ilikebigbooks-and-icannotlie - Tumblr blog

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books made of magic, fairytales, poems and love

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unsung benefit i think a lot of ppl are sleeping on with using the public library is that i think its a great replacement for the dopamine hit some ppl get from online shopping. it kind of fills that niche of reserving something that you then get to anticipate the arrival of and enjoy when it arrives, but without like, the waste and the money.

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me writing the worst paragraph of my life knowing that a sexier, more hydrated version of me will fix it later

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Trying to do research for writing is so dumb I’m literally on the Wikipedia page for rabbit

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@shadesofmagicnet essen tasch match one: get to know the members

there’s dull london, kell london, creepy london, and dead london. see? i’m a fast learner.

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The “Abbott Elementary” Cast Answers Burning Questions | IMDb

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I got my commission back from @windbyfire for my percabeth fic all of you, all of me (intertwined) and I am YELLING it’s so prettyyyyyy 😭

Sometimes u just accidentally make out with that hot coworker you are desperate to hate in a closet at a Halloween party, you can’t be faulted for that, it happens to everyone

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I've rarely seen a more validating sentence in my entire life.

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there's no greater betrayal than finally starting to read a book you've had sitting for months on your shelf or your desk or your nightstand and then finding out it's bad. like. i gave you a fucking home.

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patience is such a compelling dynamic in relationships sorryyy it’s the peak of romance to me

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Fantasy books written by women are often assumed to be young adult, even when those books are written for adults, marketed to adults, and published by adult SFF imprints. And this happens even more frequently to women of color.

This topic’s an ongoing conversation on book Twitter, and I thought it might be worth sharing with Tumblr. And by “ongoing,” I mean that people have been talking about this for years. Last year, there was a big blow up when the author R.F. Kuang said publicly that her book The Poppy War isn’t young adult and that she wished people would stop calling it such. If you’ve read The Poppy War, then you’ll know it’s grimdark fantasy along lines of Game of Thrones… and yet people constantly refer to The Poppy War as young adult – which is one of its popular shelves on Goodreads. To be fair, more people have shelved it as “adult,” but why is anyone shelving it as “young adult” in the first place? Game of Thrones is not at all treated this way…

Rebecca Roanhorse’s book Trail of  Lightning, an urban fantasy with a Dinétah (Navajo) protagonist has “young adult” as its fifth most popular Goodreads shelf. The novel is adult and published by Saga, an adult SFF imprint. 

S.A. Chakraborty’s adult fantasy novel City of Brass has “young adult” as its fourth most popular Goodreads shelf. 

Tasha Suri’s Empire of Sand, an adult fantasy in a world based on Mughal India, has about equal numbers of people shelving it as “adult” or “young adult.” 

Book Riot wrote an article on this, although they didn’t address how the problem intersects with race. I also did a Twitter thread a while back where I cited these examples and some more as well. 

The topic of diversity in adult SFF is important to me, partly because we need to stop mislabeling the women of color who write it, and also because there’s a lot there that isn’t acknowledged! Besides, sometimes it’s good to see that your stories don’t just end the moment you leave high school and that adults can still have vibrant and interesting futures worth reading about. I feel like this is especially important with queer rep, for a number of reasons. 

Other books and authors in the tweets I screenshot include:

Witchmark by C.L. Polk

A Ruin of Shadows by L.D. Lewis

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

The Day Before by Liana Brooks

A Phoenix First Must Burn edited by Patrice Caldwell

Shri, a book blogger at Sun and Chai

Vanessa, a writer and blogger at The Wolf and Books

TLDR: Women who write adult fantasy, especially women of color, are presumed to be writing young adult, which is problematic in that it internalizes diversity, dismisses the need and presence of diversity in adult fantasy, and plays into sexist assumptions of women writers. 

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there are so many books in this beautiful world. many of them bad

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Ursula K. Le Guin, “Author’s Note” from The Left Hand of Darkness

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me: yeah I'm pretty close to finishing this fic

the fic:

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PACING IS ABOUT LOAD BEARING WALLS.

*staples violently to my own forehead*

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another reminder to stop buying/watching/reading anything JK Rowling associated