#and trust on what I've read on the books

[nyxreads]

So what do you think the next book will be about? We know it will be about Elain, but how do you see it going? What will be the main storylines? I am curious about what everyone is thinking.

Hello anon, sorry this kinda took me long to answer and honestly I am lazy and can't explain articulately what's in my mind but I'm gonna link you to some theories/analysis (based on canon) that I truly loved and agreed on about Elain and her upcoming book:

[mearcatsreturns]

I have a bookstagram, and I recently followed someone because they posted about the overconsumption issue that most bookish social media seems to have. Today, though, they posted another controversial "opinion": that listening to audiobooks isn't reading, and people who claim to have read a bunch of books that they listened to as audiobooks are lying and/or deluded. Listening to audiobooks, she said, is just consuming books.

I disagreed in a fairly politely worded reply, and I intend to unfollow/block, because I find it unlikely this person will change their mind, especially since I'm far from the only person to point out that this is exclusionary and ableist. But this is tumblr/my house, and now I'm going to be as blunt as I want to be.

I'm a librarian and archivist. So much of the work I and others in my field do focuses on making books and reading more accessible and less exclusionary. It is, in fact, incredibly ableist to negate how important audiobooks are for people who have certain disabilities or challenges, and I would in no universe say they aren’t reading. For that matter, a busy person who only has time for audiobooks and for people who just prefer them--it still counts, as far as I'm concerned.

See, there's a difference between an audiobook and a podcast or long song or radio program. An audiobook is still a book--it was written with a particular narrative structure, and the author plays a defined but limited role (once the book is written, it's written; the author isn't tuning in next episode with comments and corrections based on what listeners said). An audiobook is a book, ergo, listening to one is reading. Using braille is reading, and listening to audiobooks is reading.

The part that has me in full Captain Raymond Holt "apparently that is a trigger for me" mode is that this bookstagrammer called listening to audiobooks consumption. In the context of her other posts about overconsumption as an issue in the bookish community (again, agree, but also...mind your own business), this seems particularly insidious to me. Conflating influencer-driven (and capitalist hellscape) consumption with listening to an audiobook (again, a massive boon for the visually impaired and those with disabilities like ADHD, dyslexia, etc.) is rude at best and dangerously exclusionary at worst. Stop letting comparison be the thief of joy; mind your own business and stop looking at the pages that bother you. Focus on the kindness of leaning towards inclusion, meeting people where they are, and leaving judgment behind.*

*This person also said "feel free to comment if you disagree but please don't be mean or judgmental," as if they hadn't just posted the most ableist and judgmental sludge I've seen today.

tl;dr: don’t be a gatekeeping shithead, mind your own business, and

(gif by matalyn on tenor, couldn't find on tumblr)

[kenobihater]

WHO organizes their books this way holy shit??????? it's one bump away from total collapse - banged up covers, mangled pages, books all over the floor! and what happens when you wanna read a book from the bottom, huh???

[archerofunspeakablelove]

Finished Russian Roulette. Feeling sick again

[viillette]

it's so crazy how few historical fiction novels are like sharon kay penman's. the way that they're built out of the skeleton of the historical record seems so obvious, but there's so few people who are actually willing to commit to it in the way that she did. it seems like so often that's just a starting point which gets reformed to fit a coherent narrative, but she makes no real attempt to do that. there's themes and foils and patterns, but first and foremost it is a reconstruction. you can't really know what someone who lived that long ago was like, only what they did, and you can feel how she takes these isolated, dramatic events and builds a whole life around them. the books are nothing more than an answer to the question 'what might someone have been like, what could the history between these people have been, to possibly explain something like this?' the ability to string together a handful of facts and events from medieval chronicles to create people that feel so real, and psychology and relationships that develop so naturally that these distant, seemingly impenetrable choices suddenly feel so immediate and clear is just beyond belief. you know this probably wasn't actually how things happened, but it doesn't matter because it was something like this. the particulars are less important the crushing awareness that at one point all of this made sense. there was a time when all of this was right now. the world is unrecognizable and exactly the same. that's something which sounds very simple but is incredibly difficult to accomplish.

you come to know these people so well, their loves and hatreds and ambitions and failures, and those things are rarely resolved in the end. you know them from the time that they're children, you watch each one of them die, and none of it means anything in particular except that they were a human being. things which seem like they must be building to some tragic fallout end in anticlimax. things which seem utterly inconsequential in the moment manifest again decades later in cataclysmic disaster. and then you see it all play out again from the beginning with their children, and their children's children. all these uncanny echoes, this endlessly unfolding palimpsest of lives, each laid over the triumphs and mistakes of those who came before. i've never read anything so epic with so much mastery over the micro and macro levels of history. it's the minute, seemingly inconsequential everyday details, which build into a lifetime, which builds into generation of lives, which builds into the rise and fall of kingdoms and empires. it's the merciless endlessly turning wheel of fortune that replays the same songs in different keys again and again for all time. a person is both an individual with free will, and the prisoner of their blood and circumstances. somehow everything has infinite weight, is tied to everything that has come before and will come after, is the culmination of someone's entire existence—their pains and joys and fears and hopes—and yet is simultaneously completely meaningless, just one more victim of fate in an endless procession of lives and choices. the whole impotent tragedy of humanity is laid out in front of you and it's so repulsive and beautiful. it's deep love and unfathomable, senseless horror briefly and miraculously reverberating in a vacuum, an absurd aberration fading into silence.

if it's not obvious these books have made me cry like 10 different times

[echthr0s]

man... (cw: hater moment)

the other day I tried to start this book and the first page was a content warnings list which, yeah alright, fine. (I will say, despite the fact that I am ideologically in support of content warnings, seeing them in a published work does automatically ping my "oh I'm gonna hate something about this work" geiger counter.) but then the next couple of pages was... a book playlist. as in, every chapter got 1-3 songs and it was all shit I was entirely unfamiliar with or familiar enough with to get a Vibe, ykwim

but I pushed past the alarm bells in my head and tried to read the book itself. because it was a romance about two serial killers! I mean, come on, of course I'm going to give it a chance! I barely made it through the first chapter before hittin the "delete from library" button.

idk what to call this particular narrative voice except the "this used to be a fanfic and it reads like one" voice, and I call it that because of Fifty Shades of Grey, because if you are in any way familiar with how that book reads then you know exactly what I mean. this book had that. and the male serial killer had "golden retriever vibes", which, okay, trope subversion, I guess? but... ew?

this is a shame, because the content warnings were pretty damn good (as befitting a book about murderers, yknow). I did consider skipping ahead to find to the sex scenes but instead I chose to wisely assume that there are hornyposts on my dashboard that are way hotter than whatever that book could have given me

anyway all this to say, anyone got any good bad-people romance recs

[timetravellingkitty]

.

[keeps-ache]

souP..

[lesbianlotties]

if you guys have watched the new hunger games movie can you help me figure out something pretty please

[hunxi-after-hours]

lianhualou the novel is also a pretty fun read too btw

I've heard!!! I'll admit I kind of fell out of the 古风 genres recently, I've somehow pendulumed hard in the other direction and am wallowing in uhh science fiction & friends these days

[bandzboy]

this graphic designer i follow on twt that does album cover art for artists said that he has sent labels his album cover art and most of the time they say his works are "too creative" and they need something more toned down and to me that explains why so many artists have insanely boring album covers and inclusions and it's genuinely bc these people don't know how envision cool and fun visuals for their artists lmao

[terezipyropescrocs]

just finished the traitor baru cormorant and Fucked Up about it

[dust-archive]

Here are my stats. Pls send book recommendations 🙏❤️

[artemismatchalatte]

I didn't go online at all yesterday. I self-designated a reading day and finished a book for class (The Good Solider) and one book on my owned TBR (Convenience Store Woman). It bothered me that I didn't have any books done yet for this year. I'm in the middle of three others, with a mind to start maybe one or two more, but still, it feels like very slow going.

[ohara-n-brown]

As a late diagnosed autist I will say one of the most damaging but transformative experiences I've ever had was being misdiagnosed with BPD.

Everyday my heart goes out to people with BPD.

The amount of stigma and silencing they face is astonishing and sickening.

I took DBT for years. Therapists use to turn me away because of my diagnosis.

I would be having full blown autistic meltdowns, crying for help literally - but because I was labeled as BPD ANY time I cried I was treated as manipulative and unstable.

As if the only reason I could be crying was if I was out to trick someone.

95% of the books out there with Borderline in the title are named shit like 'How to get away from a person with Borderline', 'How to stop walking on eggshells (with a person who has BPD)'

I was never allowed to feel true pain or panic or need.

That was 'attention seeking behavior', not me asking for help when a disability was literally inhibiting my ability to process emotions.

There were dozens of times where I had a full meltdown and was either threatened with institutionalization or told I was doing it for attention.

My failing relationships weren't due to a communication issue, or the inability to read social cues. No, because I was labeled borderline, my unstable relationships were my fault. Me beggong nuerotypicals to just be honest and blunt with what they meant was me pestering them for validation.

Borderline patients can't win.

And the funny thing is - I asked my therapist about autism. I told her I thought I was on the spectrum.

BPD is WILDLY misdiagnosed with those with autism and I had many clear signs.

Instead - she told me 'If you were autistic we wouldn't be able to have this conversation'. She made me go through a list of autistic traits made clearly for children, citing how I didn't fit each one.

And then she told me that me identifying with the autism community was the BPD making me search for identity to be accepted - and that I wasn't autistic, just desperate to fit in somewhere.

I didn't get diagnosed for another ten years. For ten years I avoided the autism community - feeling as if I were just a broken person who wanted to steal from people who 'really needed it'.

Because of my providers - I began to doubt my identity MORE, not less.

Ten years of thinking I was borderline and being emotionally neglected and demonized by a system meant to help me.

To this day, I still don't trust neurotypicals. Not fully.

I know I'm not borderline now - but my heart aches for them. Not for the usual stuff. But for the stigma. And the asshole doctors. And the dismissiveness and threatening and the idea of institutionalization hanging over their head.

I love Borderline people. I always will. I'm not Borderline but if you are I love you and I'm sorry.

You're not a bad person. You're not a therapists worst nightmare, you are a human with valid feelings and fears.

Borderline people I'm sorry.

[usodeshou]

I had many things that I had considered doing today, most of it just being some chill video gaming, if I'm really honest. And I did get to do some. Then I started feeling sick.

I thought to myself, oh well, that silly motion sickness again, guess I'mma take a break 🙃

Turns out, wasn't just the motion sickness, though.

Spent the next hour and a half using my toilet as an echo chamber for creative voice lessons. Switched it up every now and again, just to keep things interesting, but the sound was just too good, so I kept coming back for encores. Realised the toilet might be cursed because I could not move away from it for more than a few meters or a few minutes before having to return.

Messaged my mom, who kindly brought me something to help break the curse.

Then spent the next three hours in a curled up position on my bedroom floor, on the carpet right next to my bed (bed would have been to soft), head on my fluffiest pillow, and underneath a warm, cuddly blanket, finally getting some rest and sleeping off the exhaustion.

When it all started it was early afternoon. The sun has now set. I am finally sitting back on the couch, munching on some insanely good pretzel sticks and drinking tea. Feel utterly serene. Could murder someone for a good, cheesy pizza right now, but that might be the devil talking.