Not sure if this is the stronger of Volmann's 2 Carbon Ideologies books, but I found No Good Alternative an easier read than No Immediate Danger. Volmann's self flagellating & male-gazing asides were less common & less jarring; perhaps I just got used to them? Full of interesting interviews & has many tidbits of information about worldwide energy use and generation. Does a good job of showing how thoroughly the coal industry has poisoned West Virginia's water while also drawing parallels with uninhabitable radioactive zones around the Fukushima Daiichi disaster site. Discusses the extreme contempt of oil, gas, & coal extractors for anything but their profits, and the the US's extreme lack of regulation of these industries. Still gives capitalism too much of a pass, conflating the nature of capitalism with the nature of humans, leading to the flawed conclusion that it would be easier to lower the population and reproduction than it would be to lower consumption. I would have thought Volmann would recognize telling people to have less sex would be harder than telling them to have less stuff. In the end, Volmann is still a carbon ideologue, unable see any alternative to capitalism, despite deploying examples from such alternative formulators as Ursula K Leguin. Perhaps the problem was that he never spoke to anyone presenting a real alternative to capitalism. He spoke to Solar experts, but they were still speaking in terms of simply meeting energy demand as it exists now, as if ordained by laws of nature. All in all a good read though. Good for book clubs, pandemics, etc.

Super dark graphic telling of Boudicca's and revolt. Also depicts the demise of the Druids and the imposition of Roman Britain. Not an upbeat story. Very cinematic.

Great post apocalyptic immigrant office novel. Very crudely, it's kind of like if Gogol from the Namesake was crossed with Macon from Accidental Tourist or Toru from Wind Up Bird Chronicles and then inserted into the Stand or Station 11, with a sadder version of the zombies from I am Legend (or at least the Vincent Price adaptation) thrown in as well. That summation does not do Severance justice, because there's a lot of other stuff & ideas packed in there. It's about working in an office, faimly, immigrant family, memory & nostalgia, globalization. I have often wondered how long I'd keep working from home after the apocalypse, even before shit really hit the fan in norcal however many months ago now. I've often pictured myself or others checking bank accounts, or using credit cards in desolate abandoned streets or ruined cafes. In other words, Severance really spoke to me.

Collection of 13 novellas by Ursula K LeGuin. All of the stories were winners, but my faves were "The Matter of Seggri", "Another Story or Fisherman of the Inland Sea" (I'd already read it), "Old Music & the Slave Women", & "Paradises Lost". "Seggri" probably had some of the best quotable quotes in the collection, and the best use of the term "fuckery" I've ever seen or heard anywhere. "Another Story" captures the feeling of sadness for every decision in life forfeited by every other decision one makes. "Old Music" illustrates the complexities of what happens when the liberation finally arrives for the subjugated. "Paradises Lost" seems like it was the much more successful (fiction-wise) inspiration for Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora. The 3 Earthsea-set novellas make me want to pick up the Earthsea books. I wish I'd read all of these earlier, but who knows if I would have been ready to absorb them before right now? I wish there were more notes about each novella; maybe that means I should just read more of LeGuin's nonfiction.

Should be called A *Brief* Black Women's History of the United States. This book touched on so many different figures throughout U.S. history, it could have easily been a much much longer book, even taking into account the gaps in documentary evidence in the early years. As it is, A Black Women's History of the U.S. is a good place to start to learn more about the black women whose lives it touches upon. A Black Women's History of the United States would be a good history textbook; I wish I could have read this when I was working on my history degree! It's full of examples of how to read between the lines of primary sources to get a view of the figures in the background. Many sections could are good examples of how to construct history paper paragraphs using the evidence in the sources to draw conclusions.

Great short story collection. Most of the stories are more setting or concept-driven than character driven. Many of the stories were very New York (e.g. "The You Train", "The City Born Great"). "The Ones Who Stay and Fight" & "Too Many Yesterdays, not Enough Tomorrows" felt very relevant to 2020, for different reasons (hell world & isolation, respectively). All of these stories are great examples of how a short story can be a great vehicle for describing a world or fantastic setting. I've read a fair number of fantasy & sf novels that were set in interesting worlds, or dealt with interesting concepts, but failed because they tried to roll everything up into a novel following certain characters through a grand narrative.... but I digress. I'll definitely want to read Jemisin's other collections, and also the Dreamblood novels.

A ma. gical adventure, cute but with a lot of Jungian (?) symbolism. Could be called A Wizardungsroman of Earthsea. I liked the Earthsea novellas included in Found & Lost, & this book didn't disappoint. If I'd read Earthsea as a kid, I would probably have gotten me into LeGuin way earlier. Very glad I was able to find the next book in my massive tsundoku pile.

Kind of a reversal of the hero-rescues-the-maiden story, and also kind of a reversal of the coming of age story that's in Wizard of Earthsea. Wizard of Earthsea was kind of about coming of age by becoming something, while Tombs of Atuan was more about coming of age by rejecting a previous self. Tombs of Atuan was sadder than the other Earthsea stories I've read. Like all the other Earthsea stories I've read so far, it can stand alone & doesn't need to be read before or after any of the others.

More of a typical adventure novel than Tombs of Atuan. The farthest shore takes the reader to the farthest reaches of LeGuin's Earthsea. This 3rd book in the Earthsea series drives home to me how odd these novels are. The main recurring character of the series so far is really only the main character of the first book. Most of the conflicts are resolved by speaking. The undead are dispelled by the wizard knowing how to tell them to go away, dragons are handled by knowing how to keep interesting conversation with them, etc. Even the most legitimate kings & warriors are basically pirates. The more I read Earthsea, the more I'm thinking I would not have been able to get these books as a kid (I probably would have appreciated the Ekumen books more). Looking forward to reading Tehanu, and maybe re-reading the Earthsea novellas in Found & Lost before I return it to the library.

Sequel to Tombs of Atuan & the Farthest Shore. Tehanu is the Earthsea book that depends most on reading previous Earthsea books. Don't be fooled by the subtitle ("the last book of earthsea"), LeGuin later wrote a novel & a book or two's worth of stories & novellas set in Earthsea, and sure enough, Tehanu has the ending that most hints at a sequel. Looking forward to finding the rest of the Earthsea books & stories whenever I can get them from the library. Tehanu is also probably the darkest Earthsea book.