#readingnotes — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #readingnotes, aggregated by home.social.
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Started reading Elizabeth Bishop's volume of poetry entitled A Cold Spring (1955) this morning. It opens with the titular poem, which I read (and shared here!) back in April.
It's so good and I was happy to re-read it -- especially on the other side of summer. Since the weather's not cooperating with my tasks today, I stopped to blog a few words about it.
https://nearerandfarther.com/posts/2026/08/starting-bishops-a-cold-spring-bishop-hopkins/
Will put #ReadingNotes on the larger volume here.
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Started reading Elizabeth Bishop's volume of poetry entitled A Cold Spring (1955) this morning. It opens with the titular poem, which I read (and shared here!) back in April.
It's so good and I was happy to re-read it -- especially on the other side of summer. Since the weather's not cooperating with my tasks today, I stopped to blog a few words about it.
https://nearerandfarther.com/posts/2026/08/starting-bishops-a-cold-spring-bishop-hopkins/
Will put #ReadingNotes on the larger volume here.
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Tiny details matter. From a misplaced sheet of music to a stifled cough, good sleuthing often starts with listening and watching closely. That's something Lily is very good at -- she's naturally inclined to be observant, and 40 years of nursing honed her observation skills to a fine art.
Try noticing one small detail today — it might change the whole story. 👂🔎
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Tiny details matter. From a misplaced sheet of music to a stifled cough, good sleuthing often starts with listening and watching closely. That's something Lily is very good at -- she's naturally inclined to be observant, and 40 years of nursing honed her observation skills to a fine art.
Try noticing one small detail today — it might change the whole story. 👂🔎
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"Helm doesn't know when Helm was born.
Or brewed.
Conjured or conceived.
First formed above the highest mountain.
First blown into the valley.
Long before humankind -- that brief, busy interlude."-- #FirstSentences of Sarah Hall, Helm (2025)
#ReadingNotes will go here. I am giddy for this one, truly, but also a little intimidated tbh. The first chapter was no joke!
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"Helm doesn't know when Helm was born.
Or brewed.
Conjured or conceived.
First formed above the highest mountain.
First blown into the valley.
Long before humankind -- that brief, busy interlude."-- #FirstSentences of Sarah Hall, Helm (2025)
#ReadingNotes will go here. I am giddy for this one, truly, but also a little intimidated tbh. The first chapter was no joke!
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"There are many ways not to be someone."
-- First sentence of Daniel Heller-Roazen, Absentees: On Variously Missing Persons (2021)
Started last night. #ReadingNotes will go here.
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"There are many ways not to be someone."
-- First sentence of Daniel Heller-Roazen, Absentees: On Variously Missing Persons (2021)
Started last night. #ReadingNotes will go here.
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"What a lovely home I found myself plummeting toward, acquiring, as I fell, arms, hands, legs, feet, all of which, as usual, became more substantial with each passing second."
-- First Sentence of George Saunders, Vigil (2026)
Started this last night. Any #ReadingNotes will go here.
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"What a lovely home I found myself plummeting toward, acquiring, as I fell, arms, hands, legs, feet, all of which, as usual, became more substantial with each passing second."
-- First Sentence of George Saunders, Vigil (2026)
Started this last night. Any #ReadingNotes will go here.
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New reading notes: why utility subsidies should be a visible line item instead of a hidden one and why your Mastodon feels nothing like anyone else's Mastodon. Plus a low-and-slow cooking win.
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New reading notes: why utility subsidies should be a visible line item instead of a hidden one and why your Mastodon feels nothing like anyone else's Mastodon. Plus a low-and-slow cooking win.
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"The row of tall, narrow houses all in the same shade of ecru trailed up the gently sloping hill, with no end in sight."
-- first sentence of Butter: A Novel of Food And Murder by Asako Yuzuki (2017, trans. Polly Barton in 2024)
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"The row of tall, narrow houses all in the same shade of ecru trailed up the gently sloping hill, with no end in sight."
-- first sentence of Butter: A Novel of Food And Murder by Asako Yuzuki (2017, trans. Polly Barton in 2024)
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"I have thought long and hard about how I would dispose of a dead body."
-- First sentence of Dead Weight by Hildur Knútsdóttir (2025, trans. Mary Robinette Kowal)
Starting this now. #ReadingNotes will go here.
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"I have thought long and hard about how I would dispose of a dead body."
-- First sentence of Dead Weight by Hildur Knútsdóttir (2025, trans. Mary Robinette Kowal)
Starting this now. #ReadingNotes will go here.
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This is near the start of one of the longer stories told among the women.
"How was it now with the mistress of Baggesvogn? someone said. Indeed, that good old one, someone said. Have you not heard? someone said. Oh, but then you must. I may have heard it, someone said, but no matter, let me hear it again. Yes, how was it now? someone said. There was a mistress at Baggesvogn, someone said. They called her the mad wife. Yes, every year she lost a bullock, someone said. That was it, yes, someone said. So seh made up her mind to ask the Devil why they had to lose so many creatures on their manor farm. Indeed, that part I've never understood. Why would she ask the Devil? Why not a priest? someone said. It's what makes the story so good, someone said. Quiet now, someone said, I want to hear this."
2/n
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This is near the start of one of the longer stories told among the women.
"How was it now with the mistress of Baggesvogn? someone said. Indeed, that good old one, someone said. Have you not heard? someone said. Oh, but then you must. I may have heard it, someone said, but no matter, let me hear it again. Yes, how was it now? someone said. There was a mistress at Baggesvogn, someone said. They called her the mad wife. Yes, every year she lost a bullock, someone said. That was it, yes, someone said. So seh made up her mind to ask the Devil why they had to lose so many creatures on their manor farm. Indeed, that part I've never understood. Why would she ask the Devil? Why not a priest? someone said. It's what makes the story so good, someone said. Quiet now, someone said, I want to hear this."
2/n
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This is really great so far. It's written in rather short sections/chapters, some just one or two paragraphs, most no longer than one or two pages.
So far, the narrative (set in the early 17th c.) hovers around groups of women and the stories they share while working together on various tasks, like cleaning herring when it's been brought in.
The author (Olga Ravn) uses simple but super effective technique to mimic the way group chatter overlaps, interweaves, gets muddled, has moments of clarity. Take the following passage as an example:
1/n
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This is really great so far. It's written in rather short sections/chapters, some just one or two paragraphs, most no longer than one or two pages.
So far, the narrative (set in the early 17th c.) hovers around groups of women and the stories they share while working together on various tasks, like cleaning herring when it's been brought in.
The author (Olga Ravn) uses simple but super effective technique to mimic the way group chatter overlaps, interweaves, gets muddled, has moments of clarity. Take the following passage as an example:
1/n
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Plan to jot something up on Garza's The Autobiography of Cotton for the blog, so making a few quick notes here.
Overall, I really liked the book and its approach to blurring the lines between personal memoir and larger/longer history. This is a profoundly personal story for CRG, an effort to understand her family's longer history and why so much of it is missing/undeveloped. It's a genuinely two-way street: CRG uses her grandparents' own experiences farming cotton and other ag work in northern Mexico to explore the experiences and legacies of the period, and she works it back the other way too... developing historical context and then, from that, imagining her family's story in more concrete ways than the record initially allows.
It's well-done and often quite moving. Occasionally CRG's first-person moments feel a little redundant but her decision to include her narrative explicitly feels natural, not forced.
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Plan to jot something up on Garza's The Autobiography of Cotton for the blog, so making a few quick notes here.
Overall, I really liked the book and its approach to blurring the lines between personal memoir and larger/longer history. This is a profoundly personal story for CRG, an effort to understand her family's longer history and why so much of it is missing/undeveloped. It's a genuinely two-way street: CRG uses her grandparents' own experiences farming cotton and other ag work in northern Mexico to explore the experiences and legacies of the period, and she works it back the other way too... developing historical context and then, from that, imagining her family's story in more concrete ways than the record initially allows.
It's well-done and often quite moving. Occasionally CRG's first-person moments feel a little redundant but her decision to include her narrative explicitly feels natural, not forced.
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"I am a child shaped in beeswax. I am made like a doll the size of a human forearm."
-- #FirstSentences of The Wax Child by Olga Ravn (trans. Martin Aitken, 2023/2025, New Directions.)
#ReadingNotes will go here.
Started this last night and this will probably be a super quick read, which is good -- but already loving the style and the ambiance.
I wanted something fun... if not light then at least odd or a bit weird, maybe creepy, brisk pace.
A tale of 17th-century witchcraft accusations told from the perspective of a wax doll many centuries later? Yes, I think that will do.
#OlgaRavn #TheWaxChild #InternationalBookerPrize #Bookstodon
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"I am a child shaped in beeswax. I am made like a doll the size of a human forearm."
-- #FirstSentences of The Wax Child by Olga Ravn (trans. Martin Aitken, 2023/2025, New Directions.)
#ReadingNotes will go here.
Started this last night and this will probably be a super quick read, which is good -- but already loving the style and the ambiance.
I wanted something fun... if not light then at least odd or a bit weird, maybe creepy, brisk pace.
A tale of 17th-century witchcraft accusations told from the perspective of a wax doll many centuries later? Yes, I think that will do.
#OlgaRavn #TheWaxChild #InternationalBookerPrize #Bookstodon
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Just finished Cristina Rivera Garza's The Autobiography of Cotton this afternoon.
A rather haunting exploration of cotton production in northern Mexico/the borderlands in the early 20th c., a story that spins out into a longer family narrative around migration, the relationship between history and memory, and what gets remembered and why.
Will have a few notes to add on in the next day or two, but overall enjoyed it a great deal, despite a few reservations. Might be especially interesting to those interested in the fuzzy borders between fiction and non-fiction: it is effectively a history and a family memoir, but with a fair amount of speculation and creative license.
(Original reading notes are here: https://bookstodon.com/@NearerAndFarther/116893036010909069)
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Just finished Cristina Rivera Garza's The Autobiography of Cotton this afternoon.
A rather haunting exploration of cotton production in northern Mexico/the borderlands in the early 20th c., a story that spins out into a longer family narrative around migration, the relationship between history and memory, and what gets remembered and why.
Will have a few notes to add on in the next day or two, but overall enjoyed it a great deal, despite a few reservations. Might be especially interesting to those interested in the fuzzy borders between fiction and non-fiction: it is effectively a history and a family memoir, but with a fair amount of speculation and creative license.
(Original reading notes are here: https://bookstodon.com/@NearerAndFarther/116893036010909069)
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#ReadingNotes thread for 2026, part III!
In which I attempt to corral my reading notes in a single thread -- hopefully for the last time this year.
So first sentences, running commentary, etc. will be posted as responses to this thread.
Previous threads for 2026 were disrupted by my move to a new instance but can be found here:
Part I: https://techhub.social/@NearerAndFarther/115825883230835771
Part II: https://bookstodon.com/@NearerAndFarther/116721345848279855
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#ReadingNotes thread for 2026, part III!
In which I attempt to corral my reading notes in a single thread -- hopefully for the last time this year.
So first sentences, running commentary, etc. will be posted as responses to this thread.
Previous threads for 2026 were disrupted by my move to a new instance but can be found here:
Part I: https://techhub.social/@NearerAndFarther/115825883230835771
Part II: https://bookstodon.com/@NearerAndFarther/116721345848279855
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A long overdue "Things I Read" — most of it binge-read on a beach after I accidentally gave myself a digital detox (Kindle + 300 Instapaper articles beat my phone).
The resulting reading notes range from AI-assisted software work and keeping patches in forks to open source sustainability, social connection, aging, and three books I finished along the way.
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A long overdue "Things I Read" — most of it binge-read on a beach after I accidentally gave myself a digital detox (Kindle + 300 Instapaper articles beat my phone).
The resulting reading notes range from AI-assisted software work and keeping patches in forks to open source sustainability, social connection, aging, and three books I finished along the way.
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"The sound of hooves beating on the sandy ground comes first. Then the breathing, strained and short-winded. Panting. A snort."
-- #FirstSentences of *Autobiography of Cotton* by Cristina Rivera Garza (trans. Christina MacSweeney)
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Started this evening. Really looking forward to this one. Will put #ReadingNotes here. -
"The sound of hooves beating on the sandy ground comes first. Then the breathing, strained and short-winded. Panting. A snort."
-- #FirstSentences of *Autobiography of Cotton* by Cristina Rivera Garza (trans. Christina MacSweeney)
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Started this evening. Really looking forward to this one. Will put #ReadingNotes here. -
"Scorching salt sprinkled onto a healing wound -- that's how the wedding of his young neighbor felt to Petko."
-- #FirstSentences of *White Moss* by Anna Nerkagi, translated by Irina Sadovina. Pushkin, 2026.
(Started last night. #ReadingNotes will go here.)
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"Scorching salt sprinkled onto a healing wound -- that's how the wedding of his young neighbor felt to Petko."
-- #FirstSentences of *White Moss* by Anna Nerkagi, translated by Irina Sadovina. Pushkin, 2026.
(Started last night. #ReadingNotes will go here.)
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"As silent as a mirror is believed
Realities plunge in silence by . . ."-- #FirstLines of Hart Crane, "Legend," the opening poem in his *White Buildings* volume (1926)
A poetry thread in the #ReadingNotes thread? Sure!
Going to read through Crane's *White Buildings*, as a cure for poetry paralysis (having trouble deciding what to read lately).
Will put some reading notes here, unsure of how much.
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"As silent as a mirror is believed
Realities plunge in silence by . . ."-- #FirstLines of Hart Crane, "Legend," the opening poem in his *White Buildings* volume (1926)
A poetry thread in the #ReadingNotes thread? Sure!
Going to read through Crane's *White Buildings*, as a cure for poetry paralysis (having trouble deciding what to read lately).
Will put some reading notes here, unsure of how much.
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#ReadingNotes thread for 2026, part II!
In which I attempt to corral my reading notes in a single thread.
So first sentences, running commentary, etc. will be posted as responses to this thread.
Previous thread for 2026 was disrupted by my move to a new instance but can be found here:
-
#ReadingNotes thread for 2026, part II!
In which I attempt to corral my reading notes in a single thread.
So first sentences, running commentary, etc. will be posted as responses to this thread.
Previous thread for 2026 was disrupted by my move to a new instance but can be found here:
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"We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall. It was surprising there were so many of us left to die."
-- #FirstSentences of Louise Erdrich, *Tracks*
(Started 6/2. Notes will go here.)
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"We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall. It was surprising there were so many of us left to die."
-- #FirstSentences of Louise Erdrich, *Tracks*
(Started 6/2. Notes will go here.)
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"In the place I used to live, my rusty top bunk rocked like a boat. Night after night, it carried me off towards a secret crevice."
-- #FirstSentences of Dorothy Tse, *City Like Water*
(trans. Natascha Bruce, Graywolf Press, 2026)
Started this morning. Reading notes will go here.
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"In the place I used to live, my rusty top bunk rocked like a boat. Night after night, it carried me off towards a secret crevice."
-- #FirstSentences of Dorothy Tse, *City Like Water*
(trans. Natascha Bruce, Graywolf Press, 2026)
Started this morning. Reading notes will go here.
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"Jude had been teaching Engineering Communication and Design online for so long that the temporary virtual classroom seemed permanent. Every year or two someone in the department brought up in-person classes, but he wasn't surprised when the state of emergency extended another year, and they continued to wait for a return to normal that never came."
-- #FirstSentences of Rebecca Campbell, *Arboreality*
(Started tonight. #ReadingNotes will go here.)
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"Jude had been teaching Engineering Communication and Design online for so long that the temporary virtual classroom seemed permanent. Every year or two someone in the department brought up in-person classes, but he wasn't surprised when the state of emergency extended another year, and they continued to wait for a return to normal that never came."
-- #FirstSentences of Rebecca Campbell, *Arboreality*
(Started tonight. #ReadingNotes will go here.)
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Daily Notes From “Dance of Thieves” by Mary E. Pearson
This post is a little different from the usual essay-style ones. This time, I'm sharing my unfiltered, daily thoughts on Dance of Thieves, separated over 8 days as I was reading the book. Keep in mind that this is all just my opinion, so don't take my comments too seriously, and if you have anything you would like to share, feel free to do so. SPOILER WARNING: These are notes I wrote as I read the book, so if you intend on reading Dance of Thieves in the future, check out a different blog […] -
Daily Notes From “Dance of Thieves” by Mary E. Pearson
This post is a little different from the usual essay-style ones. This time, I'm sharing my unfiltered, daily thoughts on Dance of Thieves, separated over 8 days as I was reading the book. Keep in mind that this is all just my opinion, so don't take my comments too seriously, and if you have anything you would like to share, feel free to do so. SPOILER WARNING: These are notes I wrote as I read the book, so if you intend on reading Dance of Thieves in the future, check out a different blog […] -
"He was the second, or perhaps the third, Nero owned by my grandparents. With a grocery store that included a butcher shop and a slaughterhouse, they could feed as many dogs as they liked."
--- #FirstSentences of Louise Erdrich's story, "Python's Kiss"
(This is also the title story of her new short story collection. Reading notes will go here.)
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"He was the second, or perhaps the third, Nero owned by my grandparents. With a grocery store that included a butcher shop and a slaughterhouse, they could feed as many dogs as they liked."
--- #FirstSentences of Louise Erdrich's story, "Python's Kiss"
(This is also the title story of her new short story collection. Reading notes will go here.)
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New Things I Read is up: Czech wages and trams, Rust from a C++ shop, AI harnesses and prompt language, Americans abroad, handcarts, and British insults. A normal collection, basically.
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"Should I dream one dream or seven?"
-- First sentence of William Vollmann, *The Ice-Shirt*
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(Started this morning. #ReadingNotes will go here.)
#WilliamVollmann #Bookstodon #WilliamTheBlind #TheIceShirt #FirstSentences
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"Should I dream one dream or seven?"
-- First sentence of William Vollmann, *The Ice-Shirt*
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(Started this morning. #ReadingNotes will go here.)
#WilliamVollmann #Bookstodon #WilliamTheBlind #TheIceShirt #FirstSentences
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I pulled together the first "Things I Read" post: links and light commentary on Native rights and originalism, why AI success could still be economically bearish, the failure of the low-end Windows laptop market, and why geldings changed horse society.
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"The rain continued. It was a hard rain, a perpetual rain, a sweating and steaming rain; it was a mizzle, a downpour, a fountain, a whipping at the eyes, an undertow at the ankles; it was a rain to drown all rains and the memory of rains. It came by the pound and the ton, it hacked at the jungle and cut the trees like scissors and shaved the grass and tunneled the soil and molted the bushes. It shrank men's hands into the hands of wrinkled apes; it rained a solid glassy rain, and it never stopped."
-- #FirstSentences of Ray Bradbury's "The Long Rain"
What a great opening!
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"The rain continued. It was a hard rain, a perpetual rain, a sweating and steaming rain; it was a mizzle, a downpour, a fountain, a whipping at the eyes, an undertow at the ankles; it was a rain to drown all rains and the memory of rains. It came by the pound and the ton, it hacked at the jungle and cut the trees like scissors and shaved the grass and tunneled the soil and molted the bushes. It shrank men's hands into the hands of wrinkled apes; it rained a solid glassy rain, and it never stopped."
-- #FirstSentences of Ray Bradbury's "The Long Rain"
What a great opening!
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"In the town they tell the story of the great pearl--how it was found and how it was lost again."
-- First sentence of Steinbeck's *The Pearl*
#ThePearl #JohnSteinbeck #ReadingNotes #FirstSentences #Bookstodon
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Started this morning. Will probably read quite quick, but notes will go here.
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"In the town they tell the story of the great pearl--how it was found and how it was lost again."
-- First sentence of Steinbeck's *The Pearl*
#ThePearl #JohnSteinbeck #ReadingNotes #FirstSentences #Bookstodon
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Started this morning. Will probably read quite quick, but notes will go here.
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"My beloved aunt,
I am as innocent and forged in the image and likeness of God as any other, as every other, though I have been a cabin boy, shopkeeper, and soldier, and before then, long before, a small girl at your skirts."
- #FirstSentences of *We Are Green and Trembling* by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara (translated by Robin Myers)
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Started last night -- but was exhausted, so only got through three pages. Was awake enough to get excited by this first sentence though. Read a bit more this morning, and this is great so far.
#GabrielaCabezónCámara #Bookstodon #ReadingNotes #WeAreGreenAndTrembling
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I absolutely *loved* this article, which is ostensibly an investigation of fandom, but ultimately uses that to poke at things like criticism, aging, community, and more.
Super well-written, super funny, and a bit moving. It even moves with the breathlessness, the rhythm of fandom. I loved everything about it. Could easily use it in a #Writing class of some sort.
#GiftLink below.