libraryenthusiast - Tumblr blog

[libraryenthusiast]

Valuable. When they yell at me, or roll their eyes at me; when they ground me for some minor thing that isn't even my fault, I remember that word and hang on to it. When I see another family having fun in a way we never do, I picture how Mom's lips must have moved to form those precious syllables.

I'm valuable.

If that's not love, what is it?

Masterminds by Gordon Korman / book 1, page 38

[libraryenthusiast]

RIP Hector Amani, you would've loved cheesy anime romcoms

[libraryenthusiast]

She's constantly nagging; he's constantly yelling, yet they're closer than close. There's this word I heard once: codependent. I'm not sure if it comes under honesty, harmony, contentment, or a little of all three.

I don't say anything, but when moving day comes, I'm going to beg Malik to take me with him— to college and beyond. I don't want to stay in this town forever, even though the outside world scares me. It's just too different and unknown.

Masterminds by Gordon Korman / book 1, page 36

finding it very funny that Hector talks about the word "codependent" and then immediately talks about how he wants to follow Malik to the ends of the earth

[libraryenthusiast]

the fact that I randomly picked up an issue of the Batman and Scooby Doo mysteries from my comic shop weeks ago (bc I love Batman and Scooby Doo) and then found out Matthew Cody wrote for it :')) woaw ... everythigb's connected ........

[libraryenthusiast]

having an experience

[libraryenthusiast]

me reading the Wikipedia summary for Superboy Prime: why is this so familiar. why does his story seem SO familiar.

Fowen Conners:

[libraryenthusiast]

goddamn there's a movie coming out called Orion and the Dark?? a collective RIP to any fellow Story Thieves fans who will get excited seeing post titles and expecting Kid Twilight content

[libraryenthusiast]

torchie grieg is such a good character concept. nicest sweetest boy you know keeps doing arson by accident. with his mind. he fidgets with dead lighters for fun but it's genuinely completely unrelated. he doesn't know why it happens for the first 12 years of his life. oh yeah and also he loves comics and folk music. how can you hate him? boy of all time.

[libraryenthusiast]

obsessed with mass market paperbacks. their pleasing rectangular proportions. how they fit badly in a hoodie pocket so you can drag them around everywhere with you like a temporary little buddy. the way they fit in your hand because they're MADE for human hands and not as bookshelf decoration. the way the pages feel when you riffle them gently with your thumb. How pristine and crisp they look when you get them and how creased and folded they look when you're done, even if you try to be nice to them. how that wear is okay, how that's correct actually, because they're made with the philosophy that books aren't meant to be PRETTY, they're meant to be read. that little ripple new ones get on the left side from where you hold them when you're reading, the way the ripple only goes as far as you've read, because u change stories by reading as they are changing you. how you can find thousands of these creased and folded and loved little dudes in every thrift store and used book shop and neighborhood library and you can instantly see the ones that someone carried around in a backpack for weeks or read to pieces or gave up on halfway through because they wear being read like fresh snow wears footprints. I love these poorly made, subpar little rectangles so much. truly the people's books.

[libraryenthusiast]

one day I'll draw Superman in shorts and cowboy boots. for u Mr. Cody.

[libraryenthusiast]

Superman vs. Batman

By Matthew Cody

Superman is cooler than Batman, and I’ll tell you why.

I practically grew up wearing a cape. Sometimes it was a real, honest-to-goodness cape with a Superman symbol drawn on the back in black magic marker. But as often as not it was a towel, or my jacket tied around my neck. A shirt would do in a pinch and my poor mother spent untold hours of my childhood trying to untie the knots of my shirtsleeves. Supes was my guy.

For those of you who need a quick primer - Superman is an alien, the last survivor of a dead planet. Despite a loving adoptive family, he’s still an outsider. He’s different and he’s treated badly because of it. As a kid, he’s picked on and pushed around because his parents won’t let him play sports. But what the other kids don’t know is that he’s so powerful that playing sports with them would actually put them in danger. Even as an adult, mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent is the office klutz who will never get the girl.

But what makes Superman really, well, super, is that he could score any number of touchdowns as easily as breathing. He could take off his nerdy glasses and get the girl. He could toss the bullies into the next cornfield, into the sun. But he chose not to. Superman rose above it all – up, up and away. That’s pretty potent stuff for a terminally-shy kid wearing his shirt tied around his neck.

I don’t know what came first, the awkwardness or the cape. Did I get picked on because I ran around my neighborhood dressed up like a superhero or did I dress up like a superhero because I was getting picked on? I’m not really sure that it matters because the bullying continued long after the cape went away.

I wasn’t bullied by one specific kid. Throughout elementary and middle school it was more a series of unfortunate encounters, each little shame a doomsday plot. Each conflict a cliffhanger in which the hero rarely triumphed. But I learned something over the years in spite of, or perhaps because of, it all.

We are all powerless at some point in our lives. We all feel alone and alien in a world that doesn’t seem to want us, surrounded by evil-doers determined to make our lives miserable.

But we grow. We change. And under a bright yellow sun we discover a strength that goes deeper than our muscles. We defy the mere gravity that presses down on us and we leap, we soar into the future. And when we get there, we look back on our villains not with a desire for vengeance, but with kindness, because we know we were stronger than they were. Always.

So that’s why, for me, it’s Superman. Because of his secret power. Because of the secret power we all share, if we choose to embrace it.

That, and the heat vision.

MATTHEW CODYdivides his time between writing and teaching college English in New York City. His latest novel, Super, will be available in September 2012; his previous works include Powerless and The Dead Gentleman. Originally from the midwest, Matthew lives with his wife and young son in Manhattan.

[libraryenthusiast]

ohmg why did no one tell me there was a Powerless short story for contest winners AND that its Clay focused??

[libraryenthusiast]

So turns out…..you guys are not gonna believe this…….but it turns out. Reading real books. Is good for you actually.

[libraryenthusiast]

omg i told a million times just bc the amulet glows a bright pulsating red every time i'm about to commit acts of great evil doesn't mean the amulet is *driving* me to evil. it just gets excited is all

[libraryenthusiast]

daniel during Super

[libraryenthusiast]

I think it’s time for us to all collectively return to the library. Get a card, go to a club meeting, volunteer on an off day, rent some equipment. You don’t even have to read a book. But since the digital world is rapidly becoming a subscription-only hellscape requiring a criminal amount of private personal information to use even CASUALLY, the library has become our last safe haven to just exist with information present and not have our labour or information exploited for money.

[libraryenthusiast]

"He was reaching for more when he saw something moving in the moonlight just outside his window. Michael’s house was three stories tall, and his room was on the top floor. An oak tree grew outside his window, and the uppermost branches reached almost, but not quite, to the window. There, sitting in the tree, was Mollie. She was wearing a Windbreaker with the hood up, but he could still see her face. She looked upset, and she might even have been crying, but it was hard to see in the dark. As he watched, she slowly lifted from the branches of the giant oak until she was no longer in the tree but above it, several feet above the highest branches. And she was waving goodbye.

At that moment a cloud must have passed in front of the moon because the yard was suddenly covered in shadow, and Michael couldn’t make out anything. He was so shocked that he couldn’t even speak. He just stood there, frozen, waiting for the cloud to pass. When it did, Mollie was gone. All that was left was the old oak, swaying in the breeze."

Powerless by Matthew Cody // I wait for you by Alex G.