#Re-readable Classics

[lucifermurdock]

Re-Read Spiral: The 1 Book That Broke Me Open

Daily writing promptWhat book could you read over and over again?View all responses The One Book I Could Re-Read on Loop: Angels & Demons (a.k.a. My Origin Story) Some people rewatch Friends.Some keep going back to DDLJ.Me? I re-read Angels & Demons.Dan Brown’s masala blockbuster in book form—where the Vatican meets Vendetta and symbology becomes sexier than any Netflix plot twist. 📖 The Book…

[rachaelthemes]

Ocular — Version 3

Preview // User Guide // More Info & Install

your favorite sidebar theme just got an upgrade, babeyyy

I went to update Ocular to make it NPF post-compliant and then my hand slipped and I redesigned the whole thing lmao. here's a brief update about Ocular 3; if you're looking for a full list of changes between versions 2 and 3, click the "Read More" below)

Ocular comes with the following features:

Colors: easily change the color scheme of your sidebar and posts using any colors you want

Post sizes: 400px, 500px, 540px, 600px, 700px

Sidebar: can be on the left, right, or above the posts. pick from a list of sidebar sizes, header image heights, and avatar shapes

Fonts: 20 different fonts, sizes 13px to 18px

Background: solid, gradient, full-size image or repeating image

Links: choose either regular navigation or drop-down navigation. unlimited custom links (visit the help desk FAQ for a tutorial) and ability to rename home, ask, submit, and archive links

Endless scroll, custom ask box text, Tumblr's full-width controls and search bar, optional header, avatar, and favicon images

if you already have Ocular installed, version 3 should be coming at you as soon as the update passes the theme garden. if you installed this theme with GitHub, you'll have to re-install manually.

now let's get to the fun stuff. what's new in version 3?

wow, do I have some updates for you!

1. goodbye color schemes, hello post background and text colors

you can now directly control the color of the posts rather than relying on color schemes to do it. want your posts to be a very specific shade of navy? all yours, buddy. go wild (make sure it's readable tho)

2. hello, color schemes! wait I thought we got rid of that guy

a lot of the color schemes I made became redundant now that the new post background/text color options exist. if you were married to the old color schemes, all of them can be recreated using those options. so the new color scheme options are as follows:

"My colors" — uses the colors you picked for post background/text

"Light preset" and "dark preset" — sets the posts to white with black text, or off-black with white text

"Translucent" — uses the colors you choose for post background/text, but makes the post backgrounds semi-transparent. there are NINE different translucent color schemes, ranging from 90% (only slightly see-through) to 10% (VERY see through)

3. navigation dropdown option

you can either use the sidebar links like they were before, or you can turn them into a cute little dropdown (helpful if you have lots of links or links with long titles!) you can enable this using the "use dropdown navigation" setting. you can also customize the label for the dropdown using the "dropdown menu label" setting. for instance, the dropdown on my blog currently says "oooh you wanna click me"

4. RIP google fonts I always hated your load times

decided to stop using Google Fonts and instead I'm providing the font files directly in the code. this will help speed up load times drastically when using custom fonts, plus I don't have to use Google. win-win! there's quite a bit of coverage overlap with the old fonts, but some of them that were too similar to each other got the ax. I also added all of the system fonts as options (hit classics like Arial, Georgia, and Comic Sans MS are now available TO YOU!)

5. more layout, sizing, and spacing options

the sidebar used to be either on the center-left, center-right, or above the posts; now it can go in the top-left or top-right! you can now control the border radius on the posts and sidebar. the header height, sidebar width, and post spacing all have additional options.

6. some options have been renamed for additional clarity

"background color 1" -> "background color"

"background color 2" -> "gradient background color"

"background" -> "background style"

"font override" -> "use body font everywhere"

"title" -> "sidebar title"

"description" -> "sidebar description"

"ask box text" -> "custom HTML above ask box"

7. removed some options

you win some, you lose some. I removed the uppercase sidebar links, theme credit, and inline media spacing options, mostly for redundancy reasons or because they produced unclear results.

8. as previously stated, now NPF-compliant

Ocular was ALMOST compliant with Tumblr's new post format, but had a few tweaks that needed to be ironed out. they're now ironed.

9: now user-friendly right out of the box

I updated the default color and content options, so new users installing this theme will have a much easier time using and customizing it immediately. no more ugly ass green background!

10. and finally, new JS

I had to rewrite some of the javascript for this theme, which turned into me rewriting ALL of the javascript. doing so meant that I could eliminate dependencies on third-party JS libraries and run the whole thing on plain JS. that should improve load times!!

bonus: custom CSS can do some nifty stuff now

want to change the size of your avatar? you can do that now! just do this to your Advanced > Add custom CSS section

super helpful if you're using the Avatar shape: Uncropped setting and you need your image to be a specific size (like a pixelated GIF)

for more info, check out the Ocular user guide. thanks for reading my updates!! hope you all have a fantastic start to your 2024 ❤️

[tigerballoons]

🪻 March books 🪻

Somehow I've managed to read all these AND get through a load of knitting/watching things. I am unstoppable.

🔹A Power Unbound - 5⭐

An excellent end to the series!

🔹 Piranesi - 4⭐

I loved the mystery in this, and the House sounds so restful. Very much worth a re-read.

🔹 The Island of Extraordinary Captives - 4⭐

Everyone has heard of the American internment of Japanese people during WW2 but apparently people don't know the UK did the exact same thing. This book examines the mass incarceration of Germans which took place in 1940 purely on the basis of their nationality, never mind that most were refugees from the Nazis. Parkin focuses on one particular internment camp which had a high proportion of artists and academics, and the impacts of this period of imprisonment. A cautionary tale of how governments make decisions in panic and then don't walk it back in order to save face.

🔹 The Deerslayer - 3⭐

The latest Æsthetique™️ book. Dear US, sorry about your classic literature, this star rating is rounded up. The plot is actually quite readable and once again that isn't the problem. I'm very impressed that it manages to be wildly racist towards Native Americans while also mostly viewing them positively. Fascinating insight into the 1840s mind. Would not recommend.

[cozypunkprints]

2024 reading recap

(Yes I know we’re 3 months into 2025 leave me alone)

I think I’m going to start blogging about the books I read as a way to keep myself accountable to actually read more. I’ve unfortunately fallen victim to That Darn Phone in recent years. The middle schooler who read a stack of fantasy novels a week would be ashamed of me.

In 2024 I read 29 books, including re-reads.

I did a lot of re-reading this year. 16, or 55% of the books I read in 2024 were re-reads. Going to try to read more new-to-me books in 2025.

In 2024 I read 9 Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett, or 29% of my total books, 6 of which were re-reads.

I also re-read 4 Murderbot novels by Martha Wells and read the new one twice, and re-read all three The Locked Tomb books by Tamsyn Muir.

2 of the books I read in 2024 were nonfiction (a measly 7%) and one was a graphic novel. All the rest were fiction novels. Going forward, I should really read more non-fiction.

Favorites from 2024:

Piranesi by Susanna Clark (re-read)

I check this out every summer break from my local library. One of my favorite books of all time. Equal parts haunting and comforting, I absolutely devour it every time I read it. It feels deeply reductive to describe it as dark academia, as it’s so much more than that, but I guess it’s dark academia?

Hail Mary by Andy Weir (re-read)

This and the Martian are two of my favorite sci-fi novels. I hear we’re getting puppet practical effects Rocky in the movie and I’m tentatively excited.

The Great Transition by Nick Fuller Googins

A fast paced and tense yet tender novel about a world post climate-disaster and post hard-won recovery. This novel sort of subverts the classic “teenagers save the world” story by painting a searing portrait of what saving the world costs, as well as its aftermath. The novel cuts back and forth between Emi Vargas, born post climate-crisis into what seems like a utopia, albeit an imperfect one, and her parents experiences and sacrifices during the great transition. When the past collides with the present, Emi’s family is in danger of being torn apart. A portrait of generational trauma, enormous prices, and a world that will never truly be fixed but is still worth fighting for. Anyone who likes solar-punk, eco-punk, or is just in need of some hope that doesn’t feel like toxic positivity should read this.

Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg

Classic, beautiful, sad queer novel about butch identity and resilience. What else is there to say that hasn’t been said far better by someone else? Everyone queer should read this novel, especially lesbians. Next year: more queer non-fiction and more books by non-white lesbians.

The Knowledge Gap by Natalie Wexler

One of the non-fiction books I read this year. It’s about the literacy problem in America, and makes a case for high-content curriculum as a solution. An interesting look at education inequality and the flaws of American public schools. I found it really validating for a lot of the things I either experienced in public school or saw my sibling experience. A lot of it is sort of insider-baseball-y literacy theory (I only picked it up because my mother, a dyslexia tutor, had it lying around.) However I think that made it a good reminder of just how complicated literally everything is. Behind every system you can think of is a whole world of theory and practice and people who have put their whole lives into making this one part of society work. In a time when our public institutions are under attack, that’s a very important reminder. It’s a fairly quick and readable read and quite interesting.

Against the Grain: a deep history of the earliest states by James C Scott

The other non-fiction book I read. Against the grain is about new evidence regarding the rise of agriculture and the accompanying rise of inequality and the nation state. While dry at times, it makes a pretty good argument agains the idea of oppression and inequality as natural and inevitable states of humanity. This is the only book on this list that I read for a class.

Going Postal by Terry Pratchett

This was my favorite discworld novel of the year. I had read part of it when I first got into Pratchett and was too young to really click with it. This time I got the hype. Holy shit did I get the hype. This is both a very fun and humorous adventure and a sincere manifesto against corporate greed and for public services, in the form of a fantasy world’s defunct post office. Also did anyone else catch that the greedy con-man idiot has his office in Tump Tower? Seriously can’t recommend this one enough, and you should be able to get into it without reading any other disc world.

Honorable mentions:

Nimona by ND Stevenson

The Empress of Salt and Fortune and When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo (seriously so lovely and super quick reads)

Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer

Previously mentioned Pratchett, Wells, and Muir. I wouldn’t have re-read them if they didn’t absolutely slap.

Wasn’t sure about:

Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino

Definitely beautifully written at times, though not the type of highbrow literary-fiction poetry-prose I usually go in for. It’s a story about a girl who’s sent to earth by aliens to report back. On the one hand, it’s definitely doing “autistic/queer coded character is an alien/robot” very hard. On the other hand it seems very self aware and deliberate about that? As an autistic who felt like an alien, the portrait it painted of profound loneliness and isolation felt very real to me. Maybe a little too real, and it wasn’t necessarily a hopeful story. I really really wasn’t sure how to feel about the ending. Overall worth reading and quite memorable, but it could definitely be triggering for some people, so be careful. I’m sure there’s a list of trigger warnings out there somewhere, and if not, message me and I’ll do my best.

Didn’t love:

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armsfield

I see this one get so much hype, and it has every element and theme that should have made it a hit for me. And yet, it just didn’t speak to me. There were definitely elements that were memorable and it’s not a bad book by any means, but the main character and her relationship to her wife just didn’t compel me. I think if we’d spent more time with Leah pre-eldritch horror I’d have been more invested. Idk.

Anyway, apologies for the crazy long post. This probably isn’t interesting to anyone except me but tumblr is kind of the social-media-as-diary website so who cares.

Going forward I’m going to review books as I read them. If you’ve read any of these and want to chat/discuss I’m very open to that, especially ones that don’t have a big fandom on tumblr.

[edenspoem]

HI queen! I just want to start out by saying you are one of my fav fic writers ever!!!! Like top 2 omg your style is so distinct and unique to me and I really want to start writing fics. I was wondering if you had any tips for beginner writers?

first off, thank you so much! second off, i have given lots of writing tips in the past, but as someone who's still learning and experimenting here and there, i think i've picked up more as i've gone on. get ready for a yapfest.

there are some that stay true, such as simplicity over complexity. i struggle trying to dilute all the thoughts in my head into a simple, readable form that doesn't have specific jargon or 20 complex words in one paragraph, but it's gotten visibly better. if you look at my earliest work vs my newest work, there is a big difference. most classic literature (like pride and prejudice, little women, etc.) (save for the illiad & odyssey: those are some ancient books.. with ancient words..) isn't so complicated. sure, the writing is still quite matured, but it's also paced and humble. just write what comes to mind; don't pick at it's potential "flaws". the truest writing is flawed and real, not processed and automated (for the love of all good, never use a.i. bad for the environment, bad for the creative world.)

read books, enrich yourself in movies, trace the ups and downs of stories. inspiration doesn't hurt. starting with cliche tropes is not "boring" at all. they're building blocks. i've found the more overdone tropes, with my own twists and turns woven through, to be the most enjoyable. infiltration (my best fic yet, imo. not even sure nvfe topped it.. it flopped really) was quite literally pulled from the actual tlou2 plot and just.. twisted. thrown for a loop. it filled in a blank. and i feel like that plot, for apocalypse-centered stories, is quite common. angry person seeking revenge finds random person in the wrong place at the wrong time and interrogates them. like omg do yourself some literary justice and write those cheesy and cliche stories. not everything has to be newfangled and odd all the time. it can be, but if it tortures you to come up with ideas, then it's better to take a step back.

on another note, write about the things close to home. i refer to interests, real life, experiences, nostalgia, etc. don't force yourself to write others experiences or others requests. most collect dust in my inbox because they just don't quite fit in the frame of my mind. and when i do end up writing them, i take forever because i have no clue where to begin or how to end. i get so giddy thinking about equestrian!ellie because i've been a horse girl since the age of like.. five. it really hits home. i just never have the time to because of 1. work or 2. pressuring myself to write plots that i'm just so.. done with. confused about. and then they never get finished! i'm literally about to start romanticizing my job because writing about it would be so fun. it's weird. and specific. but also funny.

take the way songs, memories, movies, games, etc. make you feel and turn them into fics. not necessarily what they remind you of, but just that.. feeling you get. playing skyrim gets me all nostalgic and adventurous and like i need to be looking out a window longingly.. and then i encapsulate that feeling and baboom thief!ellie or something. if it makes you feel good, (Not Sexually) then writing about it will probably be a breeze. if it makes you feel nothing, don't! it just won't hit as good. nostalgia is literally so powerful.

if you want genuine tips, like when it gets down to the nitty gritty and grammar.. accuracy.. writing-level stuff, then here's some quick do's and do NOTs (only if it matters to you): use simple epithets, don't be afraid to re-use those epithets, shorten your dialogue tags/try not to cram too many actions into one, show emotion tell feelings (read this here), it's okay to re-use words, try to keep paragraphs a maximum of 6 or so sentences; spacing your writing out is so important. (story-wise and just because big paragraphs can be genuinely impossible to read). remember your pov (reader is the main pov, they feel things, but notice others reactions. unless you're writing 3rd person, which if you're using "you" and not "i" or "they", it's 2nd person, the reader doesn't know what xxx is feeling. they can assume or estimate based on whatever xxx is doing. you also can't exactly write "your cheeks turned red" because, well, that's exclusive, but also because that's superficial. if you're blushing, you can tell by 1. a sear in your cheeks or 2. someone else pointing it out) this is more nitpicky, but if you want to get serious with writing realistically, remembering your pov is important. otherwise i don't think most people care. but unfortunately i'm a perfectionist and need it to survive. lastly, sometimes, one sentence can describe an entire paragraph. you don't always need the details.

this is all i can think of.. been in and out of a writing slump but i'm slowly picking myself back up by reading. these are just my personal tips. just try to have fun because at the end of the day: it's fanfiction. hope this helps!

[wishcamper]

AITF Part IV: The Nestapocalypse

Pre reqs: PART I | PART II | PART III

Creds: licensed mental health profesh, person with a family

Hello and welcome back to our deep dive on ACOTAR and family systems theory!

Last time we talked about how Feyre destabilized, and then re-stabilized the IC family system. Her addition revealed the weak points in the system, particularly of Mor as the primary source of anxiety. So let’s look at what happens to the system, and Mor in particular, once Elain and Nesta join, with Lucien peripherally.

Mor, you good? You’re looking a little lonely there.

So I had to eliminate some relationships to make it readable, but there have been some major changes structurally that I want to highlight:

Feyre and Rhys introduced a romantic alliance into the system. Cassian and Nesta later reinforce this. And Azriel is clearly tryin, even if he’s not having success. This is a complete turn from the original systems where, not only were there no romantic relationships, but via the buffer romance in the family was actively discouraged.

The center of anxiety has shifted to Rhys. We see him make choices for others to soothe that anxiety CONstantly throughout ACOFAS and ACOSF. It’s pretty much his primary strategy. And that’s because..

Rhys has real challenges to his power. Nesta doesn’t want or need anything from him, yet has influence on her sisters and Cassian. Nesta refuses to follow the family rules and participate in the NFEP, undermining Rhys’ ability to keep the system stable. Until they cut her off financially and give her the “intervention”, he has no leverage against her because enough other people ultimately want her in.

Waaaayyyy less energy and resources are being devoted to Mor, and her feelings matter much less in family decisions and functioning. 

It’s interesting because even though Mor is no longer the center of the family in terms of relationships, I think she has the most to lose from instability in the system. Everyone else has a stronger relationship than the one they have with her. Yet she needs each one of them to:

Rhys - establish her relevance in the system, provide structure and enforce the rules, and keep the buffer drama from spilling over

Cassian - protect her from connecting with Azriel’s feelings and diffuse her anxiety

Azriel - provide a reason for her to be cagey about her love life/justify keeping her sexuality a secret

Feyre - ensure her relevance to Rhys / secure her position and value

Elain - less their relationship, more that there’s a blanket family rule of “protect Elain”

I say this not as a call out, but to show that Nesta is the only person Mor can attack without jeopardizing her position and reasonably assume the others will let her. Nesta in ACOFAS and ACOSF is a classic scapegoat as the person with the least apparent power and most obvious and stigmatized issues. She’s an easy target, especially for someone like Mor, who is well-versed in the courtier’s game and can appear to be innocent while actually being quite malicious (see: lingerie-gate).

This is where we come back to the topic of alliances. I always associate that term with Survivor, which is actually a really good representation of how alliances function in families in three main ways:

Alliances are always mutually beneficial.

Alliance can be used to leverage power.

Alliances can be broken or changed if one person can get their needs met in a better/easier way.

Alliances can be temporary and utilitarian (I’ll give you a dollar if you don’t tell mom I hit you) or long-standing and an integral part of the system (parents do not contradict each other on rules in front of the kids, and work those disputes out in private to maintain consistency).

The Mor/Cassian alliance fits all these qualities exactly. Cassian gets relief from his guilt and can suppress conflict before it starts, and he also gets someone to fuss over which tbh it seems like he enjoys. Mor gets protection from Azriel’s feelings for her, doesn’t have to face the conflict she generates, and gets fussed over which she also seems to enjoy. And when Cassian starts getting those needs met by Nesta instead, with more perks and fewer costs, he leaves Mor behind and both their roles fundamentally shift.

In that way, Nesta and Cassian’s relationship is really the thing that changes the family permanently, in my opinion. I think if Nesta had just been pushed out, or at least neutralized, they could’ve been fine for a while longer. But because he wants her there, and she refuses to follow the rules, the family has to figure out how to accommodate her. The Nes/Cass alliance is crazy powerful when you break it down.

Nesta has power in the purest sense, as in she is probably magically stronger than anyone else in the Night Court, especially considering Amren’s lost her powers. So at the end of the day, if she got her shit together she could tear it all down. She’s could really leverage the idea that no one should take her temperance for granted. She doesn’t do this and I think that’s because she’s a good person. She doesn’t desire power, which weirdly makes her very suited to have it. She also has power in an influence sense, in that at least her sisters and Cassian are invested in having a good relationship with her which means, by extension, Rhys and Mor have to get on board.

(I realize I haven’t mentioned Azriel very much - he’s the former scapegoat, and never had much power in the first place. I wonder if that’s why he seems to have a soft spot for Nesta, like there’s a sense of solidarity. So his opinions and actions don’t really affect the system unless he wants to start rebelling. Which I think we’ll eventually see him do since he doesn’t have as much investment in keeping the family together after his brothers pair off and Rhys pulls rank.)

Cassian’s power is more passive in this system, in that he causes change when he STOPS doing things, mostly peacemaking behaviors. He absorbs a lot of anxiety in the system, along with Az, and exerts influence through physical and emotional absence. Because of this power, when he starts investing more time and attention in Nesta, Mor reacts by retaliating toward NESTA, who she sees as the more vulnerable/lower status one even though Cassian is 100% initiating the change. Lingerie-gate. “She belongs in the Hewn City”. Her protectiveness of Cass. The call’s coming from inside the house, my love.

As a sidebar, I find this such an interesting dynamic in that is sort of an accidental subversion of the typical tropes. Magical young women conquers the world by NOT using her powers. Bad ass fighting dude is more powerful when he chooses not to act. Such a fascinating theme. Anyway.

We know systems want to stay in balance, so members will do things to rebalance them. Cassian and Nesta are going to be together? Okay, then she has to be acceptable by the family standards and fall in line with the rules. We see this blatantly in the way the IC “intervenes” when Nesta is “embarrassing” them. And there is a layer of the backlash to this shift this that is definitely Mor feeling threatened by Nesta taking her place in the alliance. But what’s interesting to me is that there’s another layer in what she says TO Cassian when Nesta isn’t even around, a passive aggressive way of expressing her disapproval that he’s abandoned her and what she sees as his role.

So when they’re very clearly going to be together, and the mating bond is both obvious and powerful given the rules of their culture and their own system, it forces a schism. On one side is Rhys, Mor, and Amren. On the other is Nesta, Cassian, and Azriel. Feyre straddles the middle, and Elain uses absence to avoid taking sides.

This is actually fairly normal in families as kids grow up and begin families of their own. Shifting priorities change how decisions are made individually and as a group, and where members go to get their needs met. If people are able to accept their changing roles, things can go well - parents transition to being grandparents, siblings can support each other without competing for resources, adult children can establish their own family rules that are in line with their values. When it goes poorly, or when people cling to their rules and roles too rigidly, there can be a lot of conflict.

It’s the great contradiction of the family system that the best way to achieve equilibrium is by accepting that shifting is constant, inevitable, and important. It’s like standing on one foot, that even when you feel stable there are tiny shifts happening, and when you focus too hard on staying upright you almost always fall over. But when you treat the little shifts as normal, you realize that balancing is a process in motion, and looking ahead keeps things steadier than looking down.

Looking at this in a zoomed out way is helpful, but I also want to remember that while these are characters, the dynamics they play out are very real and can be very damaging. We naturally internalize the strategies and structures of our family system. I see this over and over again in my office, the ways people have been conditioned to believe they are defective, broken, inadequate, hopeless. In my personal life, I’ve been contending recently with a lot of trauma from my family that was covert, normalized, and well-hidden but which left me convinced that I was so repulsive, that my inner world was so ugly that anyone I showed it to would immediately leave. Some days it feels like it’s permanently damaged my brain. I know that’s not true, both on a literature level and a personal belief level, but it can be hard to remember and god does it still hurt. I still fear breaking the rules even though I’m the only one enforcing them now.

Okay I’m gonna stop here. This one is really rambling so I hope you got something out of it lol. Life is hard and weird right now, so I hope you’ll excuse if it’s not my usual standard. Thanks for reading <3

[kingarthurflourofficial]

december books

i already know i'm about to be missing some since december has simultaneously lasted 800 years and also 8 minutes but here we go!

william again

william the fourth

cue for treason 4/5 (what an absolutely delightful book! thank you darling for recommending it to me! reminded me strongly of emeralds for the king, another of my childhood faves)

william the outlaw

still william

william the rebel 3.5/5 (docked just a Little on all these due to the Product Of Their Times of it all)

Noel Streatfeild's Christmas Stories 4/5 (THE PANTOMIME GOOSE)

dreadful 3.5 (a solid 'modern' fantasy! a Little rough around some edges, but also didn't shy away from the hard implications of being an Evil Wizard while still keeping the tone on the lighter side)

one christmas morning 2.5 (found this one frustrating. the kind of thing that would have been quite good as a novella but was just too long and irritating as a full length book. take a leaf out of Dickens' book and notice how short he kept a christmas carol!)

anne of windy poplars 5/5 (sometimes classics are classics for a reason, it turns out! i missed anne the past few years and was glad to visit with her again)

five red herrings 5/5 (i love a deliberately unlovable book about timetables! what can i say!)

horrible history's guide to oxford 4/5 (thank you for not pandering to children horrible histories writers and also for genuinely interesting facts about oxford!)

i am the walrus 4/5 (unexpectedly poignant if silly middle grade book picked up on a whim!)

Super-infinite : the transformations of John Donne 5/5 (VALAR i love it when you can tell someone has eaten slept and breathed a subject for minimum five years! god bless you katherine rundell! absolutely fascinating and you can see why peter wimsey was Obsessed)

the cleaner 2/5 (once again! interesting premise! love the idea of a worker being so subsumed by the clients she cleans for that they are the only thing real to her and she sees herself as a benevolent god to them! the actual execution was disappointing and i think would have been served by the occasional outsider POV)

mrs harris goes to paris 5/5 (watched the movie on the plane and NO SURPRISE the book is SO much better. why do movie adaptations always have to bring romance into it! it's not ABOUT that!)

mrs harris goes to new york 4/5 (thoroughly enjoyable if a little higher stakes than the first! also loved the author's rejection of the premise that everything must hold some meaning, even as the world's no. 1 meaning-assigner)

exit strategy 5/5 (i miss murderbot all the time. re-reading any one of these books is an exercise in appreciating showing not telling and also in being a person)

our hideous progeny 3/5 (thoroughly readable, not to damn it with faint praise. it actually did something most books of the type are too cowardly to do - e.g., let the main character leave her awful husband and run off with his sister. huge props! sorry i wasn't more interested in the weird science of it all.)

the memory theater 3.5/5 (VERY dream sequence-y! LOVED the main character! wish she had actually been the author's favourite character instead of the secondary mc whom, sorry to this man, i did not actually care about.)

christmas tales 5/5 (LOVEEEEE ruth sawyer love trina schart hyman didn't realist this beloved book from my childhood christmases was their work but it explains much! fave tale of all time the one about the greedy kingson being stripped of all his hoarded food and wealth and having it forcibly re-distributed by divinely inspired animals)

we kept her in the basement 3.5/5 (definitely the most....visceral cinderella re-telling i've ever read. very well written and evocative if not exactly my thing - i ended up passing lightly over some of the more gory descriptions, but it was a solid book!)

pippi runs away 5/5 (i didn't know there was more pippi!!! my childhood hero and deservedly so <3)

chapters 5/5 (listen. i don't know shit about poetry. however! i love tim key's poetry so much. both hilarious and unexpectedly poignant)

unexploded remnants 2/5 (REALLY wanted to like this one! unfortunately despite being a novella it read like it was 300 pages of infodumping)

the ladies of covington send their love DNF (great premise! clunky writing.)

those meddlesome kids 4/5 (for someone who grew up watching scooby doo this would probably have been a 5/5! SUCH an interesting writing style; half prose and half? idk. screenplay style maybe? interesting and funny and impressive as HELL to get to the end and realise english is the author's second language)

grain of knots 4/5 (some were stronger than others - I think I liked buttercup farm the best!)

and some fave fics!

pride

raised by wolves

coming home

a man of honour

take away the glass

how i learned to stop worrying and love my spouse

love in another shape

shen yuan of no relation

love will row you out

contrapuntal

final book count for the year: 200!

[nellie-elizabeth]

March 2025 - Reading & Media Logging

Thoughts under the cut!

What I Read:

I guess I was on a bit of the classics/canon kick this month!

Tender is the Night - my first read of this book, and holy shit, it's infuriating how good the language is... I had a hard time grappling with its larger themes/plot in some ways but honestly that's hardly the point. Fitzgerald is a fucking master.

Breakfast at Tiffany's - Haven't read a ton of Capote in my day either but maybe I should change that, I found this really delightful in a heart-twisting sort of way. I knew nothing about the story other than imagery from the movie that I'd absorbed through cultural osmosis.

Nicholas Nickleby - Definitely feels like an early work of Dickens, but I enjoyed a lot of of elements of it! Nicholas himself as a character was really appealing, he was kind of a bad-ass which I wasn't expecting when the novel began.

Beloved - This was a re-read, and it was even better than I remembered it to be.

The Lathe of Heaven - Read for one of my book clubs, I really enjoyed it and I'm excited to discuss. It didn't totally re-write my brain the way The Left Hand of Darkness did, but it's undeniably excellent.

Demon Copperhead - I guess it's a Dickens-themed month even though I just read the one Dickens. This was an amazing novel adapting my favorite Dickens work, I really cannot recommend it highly enough, it was heartbreaking and hopeful and so enjoyable to read start to finish. It's been lingering with me.

Cytonic - Eh, I mean, Sanderson writes some fun action scenes but this series so far hasn't really compelled me, and I think this book was the weakest in the series so far. I'll probably finish it out eventually.

Family Family - This is kind of unforgivably twee and cheesy. It purports to be about real shit and then doesn't really grapple with anything directly. It was very... readable, like, the author is clearly good at pacing a story, but I felt like I'd rather have watched this as a cheesy movie than read it as a novel.

The Priory of the Orange Tree - I didn't completely love everything about this, but I did really love the atmosphere and the world-building, this was a book I wanted to keep reading just so I could keep being inside of its world. Plus sapphic forbidden love and dragons and stuff. So, pretty fun.

Gathering Blue - Part of my re-read childhood favorites project. This is a lovely book, but I understand why it doesn't have the classic staying power of The Giver.

War and Peace - Okay, I am putting this on here because I've begun my quest! I intend reading this book to take me the better part of this year. I'm only like 150 pages in so far. And honestly, I'm finding it way more readable and fun than I expected! I love all the politics and gossip and drama.

What I Watched:

I've dipped into Dimension 20: The Unsleeping City Season 2. You know how there are so many books and movies and shows about New York and what a super special unique place it is? I honestly think Unsleeping City is maybe the best at convincing me it might really be true. Brennan's love for the setting is so apparent and it's so enjoyable to watch. I've been loving the new characters in season 2, as well, especially Murph, who is playing so delightfully against type.

Contrapoints new video dropped! She's excellent and hilarious as always, although the subject matter (conspiracy theories) was a little tough to chew on in today's world. That's the point, I suppose.

What I Listened To:

Been listening to this Boys Go to Jupiter album, "Meet Me After Practice" just over and over again, it's fucking amazing. I'm trying ever so slowly to become a person who "listens to music" and if you're looking for something to try, try this - it's alternative, it's really fun and sweet. In particular I can't get "Lovers Always Lose" and "Last Last Time" out of my head.

[billveusay]

Just watched Hathaway's Spark and...

I am currently making my way through basically all of Gundam, and having now watched almost all of pre-CCA Universal Century (CCA included), Hathaway was next on my list. And my conclusion is, it certainly is a true successor to Char's Counterattack.

The problem is I didn't like Char's Counterattack very much.

I'd even go as far as to say it's my least favourite piece of Gundam media I've watched, and felt like Hathaway shared several issues with it, the most prominent being the insufferable main female character, and a plot that seems cramped inside it's runtime. It starts in medias res and has relatively little exposition, which I sometimes like when it's handled well, but there I had to regularly alt-tab to the wiki summary just to understand some parts of the plot.

Sometimes crucial information will be shared casually through a line of dialogue or a shot that seems to be of minor importance. But then, that piece of information will be referenced in a way that implied I was supposed to have fully internalized it and extrapolated on its implications. Though maybe it was also because I was watching it subbed, and some stuff got lost in translation. But I won't accept that excuse for one aspect: Too many characters, especially in the Mafty squad that gets introduced around the halfway point. However, that was less of an issue in CCA (mostly because many of them where recurring from MSG and Zeta) and more in G-Witch. The in medias res aspect also has the problem of making it feel like we're catching Hathaway mid-character arc, so it feels less of a realization when he decides to stop keeping both of his identities because of his encounter with Gigi. Though maybe it would have helped if Gigi wasn't... well...

Cue shot from HTTYD where Stoic gestures at "all of Hiccup".

And of course, my biggest beef:

Yes, what better climax than a battle between two of the ugliest and most overdesigned gundams ever imagined. With the same overall indistinct silhouette. At night. A shame cause the fight would probably have been great if it was somewhat readable, and the city battle was really incredible, probably the best execution of the classic scene civilians trying not to die while mobile suits are fighting it out.

In fact, the animation and directing was absolutely fantastic overall. Even in terms of cinematography and pacing, it had the vibe of a contemplative thriller movie, and in the first act I was half-expecting to learn that it was made by an acclaimed author with a strong identity like Mamoru Ooshi, Satoshi Kon or Hideaki Anno, having a crack at Gundam the same way Naoki Urasawa reinterpreted Astro-Boy with Pluto. But no, it's a veteran of the franchise. At least it made me want to see his previous movie and what he'll do next, cause I'm betting a lot of the problems come from the novels it was adapted from, since it shares many of them with CCA and they were written around the time it came out.

Anyways, that's my opinion, to each his own taste etc. I can definitely see this being many people's favourites and would absolutely not consider it bad, or say that I didn't a least enjoy parts of it.

Now on to Turn A Gundam! I may write some reviews of the other shows I watched, cause I have thoughts, and hotter takes than this one.

My gundam reviews :

> Hathaway's Spark > Mobile Suit Gundam > Gundam Zeta > 0083: Stardust Memory > 0080: War in the Pocket > 8th MS Team > The Witch from Mercury > Gundam Thunderbolt > The Origin > Turn A Gundam > F91 > Gundam Unicorn > Gundam 00 > MS IGLOO > Gundam Narrative > Iron-Blooded Orphans

[readingoals]

Northanger Abbey was the book me and Lauren decided to exchange for christmas this year! It was one of only two Austen books I've not read (the last being Lady Susan).

I was a little hesitant going in because it was unfamiliar and I was annotating it and sometimes classics can be a little tricky to parse but I needn't have worried. Austen is very readable and I ended up having a great time with it! I loved Catherine and Tilney so much. And boy I sure had a lot to say about the Thorpes lmao.

I can defs see myself re-reading this one in the next few years.

[rustycottage]

Not that I have any followers, but - in a few days I'll receive the "Penguin Little Black Classics Box Set" in the mail.

My plan is to post reviews of each book/short story when I finish them one by one.

As a kind of rough outline I think I will format the reviews thusly:

1. Expectations going into the book

2. First thoughts (page × - page ×)

3. Final thoughts

4. A rating out of 4 stars in these categories:

a. Recommendation

b. Re-readability

c. Writing Style

d. Characters

WISH ME LUCK, CRITTERS! 🔖

[dailyanarchistposts]

Would industrial society not simply re-emerge?

Ishkah: I’m sceptical of Kaczynskis’ confidence that a new industrial revolution wouldn’t simply re-emerge, especially with people passing down memories and books of all the benefits to modern life.

My concerns are that firstly, the harm to the environment would be much worse than us simply transitioning to renewable energy and rewilding areas as we depopulate, as is the trend in advanced countries. Secondly, I would argue the probability that we will achieve a long-lasting, mostly peaceful, technologically advanced, left-anarchist society is far more valuable to me than returning to an either never ending series of warring feudal societies or feudal societies that repeats the industrial revolution and has another series of world wars for resources.

Primitive life is more appealing to me personally than feudalism in that I could be born into a fairly egalitarian tribe like the Penan or even if I wasn’t I wouldn’t know any different life, or if I had some of the egalitarian ideals I have now, the possibility would be there to strike out on my own and form an egalitarian tribe. But, bar convincing everyone to be hunter gatherers, or the provision of technological incentives to have fair and democratic communication among societies who trade with each other – you just are going to recreate feudal era societies where you’d have to be very lucky to escape from conscription and tyrants, and where the environmental destruction in the long term could be far worse.

Zerzan: What is happening in terms of social movements? Perhaps Kaczynski’s forgotten. And to me his rigidly anti-tech focus kind of loses its steam. As you know, I’m anti-civilization and if you’re just stuck with only the anti-tech thing you get to this wooden position where you you lose a lot of potential it seems because the rest of it just flows.

I noticed in the notes you were saying well you don’t want to be stuck in some medieval deal without industry, well that’s right, there you get the problem, right? I mean there was a piece – not to go too far along with this, but there was a piece – in the American magazine ‘The New Yorker’ back in the 90s when the trial was still going on I believe, it was simply called ‘E Pluribus Unabomber’, it was kind of a funny little one page piece. And it posed that question precisely, precisely that, okay so you’re against modern technology? Does that mean you want the middle ages? And he never answered that question.

I don’t want the middle ages, hell no. You know, you’ve got to look back to see what this crisis is all about what has brought us to this stage. Otherwise you’re kind of stuck with this one note deal that’s really rather limited. He’s insisted over and over and over that he has no interest in anything but modern technology, I mean that’s almost silly, the crisis shows that it’s much bigger and much deeper than that.

It comes to a head with the technological society, and by the way he told me he got his ideas from Elull, it’s an American vernacular version of the technological society, that’s his great gift, that’s his great plus, he made it very readable, you know the original or the original translation in English is hard to read, it has that abstract classical mode of the way French are taught to write and it’s very off-putting I think in the rest of the world, the rest of the west anyway, the rest of say America. [6]

Ishkah: Yeah, and it’s interesting Ellul is a kind of classical Christian anarchist, who likes the anabaptist tradition of creating small communities within a federated society, so he’s very critical of this concept of technique, but he still wants to make accommodations for technology if we can view it as a tool.

But, yeah I think for most of the people who identify with Kaczynski’s philosophy, calling themselves anti-industrialists rather than primitivists is an optics move, in that they don’t want to be seen to be striving for something that most people see as impossible to achieve. Because an anti-industrial revolution is achievable if you can destroy the electricity grids and keep them from being rebuilt, and once it is thoroughly destroyed it will be harder to rebuild and easier to stop than at least other pre-industrial oppressive conditions like feudal tyrants.

Zerzan: Well sure, it’s less abstract, here we are so totally immersed in the technology and the alienation it’s brought is just frightful, it’s so palpable, it’s just you know utterly impossible to ignore.

So, yeah there’s the technology on all sides at every moment, so sure it’s obviously part of the problem of course it’s right up there, but that’s just part of it. To me it’s like the leftists who are only limited to talking about capitalism, well of course one’s against capitalism, but it goes much deeper than that, right? Look at the rest of it, look at how it emerges and why?

Ishkah: Yeah and I definitely like a lot of Bookchin & eco-feminist philosophy who write about the priestly classes throughout history, who even before there was capitalism were trying to keep people ignorant and regimented into hierarchies.

But, in terms of getting this global shift is it that you just don’t have kids and within a hundred years you’ve only got a very small population and obviously using some direct action to encourage people and show them the way?

Zerzan: Well yeah, it’s kind of hard to answer, I mean that’s the challenge, what would that look like? How fast could that happen if you change directions and start to imagine things so differently? I mean who can say? Whether it happens at all that is obviously an open question, we may not get anywhere with this, I’m not clear about that and no one can be I don’t think.

So, but you start to think about the emerging directions and the transition and so forth, but only when you get to that place can you start to pose those questions and think about specific practical parts of the picture, it’s difficult to speculate there and I have to some degree, but that’s a further question it seems to me.

Ishkah: Yeah it’s interesting, I like the critique in a lot of ways, like I talk about this concept of minimum viable use. Like we have a really nice culture in Europe of punk post, where if you want to talk to someone who’s on a camp across the country and someone’s going that way, then you write them a letter and that person takes it to them. So, rather than calling them you put the effort into the creativity of the writing to them and then that’s the minimum viable use technology needed for that task and then in doing that you’ve fulfilled yourself more than just a quick phone call. [7]

Zerzan: Yeah exactly, something technology is erasing. Now we just text, don’t even want to hear the human voice. I mean it’s just getting so monstrous, so fast, and maybe that’s of course the strangely silver lining in the whole thing, it’s just impossible to ignore the effects. And people are so miserable, I mean the immiseration is just almost unimaginable, but there it is, it’s the alienation, the isolation, there’s suicide among the young, deaths of despair, opioid crisis, on and on, and on, it’s just huge estrangement.

Ishkah: Yeah so that’s a good Segway to the next topic…

[lefresne]

hello, your blog is really nice and you seem like you know a lot of things, so i want to ask, i really like arthurian legends and knights in general but reading the original books and poems is a little too hard for me (i can't keep up even if i really like the theme and story) do you know of any book that speaks about these things in a simpler way? like in a simpler vocabulary i think, or maybe some books where they explain all the lore without me having to have read the original stories, sorry for the english

Hello, thank you for your kind words <3 ! This is tricky, I would probably first redirect you to Tumblr user Gringolet's wonderful intro to arthuriana master post - it is very thorough and includes some shorter texts in translation to get you started! However, I do have a few favourites I like to plug: A lot of people recommend the Keith Baines Malory (abridged and modernised) but I haven't read it so personally I usually recommend the Oxford World Classics edition by Helen Cooper. It is also modernised and abridged, but honestly, if I were to trust anyone with abridging Malory in a thoughtful way I would trust Cooper! If you would like to read shorter narratives, I highly recommend the William Kibler translations of Chrétien De Troyes - incredibly fun and readable and really captures the humour of the original Old French, and comes with some useful notes and a glossary of terms which is great!!

Peter Ackroyd has also retold Malory which you might find useful. I have not read it but I quite like his retelling of the Canterbury Tales - I am also however a dedicated hater of his Chaucer biography, so make of that what you want. I also recommend the Rosemary Sutcliff's retelling! it is a children's book but don't let that put you off! I've spoken in the past on here about how much I respect good children's literature and this is good. It is mostly playful in tone but addresses the darker themes of the legend in a way that is compelling to readers of all ages in my opinion. John Steinbeck's retelling is also absolutely wonderful (I love his retelling of Yvain's exile in particular -Yvain trying to come to terms with his fucked up family is something all retellings could include more of ) but very sadly unfinished. I think of Steinbeck's guinevere and her dark brows often.

I also highly recommend the myths and legends podcast (I believe you can stream it on Spotify etc)! I loved their Morgan podcasts and the SGATGK podcasts! they were incredibly thoroughly researched and kinda blended various traditions together in a really interesting way! if you find reading the texts tedious this is a really fun way to get to know the 'canon'!

before I leave you with these I'm going to also let you in on a secret: there is nothing wrong with skipping parts you find boring if you are reading these texts for fun. One of my professors once confessed to me that they had not re-read Malory's book of Tristan since their undergrad and skipped it when they re-read, and they are an eminent arthurian scholar! make those texts your own, my friend!

[quidfree]

grim serious book rec?

also, you are incredible. your writing is incredible. it's not love i swear is like my cleft in the rock of the world to hide in

ha, okay. i mean, my rec tag in general i suppose (although i think most of them have some levity amidst the drama). like, it's called les miserables for a reason. and your baldwins and toni morrisons do not shy away from the peaks of human misery, nor do classical french novelists.

in terms of recent reads, i did read virgin suicides for the first time and that's not particularly peppy but is very readable. also in terms of spanish language- a gritty author i've actually enjoyed is lorca, specifically the plays yerma and bernarda alba. very grim stuff but very good and not without humor, unlike my most recent read which was about a cannibal capitalist dystopia.

and thank you very much re writing, that's such a lovely way of putting it.

[rathologic]

I just started playing patho HD after getting too stressed out by 2 a few years ago... It is a lot more fun/less hard than online discussions led me to think! Like I'm genuinely surprised at how readable it is

yesss glad you're enjoying it :-) I get the sense 90% of complaints about patho1's text are about the 2005 translation that was superseded by classic HD (a purchase of PCHD on GOG includes the 2005 version for free, but this isn't advertised and is kind of hard to locate, and is a separate installation) re: just how bad that translation was, which is no longer a problem at all... you will get to parts where you have to think a lot about what people tell you (late haruspex and all of changeling route, particularly) & YMMV on that but I find it all fairly well parsable. p1's quicker to get the hang of mechanically, and it incorporates that fact into game design for the "in-order" progression through its three routes so you're in for a very long treat 🙂

[seeingteacupsindragons]

I'm late bc life, but I saw those book asks and immediately hoped you'd rb so I can ask you #2

So like. You know you don't need an ask list to just. Ask me questions. Right?

2. Top 5 books of all time?

Oh, Jeez. I'm really bad at picking top favorites and I have very nuanced thoughts on a lot of things, so this is hard to just go, "Favorites. Just Favorites. Generically."

Let's. See what I can do for you here.

The Night Room, probably. I read it at a Formative Age (middle school), and it really stuck with me hard. It's extremely re-readable, accessible but really nuanced and subtle in a lot of ways. Has kind of a Breakfast Club-y cast in a lot of ways, which is fun. Contemporary spec fic (although it's from the 90s, so, uh, don't expect cell phones or too much internet). There's a lot of references to things, and I just really like that in fiction personally. There's a little delight and bonus to me when I can see from a book how well-read the author is. Also it's literally dedicated to "The Crews of the Starships Enterprise." It would be a fun book to mark up for a lit class, I think.

The Goblin Emperor. This one was the runner up for the Hugo the year The Three Body Problem won. I'm a big fan of Sarah Monette/Katherine Addison's writing. She has a doctorate in the English and is very well versed in the Classics ad Renaissance Drama and holy crap can you tell. It's not that she references these things when she's writing, but the nuanced way characters talk and the way the worlds she writes are builds are just so very rich and dense and full of life. I was first introduced to her via the Doctrine of Labyrinths books, which are...extremely, extremely dark, but the character voice shifts make me so so so envious God I wish I could write like that oh My God. The Goblin Emperor, however, is slightly lighter and much more hopeful fare, which is much more my style. It's still dense and rich, but is slightly less about trauma and more about the difficulties of governance.

A Friend for Dragon. This is a picture book. I don't care. It's fucking great. It's about friendship and loneliness and grief.

The Case Files of Jeweler Richard. Look, I like my books as "Applied Queer Theory following two soft, snarky dumbasses." It's great, okay? There's flaws, sure, but it hits me deep in my heart and soul.

Ah, hell. This has gotten very hard. I want to list a go-to Comfort Read, but I don't think I have one. I don't re-read much anymore (I did a lot when I was a kid, just because I didn't have all access to as many books as how fast I read). Also half my books are in boxes right now so I can't just glance at my bookcases. I keep thinking of a lot of books I really liked once upon a time but had an emotional breakup with. And then hemming over, "I thought this book was great, but is it favorite?" But after scrolling through Story Graph for sometime, I think I'll pick Trick of the Light for this one. I really enjoyed Rob Thurman until she vanished into the ether, and while I certainly have some over all criticisms of her writing, I always enjoyed reading it anyway. And Trick of the Light, I don't know, appealed to me in a way some of her other series didn't. Maybe it was Zeke and Griffin (it was almost certainly Zeke and Griffin).