Mastodawn

My latest read: "The Wrecking Squad" by Nick Snape

Looking for a new sci-fi series? Give this one a try! 👍

Goodreads
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8679993767
The Book Radar
https://thebookradar.com/review/5448
The StoryGraph
https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/d5547e7f-392c-4611-9528-32abf69c0e86

#scifi #bookreview #bookrec #bookreviews #bookrecs #books #read #reads #reading #readingcommunity #bookstodon #booktodon #booksofmastodon #readersofmastodon #sciencefiction

Quasit 12h ago

Another reminder that I've moved my daily book recommendations to Beige.party. Today's book is for children.

https://beige.party/@Quasit/116734661336519737

#Books⁩⁩ ⁨⁨#Bookstodon⁩⁩ ⁨⁨#Children ⁨#fiction⁩ ⁨ ⁩#Classic ⁨⁨#BookRecs ⁨⁨#BookRecommendation⁩⁩ ⁨⁨#QuasitBookRecs

Quasit (@[email protected])

Quasit's Daily Book Recommendations: "Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain" (1936), written and illustrated by Edward Ardizonne It's Thursday, and I DIDN'T forget to do a children's book! I'm already feeling a glow of accomplishment. ☺️ This is a classic English book for children, the first in a wonderful series. It's for relatively •young• children; probably ages two through seven–but that's just a guess. I was reading the books at two, but of course they're great to read TO a child as well. Ardizonne was a master illustrator in the medium of watercolor, as well as line art. In the Tim series he proved that he was a children's writer of great talent, too. I fear the series is mostly forgotten these days, though, even in England (if anyone wants to correct me on that point, please do!). Little Tim lives with his parents in a house by the sea (in England, probably near the white cliffs of Dover). He loves ships, and watches them sail by his home whenever he can. [When it was fine he spent the day on the beach playing in and out of the boats, or talking to his friend the old boatman, who taught him how to make the special knots that sailors make and many other things about the sea and ships. Sometimes Tim would astonish his parents by saying, “That’s a Cunarder ^or “Look at that barquentine on the port bow.” When it was wet or too cold and rough to play on the beach, Tim would visit his old friend, Captain McFee. The Captain would tell him about his voyages and sometimes give him a sip of his grog, which made Tim want to be a sailor more than ever.] LOL, different times indeed! As a child I often wondered what grog tasted like. Of course I had no idea that it was alcoholic. Come to think of it, I STILL haven't tasted grog! Have you? Speaking of different times, virtually ALL of the great old books for children were illustrated by their authors; Doctor Dolittle, Mike Mulligan, Make Way For Ducklings, etc. etc. Things aren't like that now. I've been told by modern children's book authors that not only are they NOT allowed to illustrate their own works; the publishing companies are the ones who pick the illustrators, and the authors aren't even allowed to MEET them! The world of publishing has truly become cold, cruel, and utterly profit-based. Back to the story. Tim's parents won't allow him to go to sea as a boy, but Tim can't resist. Finally he finds a way to stow away on a steamer and become a cabin boy. Although he has to work hard, he's thrilled to be at sea and is happy to do it. But Tim seems to be what they call a "jonah"; bad luck for ships. Sure enough there's a terrible storm, and the steamer is sunk. But Tim survives with the help of the Captain. They're rescued and Tim returns to his parents, who are overjoyed to have him back. It's a heartwarming story, and the series got even better over time. I doubt you'll find any new copies in book stores, although you may be able to order new copies online. Ebooks do NOT seem to be available, but there are PDFs available on the high seas and you can borrow some PDFs for free from the Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/littletimbravese0000ardi Happy reading! 🤓📖 ⁨⁨#Books⁩⁩ ⁨⁨#Bookstodon⁩⁩ ⁨⁨#Children ⁨#fiction⁩ ⁨ ⁩#Classic ⁨⁨#BookRecs ⁨⁨#BookRecommendation⁩⁩ ⁨⁨#QuasitBookRecs⁩⁩

beige.party

Quasit 12h ago

Quasit's Daily Book Recommendations: "Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain" (1936), written and illustrated by Edward Ardizonne

It's Thursday, and I DIDN'T forget to do a children's book! I'm already feeling a glow of accomplishment. ☺️

This is a classic English book for children, the first in a wonderful series. It's for relatively •young• children; probably ages two through seven–but that's just a guess. I was reading the books at two, but of course they're great to read TO a child as well.

Ardizonne was a master illustrator in the medium of watercolor, as well as line art. In the Tim series he proved that he was a children's writer of great talent, too. I fear the series is mostly forgotten these days, though, even in England (if anyone wants to correct me on that point, please do!).

Little Tim lives with his parents in a house by the sea (in England, probably near the white cliffs of Dover). He loves ships, and watches them sail by his home whenever he can.

[When it was fine he spent the day on the beach playing in and out of the boats, or talking to his friend the old boatman, who taught him how to make the special knots that sailors make and many other things about the sea and ships.

Sometimes Tim would astonish his parents by saying, “That’s a Cunarder ^or “Look at that barquentine on the port bow.”

When it was wet or too cold and rough to play on the beach, Tim would visit his old friend, Captain McFee.

The Captain would tell him about his voyages and sometimes give him a sip of his grog, which made Tim want to be a sailor more than ever.]

LOL, different times indeed! As a child I often wondered what grog tasted like. Of course I had no idea that it was alcoholic. Come to think of it, I STILL haven't tasted grog! Have you?

Speaking of different times, virtually ALL of the great old books for children were illustrated by their authors; Doctor Dolittle, Mike Mulligan, Make Way For Ducklings, etc. etc. Things aren't like that now. I've been told by modern children's book authors that not only are they NOT allowed to illustrate their own works; the publishing companies are the ones who pick the illustrators, and the authors aren't even allowed to MEET them! The world of publishing has truly become cold, cruel, and utterly profit-based.

Back to the story. Tim's parents won't allow him to go to sea as a boy, but Tim can't resist. Finally he finds a way to stow away on a steamer and become a cabin boy. Although he has to work hard, he's thrilled to be at sea and is happy to do it.

But Tim seems to be what they call a "jonah"; bad luck for ships. Sure enough there's a terrible storm, and the steamer is sunk. But Tim survives with the help of the Captain. They're rescued and Tim returns to his parents, who are overjoyed to have him back.

It's a heartwarming story, and the series got even better over time.

I doubt you'll find any new copies in book stores, although you may be able to order new copies online. Ebooks do NOT seem to be available, but there are PDFs available on the high seas and you can borrow some PDFs for free from the Internet Archive.

https://archive.org/details/littletimbravese0000ardi

Happy reading! 🤓📖

⁨⁨#Books⁩⁩ ⁨⁨#Bookstodon⁩⁩ ⁨⁨#Children ⁨#fiction⁩ ⁨ ⁩#Classic ⁨⁨#BookRecs ⁨⁨#BookRecommendation⁩⁩ ⁨⁨#QuasitBookRecs⁩⁩

Little Tim and the brave sea captain : Ardizzone, Edward, 1900- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

1 v. (unpaged) : 27 cm

Internet Archive

Kaleidoscope Romance 1d ago

https://dl.bookfunnel.com/oq6ub3r8gb
They put her in the cell next to mine...

#romancereaders #bookish #readingcommunity #readerscommunity #kaleidoscoperomance #readersofmastodon #whattoread #bookstoread #readers #books #romancebooks #romancereads #booklover #bookrecs #Bookstodon #romancelandia #writersofmastodon

Kaleidoscope Romance 1d ago

https://www.books2read.com/faunoverme
When a mysterious and violent monster threatens the camp, Cricket and Avery band together...

Quasit 1d ago

Quasit's Daily Book Recommendations: ANNOUNCEMENT

As of today I'll no longer be posting my daily book recommendations on kolektiva, as part of my plan to transition away due to the unjustified censorship practiced here.

Please look for me as @Quasit in the future.

Today's book recommendation (and it's an old favorite of mine) can be found there.

https://beige.party/@Quasit/116728980150074330

Hope to see you there. Happy reading! 🤓📖

#Books #Bookstodon #Kolektiva ⁨⁨#BookRecs ⁨⁨#BookRecommendation #BeigeParty #QuasitBookRecs

Quasit (@[email protected])

Quasit's Daily Book Recommendations: "The Great Explosion" (1962) by Eric Frank Russell This is me moving my daily book recommendations from kolektiva to beige.party. If you haven't seen them before, I've done about 50 so far; it's a point of pride to me that I haven't missed a day since I started. Not bad, huh? You should be able to read all of the previous book recommendations at #QuasitBookRecs . Just in case anyone new is reading this, I'm an old bookworm who has always loved old books. I have a naturally high reading speed and a kind of freaky memory, so I was basically born as a human library. It helped that I grew up before the Internet and without TV for quite a while (we only had 12 channels back then anyway). So I did over a thousand book recommendations over on Reddit before it went rotten and I left. I love science fiction, fantasy, mysteries, humor, YA, children's books, manga, graphic novels and almost everything else. Okay, on to today's recommendation! What will it be? Well, YOU already know since I just posted the title at the top. 😁 I have a special place in my heart for Eric Frank Russell's "The Great Explosion"; in it, Russell created a world that I want to live in. It's a funny, thought-provoking, and ultimately very •moving• book. You may have noticed that I say that about a lot of books that I recommend; I may be a bit soft-hearted, but to me the greatest quality any piece of art can have is to touch the heart. I'll take a moment to also note that it's a comparatively short book: 163 pages, depending on what format you're reading. Back in the old days (for those of you who aren't old), the publishing industry hadn't dedicated itself to converting the world's forests into profit. So books were generally smaller, not the back-breaking tomes they sell today. Okay, I'm actually not sure WHY books are so much longer now, but it's definitely not because they're •better•–that's for sure! And believe me, quantity does NOT have to equal quality. Perhaps a hundred years into the future, a cheap and easy FTL (faster than light) drive is developed. Earth is virtually depopulated as every splinter group imaginable hauls up their stakes and takes to the stars. It turns out that habitable planets are pretty common, and colonies are established across the galaxy. Hundreds of years years later Earth has established a world-wide government. Spaceships are sent out to gather the far-flung colonies into a new empire. But the colonies have developed their own societies and have their own ideas. Centuries of isolation (apparently spaceships don't last a long time) has caused all sorts of cultural divergence. It's a lovely concept. [A veritable spray of Blieder-driven ships shot outward as every family, cult, group or clique that imagined it could do better someplace else took to the star-trails. The restless, the ambitious, the malcontents, the martyrs, the eccentrics, the antisocial, the fidgety and the just plain curious, away they fled by the dozens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands. In less than a century fifty percent of the human race left aged and autocratic Terra and blew itself all over the star-field, settling wherever they could give free vent to their ideas and establish their prejudices. This was the end-product of the obsession of a penny-levitator. It was written down in history as The Great Explosion. It weakened Terra for four hundred years. Then came the time to pick up the bits and pieces ...] Tenth Engineer Harrison is one of the people assigned to one of the ships sent to gather in Earth's lost sheep. It would be fair to call him a geek; he travels with his bicycle, even in space, and he's not a particularly military man. But he does as he's ordered. [News-channel commentators, lost for suitable superlatives, had repeatedly described the vessel as "one to make the senses boggle." Always willing to do some fervent boggling, the public had turned up in its thousands. A solid mass of people stood behind the barriers and studied the ship with the bovine stares of good, obedient, uncomplaining taxpayers. It did not occur to any of them that somebody had paid for this gigantic vision or that they had been stung good and hard in their individual and collective wallets. People were momentarily incapable of deep thoughts about cost. The flag had been raised, the bands were playing and this was a patriotic occasion. It is conventional that one does not think vulgar thoughts of money on a patriotic occasion; the individual who chooses such a time to count his cash is by definition a traitor or a no-good bum.] The first planet they reach is unique; it's a former prison planet, where some of Earth's criminal refuse was deposited. Twenty generations have resulted in a worldwide culture that's basically built on gangs and criminality. Organizing them into a single worldwide government for Terra to incorporate is clearly a VERY long-term project, so a team is dropped off and the ship moves on. I just realized that I have NO IDEA if there's a character limit on beige.party! I hope there isn't. But just in case, I'll switch to terse mode. The next planet was colonized by nudists. Their descendants are magnificently healthy and muscular, but to them clothing is obscene and the Terrans are shrimpy, probably diseased. It's the last planet that *I* want to move to. It was colonized by dissenters of all kinds, and seems to be populated by eccentrics. The society they've developed might not be practical...but maybe it is. And it offers an idea of freedom that's incredibly appealing. But I'll stop there. Suffice it to say that it's an imaginative, fun, and incredibly FUNNY book. The full text of the book is available to read free online at https://web.archive.org/web/20050315170821/http://tmh.floonet.net/books/tgetoc.html . It's often back in physical print, and it's available commercially as an ebook from the major ebook publishers. I still see it in used book shops fairly often, too. And of course you can borrow it for free from the Internet Archive! https://archive.org/details/bwb_O8-BOX-419 Happy reading! 🤓📖 P.S.– F.-I.W. ⁨⁨#Books⁩⁩ ⁨⁨#Bookstodon⁩⁩ ⁨⁨#humor⁩ ⁨#ScienceFiction⁩ ⁨#Classic ⁨⁨#BookRecs ⁨⁨#BookRecommendation⁩⁩ ⁨⁨#QuasitBookRecs⁩⁩

beige.party

Quasit 1d ago

Quasit's Daily Book Recommendations: "The Great Explosion" (1962) by Eric Frank Russell

This is me moving my daily book recommendations from kolektiva to beige.party. If you haven't seen them before, I've done about 50 so far; it's a point of pride to me that I haven't missed a day since I started. Not bad, huh?

You should be able to read all of the previous book recommendations at #QuasitBookRecs .

Just in case anyone new is reading this, I'm an old bookworm who has always loved old books. I have a naturally high reading speed and a kind of freaky memory, so I was basically born as a human library. It helped that I grew up before the Internet and without TV for quite a while (we only had 12 channels back then anyway). So I did over a thousand book recommendations over on Reddit before it went rotten and I left.

I love science fiction, fantasy, mysteries, humor, YA, children's books, manga, graphic novels and almost everything else.

Okay, on to today's recommendation! What will it be? Well, YOU already know since I just posted the title at the top. 😁

I have a special place in my heart for Eric Frank Russell's "The Great Explosion"; in it, Russell created a world that I want to live in. It's a funny, thought-provoking, and ultimately very •moving• book. You may have noticed that I say that about a lot of books that I recommend; I may be a bit soft-hearted, but to me the greatest quality any piece of art can have is to touch the heart.

I'll take a moment to also note that it's a comparatively short book: 163 pages, depending on what format you're reading. Back in the old days (for those of you who aren't old), the publishing industry hadn't dedicated itself to converting the world's forests into profit. So books were generally smaller, not the back-breaking tomes they sell today. Okay, I'm actually not sure WHY books are so much longer now, but it's definitely not because they're •better•–that's for sure! And believe me, quantity does NOT have to equal quality.

Perhaps a hundred years into the future, a cheap and easy FTL (faster than light) drive is developed. Earth is virtually depopulated as every splinter group imaginable hauls up their stakes and takes to the stars. It turns out that habitable planets are pretty common, and colonies are established across the galaxy.

Hundreds of years years later Earth has established a world-wide government. Spaceships are sent out to gather the far-flung colonies into a new empire. But the colonies have developed their own societies and have their own ideas. Centuries of isolation (apparently spaceships don't last a long time) has caused all sorts of cultural divergence. It's a lovely concept.

[A veritable spray of Blieder-driven ships shot outward as every family, cult, group or clique that imagined it could do better someplace else took to the star-trails. The restless, the ambitious, the malcontents, the martyrs, the eccentrics, the antisocial, the fidgety and the just plain curious, away they fled by the dozens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands.

In less than a century fifty percent of the human race left aged and autocratic Terra and blew itself all over the star-field, settling wherever they could give free vent to their ideas and establish their prejudices. This was the end-product of the obsession of a penny-levitator. It was written down in history as The Great Explosion.

It weakened Terra for four hundred years. Then came the time to pick up the bits and pieces ...]

Tenth Engineer Harrison is one of the people assigned to one of the ships sent to gather in Earth's lost sheep. It would be fair to call him a geek; he travels with his bicycle, even in space, and he's not a particularly military man. But he does as he's ordered.

[News-channel commentators, lost for suitable superlatives, had repeatedly described the vessel as "one to make the senses boggle." Always willing to do some fervent boggling, the public had turned up in its thousands. A solid mass of people stood behind the barriers and studied the ship with the bovine stares of good, obedient, uncomplaining taxpayers. It did not occur to any of them that somebody had paid for this gigantic vision or that they had been stung good and hard in their individual and collective wallets.

People were momentarily incapable of deep thoughts about cost. The flag had been raised, the bands were playing and this was a patriotic occasion. It is conventional that one does not think vulgar thoughts of money on a patriotic occasion; the individual who chooses such a time to count his cash is by definition a traitor or a no-good bum.]

The first planet they reach is unique; it's a former prison planet, where some of Earth's criminal refuse was deposited. Twenty generations have resulted in a worldwide culture that's basically built on gangs and criminality. Organizing them into a single worldwide government for Terra to incorporate is clearly a VERY long-term project, so a team is dropped off and the ship moves on.

I just realized that I have NO IDEA if there's a character limit on beige.party! I hope there isn't. But just in case, I'll switch to terse mode.

The next planet was colonized by nudists. Their descendants are magnificently healthy and muscular, but to them clothing is obscene and the Terrans are shrimpy, probably diseased.

It's the last planet that *I* want to move to. It was colonized by dissenters of all kinds, and seems to be populated by eccentrics. The society they've developed might not be practical...but maybe it is. And it offers an idea of freedom that's incredibly appealing.

But I'll stop there. Suffice it to say that it's an imaginative, fun, and incredibly FUNNY book.

The full text of the book is available to read free online at https://web.archive.org/web/20050315170821/http://tmh.floonet.net/books/tgetoc.html . It's often back in physical print, and it's available commercially as an ebook from the major ebook publishers. I still see it in used book shops fairly often, too.

And of course you can borrow it for free from the Internet Archive!

https://archive.org/details/bwb_O8-BOX-419

Happy reading! 🤓📖

P.S.– F.-I.W.

⁨⁨#Books⁩⁩ ⁨⁨#Bookstodon⁩⁩ ⁨⁨#humor⁩ ⁨#ScienceFiction⁩ ⁨#Classic
⁨⁨#BookRecs ⁨⁨#BookRecommendation⁩⁩ ⁨⁨#QuasitBookRecs⁩⁩