Christopher Brown

@christopherbrown.bsky.social

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Writer & lawyer. Novels TROPIC OF KANSAS et al • urban nature newsletter FIELD NOTES • forthcoming: A NATURAL HISTORY OF EMPTY LOTS (narrative nonfiction)

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Hey Ho, Let's Go! It's "independence day" in the USA & it's a July 4th sale in my Xenotone Bandcamp shop. Until 8pm EST tomorrow everything is 25% off using code: july4th2024_25off Music by Blake Leyh, N to The Power, Dozen Zendog, Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ Visit the store here: xenotone.bandcamp.com

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The timing of this two-page front-section feature about the decor of the Supreme Court is a little off

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Drove by this guy on the way home from Book Moon. Guessing he was around 600 lbs. Definitely the biggest bear I’ve seen around here. Just before this picture was taken he was on his back, bent forward, grooming his own butt fur like some giant house cat.

Tuesday morning on the urban river

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Some Field Notes from the end of June, with edgeland relics, Canadians sweating their way through Tarkovsky Texas, Ballardian sunsets, baby spiders, migratory mamas, and some book news: fieldnotes.christopherbrown.com/p/stalkers-c...

Stalkers, cherubs and settlersfieldnotes.christopherbrown.com No. 155

Some scenes from the lovely memorial for Howard Waldrop here in Austin Saturday afternoon

Stalkers, cherubs and settlersfieldnotes.christopherbrown.com No. 155

Our unplanned staycation at DFW thanks to a cancelled flight was a lot more enjoyable than we would have expected. Nothing like the rooftop swimming pool of one of those hotels where you never leave the terminal and are surrounded by runways and freeways in every direction 🛫

How Melville seeded Cthulhu—fascinating essay by antiquarian bookseller and author Henry Wessells tracing the impact of Lovecraft's copy of Moby-Dick: endlessbookshelf.net/2024/06/19/m...

Moby-Dick and American Literature of the Fantastic ; or, Bound for the South Seas – The Endless Bookshelfendlessbookshelf.net

A counter-Boolean alternate history of the coming Butlerian Jihad—fascinating Benjamín Labatut essay @harpers.bsky.social tracing the cultural roots of AI and the role of science fiction as manifesto of resistance: harpers.org/archive/2024...

The Gods of Logic, by Benjamín Labatutharpers.org Before and after artificial intelligence

Found a cherub on this morning’s walk in the East Austin edgelands—19th Century German porcelain doll, almost smiling from the bottom of a side channel of the urban river behind an old warehouse:

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Love this, thank you. I think of our hound as, not a psychopomp, but whatever the Greek would be for ferrying the wild to us and us to the wild. What happens in those encounters is unpredictable of course. slantly, here is a bit of that (no obligation to read!) contrarymagazine.com/2021/outis-o...

Outis Odysseus by Catherine Rockwood | Contrary Magazinecontrarymagazine.com

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Weekly required reading

A remembrance of an edgeland hound, and some reflections on dogs, humans, and paths of escape from the long Anthropocene, in this week's Field Notes: fieldnotes.christopherbrown.com/p/the-ecolog...

The Ecology of Stray Dogsfieldnotes.christopherbrown.com No. 155

A remembrance of an edgeland hound, and some reflections on dogs, humans, and paths of escape from the long Anthropocene, in this week's Field Notes: fieldnotes.christopherbrown.com/p/the-ecolog...

The Ecology of Stray Dogsfieldnotes.christopherbrown.com No. 155

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New linky email is out! This one's got links by/re Sebastian Smee on Peter Schjeldahl, the isolation of Big Sur, @christopherbrown.bsky.social, #RozChast on solo travel, a little on my LA/LACMA visit, & more, so GO READ: buttondown.email/vmspod/archi...

Hitting The Links: 6/2/24buttondown.email It's your weekly link roundup, plus my visit to LACMA, where I got into a Richard Serra

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In the desert in Inyo Co with all 3 sons, crashed out in their tents while I attempt sleep in our old Hyundai sedan after navigating the sharp lava of the inaptly-named Fossil Falls, & the arrival of Field Notes at the 3AM rising of the crescent moon was very welcome @christopherbrown.bsky.social

Bone trucks, butterflies, end of the world movies and urban rivers, in this week’s Field Notes from the beginning of summer: fieldnotes.christopherbrown.com/p/peaches-an...

Peaches and post-apocalypsesfieldnotes.christopherbrown.com No. 154

Got some film back

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Very much thought of @christopherbrown.bsky.social 's book & newsletter while reading @lacymjohnson.bsky.social 's "Downstream" in the latest issue of Orion Magazine orionmagazine.org/article/hous...

Orion Magazine - Downstreamorionmagazine.org ON THE THIRD NIGHT of flooding, we learned that the reservoirs upstream had begun to fail. Water had started to flow around their edges, flooding streets,

The NYT’s ever-evolving standards for who merits an editorial obituary in the print edition will always be a mystery, but it was a big smile to see mid-list mid-70s comics end up canonized this way amid the news of the day 😮

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Just started reading this myself! It’s a lot of fun so far. Amazing cover also

Excited to dig into this new novella from @melikhovo.bsky.social that arrived in yesterday’s mail 👁️🌳🌔! matthewcheney.net/books/change...

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”What are big muscles for?” I ask, in my @washingtonpost.com review of Michael Andor Brodeur's new book “Swole: The Making of Men and the Meaning of Muscles.”

Review | A brief history of muscles and their meaningwww.washingtonpost.com Michael Andor Brodeur’s “Swole” is a semiotic history that doubles as an autobiography in lifting.

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Preorder time! Dystopian novelist @christopherbrown.bsky.social has a new nonfiction book coming out, and we are just as excited as for his novels! Can't wait to get this. Think it will fit nicely on our shelves next to Jeff Vandermeer, Philip K. Dick, Cormac McCarthy, and Hunter S. Thompson.

Memorial Day in the rewilded brownfield (aka our backyard):

Native ghost plant in bloom behind the door factory *Buffalo gourd, aka stink gourd—Cucurbita foetidissima: www.wildflower.org/plants/resul...

Book review as Ballardian condensed biography, in this @londonreview.bsky.social piece on Ballard as book reviewer (with cameos by @mjohnharrison.bsky.social et al)—one of the better career summations I’ve seen now that 15 years have passed since JGB’s death: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Edmund Gordon · His Galactic Centrifuge: Ballard’s Enthusiasmswww.lrb.co.uk J.G. Ballard was consistent in saying that his imagery came from deep within himself – until it crossed a certain...

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Also, several degrees less terrifying, is the notion that lizards outside of West Texas oil lands are downright plentiful

The season of the devil riders has begun (Anisomorpha buprestoides, making more of the same)

Tfw when the putatively reassuring headline terrifies you for its implicit inverse