techhub.social is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
A hub primarily for passionate technologists, but everyone is welcome

Administered by:

Server stats:

4.6K
active users

#serialreader

0 posts0 participants0 posts today
Reading Recluse<p>📗 "Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson" by Mary Rowlandson</p><p>Time for another strange text from the public domain. I hope it doesn't need to be said, but just in case: I don't read texts like these because I support of believe the offensive things they say. I read them because I find it interesting to see what people thought and did in different centuries, and I think it's helpful to see what kind of patterns persist and what ideas have changed over the years.</p><p>This is a memoir from 1682. It's from an English colonist who was kidnapped by Native Americans and held for ransom for a few months. It's short, confusing and a narrative mess, but standards were different back then.</p><p>I can't believe how you can have an author who has to see neighbors get murdered, whose child dies in her arms, and who somehow still manages to come across as the most unsympathetic person out there. I'm sorry she suffered, but I suffered having to read her words.</p><p>Obviously there is a lot of racism in here, along with a lot of slurs. Rowlandson doesn't skip an opportunity to describe her captors as horrific beasts, which is somewhat understandable with her anger and fear, but whenever they do anything kind or smart, she praises God for doing His Work through them. She makes their language sounds like animal grunts, but never seems to be surprised that they can talk back in English to her. I couldn't help but laugh when she was disgusted that her captors eat all sorts of animals she wouldn't ever eat, but then admires her god for providing so diversely for them.</p><p>I really can't get over the arrogance she has in a position of captivity. She is told to work, but refuses on Sabbath day and gets offended if that's not accepted as a good enough excuse. She does knitting, but gets angry if one person doesn't pay her for her work afterwards. She steals the food of another captive, a small child, and then praises the lord for making it taste so good! </p><p>At a certain point some Native Americans offer to help her leave and she declines, because she says she'll wait on God to save her. I swear, if her god exists, he must have been facepalming to hell and back when that happened.</p><p>It's interesting to read that this sold so well, even being called one of the first US bestsellers. How many people were literate then, and how much of a sensational read must this have been? It's disturbing to read about the violence she endured, but it's even more disturbing to research and read more about why such raids and kidnappings happened at all. </p><p><a href="https://c.im/tags/SerialReader" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>SerialReader</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/AmReading" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>AmReading</span></a></p>
Reading Recluse<p>📗 "Ten Days in a Mad-House" by Nellie Bly</p><p>A journalistic account from 1887 that I read through the Serial Reader app. It quite disappointed me.</p><p>Nellie Bly goes undercover in a 'madhouse' in New York (Roosevelt Island), an institution where they basically locked up every woman who was poor, chronically ill, mentally unwell or spoke a language other than English. They were treated horribly: rotten food, permanent cold, abuse from the workers and no freedom or any form of agency.</p><p>Of course I'm glad that this information got out and that we have a written account of it. But although Bly is sympathetic towards the women inside, she still holds quite judgmental views of some of them and of mental illness in general. It's the 19th century and yes, many offensive terms are used and that is to be expected, but as someone going undercover, seeing it all and advocating for these women, she really could've done better.</p><p>The ending is also disappointing. The information is published, but lots gets covered up by the asylum too, and it appears as if some of the women are disappeared. Bly's account must have had dire consequences for some of them, but there's not much thought given to that. The city promises a financial sum to improve things so yay, celebration! The end. Did they spend that money well? Probably not.</p><p>Reading this I also felt upset that truly not much has changed. There's better care, better food, yes, getting placed somewhere without consent is a little more difficult nowadays. But at its core, it's a problem of people dehumanizing others in a care/medical setting and mistreating them. I have encountered some of the things mentioned in this book in hospitals in the 21st century, and so have many others. It's sad to read something that is almost 150 years old and finding it recognizable in its depravity.</p><p><a href="https://c.im/tags/AmReading" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>AmReading</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/NonFiction" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>NonFiction</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/memoir" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>memoir</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/SerialReader" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>SerialReader</span></a></p>
Reading Recluse<p>📘 "Sultana's Dream" by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain</p><p>This is a short story from (now) Bangladesh, not a full novel. I read it through the Serial Reader app, and it existed of only two issues.</p><p>It's sad that it's so short, because it was fascinating. It's a sci-fi utopia tale from 1905 (!) about Ladyland, a mysterious region where women rule and men are locked up indoors. Women have expanded their studies, developing science to have renewable energy from the sun and a solution to water shortages by extracting moisture from the air. </p><p>Public life is practical, but aesthetically pleasing, with an eye for detail. There's barely any crime. Life is peaceful and good. A girl can dream. Dreaming in 1905 and still dreaming now, too many years later.</p><p>In a review elsewhere I saw some artwork for the text made by Chitra Ganesh. I found all of them here:</p><p><a href="https://www.durhampress.com/viewing-room/4-chitra-ganesh-sultana-s-dream/" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">durhampress.com/viewing-room/4</span><span class="invisible">-chitra-ganesh-sultana-s-dream/</span></a></p><p>They're really cool and fit the story beautifully. </p><p><a href="https://c.im/tags/AmReading" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>AmReading</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/fiction" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>fiction</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/ShortStory" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>ShortStory</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/SerialReader" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>SerialReader</span></a></p>
Reading Recluse<p>📗 "My Ten Years' Imprisonment" or "My Prisons" by Silvio Pellico, translated from Italian into English by Thomas Roscoe</p><p>This book had no right being as fun as it was. I read this through the Serial Reader app and looked forward to reading my daily issue.</p><p>Pellico, a poet and writer of plays, was imprisoned during 1820-1830 for being active in the movement for Italian unification. This is a memoir about some of his time in various prisons. Oddly enough, there's barely anything about politics or his reasons for being there.</p><p>I admit, his religious rants were quite boring. But I enjoyed reading about all the people he met and the way things were run in the early 19th century. I was surprised about there being female guards, and about guards bringing their family or children to work and letting them roam around. Also, apparently there was no anesthesia for amputations yet, ooffff. </p><p>He teaches a kid for while, gets a crush on a visitor, makes some friends. He has a lot of good insights, I saved quite a lot of quotes. But I also laughed out loud with his escalating letter exchange with a fellow prisoner, a sassy atheist. When I gleefully summarized these letters to my partner, he stared at me blankly. I'm starting to think I might be the only one having a blast with some overly dramatic musings from 200 years ago.</p><p>Later on Pellico is sentenced to jail in hard conditions, and the tone becomes more somber. There's lots of illness and suffering for him and his co-prisoners. Although this rough phase is the longest part of his imprisonment, he writes the least amount about it. Fortunately we get to see him getting released in the end.</p><p>I thought this was great in its own weird way. I have no clue who to recommend this to. Give it a go if anything at all sounds good to you, it's in the public domain anyway.</p><p><a href="https://c.im/tags/AmReading" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>AmReading</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/memoir" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>memoir</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/NonFiction" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>NonFiction</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/books" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>books</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/PublicDomain" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>PublicDomain</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/SerialReader" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>SerialReader</span></a></p>
Reading Recluse<p>📗 "A Negro Explorer at the North Pole" by Matthew A. Henson</p><p>Starting the year off with a strange one. Sorry for the unfortunate title. I've been browsing public domain non-fiction in the Serial Reader app and this is the result.</p><p>This book is from 1912 and logs the expedition to the North Pole of the author and his captain. It starts with an introduction by a white person full of terribly awkward racist praise of newly freed African Americans. Then we continue with Henson's own tale and ehh, it doesn't get much better in that regard. Now we get a lot of racist remarks about the indigenous people of Greenland.</p><p>I think it's fascinating to see how people thought and acted in different times -especially if they're exploring and discovering places, back when people knew even less of the world than we know now. They were travelling through a cool and treacherous place. Looking at it that way, this text is interesting and has a humorous tone too sometimes. </p><p>However, it's hard to overlook the sinister side of it all. Inuit people are infantilized, exploited and compared to animals (and the animals aren't treated well either btw). It reads like an example of just because your people went through a horrific collective trauma, doesn't mean you'll never fall prey to perpetuating the same sorts of behavior. The author is one of the first generations to live after the abolition of slavery in the US. It's painful to hear him talk about things like his 'adoption' of a native kid, stripping him of his things and keeping him under his bed as if he's more of a pet than a son. He clearly likes the people he meets and has a soft spot for them, but also treats them as nothing more than convenient but child-like creatures, looking down on them and laughing at their beliefs and habits, yet making use of them when it suits him and the crew. Extremely uncomfortable (yes, even though "those were different times").</p><p>If you like niche, old diaries/memoirs and seeing what things were like in the past, this is probably compelling. But prepare to be offended too.</p><p><a href="https://c.im/tags/NonFiction" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>NonFiction</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/AmReading" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>AmReading</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/SerialReader" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>SerialReader</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/memoir" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>memoir</span></a></p>
Cindy Sue<p>I was reading four books on the Serial Reader app, but then I went to visit my parents and didn't keep up with my sections. Yesterday I decided to pick two of the books back up. </p><p>King Coal- Upton Sinclair<br>On the Bondage of the Will- Martin Luther</p><p>I also have started:</p><p>David Copperfield <br>Le Morte d'Arthur</p><p>I will get back to both of those once I have the other two finished. </p><p><span class="h-card"><a href="https://a.gup.pe/u/bookstodon" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">@<span>bookstodon</span></a></span> </p><p><a href="https://bookstodon.com/tags/books" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>books</span></a> <a href="https://bookstodon.com/tags/SerialReader" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>SerialReader</span></a> <a href="https://bookstodon.com/tags/reading" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>reading</span></a> <a href="https://bookstodon.com/tags/read" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>read</span></a> <a href="https://bookstodon.com/tags/bookstodon" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>bookstodon</span></a> <a href="https://bookstodon.com/tags/classics" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>classics</span></a></p>
Serial Reader<p>Serial Reader is seven years old today! 🎉 It’s a long way from the dinky prototype I used to read My Antonia on my train commutes <a href="https://www.serialreader.org/blog/seven-year-anniversary/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">serialreader.org/blog/seven-ye</span><span class="invisible">ar-anniversary/</span></a></p><p>I had completely forgotten one of the early adopters of <a href="https://indieapps.space/tags/SerialReader" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>SerialReader</span></a> was Debra Messing 😳 life is wild sometimes</p>
Serial Reader<p>Happy 2023! 🎉 The new year brings a bunch of new books from 1927 into the public domain (and into Serial Reader for daily bite-sized reading)</p><p>This includes "To the Lighthouse" by Virginia Woolf, "Death Comes for the Archbishop" by Willa Cather, the remaining Sherlock Holmes stories, plus other titles by Ernest Hemingway, Edith Wharton, Agatha Christie, Edgar Rice Burroughs and more.</p><p>More info: <a href="https://www.serialreader.org/blog/new-books-1927-public-domain-2023-lighthouse-holmes-poirot-archbishop/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">serialreader.org/blog/new-book</span><span class="invisible">s-1927-public-domain-2023-lighthouse-holmes-poirot-archbishop/</span></a></p><p>cc <span class="h-card"><a href="https://a.gup.pe/u/bookstadon" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">@<span>bookstadon</span></a></span> <a href="https://indieapps.space/tags/books" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>books</span></a> <a href="https://indieapps.space/tags/bookstodon" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>bookstodon</span></a> <a href="https://indieapps.space/tags/PublicDomain" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>PublicDomain</span></a> <a href="https://indieapps.space/tags/SerialReader" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>SerialReader</span></a> <a href="https://indieapps.space/tags/reading" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>reading</span></a></p>
Awe & Wonder & Dream media<p><span class="h-card"><a href="https://sauropods.win/@schmitt" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">@<span>schmitt</span></a></span> <a href="https://www.serialreader.org/preview/56b027145171015305d09ede/anna-karenina/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">serialreader.org/preview/56b02</span><span class="invisible">7145171015305d09ede/anna-karenina/</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/SerialReader" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>SerialReader</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/AnnaKarenina" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>AnnaKarenina</span></a><br>Leo <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Tolstoy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Tolstoy</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/RussianLiterature" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>RussianLiterature</span></a></p><p>Preview: Issue 1 of 1<br>Translated by <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/ConstanceGarnett" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>ConstanceGarnett</span></a></p><p>Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way...</p><p><a href="https://www.serialreader.org/faqs" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="">serialreader.org/faqs</span><span class="invisible"></span></a> "Dividing up a book in 20 minute daily issues offers several benefits but definitely isn't for everyone. .. it's a great way to work through otherwise daunting books, or to luxuriously re-read old favorites...you can subscribe for free.</p>
michael schmitt<p>Spent the whole morning adding Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "Demons" to Serial Reader. "Why haven't I added this sooner?" I thought. 2 hours of adding issues later... "ah right"</p><p>Anyways, another big scary classic book available in the app! 🎉<a href="https://www.serialreader.org/638bb2ab4b31de1203a9c1b3/demons/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">serialreader.org/638bb2ab4b31d</span><span class="invisible">e1203a9c1b3/demons/</span></a></p><p><a href="https://sauropods.win/tags/bookstodon" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>bookstodon</span></a> <a href="https://sauropods.win/tags/reading" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>reading</span></a> <a href="https://sauropods.win/tags/Dostoevsky" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Dostoevsky</span></a> <a href="https://sauropods.win/tags/SerialReader" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>SerialReader</span></a></p>