overthegardenwirtt - Tumblr blog

[overthegardenwirtt]

[overthegardenwirtt]

good books (I’m a kindle girlie though)

[overthegardenwirtt]

This Winter, stay safe!! remember:

- it is not worth it to answer the wrong questions

- if you turn your back on Mishnory you are still on the Mishnory road

- light is the left hand of darkness, darkness the right hand of light

[overthegardenwirtt]

books

there are a few books I've read recently, like in the last year, that no one ever talks about. they're not the booktok or tumblr darlings so it's hard to find other people who are interested in them. anyway most of these are at least subtextually queer and written prior to 1970, and those vintage queer vibes go so fucking hard. like once you read pre-1970s queer lit it's really hard to read a modern LGBT romance.

Another Country by James Baldwin. James Baldwin was an actual icon. He lived between New York City and Paris and wrote profoundly human books about race, gender, and sexuality while also being an American civil rights activist and orator. Another Country is Baldwin's third novel, published in 1962. It follows a group of artists in Greenwich Village and their various relationships with one another. It looks at racism, Black masculinity, interracial relationships, homosexuality, and bisexuality, and it explores all of these societal issues through the microcosms of different romantic and sexual relationships between the characters. Baldwin's writing is like Jazz. It is rhythmic, smooth, and breathtaking. If you liked Giovanni's room, read this. It is much more nuanced in its exploration of both race and sexuality.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin. Le Guin's mind is revolutionary. She is everything jk r*wling is credited for, except far better as her most famous books center people of color and androgynous people. She published the first The Earthsea Quartet, a series about a boy wizard at a wizarding school, in 1964 and was never credited as inspiration by r*wling. The Left Hand of Darkness was published in 1969 and won both the Hugo and the Nebula that year. The book follows a human who visits a planet where he finds that its inhabitants are all completely androgynous for the majority of their lives. It is a beautiful exploration of love, trust, and the ability to see past societal conventions to truly love and understand other people.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. Shirley Jackson is perhaps best known for her short story The Lottery, or unfortunately for the incredibly unfaithful Netflix TV adaptation of this novel. Published in 1959, The Haunting of Hill House follows Eleanor Vance, a woman in her early 30s who has about the maturity of a 19-year-old, as she is recruited along with a group of others to live at the mysterious Hill House. The book is essentially psychological horror and follows Eleanor as she is driven mad by her own feelings of otherness and isolation from the world. There is also some incredibly lesbian subtext in the novel between the two female main characters which adds really interesting layers to Eleanor's feelings of otherness. It's a quick and compelling read and gives interesting insight into the lives of two women in the late 1950s who cannot adhere to the standards of womanhood set for them in society.

[overthegardenwirtt]

favorite character from any media BUT it has to be a woman. in the tags now go (pls talk to me about your favorite fictional women pls pls pls pls)

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i relate to vivaldo in that i cannot finish writing to save my life and i live in my own little world of denial. also the bisexuality.

[overthegardenwirtt]

not to keep talking about another country but it was so cinematic i wasnt reading it i was watching it and i wish i could stay with it longer…….. what happened to vivaldo and eric and cass and ida :( i felt like it all happened to me. 

[overthegardenwirtt]

Lestat, Louis, and Claudia? More like Eric, Vivaldo, and Ida

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i know george orwell would’ve probably fainted at the sight of two men kissing but he somehow?? managed to write the most homoerotic relationship in classical 20th century literature. whatever is going on in part 3 of this book isn’t…straight. iykyk.

[overthegardenwirtt]

seen a lot of these with your favorites, but reblog with the CURRENT book you are reading, show you are streaming, the last movie you watched, and any game/puzzle/crafts you’re working on 

[overthegardenwirtt]

gotta be one of my favorite genders

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but i'm a cheerleader by elijah kauffman, oil on canvas, 2022, 20 x 16 inches

[overthegardenwirtt]

clea duvall could play billy loomis but skeet ulrich could not play graham eaton

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sexiest height for a man is 5'6. sexiest height for a woman is 6'0. this is true

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let’s flip the game besties tell me in the tags the WORST books you read this year

[overthegardenwirtt]

Asteroid city is inaccessible and unintelligible and vague and wandering and a series of vignettes spliced together to give the suggestion of a larger story that’s not actually complete with incomprehensible characters grappling with grief and isolation accompanied by a strange use of stop motion to YOU. I get it though

[overthegardenwirtt]

Nonono you don't understand it's about knowing the unknowable and it's about grief and the processing of said grief and it's about love and it's about family and it's about feeling like an alien but finding comfort with others like you and it's about searching for the meaning in a meaningless world and and and-