Author | Lightnews

that bookstore downtown @usedbookstore.bsky.social · May 11

yoko ogawa, the memory police

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."

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that bookstore downtown @usedbookstore.bsky.social · Dec 25

#jamesbaldwin #merrychristmas #freepalestine

"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."

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that bookstore downtown @usedbookstore.bsky.social · Dec 25

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

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that bookstore downtown @usedbookstore.bsky.social · Dec 24

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that bookstore downtown @usedbookstore.bsky.social · Dec 10

"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

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

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that bookstore downtown @usedbookstore.bsky.social · Dec 6

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

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that bookstore downtown @usedbookstore.bsky.social · Nov 29

book club hardback(s)

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that bookstore downtown @usedbookstore.bsky.social · Nov 29

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

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that bookstore downtown @usedbookstore.bsky.social · Nov 29

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

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that bookstore downtown @usedbookstore.bsky.social · Nov 29

"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..."

Pluralistic: Bossware is unfair (in the legal sense, too) (26 Nov 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

pluralistic.net

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Reposted by that bookstore downtown

Mondoweiss @mondoweiss.net · Nov 29

This Black Friday, boycott Amazon to end Big Tech’s complicity in the mass murder of Palestinians.

https://mondoweiss.net/2024/11/do-not-support-the-first-genocide-carried-out-by-big-tech/

#Palestine #Israel

Do not support the first genocide carried out by Big Tech

This Black Friday, boycott Amazon to end Big Tech’s complicity in the mass murder of Palestinians.

mondoweiss.net

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that bookstore downtown @usedbookstore.bsky.social · Nov 29

Hundreds of authors have signed an open letter in support of Lisa Ko.

Maxine Hong Kingston, Alexander Chee, Alissa Nutting, David Henry Hwang, Eugene Lim, Rachel Khong, Susan Abulhawa, Susan Bernofsky, Laura van den Berg, R. O. Kwon, Bryan Washington, Danzy Senna, an…

lithub.com

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that bookstore downtown @usedbookstore.bsky.social · Nov 21

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

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that bookstore downtown @usedbookstore.bsky.social · Mar 11

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

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that bookstore downtown @usedbookstore.bsky.social · Mar 9

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

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that bookstore downtown @usedbookstore.bsky.social · Mar 9

"...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

that bookstore downtown @usedbookstore.bsky.social · Mar 9

"...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

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that bookstore downtown @usedbookstore.bsky.social · Mar 9

"...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

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that bookstore downtown @usedbookstore.bsky.social · Mar 9

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

#minordetail #adaniashibli #amreading #palestine

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that bookstore downtown @usedbookstore.bsky.social · Mar 9

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

#minordetail #adaniashibli #amreading #palestine

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that bookstore downtown @usedbookstore.bsky.social · Mar 9

"...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

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that bookstore downtown @usedbookstore.bsky.social · Mar 9

"...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

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that bookstore downtown @usedbookstore.bsky.social · Mar 9

the evening's reading...

#minordetail #adaniashibli #amreading

front cover, minor detail by adania shibli

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that bookstore downtown @usedbookstore.bsky.social · Mar 5

i am six of these simultaneously

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