Sometimes I think about my nearby bookstore.
Not the indie store that's a short walk from my apartment (though I adore that one, and they will always get my money over chain stores) but the Barnes & Noble. Which, coincidentally, is also a short walk from my apartment.
The B&N is brand-spankin-new. It's fitted with modern minimalist aesthetics and glaring white lights. I greatly prefer the cozier vibes of older B&Ns in the area. Y'know: yellower lights, seating for customers. I could rant for days about inhospitable nature of modern "third spaces," built for aesthetic and not for real use. But that's not today's focus.
This Barnes and Noble has one little table that always catches my attention. It's small and unassuming compared to the massive shelves of popular romantasy books and the huge "Harry Potter" section that I avoid like the plague (FYI: author J.K. Rowling is a raging transphobe who has actively admitted to using her Harry Potter royalties to fund anti-transgender legislation in the UK).
Every time I pass by the little table, I pause and acknowledge it.
The table is probably about the size of the average nightstand, and it has a sign that says: "Current Events." And on that "Current Events " table are dystopian literary classics. 1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.
Now, I say "every time I pass by" as if I'm at the B&N regularly, which is untrue. I'm not really a fanatic book-buyer, but I'll occasionally visit and wander through the isles. Sometimes for writing or cover design inspiration. Sometimes just because I'm bored and want to get out of the house. And every single time I go, that little table is there, sitting along the rightmost wall and about halfway toward the back of the store. It's somewhere between the Science Fiction & Fantasy and the General Fiction sections. And by my nature to drift over to the SFF section, I always see it.
I think I'm always rather struck by it simply because it's nice to see all the subtle ways people are fighting back against rising fascism in the United States. It's like a tiny beacon of light. A little nudge that says, hey, general public, look at this. Things are not okay right now. You should read some books about it.
Books that are often banned. What a coincidence, huh? That banned books are the ones with the most poignant social commentary? It's almost as if governments want to suppress dissenting voices! Wow! (I’m being sarcastic, if I haven't laid it down thick enough.)
Now, books are expensive these days, and I'm not always the most inclined to spend money on them when rent and groceries take up 75% of my monthly paycheck—and that's with a roommate I can split rent with. So, I've decided to place a hold on Libby for the book 1984.
I've read 1984 before, back in high school, when it was required reading. I hated reading when I was a teenager (though I loved writing—I always have, but back then I wanted to write and utterly refused to read). I think I hated it because I was forced to read books I didn't enjoy. Though I was privileged enough to grow up in a very high quality school system, I can say with utmost confidence that schools have a tendency to beat the joy out of things.
I'll be curious to see what I remember from my cursory high-school skimming of the book. I'll also be curious to see what critiques I have of it. In high school, I didn't bat an eye, but nowadays I am a far more critical reader. I'm immediately wary of reading an "old classic" by a cisgender white man. Because there are always biases, and they are not discreet.
For example: I recently read the short story I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison. The story was about a supercomputer that had taken over and was torturing the last five surviving humans. It's acclaimed as being a revolutionary piece of science fiction, but it's so jam-packed full of misogyny and microaggressions that I could hardly stand to read the thing.
What will I think of 1984 with my current level of literary criticism? I've got three weeks until I find out.
By the way—highly recommend using Libby to get your hands on ebooks through your local library system. All you need is a library card, and boom! Ebooks and audiobooks galore! There are some pretty significant wait times for the popular books (I've been waiting for Katabasis by R.F. Kuang since October 2025 and Libby estimates I still have 18 more weeks to wait), but I'm making an effort to use it more. I've only got so much money, and so much bookshelf space, after all. And it supports my local library!
"When people tell you art is not important, that is always a prelude to fascism."
In a rapidly-changing world where the rise of generative AI is infiltrating everything from basic computers to nearly every single workplace, it's growing ever harder to boycott it. Google has its AI implanted in its search function, at the very top. There is no way to turn it off. Microsoft forced AI on everybody in Windows 11. There is, again, no way to disable it. My only saving grace is that neither my laptop nor my desktop computer have the processing power to update. And most new computers these days come with ingrained AI systems, and only now are companies like Dell starting to learn that people do not give a single crap about having AI computers.
Meanwhile, X's AI, Grok, is actively being used to non-consensually remove shirts off women in photos, and even more detestable, remove clothing from images of children. Other AI models are actively encouraging people to commit suicide. These AI are not regulated in any way, and they're actively harming people.
Anyways—as a creative, the rise of AI is especially disconcerting, as corporations push to devalue the arts. As such, my business, Corvid Arcana, prioritizes AI-free spaces. I have slowly began the process of migrating all of my documents from Google Docs to Ellipsus, a cloud-based writing service very alike to Google Docs, but has a very firm anti-AI policy. Ellipsus gives the modern internet its whimsy and charm back, with customizable color palettes, and its merch store is full of stickers that say things like "protect queer authors," "resistance starts with words," and "FCK GPT."
I would like to encourage everybody to make the switch to Ellipsus for writing. There are ups and downs (the spellcheck feature, for example, is not as sophisticated, flagging words in this newsletter like "corvid" and "ebook," which other document services like Word or Google Docs might not), but I do feel at home here. If a company pledges to fight against the rise of environment-killing, job-destroying, fascism-perpetuating, plagiarizing generative AI, then they will get my business. If a company pledges to protect queer people as the genocide against transgender people rages on, they will get my business.
It's as simple as that.
Wren L. Rivers
@corvidarcana [Bluesky, Tumblr]
@corvid.arcana [Instagram, TikTok]
www.corvidarcana.com
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P.S. If you’re interested in showing transgender people that you support them, one fantastic way to do this is by ordering cookies from transgender girl scouts!
