Books - Blog Posts
Helpppp
So I just finished the NaNoWriMo story I was doing for school yesterday, and then last night I thought of another fucking story.
Long story short, I've come up with the plot, 11 characters, their names, and their pasts, and I created a playlist for my MC.
This just happened
Me letting my friend read the prologue to my story: "So, what do you think?"
My friend: "Uh...I like... the words..."
Me:
My friend: *Blushing because she knows how dumb she sounds*
I just listened to the shmanners episode about libraries and at my local library you can, as a library goer, get a key-card to access the facilities between the hours 06.00-22.00 all days of the week. The library is only staffed some days of the week under normal business hours and I was wondering if this is something common of if my local library is a bit odd in that regard
Ciao!
Io sono interessato a scorprire le amicizia italiani per parlare con mentre imparo la lingua! Il mio blog è in inglese ma io parlo di scrivere e l’anime (sopratutto my hero academia).
Mi mandi un messaggio se interessa o se hai una raccomanda italiana per i film/le serie, musica, o i libri :)
here's a list of books I've read and would recommend as well as books from my to-read list for Pride Month!
A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers: a solarpunk novella that discusses existential purpose from the perspective of a nonbinary narrator who meets a sentient robot years after robots decided to stop working and disappear into the wilderness. A great read that I found very soothing!
We Are The Ants by Shaun David Hutchinson: a YA sci-fi novel that follows a grieving high-schooler who gets routinely abducted by aliens. I read this one in the eight grade and as a kid who was unknowingly struggling with depression and had just learned that the word 'bisexual' existed, this was a pretty important read for me so even though I haven't read it in years it deserves an honorary place. CW: past suicide of the narrator's bf
Burning Roses by S.L Huang: a novella that combines European fairytales and Chinese mythology. It follows two middle-aged queer women as they reflect on their lives and chase down a deadly threat together. Told largely in flashback, I found this story very hopeful.
Blue Period (manga & anime) by Tsubasa Yamaguchi: had to toss this one in here as I adore BP. While not a romantic story, BP is about the discovery of artistic passion and the highs and lows of pursuing what makes you feel alive (and I find it to be relatable, refreshing, and inspiring tbh). In volumes 1-6 (and the anime), a secondary, genderqueer character has a fairly prominent storyline, told largely via the main character's changing perceptions of them. If you do give it a watch, I personally feel that the sub version hits harder.
In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune: I'm very excited to read this one (i love me some sentient robots lol) and have high hopes for the emotional depth. Here's the first bit of the synopsis. "Deep in the heart of a peculiar forest, in a strange little home built into the branches of trees, is a family assembled from spare parts: three robots- fatherly inventor android Giovanni Lawson, a pleasantly sadistic nurse machine, a small vacuum desperate for love and attention- and a human, Victor Lawson."
The Dark Tide by Alicia Jasinska: Google says it's a gripping, dark sapphic YA fantasy about two girls who must choose between saving themselves, each other, or their sinking island home. I love to see sapphic rep and truly hope this book delivers!
Feel free to drop more recs in the comments or share your thoughts about the books on this list!
Casual Life Update:
Remember that cat my grandparents stole a few months ago? His name is Dos. Because he was part of a litter of 4 kittens. So they were named Uno, Dos, Tres, and Kevin, because the neighbors couldn't remember Quatro.
Grandma calls him Do-si-do and he follows her around when she takes care of her chickens.
I've been thinking about my farmer grandparents a lot lately, about the people they knew and the lives they've lived. About how American culture has changed so much in their lifetimes. About how Grandma had to leave her schooling to help support her family after her mother died of cancer. About how teachers would often lock my Grandfather out of their classrooms when he was excused for religious services and they'd humiliate him in front of his peers before letting him back in.
About how a lot of people - especially in these Internet spaces - see them now, as old farm folk, and dismiss them as uneducated. As stereotypes and caricatures to be derided. Without a word to them, people will assume them to be of no use, to be able to contribute nothing of value by their experiences, and capable of no grand thoughts.
It's a bitter taste to recognize, hypocrisy.
I think about how my Grandma insists that everyone should write at least one book in their lifetime. She has books of short stories, books of poems, books of essays, books of local recipes collected by the women's societies in the area. So many of them are self-published and freely given to her by her friends and family. I love that she can pick each one up and tell me about the author and how she, and I by way of her, is connected to this person whose thoughts are inked on cheap paper.
She has her own book almost ready to go. It's full of little poems and daily devotions, letters to people who are no longer around to receive them. It scares me, because she had been in my life for so very long and I do not want to trust her to my faulty, frail memory.
Hello, yes, I'd like to slam the entire 22 Redwall novels by Brian Jacques down onto the counter and then add several picture books, recipe books, and supplemental mini-series.
I would like to look the Internet at large in the eye when I say the following.
These books are an excellent way to see cruel people from their own points of view just as you can see the kind and heroic people's perspectives. It might royally piss you off, even, to realize that you have motivations in common with a scoundrel. That you will have sympathy for the power-hungry murderer. That you might mourn for a monster even as you're so glad the monster is dead.
And you're going to love these characters. You're going to love the camaraderie and the jokes and the squabbling. The coming-of-age stories and the parents seeking to protect their children. You're going to cry so fucking hard at some point, guaranteed, and it's going to feel so cleansing.
Also! Brian Jacques wrote these books with massive feasts and was particularly descriptive about taste. This is because he often volunteered to read to blind kids and became frustrated with how so many books relied on visual descriptions, so he made it a point to focus on a different sense.
I think every single book worm had that series that got them through shitty teenage years. For me that series was Tigers Curse by Colleen Houck. The series quite literly was my source of hope and joy during my early teen years. Was my lifeline. It's definitely YA and a little cringe to read as an adult but it's like a found friend that holds nothing but fond memories💙🖤.
What was your hard time book series?
Oklahoma is attempting to pass a bill that would ban explicit romance novels. Authors, narrators, and sellers could all face fines of up to $100,000 and up to 10 years in jail for each instance.
If you live in OK, call your representative and tell them this bill should not be allowed to pass.
This is likely a test case. Republicans will try to pass it in OK and if it passes other states will likely try to pass similar laws.
In the meantime, get physical copies of books you like. Download those pdfs. Archive your AO3 stories and keep them on a physical hard drive. (Storing those files in the cloud could be problematic in the future as the company managing the cloud service can see what your files are)
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” - Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan
Reading the wizard of once and WISH IS DYSLEXIC!!
my favorite genre is “kitchen sink” tbqh. yes i want your metaphysical space opera Gothic haunted house horror-comedy. yes i want your medieval road trip heist mystery. give me time traveling werewolves and noir detective robots teaming up to fight alien supervillains. i want this sundae with every topping in the shop
Exactly!
And i gotta ask, I cannot be the only one who sees these things, like
Writing tips to help get published! Problems an editor always has to point out!
And I'm just like, please don't do that?? As a reader, i do not agree?
For example, i saw one guy saying, "Don't use one-off side characters. Combine them into one character, so that the batista the MC sees everyday, the secondary love interest, and the childhood are all 1 3-dimensional person instead of 3 1-dimenaional characters."
I saw that and i just immediately thought, please god no, don't do that. I love random side characters! I hate it when it feels like the MC's world is so tiny, like they literally only interact with 2 or 3 people. I wanna see how they are with strangers! How strangers percieve them! It makes the world feel larger!
And i admit, i am NOT a writer, at all. But I read CONSTANTLY. I'm part of the audience, and i prefer when my book/fanfiction does the opposite of what professionals tell them to.
Please tell me I'm not the only one
Reblog if you’ve ever read fan-fiction that actually set the bar higher.
God bless you! Free the books!
The sign of high quality is the fact the book was banned by the government. Trash literature NEVER EVER had any troubles with the law.
Reblogging myself to give another book life hack. Mostly works for older books though. Google the name and author plus "pdf," i.e. "The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket pdf" and there will be a link or download. Sometimes the formatting is weird and sometimes there isn't a free one, but it usually works. This is how I read the entirety of A Series of Unfortunate Events
I’M ABOUT TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE FOREVER, BOOK NERDS
Do you like books!?
OF COURSE YOU DO
Do you like reading books?
DUUUUUH!
Do you collect books and let them sit on your shelf!?
WHAT IS THIS!? AMATEUR hOUR? OF FUCKING COURSE!
Do you spend WAAAAAAY too much money on books even though they’re totally worth it but holy fucking shit fifteen dollars is the median and why is the world so effortlessly cruel?
Who’s got two thumbs and an empty wallet! Yes yes and yes!
WELL HAVE I GOT A SOLUTION FOR YOU
Thriftbooks is an amazing online site that sells used books! These books are, for the most part, in great condition. I’ve used this website for everything from textbooks to fiction to everything else in between! It has a wide selection with an even wider selection of options per book!
You want softcover? They’ve got it! Hardcover? Of course! Audio? Why not!
Hell! They even sell the books in other languages!
You might say to me, humanity, why are you telling us this? We already have barnes and noble!
Because, my poor, naive friend, thriftbooks sells the majority of it’s books for under four dollars.
That’s right. You heard me. Under. Four. Dollars.
And right now, they’re having a huge deal!
2 books for $7
3 books for $10
4 books for $12
But wait! There’s more!
If you leave a book in your cart for long enough, chances are you’ll be alerted when a seller nearby, for a cheaper price, has the same book! You’ll get it cheaper and faster, with less waste of paper and time!
And prices change! That book that would have cost you $3.79 one day might be $3.45 the next, and man oh man isn’t that the best thing to see when you check up on your cart.
So what are you waiting for, book lovers! Go! Go shop!
Go and rule the world!
Be the book lovers I know you can be!
By “relaxing with a book” I actually mean that I’ll be crying and sweating and having heart palpitations and basically just stressing the fuck out but y’know details
FAMOUS AUTHORS
Classic Bookshelf: This site has put classic novels online, from Charles Dickens to Charlotte Bronte.
The Online Books Page: The University of Pennsylvania hosts this book search and database.
Project Gutenberg: This famous site has over 27,000 free books online.
Page by Page Books: Find books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and H.G. Wells, as well as speeches from George W. Bush on this site.
Classic Book Library: Genres here include historical fiction, history, science fiction, mystery, romance and children’s literature, but they’re all classics.
Classic Reader: Here you can read Shakespeare, young adult fiction and more.
Read Print: From George Orwell to Alexandre Dumas to George Eliot to Charles Darwin, this online library is stocked with the best classics.
Planet eBook: Download free classic literature titles here, from Dostoevsky to D.H. Lawrence to Joseph Conrad.
The Spectator Project: Montclair State University’s project features full-text, online versions of The Spectator and The Tatler.
Bibliomania: This site has more than 2,000 classic texts, plus study guides and reference books.
Online Library of Literature: Find full and unabridged texts of classic literature, including the Bronte sisters, Mark Twain and more.
Bartleby: Bartleby has much more than just the classics, but its collection of anthologies and other important novels made it famous.
Fiction.us: Fiction.us has a huge selection of novels, including works by Lewis Carroll, Willa Cather, Sherwood Anderson, Flaubert, George Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald and others.
Free Classic Literature: Find British authors like Shakespeare and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, plus other authors like Jules Verne, Mark Twain, and more.
TEXTBOOKS
Textbook Revolution: Find biology, business, engineering, mathematics and world history textbooks here.
Wikibooks: From cookbooks to the computing department, find instructional and educational materials here.
KnowThis Free Online Textbooks: Get directed to stats textbooks and more.
Online Medical Textbooks: Find books about plastic surgery, anatomy and more here.
Online Science and Math Textbooks: Access biochemistry, chemistry, aeronautics, medical manuals and other textbooks here.
MIT Open Courseware Supplemental Resources: Find free videos, textbooks and more on the subjects of mechanical engineering, mathematics, chemistry and more.
Flat World Knowledge: This innovative site has created an open college textbooks platform that will launch in January 2009.
Free Business Textbooks: Find free books to go along with accounting, economics and other business classes.
Light and Matter: Here you can access open source physics textbooks.
eMedicine: This project from WebMD is continuously updated and has articles and references on surgery, pediatrics and more.
MATH AND SCIENCE
FullBooks.com: This site has “thousands of full-text free books,” including a large amount of scientific essays and books.
Free online textbooks, lecture notes, tutorials and videos on mathematics: NYU links to several free resources for math students.
Online Mathematics Texts: Here you can find online textbooks likeElementary Linear Algebra and Complex Variables.
Science and Engineering Books for free download: These books range in topics from nanotechnology to compressible flow.
FreeScience.info: Find over 1800 math, engineering and science books here.
Free Tech Books: Computer programmers and computer science enthusiasts can find helpful books here.
CHILDREN’S BOOKS
byGosh: Find free illustrated children’s books and stories here.
Munseys: Munseys has nearly 2,000 children’s titles, plus books about religion, biographies and more.
International Children’s Digital Library: Find award-winning books and search by categories like age group, make believe books, true books or picture books.
Lookybook: Access children’s picture books here.
PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION
Bored.com: Bored.com has music ebooks, cooking ebooks, and over 150 philosophy titles and over 1,000 religion titles.
Ideology.us: Here you’ll find works by Rene Descartes, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, David Hume and others.
Free Books on Yoga, Religion and Philosophy: Recent uploads to this site include Practical Lessons in Yoga and Philosophy of Dreams.
The Sociology of Religion: Read this book by Max Weber, here.
Religion eBooks: Read books about the Bible, Christian books, and more.
PLAYS
ReadBookOnline.net: Here you can read plays by Chekhov, Thomas Hardy, Ben Jonson, Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe and others.
Plays: Read Pygmalion, Uncle Vanya or The Playboy of the Western World here.
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: MIT has made available all of Shakespeare’s comedies, tragedies, and histories.
Plays Online: This site catalogs “all the plays [they] know about that are available in full text versions online for free.”
ProPlay: This site has children’s plays, comedies, dramas and musicals.
MODERN FICTION, FANTASY AND ROMANCE
Public Bookshelf: Find romance novels, mysteries and more.
The Internet Book Database of Fiction: This forum features fantasy and graphic novels, anime, J.K. Rowling and more.
Free Online Novels: Here you can find Christian novels, fantasy and graphic novels, adventure books, horror books and more.
Foxglove: This British site has free novels, satire and short stories.
Baen Free Library: Find books by Scott Gier, Keith Laumer and others.
The Road to Romance: This website has books by Patricia Cornwell and other romance novelists.
Get Free Ebooks: This site’s largest collection includes fiction books.
John T. Cullen: Read short stories from John T. Cullen here.
SF and Fantasy Books Online: Books here include Arabian Nights,Aesop’s Fables and more.
Free Novels Online and Free Online Cyber-Books: This list contains mostly fantasy books.
FOREIGN LANGUAGE
Project Laurens Jz Coster: Find Dutch literature here.
ATHENA Textes Francais: Search by author’s name, French books, or books written by other authors but translated into French.
Liber Liber: Download Italian books here. Browse by author, title, or subject.
Biblioteca romaneasca: Find Romanian books on this site.
Bibliolteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes: Look up authors to find a catalog of their available works on this Spanish site.
KEIMENA: This page is entirely in Greek, but if you’re looking for modern Greek literature, this is the place to access books online.
Proyecto Cervantes: Texas A&M’s Proyecto Cervantes has cataloged Cervantes’ work online.
Corpus Scriptorum Latinorum: Access many Latin texts here.
Project Runeberg: Find Scandinavian literature online here.
Italian Women Writers: This site provides information about Italian women authors and features full-text titles too.
Biblioteca Valenciana: Register to use this database of Catalan and Valencian books.
Ketab Farsi: Access literature and publications in Farsi from this site.
Afghanistan Digital Library: Powered by NYU, the Afghanistan Digital Library has works published between 1870 and 1930.
CELT: CELT stands for “the Corpus of Electronic Texts” features important historical literature and documents.
Projekt Gutenberg-DE: This easy-to-use database of German language texts lets you search by genres and author.
HISTORY AND CULTURE
LibriVox: LibriVox has a good selection of historical fiction.
The Perseus Project: Tufts’ Perseus Digital Library features titles from Ancient Rome and Greece, published in English and original languages.
Access Genealogy: Find literature about Native American history, the Scotch-Irish immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries, and more.
Free History Books: This collection features U.S. history books, including works by Paul Jennings, Sarah Morgan Dawson, Josiah Quincy and others.
Most Popular History Books: Free titles include Seven Days and Seven Nights by Alexander Szegedy and Autobiography of a Female Slave by Martha G. Browne.
RARE BOOKS
Questia: Questia has 5,000 books available for free, including rare books and classics.
ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT
Books-On-Line: This large collection includes movie scripts, newer works, cookbooks and more.
Chest of Books: This site has a wide range of free books, including gardening and cooking books, home improvement books, craft and hobby books, art books and more.
Free e-Books: Find titles related to beauty and fashion, games, health, drama and more.
2020ok: Categories here include art, graphic design, performing arts, ethnic and national, careers, business and a lot more.
Free Art Books: Find artist books and art books in PDF format here.
Free Web design books: OnlineComputerBooks.com directs you to free web design books.
Free Music Books: Find sheet music, lyrics and books about music here.
Free Fashion Books: Costume and fashion books are linked to the Google Books page.
MYSTERY
MysteryNet: Read free short mystery stories on this site.
TopMystery.com: Read books by Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, GK Chesterton and other mystery writers here.
Mystery Books: Read books by Sue Grafton and others.
POETRY
The Literature Network: This site features forums, a copy of The King James Bible, and over 3,000 short stories and poems.
Poetry: This list includes “The Raven,” “O Captain! My Captain!” and “The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde.”
Poem Hunter: Find free poems, lyrics and quotations on this site.
Famous Poetry Online: Read limericks, love poetry, and poems by Robert Browning, Emily Dickinson, John Donne, Lord Byron and others.
Google Poetry: Google Books has a large selection of poetry, fromThe Canterbury Tales to Beowulf to Walt Whitman.
QuotesandPoem.com: Read poems by Maya Angelou, William Blake, Sylvia Plath and more.
CompleteClassics.com: Rudyard Kipling, Allen Ginsberg and Alfred Lord Tennyson are all featured here.
PinkPoem.com: On this site, you can download free poetry ebooks.
MISC
Banned Books: Here you can follow links of banned books to their full text online.
World eBook Library: This monstrous collection includes classics, encyclopedias, children’s books and a lot more.
DailyLit: DailyLit has everything from Moby Dick to the recent phenomenon, Skinny Bitch.
A Celebration of Women Writers: The University of Pennsylvania’s page for women writers includes Newbery winners.
Free Online Novels: These novels are fully online and range from romance to religious fiction to historical fiction.
ManyBooks.net: Download mysteries and other books for your iPhone or eBook reader here.
Authorama: Books here are pulled from Google Books and more. You’ll find history books, novels and more.
Prize-winning books online: Use this directory to connect to full-text copies of Newbery winners, Nobel Prize winners and Pulitzer winners.
Oooooooooo
Status report: In the "Adventures In Staying Housed" department...
Greetings to the Bluesky folks who've dropped by! Just to confirm what's going on:
We're hoping to sign the lease on our rented house early next week, but we have some rental arrears that we're very much hoping to be able to deal with in the short term. Some extra cash flow in the short term would be a really big help.
With that in mind, may I possibly point you at the following SF and fantasy ebook bundles at our ebook store? All are DRM-free and come with our lifetime replacement guarantee if you lose the files or your reading device, change platforms, or whatever. (With this caveat only: due to Brexit, we can no longer sell into the UK. Our profound apologies.) And once you buy a book from us, you own it. Period.
Our store's full inventory of the revised/edited Young Wizards young adult SF/fantasy novels, and the interstitial works that go with them, is here:
All the current works in the LGBTQ-centered Middle Kingdoms adult fantasy universe are here:
And if you're feeling expansive, our entire store inventory—36 ebooks at present—is here:
Finally: if you're all ebooked up at the moment, but you'd still like to be of assistance... after some public-demand style noodging we've finally installed a Ko-Fi. If you choose to go this route, please consider yourself thanked in advance for your thoughtfulness! We very much appreciate it.
Thanks, everybody! ❤ ...And we very much look forward to enlarging your TBR pile. :)
Openly - a photo-poetry book.
This is my first book ever in collaboration with Roshni Riar, a Vancouver based poet. All the poems have been translated to Punjabi by me.
Book can be purchased at -
https://www.guntajdeepsingh.com/shop/openly-the-book
Awesome, great to see this! Now that that's settled, who would you want to learn more about first?
@deadandgaysetanta @queen-of-hobgobblers @redkarmakai
@deadandgaysetanta @queen-of-hobgobblers
the thing about people who are like “i don’t like tolkien that much, fantasy should move on and be better” is that i AGREE that fantasy has all the wrong holdovers from lotr. but when you ask those people what contemporary fantasy they think is better, they’ll say shit like name of the wind or game of thrones, and i do not relate to that…..at all?? or even, like, brandon sanderson, whose books i REALLY like. but if you’re still naming mostly white straight male authors, what is it about tolkien you wanted to leave behind exactly???
no one:
me: here’s a flow chart of 41 lgbtq+ book recommendations, have fun!
disclaimer: this is a very non-comprehensive list since I’m only including books that I’ve read
i’m just… so tired of reading posts complaining about problems that only exist because people won’t read romance novels… it is a huge genre there are books about werewolf dukes, there are books about black revolutionary war soldiers, there are books about south asian doms who care about enthusiastic consent, there are books about shape-shifting cowboys who turn into bears, there are books about lady scientists learning how to trust that their boundaries will be respected, there are books about alien barbarian warriors, there are books about genies, there are books about women of color in victorian london, there are books about polyamorous earls, there are fake marriages and marriages of convenience and basically every fanfic trope that people lose it for exists as a book with original characters but some of the same people who complain about how books no longer satisfy them turn a blind eye to a whole genre because it never occurs to them to read a ~bodice-ripper~ when they could read romantic fanfic of a more respectable genre instead
Random book I read when I was 13
Well loved books.
I am in firm belief that books should be well loved. they should be written in, the spine should be cracked, the pages should be folded, things you find during the adventures you take squished between the pages. The more damage done to a book, the more memories and love are in it and there's something so beautiful about a well loved book. it tells a story. it's like a scrapbook of that time in your life whilst you've read it and when you pick it up again after a while of finishing it you can look back at the life you lived while the book traveled with you.
I've started packing my things to put into storage while i'm away at college and I picked up my very well loved copy of Red, White And Royal blue that I read last summer and was flipping through it. it had water damage from me accidently dropping it in my pool and writing in it and different keepsakes from things I did that summer. it has things that I wrote that i never spoke to another living soul, thoughts of love, insecurity that the ink on the pages written by the author reminded me of.
"I don't think I ever thought I would have proper true friends until gr. 12 and now with september almost here and half of my friends going to college it's definitely gone. I hope to feel this truly happy again soon" is messly written on page 201 in pink glitter pen. I wrote that at 18 about the loss of my huge friend group leaving while I stayed and went back to school for another year, needing a missing credit to get into college. I was already feeling like I failed having to go back for another year and losing my friends and reading about Henry, Alex, Nora, and June partying and Alex having that moment of realization of found family made me realise that I most likely won't have that comfort again. Looking back at it now being on the cusp of 20, that friend group was the farthest from friendship, I had just romaticided it. We had moments where it was friendship, in its purest form but overall it turned into something toxic and by the end most of us hated each other and we split into two groups, but the girl who left the scribbled note in the pool water damaged book didn't know that yet. She didn't know what came from that friend group. The friendships that truly blossomed from it, the trips and adventures she'd have with the few friends that made it out of that friend group. She got so, so much closer to her favorite people. She has never been happier then she has now starting the new chapter of her life in a big city, and having the best friends she could ever ask for.
The seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, the well loved book i've brought on my most recent adventures. Lies sand in the crevices of a few pages where I had been reading it on the beach with my friends this summer, the ones that made it out of my Red, White and royal blue adventures.
damaged books are well loved books,
well loved books keep memories,
and well loved books are scrapbooks.
