Ken Thompson

I’m a former artist, librarian, and queer activist; I still do some of those things when I’m not working my day job. Current project: reading my way through history’s 'best' novels, and examining what 'best' means and who decides it.

Pronouns: he/him
Location: Seattle

Public Key

npub19g5vlw0ndqg423hmte6g8ae2fgf30gg3ggdhh2ny45ts5v8ny5nsg0zcky

NIP-05 Address

kenthompson_at_mastodon.world@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsz52x0h8eksy24gma4uayr7u4y5ych5yg5yxmm4fj269c2xrej2fcprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmntqyg8wumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytnhd9hx25g66cn

Publishing to

relay.momostr.pink

nostr.wine

relay.damus.io

Author Public Key

npub19g5vlw0ndqg423hmte6g8ae2fgf30gg3ggdhh2ny45ts5v8ny5nsg0zcky

Show more details

Last Notes

2026-09-02 16:17:47 UTC

Transcription. Ben Lerner.
You are interviewing your famous and very aged philosopher-mentor, who’s showing signs of dementia, for what might be his last interview, but the recording gets messed up, and suddenly what might be an okay approach, philosophically, to solve this is not as okay in the real world.
3 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈.
@npub1q60…kp90 #bookstodon #books #reading #philosophy #writing #truth #memory
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/117/202/336/754/027/750/original/0ff56fa2e79a4b2a.png

2026-02-04 15:43:36 UTC

The Jungle. By Upton Sinclair.
It’s Chicago, almost to the start of the 20th century, and you’re a brand new Lithuanian immigrant trying to support a new wife, child, and relatives by working in the stockyards, but the system is structured to wear you down, trap you in poverty, and when things are worst, replace you with new immigrants.
4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈
CW: anti-semitism
@npub1q60…kp90 #bookstodon #books #reading #immigration #chicago #labor #capitalism
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/116/013/120/253/221/567/original/5b7ee28433c75652.png

2025-12-19 16:50:18 UTC

Things from the Flood. By Simon Stalenhag. Translated by Martin Dunelind.
You are a young Swedish teen, growing up in the aftermath of a failed industrial project that may have opened a portal to another world, but the poisoned and destroyed landscape is your playground, and the agonies of adolescence find a comfortable home there.
4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈.
@npub1q60…kp90 #bookstodon #books #reading #sweden #scifi #adolescence #graphicnovel #tech #art
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/115/747/245/709/213/797/original/b5173813ff5267ec.png

2025-09-04 15:29:58 UTC

My Antonia. By Willa Cather.
You are a middle aged man reminiscing about your childhood growing up in 1800s Nebraska, primarily about a childhood friend, a Czech immigrant girl whom you respected and loved, but whose life path did not go how most people thought it would …though she regretted nothing.
3 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈.
@npub1ny7…uv57 #bookstodon #reading #books #nebraska #farm #immigrants
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/115/146/723/833/679/544/original/b6c626c8b0e1c2a7.png

2025-08-24 15:36:06 UTC

The Road. By Cormac McCarthy.
It’s a few years after some event has killed every animal and every plant on the earth except for a few remaining humans, and you and your young son are walking southwards to escape the continuous winter, slowly starving and avoiding the dangerous dregs of humanity.
5 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈!
#bleak #postapocalyptic @npub1nhw…808u #bookstodon #reading #books #death
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/115/084/460/763/788/591/original/11306d9fb80bd309.png

2025-08-19 22:08:07 UTC

The immoralist. By Andre Gide, translated by Alan Sheridan.
You’re a young wealthy guy at the turn of the 19th century, and you marry as a favor to your dying father, but then fall very sick while traveling in N. Africa, and though your wife nurses you back to health, you realize you haven’t been living life for your own true self…which doesn’t really want a wife…so you become a self-actualized asshole.
3 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈.
@npub1ny7…uv57 #bookstodon #reading #books #lgbtq
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/115/057/701/989/078/751/original/223037f0e0d9a4f1.png

2025-08-18 15:27:00 UTC

Perfection. By Vincenzo Latronico, translated by Sophie Hughes.
You are a pair of pioneering European digital nomad design professionals, relocated to Berlin, where you’ve curated the perfectly photographable apartment, but a decade of gig work, but with an influx of even younger workers you start to ponder for the first time if you are as hip and smart as you thought you were, and the future yawns open before you.
3 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈.
@npub1ny7…uv57 #bookstodon #books #reading
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/115/050/462/089/322/078/original/fc100a67a00675d4.png

2025-08-17 14:37:16 UTC

The Age of Innocence. By Edith Wharton.
It’s 1870s NYC, and you are young, wealthy, from a ‘good’ family and engaged to a similarly ranked young woman, who you think shares some your dislike for the social constraints of the day, but since one of the social constraints is that such things can never be discussed openly, you realize that maybe you’re not in control of your own destiny, and you’re running out of time.
4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈.
@npub1ny7…uv57 #reading #books #bookstodon
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/115/044/603/976/483/964/original/a1c4aa17dbde8fa0.png

2025-08-09 15:12:06 UTC

Mice 1961. By Stacey Levine.
It’s 1961 and you escaped from foster care and became the unpaid housekeeper for orphaned older sisters, and you are sort of obsessed with the albino sister who is hounded by the local teens and the subject of much erroneous gossip in your Miami neighborhood.
4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈.
@npub1ny7…uv57 #bookstodon #books #reading #1960s #coldwar #women
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/114/999/439/587/611/803/original/8a90cef086348ab4.png

2025-08-05 17:31:12 UTC

A Tale of Two Cities. By Charles Dickens.
You leave France and move to London in the 1780s, as you are disgusted by the extreme tyranny of the nobility in your home country, and make a new life in your adopted city, but when the revolution comes to Paris, your past catches up to you when one form of tyranny is replaced by another.
5 out of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈!
@npub1ny7…uv57 #bookstodon #books #reading #france #revolution #tyranny
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/114/977/341/189/166/975/original/387b30f876262dc8.png

2025-07-29 16:07:48 UTC

On the Calculation of Volume, 2. By Solvej Balle, translated by Barbara Haveland.
As your story progresses, you are still stuck repeating the 18th of November, endlessly, and now more than a year later, you are working to find a rhythm to the (non) seasons as they pass, and find a place in (non) time as an increasingly shadowy life continues around you…or are you the shadow?
3 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈.
Note: book 2 of 7; only 3 are in English yet.
@npub1ny7…uv57 #reading #books #time
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/114/937/375/412/471/992/original/51708933c149df14.png

2025-07-20 17:50:08 UTC

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda. By Becky Albertalli.
You are a closeted gay HS junior theatre nerd living near Atlanta, and you know you should come out to your friends and family, when various circumstances start to accelerate this process, which might spell ruin for an anonymous email-based flirtation you have with another boy.
3 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈.
@npub1ny7…uv57 #bookstodon #books #reading #youngadult #lgbtq #highschool #comingout
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/114/886/818/961/274/370/original/e3476ecf9fdf9188.png

2025-07-18 23:05:56 UTC

All The King’s Men. By Robert Penn Warren.
You are the right hand man to an arrogant, egotistical, populist politician, but you think - because you are aware of all that - that none of his dirt rubs off on you … until not only you, but those closest to you, start to get ensnared in a cesspool of dirty politics (that you, of course, helped to create).
4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈.
CW: racism, sexism, hate speech
@npub1ny7…uv57 #reading #books #bookstodon #politics #populism
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/114/876/737/077/063/954/original/a7183d72de2c92c5.png

2025-07-05 14:15:59 UTC

Anima Rising. By Christopher Moore.
You are a formerly dead girl, fished out of a Vienna canal in 1911 by a horny Gustav Klimt, but you’ve lost your memory so he takes you to his friend, Freud, who isn’t much help but luckily several gods of the underworld offer guidance and it turns out you have superhuman strength ….then things get weird.
4 of 5 library cats 🐈‍⬛ 🐈‍⬛ 🐈‍⬛ 🐈‍⬛.
CW: sex, violence
@npub1ny7…uv57 #bookstodon #reading #art #vienna #death
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/114/801/042/028/536/326/original/0a5b96a25efc42fc.png

2025-06-26 19:47:22 UTC

The Emperor of Gladness. By Ocean Vuong.
You are an early 20s Vietnamese-American guy, and honestly, your life is pretty fucked up, yet somehow you find yourself being a caretaker for some old white lady, and also your cousin, who are more fucked up than you.
4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈.
@npub1ny7…uv57 #bookstodon #reading #books #dementia #fastfood
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/114/751/382/551/268/478/original/70e60c50eadf59d8.png

2025-06-22 15:12:26 UTC

The Brothers Karamatzov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky. trans by Constance Garnett.
You are one of (arguably) 4 brothers, sons of an unlikable gentleman, and it being 19th century Russia, social class and gender makes your brothers mostly assholes as well; you are giving a shot at being a monk, but ensuing family events cast doubt on God as an effective father figure also.
4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈.
CW: antisemitism
@npub1ny7…uv57 #books #reading #bookstodon #russia #religion #crime #family
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/114/727/654/030/934/479/original/9fe54238887bb106.png

2025-05-28 16:02:48 UTC

Where the Axe is Buried. By Ray Nayler.
It’s the future, and governments are either run by AIs, or despots, and you are a programmer with a breakthrough technology that could make things worse, or better for humanity…you are approached to help, but it’s impossible to tell who, or what, is pulling the strings, with what agenda.
4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈.
#bookstodon #books #reading #distopia #ai #SciFi @npub1ny7…uv57 #readingcommunity
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/114/586/292/696/315/773/original/bfae91a5628adb41.png

2025-05-06 21:46:53 UTC

Under the Volcano. By Malcolm Lowry.
It’s Mexico between the world wars, and you are a minor British official whose alcoholism has reached a stage where fact and fantasy mix (poorly) throughout one very long day that’s supposed to be about fixing your broken relationship, but instead veers well off that path.
2 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈.
@npub1ny7…uv57 #bookstodon #books #reading #readingcommunity #alcoholism
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/114/463/076/032/374/501/original/9c31c31597b3a6c1.png

2025-04-27 22:00:49 UTC

On The Calculation of Volume: I. By Solvej Balle (trans Barbara Haveland).
You are a dealer in old books, living in small town France, when one day in mid November you wake up and it’s the same day as yesterday for you (and only you), then that keeps happening and though your husband believes you, you tire of explaining it all…and each day you realize you are more alone.
5 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈!
@npub1ny7…uv57 #books #reading #bookstodon #timetravel #readingcommunity
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/114/412/157/655/316/994/original/d3113073640b3132.png

2025-04-13 15:51:27 UTC

Small Things Like These. By Claire Keegan.
You are an Irish man, as a kid you and your mom were seriously helped by a stranger, and you now have daughters of your own; it’s an ordinary life, but you happen on a teen girl who needs serious help, and your decision about what to do feels momentous.
4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈.
@npub1ny7…uv57 #bookstodon #books #reading #ireland #ethics #catholicism #humanity
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/114/331/444/785/902/678/original/333fb29910826902.png

2025-03-27 15:04:45 UTC

Under the Eye of the Big Bird. By Hiromi Kawakami, translated by Asa Yoneda.
It is far in the future, and humanity is quite close to extinction; the few remaining humans are in small settlements, monitored by human-adjacent beings ancient humans had created, and you, one of this kind, are having trouble letting go.
5 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈!
@npub1ny7…uv57 #books #bookstodon #reading #extinction #japan #scifi #translation #AI
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/114/235/003/770/979/315/original/8a1fe7b177639285.png

2025-03-22 17:22:58 UTC

Beautyland. By Marie-Helene Bertino.
You are a girl, then woman, growing up quite certain you have an alien soul, though the only evidence you have of this are faxed communications from your dying home planet which seek to understand humanity (so you become a writer).
4 of 5 library cats 📠 📠 📠 📠.
@npub1ny7…uv57 #books #bookstodon #reading #scifi #newyork #philadelphia #writing
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/114/207/231/035/766/963/original/f3dfaa35764621bd.png

2025-03-17 15:44:44 UTC

Fahrenheit 451. By Ray Bradbury.
It’s the future, and your job is to burn books found in people’s homes, as they are illegal; you never questioned this because everyone is fine with this idea since books were replaced long ago with more entertaining visual media, but then something makes you want to read one of these books, and a different kind of flame is lit inside you.
4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🔥.
@npub1ny7…uv57 #books #reading #bookstodon #dystopia #fire
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/114/178/533/500/730/361/original/fced16934c15afef.png

2025-03-08 18:06:07 UTC

The Stranger, by Albert Camus (trans Matthew Ward).
You are an averagely simple young man, but differ in that you really don’t care about other people, their ideas, or what they think of you; then you mostly accidentally kill another man who threatened you, and you end up on trial not so much for that crime, but your unwillingness to regret it in conventional moral terms.
4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈.
@npub1ny7…uv57 #bookstodon #books #reading #existentialism #justice
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/114/128/125/134/399/639/original/5c5a35b6bc032ea8.png

2025-02-24 17:00:12 UTC

You Dreamed of Empires. By Alvaro Enrigue (translated by Natasha Wimmer).
It’s 1519, and you are Emperor Moctezuma, and you may have a plan for what to do with some smelly Spaniards who have shown up, but you are secretive and known to dose yourself on hallucigenic mushrooms, which may or may not be helping out with your complicated political strategies.
4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈.
@npub1ny7…uv57 #bookstodon #reading #books #mexico #colonization
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/114/059/922/140/841/666/original/fc57b1066c53d66a.png

2025-02-23 15:45:02 UTC

Drowned Country. By Emily Tesh. (Book 2)
You are a recently ex-human young man, now the bored spirit lord of a once great forest, when your monster hunting mother shows up with your hunky ex boyfriend (whose job you stole) now in her employ, needing you to help find a missing young lady.
3 of 5 library cats 🐈‍⬛ 🐈‍⬛ 🐈‍⬛.
@npub1ny7…uv57 #bookstodon #reading #lgbtq #fantasy #books
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/114/053/962/973/709/033/original/e60421cb205e2a7c.png

2025-02-23 00:59:47 UTC

Absolom, Absolom! By William Faulkner.
You are a white man who makes his way to rural Mississippi before the Civil War, with the goal of having the biggest plantation in the county, but what is even more fucked up is your need for a male heir, which you pursue relentlessly and destroy not just your life but countless others in your lifetime and beyond.
CW: hate speech
3 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈.
@npub1ny7…uv57 #bookstodon #reading #books #race #civilwar #racism #incest
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/114/050/487/649/640/404/original/8188a41c71255437.png

2025-02-15 18:12:06 UTC

White Teeth. By Zadie Smith.
You are three multigenerational families, mostly immigrants from Britain’s colonies, living in London and trying to variously to embrace and reject the past, which has ill-prepared your children to cope the very modern world.
CW: hate speech
3 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈.
@npub1ny7…uv57 #bookstodon #books #reading #india #jamaica #britain #colonization
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/114/009/243/326/949/644/original/0dec96abe9d54653.png

2025-02-09 16:53:41 UTC

Orbital. By Samantha Harvey.
You are an astronaut on the Int’l Space Station, at 17k mph you orbit the earth 16 times per ‘day’ and can see no borders, or life really, though life is all you can think about from up there in the void, where it is much more clear, ironically, what it means to be an earthling.
4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈.
@npub1ny7…uv57 #bookstodon #iss #books #space #earth #reading #science
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/113/974/961/106/334/634/original/e45279345c468444.png

2025-02-02 21:56:08 UTC

Elena Knows. By Claudia Pineiro (trans Frances Riddle)
You have Parkinson’s, and your adult daughter cares for you; when she dies, you think she was murdered, but no one will listen to you, much as your own body will not listen to your brain.
5 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈.
@npub1ny7…uv57 #bookstodon #reading #books #argentina #parkinsons #abortion #catholic #mothers
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/113/936/516/657/362/080/original/e48cd1ca5b38ea8b.png

2025-01-26 17:20:41 UTC

My Brilliant Friend. By Elena Ferrante.
You are an Italian teen girl, growing up soon after WW2, and know nothing beyond your small neighborhood and the prescribed tiny circle of education and life options for girls; luckily, your best friend cares nothing for all of that, though her options become even more limited than yours.
3 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈.
@npub1ny7…uv57 #bookstodon #books #reading #italy #women #girls
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/113/895/798/057/078/013/original/3f3ea0fb016f5049.png

2025-01-19 19:31:23 UTC

Giovanni’s Room. By James Baldwin.
You are a young, dashing American idling in Paris in the early 20th century, and you meet a waiter, and move in with him while your girlfriend is in Spain; you feel you love him, but you struggle to understand what that could really mean.
4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈.
@npub1ny7…uv57 #bookstodon #books #reading #queer #expatriates #paris
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/113/856/675/925/245/761/original/f89d532a90b9677d.png

2025-01-18 23:16:57 UTC

Rabbit, Run. By John Updike.
It’s the waning days of the 1950s, and you are a young man with a 7 months pregnant wife, who you dump so your horniness can be expressed towards a larger range of women, none of whom are as important to yourself as you are.
2 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈.
@npub1ny7…uv57 #bookstodon #books #reading #menactingbadly
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/113/851/899/527/307/108/original/23475c8b6a000107.png

2025-01-13 19:56:25 UTC

The Devil of the Provinces. By Juan Cardenas, translated by Lizzie Davis.
You are a mid 30s biologist, coming back to your mid sized Colombian hometown after years abroad, but settling in is rough, and what seems like an ethical choice about who you’d work for is taken out of your hands by at first mysterious, then mundane, forces.
4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈.
@npub1ny7…uv57 #bookstodon #books #reading #colombia
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/113/822/803/716/383/691/original/20c13aac0f87bdca.png

2024-12-17 16:47:38 UTC

The Old Man and the Sea. By Ernest Hemingway.
You are an old fisherman, and you go to sea alone in a small wooden boat, where for several days you try to reel in a marlin larger than your boat; this gives you a lot of time to think about the differences between men and fish.
2 of 5 library cats 🐟 🐟.
@npub1ny7…uv57 #bookstodon #reading #fishing
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/113/669/175/795/545/455/original/86bc52b70a44106a.png

2024-09-05 16:25:48 UTC

Dracula, by Bram Stoker.
You are a newly minted solicitor, in the waning days the 1800s, and are sent to a castle in Romania to help an eccentric Count move to London; you barely escape with your life back to London, but once there you, your spouse and your psychiatrist friends become hunted and hunter in a clash of science and superstition where neither holds the upper hand.
4 of 5 library cats 🐈‍⬛ 🐈‍⬛ 🐈‍⬛ 🐈‍⬛.
#bookstodon @npub1ny7…uv57 #reading #vampire #horror
https://s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com/mastodonworld/media_attachments/files/113/085/872/643/875/515/original/fc559ca96c61c268.png