#Substack books

[mehmetyildizmelbourne-blog]

Practical Tips to Create and Configure a Patreon Account and Start Creating

You can do this in less than an hour with my practical tips. Bonus: importance of building a community on Patreon. When I published my Substack Mastery book, I got in touch with some readers to obtain feedback on their first impressions.. One of the questions was which chapter was the most useful for them. It varied among readers, but one pattern emerged when I analyzed the data.  Readers from…

[somerabbitholes]

a reading update from april

[dandelionjack]

excerpts from a really good article by Margaret Killjoy on her substack today about the power of stories and why some leftist critics can be misguided when using ‘escapism’ as a pejorative. you can read the rest of it down below if you subscribe to her

margaret killjoy is an anarcho-communist author, artist, musician, journalist, podcaster, punk and trans woman; and one of the role models i look up to

[teaspoonnebula]

A page scan of the original cover of The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle.

From July 1st, Letters from Watson will be reading Hound of the Baskervilles!

[lunarcec24]

This is probably common knowledge that my space-case reclusive ass just learned not long ago, but Luke Jennings wrote a new Villanelle novella in installments on Substack where Villanelle did not die and she and Eve are living in St. Petersburg. He wrote it because,

“Villanelle, for all her winning ways, is a homicidal psychopath, and transgressive characters often come to a sticky end on the screen. There’s a long history in film and TV of the same treatment being meted out to one or both members of same-sex couples, a trope known to LGBTQ+ audiences as Bury Your Gays. Killing Eve’s fanbase was, and is, acutely attuned to such issues. I know this because many of them have contacted me. The Killing Eve universe is their escape, they tell me, and Villanelle their heroine. Not because she murders people, but because she’s powerful, she’s her own creation, and she goes through life doing exactly as she choses.

The TV series ending, in which Villanelle is shot by a sniper and falls dying into the Thames, came as a shock to emotionally invested fans, and they were not slow to voice their feelings. Social media lit up with their distress, not for days, but for weeks. All over the world, makeshift shrines to Villanelle appeared, with flowers, heartfelt messages, stills from the TV show, and copies of my books. A group of fans crowdfunded a billboard in central London, protesting at “the trope”. As Villanelle’s creator, this was weird, touching and extraordinary, and I felt I had to react.”

- Luke Jennings from an article in The Guardian in 2023

It’s called Killing Eve: Resurrection and is available on his Substack page for free. He also wrote a new installment after called Killing Eve: Bloodline. I’m just gonna leave the 1st link in case anyone missed it and so I can find it again easily if I need to for some reason. I am almost finished with the last book, then I am starting on these. He has a lot of other cool posts on his account.

[fuddlyduddly]

Hey, I saw you talking about reading The Haunting of Hill House via a trans lens and I got curious. Could you elaborate on that, please? Cause I found it really interesting.

yeah I can! I've been meaning to write some sort of article about why I feel Hill House is trans, so this is a good excuse to get these thoughts written out. It's mostly that I find the story and its themes to be very trans to me, specifically with the character of Eleanor; when I was a teen and didn't know I was trans, and I found myself drawn to her for reasons I couldn't understand yet. There are a lot of things about her that spoke to me as a pre egg-crack trans woman; the way she feels like she's been waiting her whole life for something, anything, but she doesn't know what; the way she's felt trapped by the expectations of her; the way she's so shy and withdrawing (she reminds me in a way of this quote from Imogen Binnie's Nevada: "Maria is transsexual and she is so meek she might disappear"); the ways in which Eleanor constantly feels out of touch with the people around her and can't figure out social situations; the ways she's never felt wanted ("I am a sort of stray cat aren't I?"); the way she is prone to misreading casual relationships because she isn't experienced enough to know she's mistaken; and especially how she so desperately wants to belong. Eleanor is so withdrawn and desperate for connection that she lets the House take her over because, at last, “something is at last really, really, really, happening to [her]”, and unfortunately I could relate to that; she's so desperate to belong that she'll let anything happen to her, even if it kills her.

One line in particular really speaks to me every time I reread the book: “—and then each year, one summer morning, the warm wind would come down the city street where she walked and she would be touched with the little cold thought: I have let more time go by.” To me, that's what it felt like pre realization, every year would go by and I'd feel like I'd missed something; I wouldn't know what, but I'd know I'd let more time go by. Eleanor's story is one of a person who's been waiting so long to make a change, that when a change finally happens, it's too late for her; she's waited too long, and she's out of time. It's rather bleak, but so is gender dysphoria.

I think for me ultimately, any story about a woman who feels trapped and out of touch in some way will feel trans to me (I have a Letterboxd list about that with all sorts of movies on it), but Hill House really sticks out to me because of how acute and specific Eleanor's pain is, and how relatable I found her; her pain feels very transfeminine to me in ways I'm not quite sure how to articulate. I've found a lot of other transfems on tumblr who are also very drawn to Hill House, and in a way its very nice to see us all have a special connection to this book.

also part of this realization came from this post!

[literatureaesthetic]

march '24 favs:

• those who leave and those who stay & the story of the lost child ; elena ferrante — the final two books in the neapolitan novels, a tetrology recording the lives of two girls in naples from childhood to old age. gutting, beautiful, layered, and complex. this series is a masterpiece, elena ferrante is everything to me <3 (please read it!!)

• sirens and muses by antonia angress — following an array of characters at an art university as they navigate life, work, academia, relationships, and being an artist in a capitalist world where everything is commodified. the depth of characters paired with the nuanced discussions of art, class, and politics left me so pleasantly surprised. (it's also extremely gay and perfect for all you tumblr users with mummy/daddy issues)

[papenathys]

peer pressured into making a substack. subscribe for

trans, sapphic, slightly melancholic bengali-inspired queer poetry

essays on translation, diasporic versus mainlander identity, and publishing trends

rambles on publishing, academia and campus literature

analysis of contemporary queer subcultures and trans/sapphic subtextual readings in popular literature and media

writing updates + character backstories/creative ideas and inspirations

lots and lots and LOTS of book recommendations

All content is free, without any paywall. but do consider supporting me on kofi or buying my book; it's been a tough couple of months :')

[nikiabella]

I have a book:

“Where Do We Go From Here?”

After finding a love that is worth sticking by, quitting a job that constantly gave me burn out, and going through trials & tribulations with my self discipline and finances..

Here I am.

What is after this? Those who are in a similar spot, what is next? How high will I go from here? How quick will I rise? How quick will we rise?

Spoken word poems and some extra words for you all at the end. Thank you for supporting in advance.

If you are a Substack user I am on there also.

[icaruseater]

The Way We Talk About Art Is So Weird Now

We, as a culture, reward effortlessness. Look at who we platform, when and how they’re presented. Art icons arrive fully formed. Rarely do we see their infancy, the time spent reading books and articles, visiting museums, etc. In other words, developing their taste and acquiring a level of expertise.

We don’t see any of that. They blossom before us as beautiful flowers, the roots which harbor the actual work buried deep in the dirt.

More people want to fast forward, to somehow blossom without the root. But the only flowers that can do that are fake, cheap, plastic. And you can tell just by looking at them!

However, perhaps even more dreadful, people simply don’t care. The fake flowers are treated as though they are just as valid as the real thing. But they’re not. And the more I see this attitude permeate online discussion of various art forms, the more concerned I become.

In this post, I discuss the weird way we talk about fashion, music, personal style, modern art, and books. I also explain why yes, it is that deep. Click below to read! :)

[thecandlewasters]

"Well, I've never heard of the second one" - David Tennant, probably

[forthegothicheroine]

Are you itching for more weird old books to read?

Do you love the movie Kind Hearts and Coronets or the musical A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, and want to read what they were based on?

Are you craving sexy Jewish villains?

Do you start every morning by reciting the Gashleycrumb Tinies?

Then sign up for Kind Hearts and Substacks, an online book club where we'll be reading Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal by Roy Horniman! Starting this Friday, let's give 2025 a nice evil welcome!

[teaspoonnebula]

[IMG Description - A Victorian magazine cover with an illustration of a man in a red suit lighting a lamp. Reads Letters from Watson - A Study in Scarlet by A Conan Doyle. The first Sherlock Holmes novel Email Book Club Starting January 1st 2024]

Email book club/substack Letters from Watson will be reading through the Sherlock Holmes novels in 2024!

After finishing reading through the short stories in 2023, I'm pleased to announce that Letters from Watson will be moving on to reading the novels, beginning with A Study in Scarlet in January!

We'll be following with The Sign of Four in April, The Hound of the Baskervilles in July, and The Valley of Fear in October!

Sign up to the substack here!

Join the discord server here!

(Reblogging and spreading the word appreciated <3)

[aidenwaites]

Maybe it's just the books I'm reading now as opposed to the books I was reading in like 2015-2019 but I feel like I never see fan content for books anymore

[dramaticallychill]

sunrise on the reaping has been on my mind since i've read it so i wrote a review to help me cope - i've tried to make it as spoiler free as possible but i'm also paranoid so go in with caution!

[benitasroom]

tell me about the dreams you run away from and the home you build because of it.

— what i want to write, benita (published in benita's room)