Robotswithpersonality

Robotswithpersonality

The LEGO Story: How a Little Toy Sparked the World's Imagination | Jens Andersen

An enduring truth. 😒

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Robotswithpersonality

Curve!: Women Carvers on the Northwest Coast | Skeena Reece

Damn. 😮
Pardon me, while I forget how to blink.
Copper Woman Moon by Arlene Ness

lil1inblue 🩵 17h

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Robotswithpersonality

Curve!: Women Carvers on the Northwest Coast | Skeena Reece

Mesmerizing.
Snake Woman from Snake Hill by Cherish Alexander.

lil1inblue ❤️ 17h

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Robotswithpersonality

Curve!: Women Carvers on the Northwest Coast | Skeena Reece

Love that the motif is carried into even carving it into the pupil. Beautiful and uncanny.

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Robotswithpersonality

The LEGO Story: How a Little Toy Sparked the World's Imagination | Jens Andersen

Damn, Hans, wish I could say I looked that good after a twenty-hour flight.

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Robotswithpersonality

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants | Robin Kimmerer

pick

An extraordinary work, to balance the evidence of so many depredations against nature, against indigenous people, with all the many lessons the natural world has to offer, all the ways indigenous knowledge can help to heal the world.
Kimmerer‘s writing dips into memoir in sharing her own experiences, as a scientist, as a teacher, as a mother, she shares traditional indigenous stories, and the stories of her people and other indigenous 1/?

Robotswithpersonality 2/? people who have suffered losses in the past and those who work in restoration and study and traditional knowledge keeping today, and she shares continual reverence for the natural world, for the many gifts abundant that we can work to appreciate and safeguard.
What becomes evident throughout the text are the ideas of gratitude and reciprocity, to be grateful for all the abundance, to shake out of the scarcity mindset (the wendigo mindset) 2d

Robotswithpersonality 3/? of capitalism, and to ensure that in every tiny way humans can, that we are reciprocating, giving back to the natural world so that things can remain or be in better balance. There is a parallel thread to the protection and restoration of the natural world, and that is the accompanying protection and restoration of indigenous knowledge, culture and language. 2d

Robotswithpersonality 4/? Acknowledging how much has been lost, or nears extinction, and how critical it is to value and to act to preserve, whether it is an endangered habitat or an endangered language.
Indigenous knowledge and ways of living can be applied to a broad range of modern problems, and it‘s clear to see the value in enhancing our consciousness of gratitude and our consideration of all plant and animal species for instance, 2d

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Robotswithpersonality 5/? in regards to economy, governance and environmental stewardship. How could we be churlish and short-sighted if we had to think about the long term effects for all beings involved? If we thought in terms of relationships?
Without appropriating native stories, we can still share an outlook. 2d

Robotswithpersonality 6/? This idea is frequently emphasized in the text as a reason for expanding our traditional view of science and academic research. Biologists have a set way of looking at plants, and many would benefit from further questioning. Kimmerer's and others' experiences as both women and indigenous scientists confronting historical biases when proposing new avenues of field research underline the need to expand our views. 2d

Robotswithpersonality 7/? The text works to hammer certain points home, but thanks to Kimmerer's awe and writing skill, it doesn't feel like a chore or a lecture.
I highly recommend a tandem read, personally because it improves my focus to engage with a non-fiction text visually and aurally, but I would add that even sped up, the author reads the audiobook in a quiet, reverent cadence, that is a joy to listen to, 2d

Robotswithpersonality 8/? and reading the text alongside means you can easily capture all the quotes you'll want to in the beautiful writing.

Regarding the audiobook, two things to note:
1) My digital Libby library copy has an artifact from the original recording , when it suddenly instructed me to change to the second CD. 😉
2) The audiobook does not contain three things that the text version does near the end: A Note on the Treatment of Plant Names, A Note on the 2d

Robotswithpersonality 9/9 Treatment of Indigenous Language, and A Note on Indigenous Stories. Each felt important and informative, I wish they had been included.

⚠️Mention of residential school trauma, other historical colonizer campaigns to destroy indigenous lives, racism, misogyny, environmental and human toll of pollution and modern harvest methods, stripmining, clear cutting, etc 2d

BkClubCare ❤️🌳🌾 2d

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Robotswithpersonality

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants | Robin Kimmerer

“Language is our gift and our responsibility. I‘ve come to think of writing as an act of reciprocity with the living land. Words to remember old stories, words to tell new ones, stories that bring science and spirit back together...“

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Robotswithpersonality

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants | Robin Kimmerer

I thought
they would have no answer, but I was humbled by their creativity. The
gifts they might return to cattails are as diverse as those the cattails
gave them. This is our work, to discover what we can give. Isn‘t this the
purpose of education, to learn the nature of your own gifts and how to
use them for good in the world? 💡🎁

Singout Such a powerful and important book. 3d

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Robotswithpersonality

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants | Robin Kimmerer

In some Native languages the term for plants translates to “those who take care of us.” 🌱❤️

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Robotswithpersonality

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants | Robin Kimmerer

“Wild leeks and wild ideas are in jeopardy. We have to transplant them both and nurture their return to the lands of their birth. We have to carry them across the wall, restoring the Honorable Harvest, bringing back the medicine.“

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Robotswithpersonality

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants | Robin Kimmerer

“...the source of the food is mostly evident, although Cheetos and Ding Dongs remain an ecological mystery. 😏🤷🏼‍♂️

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Robotswithpersonality

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants | Robin Kimmerer

“I smile when I
hear my colleagues say “I discovered X.” That‘s kind of like Columbus
claiming to have discovered America. It was here all along, it‘s just
that he didn‘t know it. Experiments are not about discovery but about
listening and translating the knowledge of other beings.“

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Robotswithpersonality

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants | Robin Kimmerer

“Ponds grow old, and though I will too, I like the ecological idea of aging as progressive enrichment, rather than progressive loss.“ 🧓🏻❤️

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Robotswithpersonality

Between the World and Me | Ta-Nehisi Coates

pick

Formatted as letters to his son Samori, Coates writes from the perspective of a Black man in America, representing one generation reflecting on his own experience, ruminating on the experience of previous generations, his father, his parents, as it was relayed to him, how he thought his parents' experience affected how he was raised, how he in turn has lived and raised his son, what he cannot change for his son about the world he has been 1/?

Robotswithpersonality 2/? born into.
Accordingly, it's also a memoir of Coates' early days, college days, meeting his wife, becoming a father, experiencing growth in his career, experiencing New York, Paris, and the loss of a friend to a police shooting.
Primarily it is an unflinching look at the toxicity of the American Dream and how the illusions of whiteness in America shore up systemic racism. 4d

Robotswithpersonality 3/? Coates' remembrances treasure Black culture, beauty, excellence, while unpacking complicated feelings about the divisions and history that race labels inhabit. While there is admiration for the strength inherent in Black survival and striving, there is simultaneous resignation if not quite despair of the danger and disadvantage in which Black bodies constantly exist in America. 4d

Robotswithpersonality 4/? Coates is a journalist, who references poetry in his past, the writing and the speaking makes me think of spoken word poetry. I am very grateful I had the chance to hear this book as an audiobook read by the author. I would advise fellow readers not to speed up the playback. There's a lot to absorb in Coates' telling, and there's a natural cadence to his words that is best heard in the original rhythm. 4d

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Robotswithpersonality 5/5 This same way with words adds a reflective resonance and seemingly effortless eloquence to passages which might in other hands be simply informative.
I would encourage everybody to read it.
⚠️Racism, racist violence, corporal punishment/child abuse, mention of SA 4d

Reggie The part that really makes me mad in here is when that woman pushes his son and when he says something about it everyone responds to him as if he‘s the guy who‘s a threat. And how he felt bad because he forgot what could have happened. 2d

Robotswithpersonality @Reggie Agreed. The idea that you'd have to police yourself for your own safety, your son's safety and as a role model to your son on how he'd have to behave in the fucked up future instead of doing what a white parent would have the freedom to do which is unload on the woman who pushed. Which is always assuming that the racist white woman would have pushed the hypothetical white kid. Or even, a black kid with a white parent. 😡 20h

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Robotswithpersonality

Curve!: Women Carvers on the Northwest Coast | Skeena Reece

Absolutely stunning. I'm biased toward the palette of the pigment seen here, but that face is hypnotizing even without considering colouration.

lil1inblue Oh, wow! 😍 4d

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Robotswithpersonality

Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film | Carol J. Clover

Mixed results, but pretty sure it adds up to an epic ad campaign you couldn't possibly plan or pay for. 💁🏼‍♂️

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Robotswithpersonality

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants | Robin Kimmerer

The arrogance of English is that the only way to be animate, to
be worthy of respect and moral concern, is to be a human.

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Robotswithpersonality

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants | Robin Kimmerer

“....another elder concedes that
these close similarities are inherent in the language. As Stewart King,
a knowledge keeper and great teacher, reminds us, the Creator meant
for us to laugh, so humor is deliberately built into the syntax...In fact, I learned that the mystical word Puhpowee is
used not only for mushrooms, but also for certain other shafts that rise
mysteriously in the night.“ 🍄🍆😏

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Robotswithpersonality

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants | Robin Kimmerer

“I didn't have the words for resistance.“

Context of a scientist negating the value of Kimmerer's outlook, and speaking too, to the notion of not being able to be both a poet and a botanist. The importance of words.

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Robotswithpersonality

The Robots of Dawn | Isaac Asimov

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Holy F- Could not have asked for a better reading experience to start off 2026.
I suppose it's not very flattering that I keep being surprised by how much I love these books, but there's something about Asimov's writing that leads me to underestimate him in the first half, just so I can be blown away in the latter and in reflecting upon the whole.
Without a doubt, this robot series is sci-fi, but it is strongly mystery as well. 1/?

Robotswithpersonality 2/? The greatest portion of the book is lengthy dialogues between people or between people and robots, and this is fascinating and frustrating by turns, but it's really clear that Asimov is not dragging things out, he didn't forget what book he was writing, he's both exploring the world of his story, of scientific development, possible problems and solutions to humans settling in space and evolving on other planets, and exploring ideas around 6d

Robotswithpersonality 3/? robots in human society, their development, their use, the implications, and exploring the effects of humanity continuing to exist on an overpopulated Earth, how that would shape their culture, their psychology, how they would confront possible space exploration/planet colonization.
He's also laying out the characters, the possible motives, the red herrings. 6d

Robotswithpersonality 4/? About 50 pages before the confirmation, certain things lead me to a particular character as the perpetrator of a particular action, yet the character's motive was completely different than I suspected, and there was so much more besides.
The only thing more fun than getting to consider the politics and the science and the sociology around different human societies on different planets 6d

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Robotswithpersonality 5/? and how robots would play into that scene, how robots could be more or less of an aid or a threat to human progress, how robots could be more or less human, is almost having guessed the answers to a well-plotted murder mystery and to still be surprised by the end. And yet that too is supplanted in satiation by the speech given at the end, the ideal of space exploration as a truly human endeavour. 6d

Robotswithpersonality 6/? I did indeed love the development of Baley and Daneel's friendship, the vulnerability Baley is allowed to show in his agoraphobic fears and Earth-based foibles, while still being recognized as competent, the fact that he struggles with the borders of the idea of robots and relationships, has a greater feeling and respect for his partner than seen in previous books even as he is again confronted with his prejudices and underestimation in regard 6d

Robotswithpersonality 7/? to robots.
Having said that, it's still dismaying how the narrative switches between ascribing human qualities to the robots and emphasizing their existence as tools for use. I feel like there has to be a discussion coming in a later book about humaniform robots, at what point that positronic brain becomes a personality deserving of greater consideration and autonomy. 6d

Robotswithpersonality 8/? I can't go into it without getting into spoiler territory, but there is another facet to the notion of choice and consent related to robots (not the sex thing) that is its own absorbing counterpoint.
I have a great deal of mixed emotions when it comes to the relationship between Gladia and Baley. As previously mentioned, Asimov's been pretty shitty in all depictions of female characters in this series so far. 6d

Robotswithpersonality 9/? Baley's wife is never more an afterthought than in this installment. Gladia's epiphany about intimacy feels like a good character arc moment but it's so tangled up in conflicting views about sexuality, and really messed up scenarios regarding consent that I can't find any joy in her conclusion or any pathos in her parting with Baley, especially considering the advice he gives to her and Gremionis separately. Yikes! 6d

Robotswithpersonality 10/? It's leant an air of 'he said she said' as the book progresses, but if we go with Vasilia's recounting of her childhood, it seems like Fastolfe is guilty of neglect if not outright child abuse, and that's leaving out any of the unique societal standards that encompass polyamory accompanied by strict genetic screening for reproduction on Aurora.
I think the reader's mileage will vary on this one, but to cover my bases, I think these warnings 6d

Robotswithpersonality 11/11 apply:
⚠️mention of incest, child abuse (?), sexual harrassment, dubious consent bordering on somnophilia 6d

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Robotswithpersonality

The Robots of Dawn | Isaac Asimov

Please tell me somebody wrote their thesis on this passage. 🤔

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Robotswithpersonality

The Robots of Dawn | Isaac Asimov

Fascinating to consider how empathy would look in an artificial brain, but incredibly unethical to create a robot that feels the equivalent of pain each moment it somehow fails to help a human who has not properly expressed how they require aid. 🫤

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Robotswithpersonality

The Robots of Dawn | Isaac Asimov

Feelings in this case: An unusual experience for Daneel and Baley. 😏

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Robotswithpersonality

The Robots of Dawn | Isaac Asimov

“If the World of the Dawn had a quiet sunlit Day, who on that world would clamor for storm?“

Admittedly, I'd appreciate a few less thunderclouds in the 2020s...🌩️

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Robotswithpersonality

The Robots of Dawn | Isaac Asimov

Superficial changes. Correct forms of address are part of it, but truly respecting an individual's identity and worth has to go deeper.

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Robotswithpersonality

Between the World and Me | Ta-Nehisi Coates

An increasing interrogation of the stories told to us by the schools now felt essential. It felt wrong not to ask why, and then to ask it again. I took these questions to my father, who very often refused to offer an answer and instead referred me to more books. My mother and father were always pushing me away from second hand answers. Even the answers they themselves believed. I don't know that I have ever found any satisfactory answers 1/2

Robotswithpersonality 2/2 of my own. But everytime I ask it, the question is refined. That is the best of what the old heads meant when they spoke of being politically conscious, as much a series of actions as a state of being. A constant questioning. Questioning as ritual. Questioning as exploration, rather than the search for certainty. 1w

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Robotswithpersonality

Between the World and Me | Ta-Nehisi Coates

Perhaps there has been at some point in history some great power whose elevation was exempt from the violent exploitation of other human bodies. If there has been, I have yet to discover it.
But this banality of violence can never excuse America, because America makes no claim to the banal.
America believes itself exceptional, the greatest and noblest nation ever to exist.
1/2

Robotswithpersonality 2/2 A lone champion standing between the white city of democracy and the terrorists, barbarians despots and other enemies of civilization.
One cannot once claim to be superhuman and then plead mortal error.
I propose to take our countrymen's claims of American exceptionalism seriously.
Which is to say, I propose subjecting our country to an exceptional moral standard. 1w

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Robotswithpersonality

Wilding | Isabella Tree

2025 Favourite Non-Fiction:
Top row: Horror, Topics of Special Interest
2nd row: Book and word focused, Important Topics
3rd row: Animal/Nature, Greek Myth, Clothing History
4th Row: Essays and Memoirs
5th row: More memoirs! ☺️

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Robotswithpersonality

Nightwing Vol. 7: Fallen Grayson | Tom Taylor

2025 Favourite Graphic Novels
Predictably top heavy with DC selections. My absolute favourite Nightwing series ever finished this year, loved every volume.
2nd row has more DC plus some spooky picks and the fantastic Cats of the Louvre
3rd row = great LGBTQIA+ line up,
Bottom left corner = non-fiction
Bottom right = continuing series

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Robotswithpersonality

Glorious Exploits: A Novel | Ferdia Lennon

Managed to cram all my other novel length favourite fiction plus poetry into this frame!
Top row = 2025 favourite fantasy
2nd row = Horror, Mystery, Classic
3rd Row = Contemporary, Short Stories, Historical
4th row= One more classic 😅 plus poetry!

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Robotswithpersonality

Of Monsters and Mainframes | Barbara Truelove

Let's start the 2025 favourites recaps with my favourite genre: sci-fi.
Top row = best of the best,
Middle row = more robot-forward picks,
Bottom row= sci-fi horror and sci-fi mystery

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Robotswithpersonality

The Seep | Chana Porter

pick

A fantastic final read for 2025. Unusually for a novella, I think it was just the right amount of plot for the page count. There are aspects to this science fictional world that I'd love to explore further, side characters I wish we'd spent a bit more time with, but the main arc for the protagonist is satisfying, and still leaves room for things to be weird and wonderful and truly eerie. 1/?

Robotswithpersonality 2/? For most of this book I would give equal weight to sci-fi and horror, but that last bit definitely leans weird lit fic.
Certain things are resolved, but Porter doesn't make the mistake of trying to wrap everything up regarding what might be termed the larger threat, because the concepts introduced are, I'm gonna say purposefully messy, a reflection of life, and it works all the better for letting it be. 1w

Robotswithpersonality 3/? Touches on themes of transformation, I was honestly surprised transgender identity was not a bigger part of the narrative. There's something about the larger ideas of bodily autonomy in regards to the alien presence that feel like a reflection of modern anxieties around gender identity and expression, the right to choose, the notion that you can't make other people's choices for them, and if they're happy, you love by letting them BE. 1w

Robotswithpersonality 4/? The rumination on immortality, on genetic manipulation, if you take the possibilities of the human body beyond the limits of the current science, how long before the euphoria of freedom becomes the hunger for something even more extreme?
Stagnation in loss, grief, for a way of life, for a loved one, for an old self that resists change, is perhaps the strongest theme for the main character. 1w

Robotswithpersonality 5/5 think between the Compound and the Seep, I had reservations about whether it would be a brittle rebellion or a bitter assimilation, and by the end it was neither and I'm glad.
A strong sense of self even if things don't work out how you planned, a recognition of the process required to acknowledge what you have to let go of.
Good lessons to take into the new year.

⚠️suicide 1w

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Robotswithpersonality

The Seep | Chana Porter

I identify as zero chill. This is indeed intrinsic to my sense of self. 😅

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Robotswithpersonality

The Seep | Chana Porter

Published in 2020.
These times remain unbelievable. 🤨

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Robotswithpersonality

Scarlet Morning, Book 1: Scarlet Morning | ND Stevenson

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Spectacular adventure with one major caveat, apparently it's the FIRST book in a series! Had a decent stopping point, so I'm less aggrieved on the cliffhanger front, but oh dear does it sting that this was published this year, which means I have to WAIT to find out what happens next.
I've done ND Stevenson a great disservice in mostly remembering how the art told the story of Nimona, and thus was initially disappointed that this is 1/?

Robotswithpersonality 2/? a traditional novel instead of a graphic novel, though it does have its share of illustrations. Stevenson's writing is exceptional and I'm so glad I got to experience it in novel form.
I'd say the plot, the characters lean toward adventure, but some of the perils encountered could count as horror genre territory. 2w

Robotswithpersonality 3/? The younger character concerns (a lack of classic teen drama) make me think middle grade, but certain spooky/dark moments make me want to nudge it towards the youngest protagonist's age as minimum reader age (14 years old), aka YA.
If you too sometimes find yourself wishing you could be
In your mid teens watching Pirates of the Carribean for the first time again, I think you will love this as an adult. 2w

Robotswithpersonality 4/? The world-building is imaginative without overwhelming the plot pacing, the adventure ranges across a number of fantastical places, creatures, and people, though it does have a dystopian foundation.
Unsurprising from Stevenson, it's still refreshing to read in a diverse, queer/transnormative world.
Hope is renewed even as we encounter various tragic revelations, and I am eager to find out where the story takes me next.

2w

Robotswithpersonality 5/5 ⚠️Death, violence on page, creepy corrupted animal forms 2w

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Robotswithpersonality

Scarlet Morning, Book 1: Scarlet Morning | ND Stevenson

Accurate. 🫣🍌🍞💥

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Robotswithpersonality

Scarlet Morning, Book 1: Scarlet Morning | ND Stevenson

Inversion of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner?
How delightfully creepy.

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Robotswithpersonality

Fox 8: A Story | George Saunders

pick

Part literary experiment (phonetical reproduction of English, how would you write it if you mostly only heard it? How does an author write it to convey this while also ensuring the reading comprehension isn't hampered?), part environmental and animal welfare statement, part exploration of trauma and its aftermath.
Fox 8 finds many things enchanting about the human world, 1/?

Robotswithpersonality 2/? until the destruction of his habitat renders his community without shelter, food, and depreciating hope, and a last burst of optimism is overshadowed by witnessing wanton cruelty, leading the fox to write a letter to humanity.
I wish I had a better answer for Fox 8, I hope I'm doing my part to follow his closing advice. 2w

Robotswithpersonality 3/3 Hard to see sketched scenes reflecting text narrative as more than bulking up an already short story to just under 50 pages, not sure how much they add to the story.
Given the price point, I'd advise reading this one via an anthology, or library loan.
⚠️animal cruelty, animal death, discussion of trauma and mental health effects of trauma 2w

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Robotswithpersonality

Rivers of London | Ben Aaronovitch

pick

An excellent re-read. Forgot how absolutely jam-packed the first book in this series is. I think it's that only book series where I would recommend the audiobook over the physical and insist on 1x playback because Kobna Holdbrook-Smith is THAT GOOD of a narrator/performer. The jazzy chapter intros don't hurt either. Might take a bit with the library hold list, but I think I'm set to reread the whole series at this point. 1/?

Robotswithpersonality 2/? For the uninitiated, Peter Grant is a new constable in London who stumbles into that fact that the police service technically has a fading specialty branch for magic, just as all hell breaks loose. You get police procedural, urban fantasy, geeking out on the scientific examination of the possible workings of magic, starting to apprentice as a wizard, geeking out on various London architecture and history, an enthralling mystery and a truly 2w

Robotswithpersonality 3/3 unsettling trail of destruction from a colourful villain.

⚠️ You also get a generous serving of gore, including the death of an infant, so be careful out there. 2w

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Robotswithpersonality

Night Cry | Borja Gonzalez

pick

Ambiguity in books is usually not my favourite but this one really worked for me.
I read it twice in a row, made me think differently about certain parts but the answers are not forthcoming, and the book still works. Will definitely be looking into other works by this author/artist. 1/?

Robotswithpersonality 2/? Note form seems like the best way to review this one:
Bit of Nightvale podcast
Love the art style, palette
Something lonely among all three principle characters, sapphic tenderness and friendship by turns
Quiet blue of the night, but also bloody ghost and tentacled one eyed monster in forest 2w

Robotswithpersonality 3/? Listless young women with niche interests
Laura the pink haired demon
Teresa the curio shop runner who might care about her zines, plays at being a witch
Wish connecting the two of them
What it is to be in your mid/late twenties if things have gotten off track, tired, not sure what you want
Matilda, younger, hanging onto both of them
2w

Robotswithpersonality 4/4 Questions:
Who might be a ghost
What was the wish
Is the town alone bound by the supernatural or whole universe of the book
Did Laura's book ever get to Japan
What happened to Christina

🤷🏼‍♂️😏

⚠️spooky imagery, underage drinking 2w

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Robotswithpersonality

Mother of Sharks | Melissa Cristina M�rquez

pick

Beautiful art and message. Feels like a kin to Sharks Don't Sink, in promoting women of color in the vocation of shark scientists. The art is for all ages; I do think the writing is a little bit more advanced than your average picture book, would be a good 'read with parent ' pick.

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Robotswithpersonality

Raising Hare: A Memoir | Chloe Dalton

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Okay, I get the hype now. Enchanting and fascinating, to have a window into an exceptional circumstance, a mostly wild hare allowed to come and go, trusting enough of a particular human to witness behaviours and appearance up close, without hampering its ability to survive in nature. While we get a handful of reflections from the author, mentions of her life elsewhere, this is a book primarily about observing a hare 1/?

Robotswithpersonality 2/? as it matures, as it returns, as it reproduces, as it continues to return, allowing observation of the subsequent generation for a period as well.
A conservancy mindset emerges, discussing the woes of mechanized farming, the benefits of hedges, grass or wildflower borders on fields to protect various animals from harvest machines and promote shelter and food for a number of species, (edited) 2w

Robotswithpersonality 3/? the decline in hare populations as a result of human action, hunting and modern agriculture, primarily, and what could be done to alleviate such an impact.
But again, the majority of the book is wondering at the actions and appearance of a particular hare and her family, as well as building a greater appreciation for the various species and plants in the author's rural retreat, and it turns out I do not get tired of reading about either topic 2w

Robotswithpersonality 4/4 ⚠️Animal death 2w

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Robotswithpersonality

The Wisdom of Sheep: Observations from a Family Farm | Rosamund Young

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Some of it is prosaic, truly a snippet of a day in the life as much as more profound life lessons, but I kept getting slapped by the sudden elegance in a turn of phrase.
I think I just wanted more, ditch the regular quotes and poems featured from other authors, and give me more first hand experience, more of those striking sentences. Also, more of the gorgeous woodcut style illustrations by Joanna Lisowiec. 1/?

Robotswithpersonality 2/? Unfairly, yes, I do want to read more about marveling at nature, at being enchanted by animals at play or sharing empathy than I do about the rougher fortunes that come with keeping a family farm afloat, though speaking on that importance of bioiversity, small-scale farming, organic practices, I appreciate. 2w

Robotswithpersonality 3/? Despite this petulant preference, I recognize there is honesty and value in the contrast of sweet and sour moments. If nothing else, admiration for everything survived and accomplished, and hopefully no romanticizing the business-driven decisions that may affect an animal's lifespan (farm, not sanctuary, though certain choices are emphasized as ending suffering. 🫤) 2w

Robotswithpersonality 4/? I do want more details, similar to books on rewilding, of the move from earlier farmsteads and being a farming family for generations, to the current location as an organic farm, more details hinted at in the early passages mentioning a hankering for sheep, transitioning into the farm with an established flock.
Again, not what a book providing snippets from journal and memory, is set up to do. I will seek out this author's other book though, 2w

Robotswithpersonality 5/? because at this point I'll take what can get!

⚠️
A bit fervent on the topic of organic food, farm living, understandable, but I don't love the championing of unpasteurized milk.
Admires animals' ability to sample various plants and self-medicate, but is obviously not too 'naturopath or bust' as she regularly describes the modern medical care that was essential to treat injury and illness for herself and her family. 2w

Robotswithpersonality 6/6 ⚠️ Author relays experience of being the primary caregiver of a mother with a chronic illness lasting decades, as well as the crueler realities of a working farm 2w

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Robotswithpersonality

The Wisdom of Sheep: Observations from a Family Farm | Rosamund Young

“...streaks of vital light laughing the season in.“
That one's going to stay with me. ☀️

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Robotswithpersonality

The Wisdom of Sheep: Observations from a Family Farm | Rosamund Young

Just a field of grass...on an organic farm.
Modern agrochemicals and industrial farming = threat to biodiversity.

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Robotswithpersonality

The Wisdom of Sheep: Observations from a Family Farm | Rosamund Young

Gambolling by moonlight 🥰🐑

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Robotswithpersonality

The Wisdom of Sheep: Observations from a Family Farm | Rosamund Young

Ever-luminous sheep. 🐑🌟

Nebklvr Are they radioactive? 2w

Robotswithpersonality @Nebklvr I do like the idea that they glow in the dark, hopefully in an innocuous glow-stick-at-a-rave-way. 😁Alas, I fear it is the far more banal, 'white thing in fading light in contrast to all dark-coated beasts beside it' phenomenon, with poetic language (and licence) attached. (edited) 2w

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Robotswithpersonality

The Wisdom of Sheep: Observations from a Family Farm | Rosamund Young

Nine million well-fed squirrels - approximately. ☺️🌰🐿️

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Robotswithpersonality

The Wisdom of Sheep: Observations from a Family Farm | Rosamund Young

The flexible magic of statistics...😏🐸📊

13 likes

Robotswithpersonality

Cat + Gamer Volume 6 | Wataru Nadatani

pick

The cuteness continues! Feel like Nadatani is hitting his stride, there was a heavier proportion of linear narrative in the first few books as things were established, but now the reader can enjoy vignettes of Kozakura and her cats, still strong on the gamer girl and cat care themes. They're adorable and silly and I love them all.

Robotswithpersonality P.S. Props to Nadatani for providing a couple genuinely spooky moments amongst all the wholesome. 3w

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Joined June 2022