. Their twisted deceptions lead to some pretty remarkable sentences: "I apologise if I think I was deceiving me, and meant no harm". #ChristopherPriest #Bookstodon @bookstodon

#FinishedReading #Boole 's Laws of Thought, whose final chapters partly shift attention from #logic to #probabilityTheory and #philosophyOfScience . I don't have a strong sense of his historical standing in either discipline, although for probability there is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boole%27s_inequality . The attraction of probability is clear, with its range of values from 0 to 1, use of '1 -' for negation, multiplication for conjunction (of independent events) etc. There are rhymes here with his logic at least

#FinishedReading #TimFlannery 's epic story of life in North America, from the continent's formation shortly after the dinosaur-destroying asteroid wiped the slate clean, to the modern industrial economy and conservation movement. Parts are a bit repetitive - there's only so many times an animal can pop into the story, be described as 'odd', then go extinct a few million years later, before I lose track - but I loved the scope and ambition. #Bookstodon @bookstodon

#FinishedReading comedian #FernBrady 's autobiography. Don't be fooled by her day job and the silly Frankie Boyle blurb on the cover; although there's a lot of wit, this is a traumatic story about being an undiagnosed autistic girl and woman in a society that is often hostile to both autism and women. Not a light read but eye opening for an allistic dad of (thankfully, diagnosed) autistic kids, and definitely recommended. #Bookstodon @bookstodon #Autism

According to #TheStorygraph I've passed 20,000 pages read this year, now I've #FinishedReading this relatively early piece of #KimStanleyRobinson #SciFi . An interesting way to approach a utopian setting (Orange County CA after a global eco-revolution), focusing on human-level dramas (corruption in local politics, unrequited love, grief) rather than a grand threat to the utopia. #KSR #Bookstodon @bookstodon

#FinishedReading a 1950s vampire novella which, thanks to George A. Romero, ended up setting the blueprint for dozens of zombie movies. The main character, alone amongst the shambling hordes for almost the whole story, is sometimes pretty unpleasant company, but his dark sides, and even his outbursts of bigotry, pay off as we hit the ending of this thematically deep little masterpiece. #Bookstodon @bookstodon #RichardMatheson

#FinishedReading #Boole 's Laws of Thought, whose final chapters partly shift attention from #logic to #probabilityTheory and #philosophyOfScience . I don't have a strong sense of his historical standing in either discipline, although for probability there is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boole%27s_inequality . The attraction of probability is clear, with its range of values from 0 to 1, use of '1 -' for negation, multiplication for conjunction (of independent events) etc. There are rhymes here with his logic at least

#FinishedReading #Boole 's Laws of Thought, whose final chapters partly shift attention from #logic to #probabilityTheory and #philosophyOfScience . I don't have a strong sense of his historical standing in either discipline, although for probability there is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boole%27s_inequality . The attraction of probability is clear, with its range of values from 0 to 1, use of '1 -' for negation, multiplication for conjunction (of independent events) etc. There are rhymes here with his logic at least

#FinishedReading #Boole 's Laws of Thought, whose final chapters partly shift attention from #logic to #probabilityTheory and #philosophyOfScience . I don't have a strong sense of his historical standing in either discipline, although for probability there is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boole%27s_inequality . The attraction of probability is clear, with its range of values from 0 to 1, use of '1 -' for negation, multiplication for conjunction (of independent events) etc. There are rhymes here with his logic at least

#FinishedReading #Boole 's Laws of Thought, whose final chapters partly shift attention from #logic to #probabilityTheory and #philosophyOfScience . I don't have a strong sense of his historical standing in either discipline, although for probability there is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boole%27s_inequality . The attraction of probability is clear, with its range of values from 0 to 1, use of '1 -' for negation, multiplication for conjunction (of independent events) etc. There are rhymes here with his logic at least

#FinishedReading this surrealist psychological novel, in which a delusional amnesiac is hospitalized, with a narrative flicking back and forth between his elaborate fantasies and the attempts of doctors to treat / pacify him. This strange novel swings widely in tone and sometimes has very strong 'person describing their dream to you' energy. At its best, as in the 'briefing' of the title, it is a weirdly compelling blend of environmental panic, mysticism, extreme scepticism about science, and many more things that #DorisLessing throws into the mix. I didn't love it and it is not exactly a book that tries to be loved - at times deliberately repetitive, alienating, or deflating - but it was definitely interesting. #Bookstodon @bookstodon

#FinishedReading this surrealist psychological novel, in which a delusional amnesiac is hospitalized, with a narrative flicking back and forth between his elaborate fantasies and the attempts of doctors to treat / pacify him. This strange novel swings widely in tone and sometimes has very strong 'person describing their dream to you' energy. At its best, as in the 'briefing' of the title, it is a weirdly compelling blend of environmental panic, mysticism, extreme scepticism about science, and many more things that #DorisLessing throws into the mix. I didn't love it and it is not exactly a book that tries to be loved - at times deliberately repetitive, alienating, or deflating - but it was definitely interesting. #Bookstodon @bookstodon

#FinishedReading this surrealist psychological novel, in which a delusional amnesiac is hospitalized, with a narrative flicking back and forth between his elaborate fantasies and the attempts of doctors to treat / pacify him. This strange novel swings widely in tone and sometimes has very strong 'person describing their dream to you' energy. At its best, as in the 'briefing' of the title, it is a weirdly compelling blend of environmental panic, mysticism, extreme scepticism about science, and many more things that #DorisLessing throws into the mix. I didn't love it and it is not exactly a book that tries to be loved - at times deliberately repetitive, alienating, or deflating - but it was definitely interesting. #Bookstodon @bookstodon

#FinishedReading this surrealist psychological novel, in which a delusional amnesiac is hospitalized, with a narrative flicking back and forth between his elaborate fantasies and the attempts of doctors to treat / pacify him. This strange novel swings widely in tone and sometimes has very strong 'person describing their dream to you' energy. At its best, as in the 'briefing' of the title, it is a weirdly compelling blend of environmental panic, mysticism, extreme scepticism about science, and many more things that #DorisLessing throws into the mix. I didn't love it and it is not exactly a book that tries to be loved - at times deliberately repetitive, alienating, or deflating - but it was definitely interesting. #Bookstodon @bookstodon