User Profile

callan

callan@bookwyrm.social

Joined 10 months, 3 weeks ago

follow me @eminencefont on twitter; check out my website at librarycallan.com. I am a library director/career librarian and huge supporter of libraries and I love books and this is my thingy where I will tell you about the books I am reading okay bye

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callan's books

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Fulfillment (2021) 5 stars

In 1937, the famed writer and activist Upton Sinclair published a novel bearing the subtitle …

yes plz

5 stars

These social geography/tech-and-business-history tellings of the present moment are so important, and this was an exceptionally good one. I can’t wait to use this in future classrooms

Summer Fun (Hardcover, 2021, Soho Press) 5 stars

From acclaimed author Jeanne Thornton, an epic, singular look at fandom, creativity, longing, and trans …

this is how you write a weird novel

5 stars

I loved this and all the layers in it - the overlapping notions of identity & self-creation, the metaphors from all of time. Hard to describe it now, but the whole time I was reading it, I wanted to talk about it with someone. Seriously one of the best I’ve picked up in a while.

The Cruelest Month (Hardcover, 2008, St. Martin's Minotaur) 4 stars

Starred Review. Chief Insp. Armand Gamache and his team investigate another bizarre crime in the …

fave in the series so far?

4 stars

I never thought I’d be one for a mystery series, but I love the Three Pines books and this one might be my favorite so far. The allusions, character development, and atmosphere can’t be beat. Louise Penny has some serious chops for introspection and marveling at all the shitty weirdness of the human condition. This one starts to shed much more light on things in the subplot and the twists are totally there for enriching characters, not trying to trick readers - that’s mastery.

Infomocracy (2017, Tor.com) 2 stars

It's been twenty years and two election cycles since Information, a powerful search engine monopoly, …

Might recommend to some, but def not my thing

2 stars

I wanted to read this because the description of it sounds fascinating, and there are some elements that are interesting to ponder over. But the character development is basically nonexistent and the plot is complicated in a way that makes it hard to stick with because you don’t really know/understand the people involved - and thus don’t really care. No offense to the author, who seems like a wonderful human and a deep thinker, but this is not good writing for a novel.

Hidden Valley Road (Hardcover, 2020, Random House Large Print) 5 stars

The heartrending story of a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed …

tough to read & amazing

5 stars

I’m giving this a rare 5-star review because there’s no real criticism I have for it - it’s stunningly written, immersive and horrifying but ultimately hopeful. It is undoubtedly triggering for anyone with familial mental illness, and it can be too much at times. That said, it’s an incredible, fascinating book and I’m glad I picked it up.

The Great Beanie Baby Bubble (Hardcover, 2015) 4 stars

In the annals of consumer crazes, nothing compares to Beanie Babies. With no advertising or …

excellent investigation & analysis

4 stars

This book was entertaining, depressing, and insightful. I am the perfect age to have been caught up in the Beanie Baby craze as a child, and I had a ton of them, but hadn’t really given it much thought for like 2 decades. It’s really interesting/terrifying to think about how Beanie Babies kind of launched and legitimized buying stuff online, and definitely gave a big leg up to eBay. Do we have Ty to thank for surveillance capitalism? Maybe!

An Ugly Truth (Hardcover, 2021, Harper) 4 stars

democracy dies in Mark-ness

4 stars

This is an excellent takedown of Facebook, going hard on how the company created its own disinformation nightmare by treating extremist hate speech as “important political content.” Outstandingly written and devastating, it also sheds light on the epically gross working relationship between Zuck and Sheryl. If you can tolerate 300+ pages about some of the worst people in the world but want more ammunition against the selective applications of “intellectual freedom,” pick it up.

Extrastatecraft (2014) 4 stars

"Infrastructure is not only the underground pipes and wires that control our cities but also …

knowing how vs knowing that

4 stars

I will be thinking about this one for a long long time. Very interested in continuing to pull at the connections between engineering/tech, standards, and information science (and the differentiation between library science and information science). Also, so much yes to everything said about what organizations say they are doing and what they ARE doing… “…stories create ideological collisions and confusions, [and] organizations of every scale institutionalize techniques for overlooking or overriding the disconnect between what they are saying and what they are doing.”

Seeing Like a State (Hardcover, 1998, Yale University Press) 4 stars

Examines how (sometimes quasi-) authoritarian high-modernist planning fails to deliver the goods, be they increased …

legibility, high modernism, metis

4 stars

I enjoyed this greatly and I am dyingggg to know about criticisms of big tech and surveillance capitalism that utilize the concepts in this book—particularly around legibility and the mechanization of people/minds. If you see this and you know of any, plz share! Such a good read for those of us in the interstitial spaces between the provably known and the experientially felt, and for those thinking about the pain and problems of objectivity.