Caroline
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jcarolinet.bsky.social
Caroline
@jcarolinet.bsky.social
62 followers 90 following 83 posts
That leftie professor you're supposed to be scared of. (Not actually scary, but considering it.) Interests: useful gardens, subversive spec-fic (and books in general), dragon boats, writing, getting authoritarians out of office.
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jcarolinet.bsky.social
The high winds this week have gifted me a Yard Ent. (Obviously I have to keep it. It’s not like that part of the yard is doing anything else.)
A fallen tree limb standing on its branches to the limb is nearly vertical, in an overgrown yard. The limb looks vaguely like a person walking.
June 29, 2025 at 4:28 PM
jcarolinet.bsky.social
Jericho, VT #nokings #booksky
Two white people with their faces blurred out protest in front of a gas station. Their signs read “we’re not here because there’s hope, there’s hope because we’re here” and “dictators fear books more than bullets”
June 14, 2025 at 4:44 PM
jcarolinet.bsky.social
First practice of the season. Verdict: we have all been warmer. #dragonboat
Seven red and blue dragon boats tied up along a dock. There is a breakwater in the background and sailboats moored behind it.
May 21, 2025 at 11:06 PM
jcarolinet.bsky.social
Why.
Lawn and garden with leafless trees and bushes, with a light coating of snow, shown on April Effing Sixteenth
April 16, 2025 at 2:13 PM
jcarolinet.bsky.social
#vermont I love you, but I don’t need another 12-18” of snow when everywhere I need to go in my yard is already cosplaying Donner Pass. (One snow shovel down already)
A large and barely visible woodpile and a compost bin covered with 18 inches of snow, with deep drifted snow in front of them and snowy woods in the background A large woodpile covered in 18 inches of snow with a walking path shoveled through the deep snow in front of it. A compost bin and part of the woodpile have been shoveled off. Winter woods in the background. Close-up of an old red plastic handle that has broken. The handle is attached to the shaft of a snow shovel being held up by hands in heavy gloves. A partly shoveled path to a car is in the background A walking trench cut into deep snow in a yard, going towards a bird feeder. A different snow shovel with a yellow blade is standing in a bank of shoveled snow
February 14, 2025 at 3:32 PM
jcarolinet.bsky.social
Got behind on #20daybookchallenge #bookchallenge 📚💙 (9/20)
(breaking the rules for this)

Way better than the show. (1/2)
Cover of The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. Cover art shows two figures in voluminous red dresses and winged white bonnets that hide their faces passing each other in front of a very tall brick wall. One figure carries a wicker basket.
February 13, 2025 at 2:54 AM
jcarolinet.bsky.social
St. Alia of the Knives
A light brown cat with a dark face, ears, and tail and white feet lying on a heating pad. Her white belly fluff is just showing. There is a stuffed animal with her.
February 9, 2025 at 8:28 PM
jcarolinet.bsky.social
I skipped the shoveling and went straight to the butt (pork butt, of course):
A large amount of seasoned raw meat in a slow cooker.
February 9, 2025 at 8:20 PM
jcarolinet.bsky.social
#20daybookchallenge #bookchallenge 📚💙 🪐📚 (9/20)
(breaking the rules for this)

Absolutely compelling, great characters, beautifully written, perfect for those who have mixed feelings about having attended an "elite" college. (Or maybe that's just me.)
Cover of "Ninth House" by Leigh Bardugo. The background is solid black with large light gray text of the title and author taking up most of the space. A black snake is twined through the lettering.
February 8, 2025 at 2:09 AM
jcarolinet.bsky.social
#20daybookchallenge #bookchallenge 📚💙 🪐📚 (8/20)
(breaking the rules for this)

I mean, obviously.

But also: there are two things I love about Tolkien. One, Eowyn, who got the best speech in the trilogy, and who spawned so many fantasy stories about warrior women. (1/2)
Cover of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (omnibus edition). The cover features a still image of Ian McKellen as Gandalf the Grey from the film The Fellowship of the Ring. Image shows an old man dressed in long gray robes, with long gray hair and beard, standing with one hand on his hip and the other braced on a curved ceiling beam. He is in a household room with low ceilings and doors that is clearly intended for someone much shorter than him.
February 7, 2025 at 3:35 AM
jcarolinet.bsky.social
Late with yesterdays' #20daybookchallenge #bookchallenge 📚💙 🪐📚 (7/20)
(breaking the rules for this)

This is an academic one, but deserves a wider audience. When I did my PhD, I put this on my fan studies reading list so I'd have a good excuse to engage with it. (1/3)
Cover of "Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction" by andré m. carrington. Text is red and white and covers the whole cover, which has black-and-white background art of a dark-skinned cyborg sitting with its hands on its knees and gazing into the side distance.
February 6, 2025 at 1:29 PM
jcarolinet.bsky.social
#20daybookchallenge #bookchallenge 📚💙 🪐📚 (6/20)
(breaking the rules for this)

The best of the Wayfarers series, where the character-driven storylines really come together in a meditation about the relationships between identity, community, and place. (1/3)
Cover of Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers. Cover art shows a large spacecraft made of hexagonal panels with hundreds of lit windows, attached to a drive section containing multiple engines. Beyond the ship is a colorful nebula and a starfield.
February 5, 2025 at 2:40 AM
jcarolinet.bsky.social
#20daybookchallenge #bookchallenge 📚💙 🪐📚 (6/20)
(breaking the rules for this)

Very under-read, very beautiful, refreshingly free of contrived romance (two! powerful! cross-gender! friendships!), post-apocalyptic ghost story. On my upcoming reread list. (1/2)
Book cover for Archivist Wasp by Nicole Kornher-Stace. Cover art features a range of sharp, jagged mountains under a red sky. There is a grey figure trailing a cord at the peak of a mountain in the distance, and a figure in a dress with long hair on a cliff in the foreground, looking at the person in the distance.
February 4, 2025 at 4:42 AM
jcarolinet.bsky.social
I did go to the Sussex Downs and failed to find her there...
A grassy ridge with mist over the hills in the distance and a fence stretching out toward the horizon. In the foreground is an Ordinance Survey map showing the South Downs and the town of Seaford.
February 3, 2025 at 4:02 AM
jcarolinet.bsky.social
#20daybookchallenge #bookchallenge 📚💙 (5/20)
(breaking the rules for this)

I was fifteen when I met Mary Russell, fifteen years old and in need of a book while traveling in Venice, and I basically tripped over her. [IYKYK]

I adore her and have been half-jokingly accused of being her. (1/2)
Book cover of The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King. The cover features gold and red hexagons imitating bees' honeycomb made in stained glass, and there is a stylized honeybee by the title text.
February 3, 2025 at 4:00 AM
jcarolinet.bsky.social
#20daybookchallenge #bookchallenge 📚💙 (4/20)
(I break the rules for this)

The most vivid first-person character voice I've ever read. I cannot say enough good things about Murderbot and everything it has to tell us about personhood, stories, power, and connection. (1/2)
Paperback book cover of Network Effect: A Murderbot Novel by Martha Wells. Cover art shows a person in protective clothing walking on the outside of a futuristic metal vehicle while a sleek spaceship flies overhead.
February 2, 2025 at 3:08 AM
jcarolinet.bsky.social
And the Le Guin's afterword to Tehanu is just inimitable. (2/2)
Screenshot of text reading: "What cannot be mended must be transcended." Maybe the change coming into Earthsea has something to do with no longer identifying freedom with power, with separating being free from being in control. There is a kind of refusal to serve power that isn't a revolt or a rebellion, but a revolution in the sense of reversing meanings, of changing how things are understood. Anyone who has been able to break from teh grip of a controlling, crippling belief or bigotry or enforced ignorance knows the sense of coming out into the light and air, of release, being set free to fly, to transcend."
February 1, 2025 at 2:20 AM
jcarolinet.bsky.social
#bookchallenge #20daybookchallenge 📚💙 3/20
(breaking the no-comment rules)

There is no story of living as a woman--in rage and kindness, power and oppression, embrace and refusal of tradition, and rejection of gender essentialism (patriarchal or feminist)--that feels as true to me as this. (1/2)
Cover of Tehanu by Ursula K Le Guin. Cover art shows a tiny seedling with deep roots growing from charred and burning ground
February 1, 2025 at 2:16 AM
jcarolinet.bsky.social
Fun I am having pulling books I own in print for the #bookchallenge 📚💙
A stack of 15 hardcover and paperback books on a table. One book is turned with the spine facing away. Titles from top to bottom are "The Beekeeper's Apprentice," "An Acceptable Time," "A Wizard of Earthsea," "The Toughest Indian in the World," [book with no title showing], "Leaves of Grass," "The Lord of the Rings," "The Bloody Chamber," "Kissing the Witch," "The Handmaid's Tale," "Jane Eyre," "Their Eyes Were Watching God," "Network Effect," "Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction," and "The Hero and the Crown".
February 1, 2025 at 12:36 AM
jcarolinet.bsky.social
#bookchallenge #20daybookchallenge Day 2/20

Liberation + Black joy + me, a White reader = a profound lesson in empathy and respect, in one of the most beautiful stories I've ever read
Book cover for "Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston. The book is light green with an impressionist image of a young Black woman lying in grass adn looking up at a flowering tree. The cover includes a quote from Alice Walker reading "There is no book more important to me than this one."
January 31, 2025 at 3:15 AM
jcarolinet.bsky.social
I'm violating the rules of the #20daybookchallenge because what is the point of loving books if we don't talk about why?

Aerin is probably the first character I met who felt like me. She looked out of the pages and said, you are more than you know. You'll find out. (I was 12.)
Cover of a book, The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley, showing a small person on a white horse fighting a huge dragon. There is a gold Newbery Medal sticker covering part of the illustration.
January 30, 2025 at 2:28 AM