thankful for libraries, today and every day 🖤

After a very long wait, copies have arrived from Europe! Immutable: Designing History by Chris Lee Available at Draw Down Books

Immutable: Designing History explores the banal genre of the document and its entanglement with statecraft and colonial(ism/ity). This is framed as a ~5,000 year chronology, imbricating the developments of money and writing—from Mesopotamian clay tablets to distributed ledgers, like the blockchain.

Immutability figures as a design imperative and hermeneutic for considering a variety of techniques (material, technological, administrative, etc.) of securitization against the entropy of a document’s movement through space/time, and the political. This project is driven by a contrast: design educators tend to teach forms like logos, books, websites, etc., but not passports, money, property deeds, etc., in spite of these being design’s most profoundly consequential forms.

As an alternative historiography, Immutable gestures both towards anthropologist Laura Nader’s call to “study up” (on those in power), and the radical educator Paolo Freire’s recognition of the “limit situation” as a generative condition for emancipatory praxis. The volume’s aim is to orient graphic design towards the vocation of imagining, naming, and remembering beyond the horizons of its role as a managerial, administrative, and colonial instrument that imposes a rationality of vision and accountability upon what is knowable, thinkable and sayable.

Designed by Chris Lee

Published by Onomatopee and Library Stack, 2023

Softcover, 192 pages, 50 duotone images, 5 × 7.75 inches

ISBN: 978-9-49-314842-0

Oh my God. This stack is higher than I thought. I am still reading Magnus Chase. My lending period is almost over (I can extend it, though), which is wack. I finished HoO in 3 days, ToA in 5 days, and MCGA is taking me a month. I like them as much as the others and PJO, but it’s mostly because of my thesis. Most of the reading I do these days is for my thesis, which is why 4 of these books are from my university library. But oh boy, I do actually have to find time to read more, because I reserved some books before I started my thesis and now I have them. I gotta finish them.

The graphic novels Queer and Feminism have been here for 3 months or so, but that’s because the transgender library doesn’t have a lending period. I can keep them as long as I want, unless the trans group wants them back. That’s why they are my “lowest priority”, since unlike the others I don’t have to finish them before a certain date.

Current library pile, ignoring the ebooks i also borrow. In the middle of divine rivals right now and enjoying it so far.

In love with my bookshelves. 😍

I redecorated my bookshelf today (not all of my books fit in there) and was thinking of putting something there to make it more cozy, the blanket is handmade by my granny and it’s one of the most precious things I own 🌞 reblog is ok, don’t repost

this might look like a proper webweave but mostly once again i'm procrastinating by recreating my preferred ender chest storage system in rainbow-coded organized shulkers & thinking about the entropy of storage systems vs. georges perec's incredibly funny piece on the art and craft of arranging one's bookshelves (original fr text here)

i keep thinking about minecraft mechanics and all the old history bad keeps referencing like. did he every troll vesuvius by throwing shit into his inventory to fill it up. did issac newton hold the apple in his offhand. was the offhand even an option back then. when qbbh fell to earth was hunger nonexistent but for the howling pain of wounds that could only be healed by food. were people just frantically chowing down on pork while atlantis collapsed. they couldnt even swim animation

𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐬 𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐬 𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐬

Image via We Heart It - http://weheartit.com/books/

We love a Little Free Library tour

Trying to get through this stack before the end of the year.

B O O K S

Library!!! It’s been a while. There is a separate photo for Midnights cause I only had it for 3 days. And uhhhh sorry to my friend Cilla, but I didn’t like the album so I am not missing it.

I finished Queer Up and I need to mention that RTD’s afterword shook me to the core. The rest of the book was just fine, so his chapter hit me like a gutpunch and I made everyone at my local Queer HQ depressed. I also finished Easy Asian Cooking and Illegal. Illegal was another gutpunch. Little Women is done too. It was fine. I am around idk 70% into In het licht and I like it a lot.

I am very eager to read A Marvellous Light/A Restless Truth. I didn’t know my library had them. I have had my eyes on them for a while, so hooray. Yet I want to read One True Loves first, since I need to hand that in earlier. Also ALSO the Tosti book and the graphic novel of The Titan’s Curse are finally here! I reserved them back in January, I think, so it’s been a while.

This is your reminder to go email your local library head/director to give them a list of Solarpunk books, and ask to see if they’re able to get them in large print and Braille. And! If you have an absolutely favorite book and your library doesn’t have it, either in the mass produced print, large print, or in Braille, you should email the library head/director to see if they will be able to get it in! Accessibility is important, and reading is fun! Share the joy!

could i offer you an L in these trying times?