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Bookwyrm

There is a bookwyrm in the library.

Note the spelling. Not a bookworm. A bookwyrm.

No one is entirely sure when it snuck into the Elsewhere University Library, but one thing has become entirely certain: it is never, ever leaving.

And why should it leave, with a veritable unlimited floor plan filled to the bell tower with delicious, fragrant tomes to claim and hoard and sample.

An ink-black serpentine wyrm that originally was not much bigger than a rabbit, it used to scamper here and there in the library looking for open tomes to slurp the words out of (it is a terribly messy eater, much to the librarians’ chagrin). The words it eats etch themselves somewhere onto its dark hide, though it has consumed so many letters in so many languages that it is difficult now to see where new bits of prose are added.

Students have been warned repeatedly over the years not to feed the bookwyrm. But there are always those who do not heed the warnings of the librarians. It used to be a funny pastime for students that had become stuck in one section or another of the library’s labyrinthine stacks to feed scraps of paper with vulgar words to the then tiny bookwyrm and then try to find where the offending epithets manifested. The bookwyrm was not terribly picky about the words it ate back then, because it was always hungry. Whether they were in good taste or bad, it didn’t matter; its appetite was insatiable.

And this kind of recklessness is why it grew so large in such a, relatively, short amount of time. It sprang up to the size of a cat one semester, then a large dog a year later, and then eventually… well, to the point where it’s a very good thing that the library has a mostly Other architecture, because it surely would have burst the building by now. And the bigger it grew, the more territorial it became. The more it hoarded tomes in certain sections (it really seemed to savor Anne McCaffrey’s works, but would never be found anywhere near Hemingway, for example). The more aggressive it became to students and librarians alike who needed the books also.

Hoping to avoid another calamity like the last wyrm that took up residence on the campus, the librarians decided to make good use of their new pet. With a copious amount of parchment and ink, they lured the bookwyrm down down down deep into the seldom used catacombs of The Library and set it to work. They knew that once it was presented with its new collection that it would never stray far from it again. And there it stays.

It was a constant conundrum that the librarians faced in the early days, when the Fair Folk and students were beginning to… mingle. A place filled with a vast amount of knowledge like The Library is always bound to have certain… archives that are better perused by no one. Ancient texts. Tomes of ages, dated further back than it is currently recorded that written word existed. The language of the birds, poetry of the stars, and truths that would shatter the mind. Words that needed to be preserved but not necessarily studied. Not by the Good Neighbors, and certainly not by incoming freshmen. Absolutely not by school administrators.

A tiny bit of such knowledge is dangerous. A little more is a disaster. Lots of that knowledge, though, would present a crisis of cataclysmic proportions. These are the books, bound in iron and chains, locked with enchantment and dusted with bottled oblivion, that the wyrm keeps. Guards. Claims. Hoards.

Not all words fade with time. Some grow sharp teeth and attack from the dark instead.

So if you are lost in the library and find yourself in a place that is blacker than spilled ink, smells of iron and sulfur, and sounds like an ancient bellows, turn around and leave out the way you came.

Yesterday, if possible (which, in The Library, of course, it always, always is).

Exploring River of The Source Orinonoco, Remedios Varo

Beautifully magical concept with a beautifully magical painting.

Once In A Blue Moon Imagine a crumbled settlement, so old its ruins have been long overgrown by woodlands and reclaimed by nature. Still, it doesn’t quite want to leave yet.⁣ Once in a blue moon it re-appears, clinging so strongly to the world that when it has to vanish again it tears a piece of the current century with it. This way a wholly anachronistic, glowing city is created – a place where all times meet. It is a magical place to explore and it is oh so easy to get lost in there.⁣ Prints | Facebook | Instagram | Portfolio | ORIGINAL AVAILABLE

100% True

“Once you’re a reader, you never quite grow out of it. You may not have much time for it as an adult, but you’re still hooked on that magic.”

—

This quote speaks to me

“When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.”

— Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (via books-n-quotes)

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass, Lewis Carroll This is 1 of 15 vintage paperback books that comprise our current giveaway.

R.I.P. Ursula Le Guine

City & the City by China Mieville

“We mourn the incomparable Ursula Le Guin, and it hurts. A writer of intense ethical seriousness and intelligence, of wit and fury, of radical politics, of subtlety, of freedom and yearning, Le Guin was a literary colossus.” - C.M.

Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky 

“Those who see science fiction simply as a way of writing novels welcome the more Tolstoyan approach, in which a war is described not only from the generals’ point of view but also through the eyes of housewives, prisoners, boys of sixteen, or an alien visitation is described not only by knowledgeable scientists but also by its effects on commonplace people.” - Ursula K. Le Guin

Strange Bird A Borne Story by Jeff Vandermeer

“I think the biggest thing I took away from her fiction, and her nonfiction, was the sharp thoughtfulness and humanity behind it all.” — J.V.

At the Mouth of the River of Bees Stories by Kij Johnson

“It’s just as good as I thought it was going to be, if not better … the variety is tremendous, exhilarating. The book definitely won’t do that short-story-collection thing to you where all the stories run together into a sort of depressing porridge in your mind.” - Ursula K. Le Guin

Oryx & Crake by Margaret Atwood

“We can’t call Ursula K. Le Guin back from the land of the unchanging stars, but happily she left us her multifaceted work, her hard-earned wisdom and her fundamental optimism. Her sane, smart, crafty and lyrical voice is more necessary now than ever. For it, and for her, we should be thankful.” - M.A.

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

“Ursula’s work holds a prominent place on the most cherished part of my bookcase.” - N.O.

The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter by Theodora Goss

“There is one thing I wish I could have told her, although she probably knew: that she has hundreds of daughters. All those teenage girls who also found her books in local bookstores or libraries and grew up to become writers. She taught them that women could write about other planets and political philosophy, with clarity, profundity, and grace. She gave each of us a little bit of her voice, and we are all better writers and human beings because of it.” - T.G.

The Ambiguity Machines & Other Stories by Vandana Singh

“A most promising and original young writer.” - Ursula K. Le Guin

Autonomous by Annalee Newitz

“Ursula LeGuin was my first science fiction inspiration as a kid and she continued to inspire me throughout my adult life. Her stories are permanently installed in my mind.” - A.N.

The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi

“This was a subtle gift that Le Guin gave to a young person wanting to be a writer—the idea that there was more to writing fiction than ticking off plot points, that a rewarding story can be told without overt conflict, and that a world wide and deep can be its own reward, for those building the world and those who then walk through it.” - J.S.

The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett

“Whereas all my beloved P G Wodehouses and Philip Pullmans are neatly arranged on the bookshelves, my Pratchetts are strewn under the beds, in the bathrooms, the glove compartments. They have shopping lists, takeaway orders and Scrabble scores scribbled on the fly leaves. They were part of life.” - Ursula K. Le Guin

Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link

Kelly Link has been hailed by Michael Chabon as “the most darkly playful voice in American fiction” and by Neil Gaiman as a “National Treasure”. If you don’t already know Kelly’s work, start here with her debut collection.

Blindness by Jose Saramago

“Blindness scared me to death when I started it, but it rises wonderfully out of darkness into the light.” - Ursula K. Le Guin

Shadowshaper by Daniel Jose Older

“… a tremendous human being and storyteller who helped make fantasy a more imaginative and humane genre.” - D.J.O.

Stardust by Neil Gaiman

“She is willing to change the landscape of your head with her ideas and there’s such power in that. It is the power of … that things could be different.” - N.G.

All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders

“She’s a cornerstone of speculative fiction, and so much of our best storytelling traces its roots back to her. The more I write, and the more I think about fictional politics and societies, the more I find myself in awe of her singular powers. Nobody else can ever equal Le Guin, but many of us will spend our whole careers striving to build on her incredible legacy.” - C.J.A.

Little Big by John Crowley

“… a book that all by itself calls for a redefinition of fantasy …” - Ursula K. Le Guin

Spaceman of Bohemia by Jaroslav Kalfar

“And what a surprise it was to find as I grew up that the author of some of my favorite childhood fantasy novels was also a brilliant essayist, enlightened political commentator, a champion of feminism, and an activist for a more inclusive publishing industry. A true example of an artist who, both through her books and activism, changed the world for the better.” - J.K.

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf  

“It inspires me with pity, with terror, with awe at the mystery of human destiny, and the mystery of the art that can, for a moment, illuminate it.” - Ursula K. Le Guin

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon

“Of course if you haven’t read Kavalier and Clay yet, go read it at once, what on earth have you been waiting for? Then read this. It is even a little crazier, maybe. Crazy like a genius.” - Ursula K. Le Guin

Shades of Milk & Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal

“I think she did a lot for science fiction and fantasy—not just for women and women’s roles because of her feminism but also legitimizing us as an art form. There are a lot of people who will read an Ursula Le Guin book and go, ‘Well, this isn’t science fiction, it’s literature.’ But of course, it is science fiction. A lot of times, she can be a gateway drug for people.” - M.R.K.

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu

“More than anyone else, Le Guin showed me how to write SFF with an anthropological approach while interrogating the colonialist agenda and assumptions of the field itself. More than any writer of her stature, she constructed worlds in which I thought I could find and lose myself. I will miss her dearly.” - K.L.

The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth #1) by N.K. Jemisin

“I’d definitely still be a writer if not for her, but I don’t think I’d be as good a writer. Le Guin is one of the writers who taught me that beauty and fearlessness go hand in hand.“ - N.K.J.

I love the use of light in these paintings, they're beautifully atmospheric.

Art by Michael Handt

I felt a lot of nostalgia watching these, one of my favorites. Beautifully rendered and animated inked drawings.

Alice in Wonderland (1951) dir. Hamilton Luske, Wilfred Jackson and Clyde Geronimi

Some ghostly creative inspiration today. I Would really like to hear the story behind this one.

Bankersin Action, Remedios Varo