Jake Casella Brookins

@casella.bsky.social

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Appalachian in the big city. Editor at Ancillary Review, bookseller, coffee pro, SF reviewer & scholar. https://linktr.ee/jakecasellabrookins

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This is the last week of Hugo Award voting and we would like you to consider Strange Horizons for Best Semiprozine. For over 20 years, Strange Horizons has been publishing weekly issues filled with new stories, poems and non-fiction. Here are some more reasons you should vote for us below!

Loved this opportunity to rave & froth about Fellman's remarkable DEAD COLLECTIONS; Roseanna has tons of good recs and observations. Take a listen:

you can listen at @ancillaryreview.bsky.social, or wherever you find your podcasts. Notes & links here: ancillaryreviewofbooks.org/2024/07/15/a...

A Meal of Thorns 02 – DEAD COLLECTIONS with Roseanna Pendleburyancillaryreviewofbooks.org Host Jake Casella Brookins talks to critic Roseanna Pendlebury about Isaac Fellman's DEAD COLLECTIONS (a novel about a trans vampire archivist) and how it addresses grief, portrayals of bodies and ide...

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I talked to @shwethasrikanthan.bsky.social for @himalmag.bsky.social's Southasia Review of Books! We discussed THE SAINT OF BRIGHT DOORS, RAKESFALL, fantasy, fasciscm, tescrealism, history, ideology, and gender, with a ton of book recommendations. www.himalmag.com/podcast/vajr...

Southasia Review of Books podcast #06: Vajra Chandrasekera on writing fantasy and science fiction from Sri Lankawww.himalmag.com A conversation with the Colombo-based writer Vajra Chandrasekera on the current moment of Southasian speculative fiction

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gotta love how contemporary publishing is 30000000 beautiful, deeply felt, finely crafted books with 7.5 readers each whose authors are just barely making a living, and like 4 books that financially support the whole apparatus, each of which has comprehensively and unforgivably destroyed society

if you have somehow missed me shouting about this, you are forgiven! But check this out:

In case you missed it: A Meal of Thorns is a new podcast from the @ancillaryreview.bsky.social - a speculative bookclub where we dig into complex, interesting, thorny books with critics, scholars, and writers!

at #Readercon! please don't hesitate to say hello, especially if you're curiois about @ancillaryreview.bsky.social or @mealofthorns.bsky.social!

the thing about the bill of rights is that there are *always* cop-brain authoritarians champing at the bit to rip it up

Yikes yikes yikes chicagoreader.com/news-politic...

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I know fuck all about coding so this may not even be feasible but: if there was a social media site that gave you the option to temp mute for set amount of time, I would literally invest money in it.

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The purpose of a system is what it downs

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Here's a simple script you can use if you need one: "I'm calling to tell the representative that I support Alexandria Ocasio Cortez's articles of impeachment against Justices Thomas and Alito, and I am encouraging him to support them as well." That's all you need!

Call your rep today to encourage them to support AOC’s articles of impeachment. I will block anyone who tells me why they, personally, cannot and therefore why it’s pointless.

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One of my favourite Art Deco pieces, over the door of the Fulton County Dept. of Health and Wellness. Swole spirit of medicine fights off the grim spectre of death, reminding you that medicine is Cool

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YOU GUYS WE HAVE TO STOP GLOBAL WARMING SO THE ECHIDNAS CAN DREAM

Headed to Readercon!

Fantastic piece from Dan here, have been looking forward to this.

Very glad to see this piece in the wild for the LARB, on the career of Christopher Priest via his - alas - final novel: "Airside is so compelling because ... it somehow captures profound comprehension alongside complete confusion."

Waiting in Null Space | Los Angeles Review of Bookst.co Dan Hartland reviews Christopher Priest’s “Airside.”...

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Waiting in Null Space | Los Angeles Review of Bookst.co Dan Hartland reviews Christopher Priest’s “Airside.”...

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On a panel about this at Readercon next week, so I feel compelled to say—not to contradict Lincoln’s points here but to add—that everything around you should plainly indicate all the time that it’s your job to become a better person in spite of it, and this also applies to writing and to reading

People really need to give up the idea there's any connection between morality and art. Immoral people are capable of creating moving, empathetic art. Nothing about writing dark and violent art implies the artist is themselves dark and violent. Etc. There just isn't a connection.

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Oh hey y’all guess what I have a new book coming out in March 2025 & you can pre-order it if you want! You can do so from anywhere, I recommend your local indie, but meanwhile here’s Macmillan’s link us.macmillan.com/books/978125...

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Sidetracks is out today because I wanted to avoid the holiday. Feels very “check out this cool project” themed this week! 🔗 ladybusiness.dreamwidth.org/2024/07/05/s...

seeing some Lost discourse and needing to distract myself from the horrors, so, half-baked take: Lost was extremely bad, not so much in itself but in the inflection point it signaled. Intersection of deceptively high production values & cynical, empty creation. The Herald of Slop.

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Let the healing energies of this portrait of Mario Puzo fill and replenish your souls.

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A roundup of my best six books of the first six months of the year. Tough to narrow it down as I've had some really top tier books so far in 2024, but here they are: readerofelse.wordpress.com/2024/07/02/s...

Six from Six – Best Books of the First Half of the Yearreaderofelse.wordpress.com We interrupt my Hugo chatter briefly, because we are now half way through the year, to which I say "fuck, what, really? Already?? Surely not???". The linear passage of time once again confounds me. Bu...

Hey all I've been busy and not yelling enough about this: pick up THE WEST PASSAGE, friends. Most reading fun I've had this year.

well look at that

It was so good to talk to Dan about this one. A nice move forward in my quest for novels that find and annihilate story itself. (I've been sweating over this podcast for almost a year! Super-glad to have this out in the world, give a listen!)

EPISODE 1 is live! @casella.bsky.social & @danhartland.bsky.social talk about THE SCAR: bold, partially-substantiated claims about the New Weird! Deep dives into narrative & aesthetics! Unexpected comparisons! Listen now: ancillaryreviewofbooks.org/2024/07/01/a...

A Meal of Thorns 01 – THE SCAR with Dan Hartlandancillaryreviewofbooks.org Host Jake Casella Brookins talks to Dan Hartland, critic and reviewer, about China Miéville's novel THE SCAR, the genre of the New Weird, and many related works and ideas.

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"All that mattered was not to know, not to be aware- we had to forget we were being led onto the ice."

This passage from Teffi's Memories is never far from my thoughts since I first read it in 2017.

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🚨 New Critical Friends podcast now up! Join @actuallyaisha.bsky.social and me to consider genre's critical boundaries - how can we define them, to what ends? We mention Isabella Hammad and vv ganeshananthan, JRR Tolkien and @vajra.me, The New Yorker & more. strangehorizons.com/podcasts/cri...

Critical Friends Episode 11: Boundaries in Genrestrangehorizons.com In this episode, Aisha and Dan discuss genre boundaries in texts and criticism: how they're used, where they fall; what, if anything, they're good for.

Really dug this review- looking at some of the complications and complexities of the western, and how they're still playing out.

Escaping Home on the Range: Annette Koh reviews Victoria Lamont's WESTERNS: A WOMEN'S HISTORY, out now in paperback from University of Nebraska Press ancillaryreviewofbooks.org/2024/06/24/e...

Escaping Home on the Range: Review of Westerns: A Women’s History by Victoria Lamontancillaryreviewofbooks.org Annette Koh Under Review:Westerns: A Women’s History. Victoria Lamont. University of Nebraska Press, June 2024 (originally published August 2016). “Western” as a genre conjures up parched rangelands, ...

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On the same morning, the Court said: 1) We should not presume to know more than small town mayors regarding complex, technical questions like whether to arrest people for being poor. 2) I don't see why a "PhD" in "nuclear physics" should have any latitude to implement ambiguous energy rules.

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Reply to

Simon McNeil

We did this in an episode of DS9 and it was enough to make O'Brien want to blow his brains out with a phaser. It was cautionary! CAUTIONARY!

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Speculative fiction readers, we've got an exciting project coming out on Monday. A new podcast, from the @ancillaryreview.bsky.social, digging into thorny SFF literature. ancillaryreviewofbooks.org/amealofthorns/

Podcastancillaryreviewofbooks.org Latest Episode: Coming soon! About the Podcast: A Meal of Thorns is a critical book club hosted by Jake Casella Brookins. Each episode, we'll be looking closely at works of speculative fiction, thinki...