CJ de Boix, mechanical owl, they/them👽🌈♿

@cjdeboix

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CJ de Boix, mechanical owl, they/them👽🌈♿@cjdeboix· Oct 2

OMG, someone wrote a book just for #Murderbot Human words, there's too many of them... 💙📚🪐

Cover of Eli Burnstein's Dictionary of Fine Distinctions: Nuances, Niceties and Subtle Shades of Meaning, showing a drawing of a snake with "venomous" under it and a mushroom with "poisonous" under

CJ de Boix, mechanical owl, they/them👽🌈♿@cjdeboix· Jul 28

Haven't really posted here much about our #AnnaKarenina year-long slow read. Our r/yearofannakeranina group is on Chapter 25 of Part 5. I try to read our daily chapter in the morning, with my coffee and yogurt. It's become a nice ritual. #booksky 📚💙 #Tolstoy #reading

Photo of my copy of Anna Karenina, opened to Chapter 25 of Part 5. The book has many sticky tabs of different colors from previous chapters and recent humidity has made the pages pillow a little at the bottom

CJ de Boix, mechanical owl, they/them👽🌈♿@cjdeboix· Jul 19

When you'd told yourself that you should lay off the horror stuff until the start of Spooky Season (which for me is September), but you're thoroughly engrossed in a particular book (The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell) because you can't stop taking horror girlie recs (like Sinead Hanna's) 💙📚🩸

Cover of The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell, showing duplicate images of a 17th century English style painting of a girl in period dress with a basket and holding an apple in one hand, against a black background

CJ de Boix, mechanical owl, they/them👽🌈♿@cjdeboix· Jun 19

Finished Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng. 5 stars on GR plus a bonus star in my heart just for the dinner scene, if you read it, you know what I'm referring to--that scene is *chef's kiss* Our country has refused to contend with the pandemic honestly so we need books like this 💙📚🩸

Cover of Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng, showing a bat in flight with white and red tinged flowers behind it against a black background

CJ de Boix, mechanical owl, they/them👽🌈♿@cjdeboix· Jun 12

When your library critically underestimated the demand of a new release 📚💙

Screenshot of the Libby library app, showing my hold on S.A. Cosby's King of Ashes audiobook, that shows I'm 15th in queue, with 39 other people waiting

CJ de Boix, mechanical owl, they/them👽🌈♿@cjdeboix· Mar 5

Picked up Human Acts by Han Kang at the library today. About to go into the psychological blender again. #booksky 💙📚

Cover of Human Acts by Han Kang, showing a human ribcage with a black and white bird perched on the top of it, with falling yellow ginko leaves around it, against a pale yellow background

CJ de Boix, mechanical owl, they/them👽🌈♿@cjdeboix· Feb 9

While my family hangs out in the TV, I'm in the kitchen hanging out with my friends #Superbowl #SuperborwlSunday #cooking #southwestcooking

Photo of some spice containers--chipotle chile powder, ancho chile powder, garlic powder, Knorr's chicken bouillon, Knorr's beef bouillon, ground cumin--on a kitchen counter

CJ de Boix, mechanical owl, they/them👽🌈♿@cjdeboix· Feb 2

My SFF reads for early Feb 🪐📚 : - Time's Agent by Brenda Peynado (2025 Philip K. Dick award nominee) - Masquerade by O.O. Sangoyomi - The Serpent Sea by Martha Wells (book 2 of the Books of Raskura)

Cover of Time's Agent, showing time pieces gears against a background of foliage and sky

Cover of Masquerade, showing an African woman in Yoruban attire with an elephant behind her, wrapping its trunk around her, surrounded by gold flowers

Cover of The Serpent Sea showing two winged and tailed humanoid beings in flight above a sea with a whale-shaped city island

CJ de Boix, mechanical owl, they/them👽🌈♿@cjdeboix· Feb 2

My current Black History Month read is James Baldwin's If Beale Street could talk, after which I'll be reading Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon.

Kindle cover of If Beale Streat Could Talk. On the top half is a black and white photo an African-American boy in a woolen cap and medium weight jacket jumping off a wooden post with a city housing project behind him. On the bottom portion of the cover is a colored photo of blue sky with faint, sun-lit white clouds

Cover of Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon showing the title of the novel in elegant font against a solid blue background

CJ de Boix, mechanical owl, they/them👽🌈♿@cjdeboix· Feb 2

If you're looking for a read for #BlackHistoryMonth, I highly recommend @clintsmithiii.bsky.social's incredible work, How the Word is Passed: A reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America. Accessible, haunting, beautiful and important. I plan on rereading it this month #booksky 💙📚

Cover of the hardback of Clint Smith's How the Word Is Passed

CJ de Boix, mechanical owl, they/them👽🌈♿@cjdeboix· Jan 27

My SF read today: Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky It's starting out like The Gulag Archipelago in Space. Solzhenitsyn-inspired SF? Why not? 💙📚🪐 #booksksy

COver of the Kindle edition of Alien Clay, showing a yellow relief of a strange alien plant form against a pink and orange background

CJ de Boix, mechanical owl, they/them👽🌈♿@cjdeboix· Jan 25

This week's reading, hopefully will finish all three today, if I can (I had a chemo treatment yesterday so I may or may not have enough spoons for that). Frankenstein is a reread, the other 2--The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells and 2002: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C Clark--a first reads. 🪐📚💙 #booksky

Cover of The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells, showing a winged and tailed humanoid being flying amid craggy mountains against a yellow sky

Kindle cover of 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clark, showing an abstract drawing of a space station corridor, with black trailing marker against a rec background leading to yellow circle

Cover of Frankenstein: The 1818 Text by Mary Shelley, showing an illustration of Frankenstein's monster seeing himself in the reflection of a pond, grass and flowers are on lining the edge of the pond, a dead tree against a black background are seen behind him

CJ de Boix, mechanical owl, they/them👽🌈♿@cjdeboix· Jan 19

Speaking of Marcus Garvey, I'm finishing up Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison today and per Ellison's insistence, Ras the Exhorter *was not* based on Garvey, a claim that has never convinced a single reader otherwise #booksky 💙📚

1st edition cover of Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, showing an illustration of a brown-tone face shrouded in black and an abstract window pane in front of it, shining patches on light onto the face

CJ de Boix, mechanical owl, they/them👽🌈♿@cjdeboix· Jan 17

Two books I finished today: Mechanize My Hands to War by Erin K. Wagner and A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark. Both were 5 star reads for me. Both impressively conceived novels, bringing a lot of creativity and vision to the SF/F genre. #booksky 🪐📚

Cover of Mechanize My Hands to War, showing a minimalist image of a human like face against a black background

Cover of A master of Djinn, showing a human figure on a staircase surrounded by steampunk decor

CJ de Boix, mechanical owl, they/them👽🌈♿@cjdeboix· Jan 10

Rereading today an old fav: Black God's Kiss by CL Moore. It's a little irksome that some covers show Jirel in boob armor when at the start of the story, Guillaume assumes she's a man until they remove her helmet. 🪐📚

A pulp cover illustration for CL Moore's Black God's Kiss, showing the protagonist in skin-fitting armor holding out a sword stanging amid strange vegetation

CJ de Boix, mechanical owl, they/them👽🌈♿@cjdeboix· Jan 8

Also found on that sane shelf an old cloth badge from the first elementary school I attended in San Diego. Lafayette Dragons! (It needs to be cleans of dust and cat fuzz)

Photo of a cloth embroidered school badge that says Lafayetter Dragons and has a cute dragon in the middle, sitting a top colorful office supplies

CJ de Boix, mechanical owl, they/them👽🌈♿@cjdeboix· Jan 4

True (from the comments for the above video.)

You Tube comment of Sisters of mercy's This Corrosion from heyleem2334 that reads "When a goth dies their voice gets added to the choir in the intro"

CJ de Boix, mechanical owl, they/them👽🌈♿@cjdeboix· Jan 1

Happy New Year, #AK2025 cohort! So it begins! (I read up to chapter 3 this morning because Thursday and Friday I have multiple medical appts and will be very tired afterward, but I look forward to discussing Prince Stepan Arkadyevich Oblonsky with you all this weekend!) 💃🚂

Photo of a paperback copy of Anna Karenina on a lap desk at an angle that shows several colorful sticky tabs marking the first few chapters coming from the pages

CJ de Boix, mechanical owl, they/them👽🌈♿@cjdeboix· Dec 29

Today I'm finishing up the 1975 proto-cyberpunk novel The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner. A very interesting read, like if you put Dos Passos, Freud and 1970s futurist philosophizing into a blender. This 1st edition hardcover cover art captures nicely some of the strangeness of the novel. 📚🪐

1st edition cover art for The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner showing a surreal illustration of a human head with the brain visible and a red "tape worm" symbol going into the mouth

CJ de Boix, mechanical owl, they/them👽🌈♿@cjdeboix· Dec 26

“The year is almost over. We’re in the home stretch.” The home stretch:

Promo pic of The Last of US TV series showing main characters Ellie and Joel against a background of damaged dilapidated city skyline with grey clouds filling the sky

CJ de Boix, mechanical owl, they/them👽🌈♿@cjdeboix· Dec 24

Also planning on reding today: 1956 post-apocalyptic novel The Long Loud Silence by Wilson Tucker (from who we get the literary term "Tuckerism" from). I am actually using a PDF of this as copies are rare and hard to find. This cover is from a 1980s UK edition (it's so 80s, isn't it?) 💙📚🪐

Cover of a 1980s UK paperback edition of Wilson Tucker's The Long Loud Silence, showing an illustration of a mutant grey skinned human with shredded black clothing and a holstered weapon on their hip, looking menacing while clutching barbed wire in both hands. Behind the figure is a mushroom cloud against a red sky

CJ de Boix, mechanical owl, they/them👽🌈♿@cjdeboix· Dec 24

This morning's read is Old Wounds by Ashley-Logan Kisner. It's a YA horror novel with two trans MCs. That's all I know going into this. Haven't even read the blurb. 💙📚

Kindle cover of Ahley-Logan Kisner's Old Wounds, showing a black background punctuated by two eyes and fanged, open, smiling teeth in pink and light blue. The pupils of the eyes of two people's heads and the book's title in spaced between the teeth.

CJ de Boix, mechanical owl, they/them👽🌈♿@cjdeboix· Dec 24

Finished the third book for today (they all have been very short): the YA graphic novel Huda F Are You? by Huda Fahmy. Nice look into what life is like for a Muslim Arab-American teen girl. Going to spend the evening finishing up the audiobook of A Christmas Carol read by Tim Curry 💙📚

Cover of the graphic novel Huda F Are You by Huda Fahmy, showing an illustration of a teenage girl wearing glasses, a red shirt and a white hijab, saying "I dunno". Behind her are various other teenagers and behind them are rows of high school lockers

The cover of the Audible audiobook of a A Christmas Carol performed by Tim Curry, showing a wintery nighttime scene of a low city wall along a snow covered walkway, lit by a 19th century style street lamp

CJ de Boix, mechanical owl, they/them👽🌈♿@cjdeboix· Dec 23

Halfway through my 2nd book for today: Austin Channing Brown's memoir I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a Word Made for Whiteness. It's very good. I don't usually read memoirs but I'm glad to be reading this one. 💙📚

Cover of Austin Channing Brown's I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness, with the title words spaced between black bars against a green background

CJ de Boix, mechanical owl, they/them👽🌈♿@cjdeboix· Dec 23

This morning I'm rereading Roger Zelazny's Damnation Alley. Not his best work, but I recently read Walter Jon Williams' Hardwired and Williams said Damnation Alley was an inspiration for that novel so I'm in the mood 💙📚🪐

Kindle cover of Roger Zelazny's Damnation Alley, showing a bald, goatee'd man in a leather jacket and raising one hand in a fist. Behind him is a robed figure standing atop of a futuristic military-like tank. Behind them is a greenish sky and to the left is a partially seen erupting volcano.

CJ de Boix, mechanical owl, they/them👽🌈♿@cjdeboix· Dec 23

Got a new optical drive last week, finally took it out of the box this morning and flipped out that there was no USB cord in the box...then genius me looked on the bottom of the drive

Photo of an external optical drive showing the bottom of the case, where there's a manufacturer's product sticker and the device's USB cord tucked into a depression in the casing meant to hold the cord. The drive is sitting atop my wrist support and keyboard for my computer

CJ de Boix, mechanical owl, they/them👽🌈♿@cjdeboix· Dec 22

Occasionally in my online used book shopping, I end up with a copy of something that I wish was in the hands of proper collector, like this nearly pristine ex-lib 1987 paperback of the French translation of Gibson's Burning Chrome (doesn't that cover make you think of Nick Valentine from FO4?) 🪐📚💙

Photo of the 1987 French paperback edition of William Gibson's Burning Chrome (French title: Gravé sur chrome) on a brown wooden desktop. The cover shows a person in a trenchcoat and fedora hat, holding up a handgun. Behind the person is a partially seen futuristic car, some dead tress and heavily damaged city buildings, with a large orange moon looming against a dark reddish sky

Photo of same book, showing the spine that has virtually no signs of wear. There is a library shelving sticker on the bottom end of the spine and a library barcode can be seen on the back cover

Photo of the same book, showing the pages that have virtually no sign of wear, only a bit of yellowing from age

CJ de Boix, mechanical owl, they/them👽🌈♿@cjdeboix· Dec 20

🐢 Turtle Update! My guest desert box turtle unburied herself today so I took her out for a little soak and a bit of sun. She drank a little but seemed very eager to get out of the soaking tub, so to spare her undue stress she's now back in her brumation container reburying herself. #herpsky

Photo of a desert box turtle in a grey plastic tub with a small amount of water, in the sun on a concrete patio

CJ de Boix, mechanical owl, they/them👽🌈♿@cjdeboix· Dec 20

One reps phone line is down? I wonder why. Anyhow, getting angry in his contact form

Message to my state rep:

Subject: Abbott's Disgusting Billboards

Subject:

I am absolutely mortified by the billboards Gov. Abbott is planning in an alleged attempt to deter illegal immigration. It is simply vile, depraved and immoral to exploit the fears of vulnerable people for ideological grandstanding and xenophobia.

I am a non-Latino person who has lived in El Paso for over 20 years and in no way has my quality of life or safety, nor that of any other El Pasoan I have known, ever been negatively impacted by "illegal" immigrants. I reject Abbott's transparently xenophobic rationalizations for this billboard campaign, and see them as excuses to perpetuate harm against immigrants while delaying progressive and humane reform of our immigration system. I demand TX Democrats to aggressively oppose this disgusting campaign that does not align at all with the values of those of us here on the border.

CJ de Boix, mechanical owl, they/them👽🌈♿@cjdeboix· Dec 16

My copy of P&V is a used copy I got for $2. Previous owner wrote their name and WI phone # in highlighter in it (I got it in TX so it's already been on a journey). There's some highlighting up to the 12th chapter so I won't mind this copy getting terribly worn. (My Maude is an ebook) 💃🚂 #AK2025