#reading baum is not like reading tolkien come on

[witchesoz]

Okay, I will say it... It absolutely INFURIATES ME that people say they want to make (or start making) a project about Oz - as in the literary Oz, the original Oz, the Oz books, right?

And then... then they say "Oh yeah I never read any of the books outside of the first one, and I don't intend to. I'll just use Wikipedia articles and various Oz adaptations".

WHAT THE HECK IS WRONG WITH YOU ARE YOU LITERALY SO LAZY? I mean... you do an adaptation of a specific material that was overtly overshadowed and ignored, is surrounded by misinformation and misadaptation, and with more than half of its content not found on stuff like Wikipedia... And you don't even bother reading it to know what you are getting into?

If you want to do something based on the MGM movie, it's fine. If you want to do something based on Wicked, it's fine. If you want to do something based on the friggin' anime series it's fine! But don't start claiming you want to do based something on Baum's original book when you clearly don't want to!

Because you know what the worst offense is?

Not only are Baum's books books for CHILDREN which means they are quick and easy to read... BUT THEY ARE IN PUBLIC DOMAIN! Which means not only you can find copies of them everywhere... THEY ARE ALSO EVERYWHERE ON THE INTERNET! THERE'S TONS OF WEBSITES with ALL of Baum's books available for free to read any time you want, at any speed you want, with no effort to bring!

You have all of this material at your fingertips, ready to grab, and you just... "Nah, I say I will use the Oz books but I only read one and the rest comes from adaptations". GRRGRHRHFTHRAAAAAA

[batboyblog]

Wha your an inspiration! Also sorry I meant to say what things will you see in your lifetime enter the public domain bsbsbhsbs should have said that! Anyways I'm happy to see the final stuff from the 1920s finally be layer to rest and enter the public domain by 2025! Also should more people be hyped and anticipated for the Steamboat Willie (1928) or The Opry House (1929) in your opinion/thoughts?

Anyways, what your top 15 most anticipated and hyped things whether it be cartoon/film, book or something else that will enter the public domain? Wah so sorry for so many questions dvbdbdd qwq

Things I'd like to see in my life time? well I did bring up a New Hope because I could live to see that enter the public Domain, I'd be in my 80s so it could happen. I'd love to see the end of the 95 year copyright, which would be the same year as Star Wars, in general I'd love for the law to change to something more reasonable because right now.... when the 95 year copyright term runs out we could be looking at works under copyright for well over 100 years, for example George Lucas is still alive if he died tomorrow by my math Empire would be under copyright till 2099, since he's a healthy (as far as I know) man in his late 70s he could live another 10 or 15 years (maybe even 20+) expending the term deep into the next century.

On Mickey Mouse, thats a tricky question. The Issue is the difference between Trademark and Copyright. Copyright is ownership of the whole idea in all contexts, while trademark is limited to images and words (or phrases) used for marketing. SO for example you could do a "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" style movie and have Mickey (and/or Minnie) show up. However Disney still holds/will hold the Trademark because those can be renewed endlessly, so you wouldn't be allowed to use his name in the title, or say his name in the trailers or any marketing. My question and I don't know is how much of the image do they own? could you use him in Steamboat Willie form? I would guess no, I think you'd be barred from using his image in marketing but I'd also guess you'd have a legal fight with Disney trying to use trademark as copyright.

in any case I think... there's a big big Disney community and I'd guess the first effect would be fan art and unofficial merchandise blowing up big time.

top 15? hmmm well I'll stick to stuff coming out in the near-ish future, I'm very unlikely under current laws to live to see Harry Potter become public, but that'd be a trip to see.

The Hobbit (1937): thankfully Elves and dwarfs were not made up by Tolkien so fantasy can basically steal his ideas freely but it's very clear we've all been playing in JRR's sandbox since at least The Lord of The Rings of not the Hobbit so releasing this out into the wild will be amazing also hobbits which he did make up (and also Ents, and the Uruk-hai) to finally be allowed to appear in all the fantasy literature that has elves and dwarfs.

The Wizard of Oz: Of course the original book by L. Frank Baum has been public for years and years and nothing stops any one from trying to make another one, and some have. See "The Wiz" and also "Wicked" but the 1939 movie remains a triumph and a huge piece of cultural history, I'm unsure what could be done with it, but you know

Superman, Batman, Robin, Wonder Woman, Captain America: I mean this should shock no one that this is something I want to see. But I think... Superman and Batman in particular are SUCH a universal part of our culture, you can stop randos on the street who have NEVER read a comic and say "what is Batman's name?" or Superman and they can answer, they can tell you Superman's powers. I think in terms of universally known and recognizable pieces of pop culture... I mean nothing else under copyright today is as big of a pop icon as they are they are as part of the basement of our popular imagination as Dracula, or Santa.

I'm sure a lot of other stuff but I think I've gone on long enough

[trothplighted]

I think the reason I’m determined to reevaluate and re-examine my relationship with HP (to the point of getting a whole new blog because I want a fresh start and a shot at reclaiming this) is that ultimately, I think it’s the right of oppressed people to decide for themselves how to engage with bigoted media?

I’m indigenous, I’m not cis, I’m physically and cognitively disabled, and I’ve always been on the bigger side. I’m more feminine than the Cool Girl types that Harry Potter elevates and not feminine enough to win adulation and accolades for being a good woman. I’m a lesbian. I’m also the kind of not cis that will never be interested in medical transition, because my gender identity is directly tied to my ancestry and the impact of colonialism on my people. In short, I’m one of the people Rowling is gunning for, but I’ve also known that about myself since I picked up the books 20 years ago. None of this is new to me. She’s not nearly so hateful in her written works (aside from Troubled Blood, ugh) as Lovecraft or Baum or even Dahl, either, and I’ve had positive relationships with their stuff in the past even knowing that their fiction is obviously prejudiced because it’s right there in the text.

More to the point, I don’t get to opt out of seeing people say horribly bigoted shit about me, particularly since I’m a speculative fiction fan. My childhood was defined by racist and appropriative animation by Disney, racist fantasy and science fiction courtesy of Burroughs and Baum and Tolkien, and racist movies by [pick a studio here]. When it wasn’t racist it was ableist or sexist or transphobic or homophobic. Sometimes it was all of the above. And in every other case, the prevailing wisdom is that the oppressed people reading and loving and joining fandoms for these properties and stories are allowed to decide how they feel and criticize and critique and love all at the same time. You hear often that marginalized people are not a monolith, that we’re allowed to have wildly differing opinions. That we’re allowed to love things that hate us and we don’t have to spend our lives and our days being miserable. And I hold to that! I’m allowed to think for myself, and come to my own conclusions and draw my own lines!

I don’t like JKR. I’m never going to buy a book of hers again. But I cannot erase the past, and it’s downright cruel to act like there’s only one Right Way to handle a creative that hates you. I’m one of the ones being hurt. I get to say what power that has over me. If other people have a line in different places? That’s fine, that’s great. We need different voices, and I welcome the debate. It’s the hateful, cruel infighting I object to, not bashing Jo, because she deserves it.

[rubykgrant]

I made a slightly condensed version of my Spooky Ref list; it still has a heck ton of movies and books, but now I combined certain categories, eliminated a few, and removed some of the titles that don’t quite fit. If you are looking for things to watch or read so you can get into the Halloween mood (or of you just like some creepy content), here you go!

Movies and Books for October

These range from children’s media to adult content, so be sure to check the ratings/reviews, this way you’ll find ones that are suitable for the right viewers. The dates of movies and names of authors for books are included to make searches easier

(a * symbol is for when a title is in both sections, a book that got made into a movie, ect)

Halloween and Ghosts

Movies- Hocus Pocus (1993), *the Halloween Tree (1993), the Nightmare before Christmas (1993), Trick r Treat (2007), Monster House (2006), Halloweentown (1998), the Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1949), Scary Godmother Halloween Spooktacular (2003), Poltergeist (1982), the Haunting (1999), Casper (1995), Ghostbusters (1984), the Haunted Mansion (2003), Thirteen Ghosts (2001), the Others (2001)

Books- How to Drive Your Family Crazy on Halloween by Dean Marney,*the Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury, the Haunted Mask (Goosebumps) by RL Stine, Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge, Stonewords a Ghost Story by Pam Conrad, Deep and Dark and Dangerous by Mary Downing Hahn, Ghost Beach (Goosebumps) by RL Stine, All the Lovely Bad Ones by Mary Downing Hahn, the Crossroads by Chris Grabenstein, Wait Till Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn

 Witch/ESP/Mental Powers

Movies- *Practical Magic (1998), *the Wizard of Oz (1939), *the Witches (1990), Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), Scooby-Doo and the Witch’s Ghost (1999) *Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001), the Craft (1996), the Witches of Eastwick (1987), *Carrie (1976), *Firstarter (1984), *Matilda (1996), the Last Mimzy (2007)

Books- *Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman, *the Witches by Roald Dahl, Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones, *Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by JK Rowling, *the Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum, T*Witches by HB Gilmour and Randi Reisfeld, the Worst Witch by Jill Murphy, *Carrie by Stephen King, *Firestarter by Stephen King, *Matilda by Roald Dahl, Scorpion Shards (Star Shards Chronicles) by Neal Shusterman, the Witch’s Boy by Michael Gruber

 Vampire and Werewolf

Movies- Blade (1998), the Little Vampire (2000), Hellboy Blood and Iron (2007), *Hotel Transylvania (2012), Fright Night (2011), What We Do in the Shadows (2014), Alvin and the Chipmunks meet The Wolfman (2000), Ginger Snaps (2000), Van Helsing (2004) Wolf Children (2012), the Wolfman (1941)

Books- Bunnicula by James and Deborah Howe, Dracula by Bram Stoker, ‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King, Red Rider’s Hood by Neal Shusterman, the Werewolf of Fever Swamp (Goosebumps) by RL Stine, Werewolves Don't Go to Summer Camp (Bailey School Kids) by Debbie Dadey and Marcia Jones, Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause, Night of the Werepoodle by Constance Hiser

 Zombies and Slasher/Gore

Movies- Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island (1998), ParaNorman (2012), Night of the Living Dead (1968), *Pet Sematary (1989), Zombieland (2009), Resident Evil (2002), Dawn of the Dead (2004) Scream (1996), a Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), *I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), Kill Bill (2003), Happy Death Day (2017), the Hills Have Eyes (2006), US (2019), Friday the 13th (1980), the Thing (1982), *the Girl with all the Gifts (2016)

Books- *Pet Sematary by Stephen King, the Haunting of Derek Stone by Tony Abott, Welcome to Dead House (Goosebumps) by RL Stine, *I know What You Did Last Summer by Lois Duncan, the Dark Half by Stephen King, The Dead Girlfriend (Point Horror) by RL Stine, Another by Yukito Ayatsuji, the Prom Queen (Fear Street) by RL Stine, *the Girl with all the Gifts by MR Carey

 Demons/Possession/Afterlife

Movies- the Omen (1976), Insidious (2010), the Exorcist (1973), *Christine (1983), City of Angels (1998), All Dogs go to Heaven (1989), Fallen (1998), *Rosemary’s Baby (1968), Bedazzled (2000), What Dreams May Come (1998), the Book of Life (2014), Flatliners (2017), *the Lovely Bones (2009), Coco (2017), Jennifer’s Body (2009), the Mummy (1999)

Books- *Christine by Stephen King, Needful Things by Stephen King, HECK where the bad kids go by Dale E Bayse,* Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin, Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, Paradise Lost by John Milton, Inferno by Dante Alighieri, *the Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

 Monsters/Mythology/Dangerous Animals

Movies- Monsters Inc (2001), Godzilla (1998), *a Monster Calls (2016), *Jurassic Park (1993), King Kong (1933), Doug’s 1st Movie (1999), Darkness Falls (2003), Atlantis the lost empire (2001), Sinbad Legend of the Seven Seas (2003), *the Last Unicorn (1982), Urban Legend (1998), *How to Train Your Dragon (2010), the Flight of Dragons (1982), Shrek (2001), *the Hobbit (1977), Quest for Camelot (1998), Ferngully the last rainforest (1992), Lake Placid (1999), Jaws (1975), *Cujo (1983), Deep Blue Sea (1999), Anaconda (1997)

Books- *a Monster Calls by Patrick Ness, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, *Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, Sasquatch by Roland Smith, *the Last Unicorn by Peter S Beagle, the Moorchild by Eloise Jarvis McGraw, the Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians) by Rick Riordan, the Boggart by Susan Cooper, *How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell, Jeremy Thatcher Dragon Hatcher by Bruce Coville, *the Hobbit by JRR Tolkien, *Cujo by Stephen King, Cat in the Crypt (Animal Ark Hauntings) by Ben M Baglio, Congo by Michael Crichton, Watership Down by Richard Adams, the Dark Pond by Joseph Bruchac

 Dolls and Toys, Circus/Carnival/Clowns, Comedy Horror

Movies- *Coraline (2009), the Adventures of Pinocchio (1996), Child’s Play (1988), Toy Story (1995), 9 (2009), We’re Back a dinosaur’s story (1993), the Care Bears Movie (1985), Little Nemo adventures in Slumberland (1989), *Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983), *Big Top Scooby-Doo (2012), Killer Klowns from Outer Space, *IT (2017), *Beetlejuice (1988), Army of Darkness (1992), Gremlins (1984), Arachnophobia (1990), Jawbreaker (1999), Tremors (1990), the Frighteners (1996), Twilight Zone the Movie (1983), Little Shop of Horrors (1986), Eight Legged Freaks (2002), the Goonies (1985)

Books- Frozen Charlotte by Alex Bell, *Coraline by Neil Gaiman, No Flying in the House by Betty Brock, Doll Bones by Holly Black, Joyland by Stephen King, *Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury, the Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, *IT by Stephen King, the Cuckoo Clock of Doom (Goosebumps) by RL Stine, a Dirty Job by Christopher Moore jr, Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (Treasury) by Alvin Schwartz and illustrated by Stephen Gammell, JTHM (Director’s Cut) by Jhonen Vasquez

 Gothic/Dark Fantasy, Curse/Transformation

Movies- *the Addams Family (1991), Rebecca (1940), Edward Scissorhands (1990), Mama (2013), the Phantom of the Opera (2004), Crimson Peak (2010), Legend (1985), the Dark Crystal (1982), Labyrinth (1986), *the Neverending Story (1984), *the Secret of NIMH (1982), Anastasia (1997), Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), Willow (1988), *the Last Unicorn (1982), the Princess Bride (1987), *Legend of the Guardians the Owls of Ga'Hoole, Beauty and the Beast (1991), the Princess and the Frog (2009), the Swan Princess (1994), the Thing (1982), the Mask (1994), Freaky Friday (2003), Song of the Sea (2014), Pirates of the Caribbean the Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)

Books- the Raven by Edgar Allen Poe, the Shining by Stephen King, Remember Me by Mary Higgins Clark, a Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket, Well Witched (Verdigris Deep) by Frances Hardinge, Poison by Chris Wooding, *the Neverending Story by Michael Ende, *Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C O'Brien, a Tale Dark and Grimm by Adam Gidwitz, the Dark Portal by Robin Jarvis, Zel by Donna Jo Napoli, *the Last Unicorn by Peter S Beagle, *Guardians of Ga’Hoole by Kathryn Lasky, Owl in Love by Patrice Kindl

 Mystery/Thriller/Psychological/Suspense

Movies- Clue (1985), *Holes (2003), Get Out (2017), Hot Fuzz (2007), Minority Report (2002), Kidnap (2017), Saw (2004), Wind River (2017), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), the Great Mouse Detective (1986), Eve’s Bayou (1997), Breaking In (2018), Cube (1997), *Secret Window (2004), Silent Hill (2006), the Sixth Sense (1999), the Good Son (1993), Psycho (1960), Donnie Darko (2001), Fargo (1996), the Game (1997), the Invisible Man (2020), Breaking In (2018)

Books- *Holes by Louis Sachar, the Lost (the Outer Limits) by John Peel, We’ll Meet Again by Mary Higgins Clark, When the Bough Breaks by Jonathan Kellerman, *Secret Window Secret Garden (Four Past Midnight) by Stephen King, House of Stairs by William Sleator, Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King, Tangerine by Edward Bloor, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, the Girl who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King

 Sci-Fi/Space Aliens, Robots and Technology

Movies- I Robot (2004), the Iron Giant (1999), the Terminator (1984), AI artificial intelligence (2001), the Stepford Wives (2004), Wall-E (2008), *Screamers (1995), *Sphere (1998), *Blade Runner (1982), *2001 a Space Odyssey (1968), MIB (1997), Mission to Mars (2000), Galaxy Quest (1999), Alien (1979), ET the extra terrestrial (1982), Independence Day (1996), Spaced Invaders (1990), Buzz Lightyear of Star Command the Adventure Begins (2000), Chicken Little (2005), *War of the Worlds (1953), *Contact (1997), Signs (2002), Treasure Planet (2002), Frequency (2000), Back to the Future (1985), the Time Machine (1960), Planet of the Apes (1968), Lost in Space (1998)

Books- the Terminal Man by Michael Crichton, Feed by Matthew Tobin Anderson, *Second Variety (Screamers) by Phillip K Dick, *I Robot by Isaac Asimov, Cell by Stephen King, *Sphere by Michael Crichton, *Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (Blade Runner) by Philip K Dick , *2001 a Space Odyssey by  Arthur C Clarke, a Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, the Dark Side of Nowhere by Neal Shusterman, *War of the Worlds by HG Wells, *Contact by Carl Sagan, Childhood’s End by Arthur C Clarke, Aliens Don’t Wear Braces (the Baily School Kids) by Debbie Dadey and Marcia Jones, the Invasion (Animorphs) by KA Applegate

 Dystopia/Disaster, Other Worlds

Movies- Waterworld (1995), the Matrix (1999), Escape from New York (1981), *Demolition Man (1993), the Day After Tomorrow (2004), Volcano (1997), the Fifth Element (1997), Titan AE (2000), Armageddon (1998), Twister (1996), the Birds (1963), the Book of Eli, (2010) Spirited Away (2001), *Alice in Wonderland (1951), Pleasantville (1998), *the Phantom Tollbooth (1970), *the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), *Hook (1991), the Pagemaster (1994), *James and the Giant Peach (1996)

Books- Among the Hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix, Uglies by Scott Westerfeld, the Road by Cormac McCarthy, the House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer, 1984 by George Orwell, Armageddon Summer by Bruce Coville and Jane Yolen, the Giver by Lois Lowry, the City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau, *Brave New World (Demolition Man) by Aldous Huxley, Malice by Chris Wooding, * the Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, *Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, the Golden Compass (His Dark Materials) by Philip Pullman, *The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (the Chronicles of Narnia) by CS Lewis, *James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl

 Anime/Manga and J-Horror

Movies- Akira (1988), Perfect Blue (1997), Ring (1998), Dark Water (2002), Ghost in the Shell (1995), Tokyo Godfathers (2003), Cat Soup (2001), *Cowboy Bebop the Movie (2001), Blood the Last Vampire (2000), Pokemon the First Movie (1998), Sailor Moon R Promise of the Rose (1993), DBZ the World’s Strongest (1990), Digimon the Movie (2000), Ju-On (2000)

Manga- Claymore by Norihiro Yagi, Death Note by Tsugumi Ohba and illustrated by Takeshi Obata, *Yu Yu Hakusho by Yoshihiro Togashi, *Fullmetal Alchemist by Hiromu Arakawa, *Blue Exorcist by Kazue Katō, *Soul Eater by Atsushi Ōkubo, *Inuyasha by Rumiko Takahashi,

Anime- *Yu Yu Hakusho, *Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, *Soul Eater, *Blue Exorcist, *Inuyasha, *Cowboy Bebop, Mob Psycho 100, .hack//SIGN , the Promised Neverland, Paranoia Agent, Tokyo Ghoul, Hellsing Ultimate

 Super Hero

Movies- Hellboy (2004), Ghost Rider (2007), the Incredibles (2004), Batman Beyond return of the Joker (2000), TMNT (2007), Logan (2017), Black Panther (2018), Sky High (2005), Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse (2018), Justice League Crisis on Two Earths (2010), Batman Under the Red Hood (2010)

Comics- Animal Man (New 52, 2011) DC Comics, Swamp Thing (New 52, 2011) DC Comics, BPRD Dark Waters (2012) Dark Horse Comics, Nextwave (Agents of HATE, 2006) Marvel Comics

Animated Series- Batman the Animated Series, X-Men Evolution, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003), Darkwing Duck, the Powerpuff Girls, Teen Titans (2005), Static Shock, Green Lantern the Animated Series

 Cartoons and TV shows

Over the Garden Wall, The Simpsons (Treehouse of Horrors), Regular Show (Terror Tales of the Park), Adventure Time (Stakes), Scooby-Doo Where Are You/What’s New Scooby-Doo,  El Tigre the Adventures of Manny Rivera, Phineas and Ferb (Night of the Living Pharmacists), Gravity Falls, Good Omens, Miracle Workers, Grimm, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, What We Do In the Shadows, Hotel Transylvania the series, Wolf’s Rain, Danny Phantom, Aaahh Real Monsters, the Munsters, So Weird, Tutenstein, Gargoyles, Xena Warrior Princess, Are You Afraid of the Dark, Tales from the Crypt, Goosebumps, Samurai Jack, Metalocalypse, Super Jail, My Life as a Teenage Robot, Futurama, the Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, *Beetlejuice (animated series), Sabrina the Animated Series, the Owl House, Bewitched, Growing Up Creepy, the Addams Family (animated series), a Series of Unfortunate Events, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Star VS the Forces of Evil, Amphibia, Infinity Train, Penn Zero Part-Time Hero, Murder She Wrote, the Venture Bros, Avatar the Last Airbender, Invader ZIM, People of Earth, Star Trek Next Gen, Rick and Morty, Buzz Lightyear of Star Command

[smylealong]

Books that left a mark

In life, sometimes you come across things that leave an indelible mark on you. In this post, I present some books that I have read either in some critical junctures of my life or books that have changed how I look at a certain thing, or in some cases, how I look at life as a whole. These are some books that have shaped me. The books that have contributed to make me, me.

1. Wizard of Oz (L. Frank Baum): This is the first full-length novel that I read. It turned me into a bookworm.

2. Hobbit (JRR Tolkien): This was the book that told me that fantasy can be short, sweet and just wonderful. This is a book that makes me smile.

3. Fever (Robin Cook): I read this book when I was confronting mortality for the first time in my life. This book served as a reinforcement of the idea.

4. A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens): This is where I learned that I like a well-written darker character and Madame Defarge is just brilliant.

5. The Lost World (Micheal Chrichton): This book birthed my love for Paleontology. 'Nuff said.

6. The Lord of the Rings (JRR Tolkien): Do I even need to say anything about this book?

7. Many Lives, Many Masters (Dr Brian Weiss): I read this book while I was facing some professional difficulties many moons ago. This helped me gain a new perspective on life.

8. Harry Potter (J.K. Rowling): These books became the reason I fell in love with the genre.

9. The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe: I read Edgar Allen Poe as a 13-14 year old child and learned that I am a horror junkie.

10. House of Leaves (Mark Z. Danielewski): This is by far the strangest and scariest books that I have read. Describing this book will take much longer than the space here would permit.

A11. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini): I cried buckets. BUCKETS. This is the book I loved so much that I can never re-read it.

12. Tell Me Your Dreams (Sidney Sheldon): As an adult, I see the problems that this book has, but this little tale introduced me to mental-health issues as a seventeen year old.

13. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte): A tale of love, loss and betrayal, Wuthering Heights has stayed with me all my life.

14. The Bartimaeus Trilogy (Johnathan Stroud): No other book has made me laugh as much as this set of three books about a devious djinn has. Do give it a try. It is wildly different.

15. When Life Nearly Died (Micheal J Benton): A book detailing the Permian Extinction that took place nearly 252 million years ago, this book is one of my most treasured possessions. It also helped me through one of the toughest times in my life. Kept me sane.

16. The Story of Life in 25 Fossils (Donald R Prothero): The story of life is detailed in 25 small segments. Somehow, this book turned subject that is both heavy, and one that I love, easily accessible and understandable.

17. Pterosaurs (Mark P. Witton): Beautifully illustrated and well-written, this book allows me to understand a lesser-known but fascinating family much better.

18. Cambrian Explosion (Douglas H Erwin & James W Valentine): This dive into deep time gives some wonderful insights into one of evolution's most interesting and critical events.

[booketry]

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

I got this book quite early, but it was a book I chose myself, so maybe somewhere between 7-10 years old? Anyway, I enjoyed it even though it was old. It was a Swedish translation. Then we went to England on vacation a couple of times and my sister found four hardcover books with illustrations that belonged in the same series as that first book (that was hardcover too). It wasn’t that expensive back then, or maybe I didn’t notice because my parents paid for it. :) Most people have read the book at some point so I won’t say much about the plot - a girl from Kansas is ripped from her family, inside the family home, by a hurricane/twister and comes to a magical fairytale country, called Oz. Because she misses her family she tries to get home. That’s basically the story. I understand. I’d never survive without my family, even though Dorothy was lucky to get her house with her with, presumably, what little stuff she had. Whenever people ask what fantasy world you’d like to live in most people mention Tolkien’s Middle Earth, Narnia and Harry Potter’s world, but I usually answer Dinotopia. I’m obsessed with that island with cute dinosaurs. However, since I managed to download a free copy of the e-book, I now also think that the land of Oz might be an attractive option. :) Especially now. (Doctor Who isn’t primarily a book but to live inside the TARDIS would also be cool). For instance, in Oz you have trees that grow breakfast- and lunch boxes and bushes with macaroons. :) At the moment, my sister and I are also watching the first season of animated tv series called Lost in Oz and seems to be a modern retelling of the original story. It’s actually quite good, even though it’s aimed at children. Older kids, I think, because mine don’t find it that interesting. It’s fun, cute and quite thrilling too.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

#10yrsago The Magicians: a fantasy novel of wonder without sentimentality

Lev Grossman's novel The Magicians may just be the most subversive, gripping and enchanting fantasy novel I've read this century. Quentin Coldwater is a nerdy, depressed, high-achieving Brooklyn kid who finds himself hijacked from his Princeton interview and whisked away to Brakebills Academy, a school of magic upstate on the Hudson. He passes the entrance exam and begins his education as a wizard.

This is a familiar-sounding setup, but Grossman's extremely clever hack on the fantasy novel is in his complete lack of sentimentality about magic. Quentin has lived his whole life waiting to be taken to an imaginary magic kingdom ("Fillory," a thinly veiled version of Narnia) but he quickly discovers that real magic -- like stage magic -- is about an endless grind of numbing practice in the hopes of impressing someone -- anyone. All of Brakebills, from the faculty to the student body, is broken in some important way, and Quentin is no exception. In a place of scintillating minds and bottomless commitment to craft, Quentin's life is not substantially better than it is in Brooklyn. Brakebills isn't Hogwarts (at one point, the narrator notes that magic wands aren't used at Brakebills, being regarded as a kind of embarrassing prosthesis -- like a sex toy for magic).

Quentin's cycle -- mundane, magic student, magician in the world, questing adventurer -- serves as a scalpel that slices open the soft, sentimental belly of the fantasy canon, from Tolkien to Lewis to Baum, but still (and this is the fantastic part), it manages to be full of wonder. Wonder without sentimentality. Wonder without awe.

Grossman is a hell of a pacer, and the book rips along, whole seasons tossed out in a single sentence, all the boring mortar ground off the bricks, so that the book comes across as a sheer, seamless face that you can't stop yourself from tumbling down once you launch yourself off the first page. This isn't just an exercise in exploring what we love about fantasy and the lies we tell ourselves about it -- it's a shit-kicking, gripping, tightly plotted novel that makes you want to take the afternoon off work to finish it.

It must run in the family; Lev is the identical twin brother of Austin "Soon I Will Be Invincible" Grossman, another one-of-a-kind novelist.

I read the paper edition of The Magicians, but I'm delighted to see that there's an unabridged audio edition on DRM-free CDs. This is the kind of fairy story I could seriously dig having read aloud to me the second time around (and I don't think I'll be able to read this one just once).

The Magicians: A Novel

https://boingboing.net/2009/10/20/the-magicians-a-fant.html

[tomtefairytaleblog]

The thing that fascinates me the most about The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus is that L. Frank Baum created an entire pantheon of gods just for the story. And this would be years before J.R.R. Tolkien would do the same in his Middle-Earth stories, and even a couple years before Lord Dunsany’s Gods of Pegana. 

The text insists on referring to them as “Immortals,” and later on states that they answer to an unseen “Supreme Master,” which sounds suspiciously like the Christian God, but there’s really no other way to take their appearances and roles in tending to nature and mankind. In fact, if you want to get meta, the text comes off like the children’s version of various mythologies that try to downplay various elements of a mythos for censorship reasons (think the mythology books written by Tolkien and C.S. Lewis’s friend Roger Lancelyn Green in the Mid-20th Century). The meta angle works if one remembers that Baum would later link his fantasy books together into one universe, and that he also wrote his Oz books as if he were getting information from Dorothy herself.

This use of mythic archetypes also extends to the Awgwas, the demonic spirits that oppose Santa Claus and the Immortals. They’re vaguely described as gigantic and having scowling faces, and delight in spreading chaos throughout the world (specifically, the text says they like to inspire wicked thoughts in children, which naturally puts them on a narrative collision course with Claus, who wants to bring happiness to the children of the world). In many aspects they’re like the kind of primordial, chaotic beings one would read about in world mythologies, like the Jotuns, especially in how they oppose god-like beings.

[adamsdoyle]

My girlfriend asked me to make her a list of works of fantasy and science fiction so should could feel keyed into references when they come up in conversation. She wanted to feel more grounded in these genres, which she likes, but hasnt made the effort to be on top of everything.

I was happy to compile the most important names, but told her it couldn’t be a short list because recognizing the works of today means honoring their origins, which goes way back into our past. 

What’s below is my best effort to include what I assess to be the most culturally relevant becoming, tempering my favorites, and trying to keep it from being totally overwhelming. I’ve left off works from the past five to ten years because it can take a span of time before we're aware the effects new ideas may have. Felt like sharing here in case you or your friends want a crash course on the bedrock of our imagined landscape. I do try to be globally aware, however this list will reflect my bias as a white, straight, male who grew up in the States. And as this is an ongoing conversation between her and myself, I wanted to be able to vouch for the contents.

-Key-

(Wiki)  Read up for cultural significance *         Personal Favorite +        Hugely influential ^        Non-Essential but worth listing

-Literature-

8,000 BC Aboriginal mythology (pre written language)

2,300 BC Egyptian & Chinese myths+

1,000 BC The Old Testament+

900 BC Greek myths, fables, and all the rest

300 BC - 1800 AD Folk and fairy tales+

1000 AD Beowulf (Wiki)

1100s Legend of King Arthur+ 1200s Norse mythology+

1300s The Inferno - Dante Alighieri+

1500s A Midsummer Night’s Dream - Shakespeare

1600s Paradise Lost*

1700s Gulliver’s Travels The Arabian Nights (Wiki)

1800s Faust Frankenstein* - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly+ Grimm’s fairy tales+ (Wiki brothers, who collected folktales) The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde* Dracula - Bram Stoker+ Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll+ Flatland The Time Machine & War of the Worlds - HG Wells+ (godfather of SF) Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea - Jules Verne+ The Tell-Tale Heart - Edgar Allan Poe+

1900s Peter Pan - JM Barry The Comet - WEB Dubois Little Nemo in Slumberland - Winsor McCay The Book of Wonder - Lord Dunsany (less known now, he was highly influential in his time for fantasy & mythos) The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka+ (Einstein’s Theory of Relativity) The Wizard of Oz - L. Frank Baum+ John Carter of Mars - (Wiki) Call of Cthulhu or The Outsider - HP Lovecraft+ Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (Teacher of Orwell https://bit.ly/2xayA23) 1984 - George Orwell+ Amazing Stories magazine - John Campbell+ (writer & editor)

After 1950 Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien+ Chronicles of Narnia* - CS Lewis I Am Legend - Richard Matheson (The first real zombie story. Also wrote for Twilight Zone) Childhood’s End - Arthur C Clarke+ I, Robot - Isaac Asimov+ Farenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury Funes the Memorious or The Garden of Forking Paths - Borges+ Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut Wizard of Earthsea or The Lathe of Heaven - Ursula LeGuin Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein Dune Where the Wild Things Are - Maurice Sendak The Neverending Story* ^The Man in the High Castle Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - (inspired Bladerunner) Philip K Dick+ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy A Wrinkle in Time The Stand - Stephen King+

After 1980 Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino Xanth series* Communion - (True account of alien abduction) Neuromancer - William Gibson+ Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood Jurassic Park - Michael Crichton+ Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson Ender’s Game* - Orson Scott Card Parable of the Sower - Octavia Butler A Song of Ice & Fire - George RR Martin ^Hunger Games Harry Potter - JK Rowling+ Who Fears Death

-Comics/Superheroes-

-DC Comics- Superman (Wiki how he came to be) Wonder Woman (Wiki how she came to be or watch Professor Marston and the Wonder Women. Very interesting) Batman (and Joker) The Sandman - Neil Gaiman Watchmen* - Alan Moore+

-Marvel Comics- Spiderman* (Wiki how he came to be) X Men* Avengers (the hugely popular films all started with decades of comics) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles* Hellboy*

-Games- Dungeons & Dragons+ Magic the Gathering Netrunner

-Artists & Illustrators-

1100-1200 Anonymous monk’s illuminated manuscript creatures - https://bit.ly/2Ynytf7

1400s Hieronomous Bosch+ Leonardo DaVinci Michelangelo+ 1500s Arcimboldo

1800s Gustav Doré+ Howard Pyle JW Waterhouse

1900s Maxfield Parish NC Wyeth+ Sir John Tenniel Windsor McCay+ Arthur Rackham - fairy tales Jack Kirby - superhero comics Margaret Brundage - Weird Tales covers Picasso - Cubism Chesley Bonestell - space travel, integral to NASA Frank Frazetta MC Escher Heinrich Kley Sun Ra - Afrofuturist musician

After 1980 Jeff Easley - D&D Jim Lee - X Men Michael Whelan  H.R. Giger - Alien films Brian Froud  Syd Mead - design of Bladerunner & other films Roger Dean - album covers Jean Giraud aka Moebius Bill Waterson - Calvin & Hobbes Leo Dillon and Diane Dillon James Gurney - Dinotopia Alan Lee - Lord of the Rings Alex Ross - superheroes Chris Van Allsburg Mike Mignola - Hellboy Mary GrandPré - Harry Potter

-Radio-

1930s -1950s Flash Gordon War of the Worlds (Wiki Orson Welles’ radio hoax) Buck Rogers The Shadow and much more in the ensuing years, including adaptations of The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide

-TV Shows-

After 1950s Twilight Zone - Rod Serling Lost in Space Star Trek - (Wiki) Gene Roddenberry Dr Who (Wiki) The Jetsons (Wiki) Cosmos - Carl Sagan+ (Science fact)

After 1980s Transformers Quantum Leap Twin Peaks - David Lynch (not really either genre but impact has been undeniable) Buffy the Vampire Slayer* - Joss Whedon X Files* Neon Genesis Evangelion

After 2000 Firefly - Joss Whedon Lost* - JJ Abrams Battlestar Galactica Black Mirror* Game of Thrones Westworld* - reboot of Michael Crichton 1970s film

-Films-

1900s King Kong (Wiki) The Wizard of Oz+ Fantasia- Disney+ Monster movies- Dracula, The Mummy, The Wolfman, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Frankenstein (Wiki)

After 1950 Godzilla+ (Wiki) Seven Samurai or Hidden Fortress - Akira Kurosawa+ (Not SF or fantasy but influential) The 7th Voyage of Sinbad - Special effects by Ray Harryhausen (Wiki) Invasion of the Body Snatchers 2001 A Space Odyssey - Stanley Kubrick+ (Wiki) Planet of the Apes Night of the Living Dead+ (Wiki) Superman #Star Wars Trilogy - George Lucas (owing to Joseph Campbell’s monomyth)+

After 1980 Bladerunner* - Ridley Scott ^Legend Mad Max series Alien or sequel Aliens Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind - Steven Spielberg+ ET Star Trek series Back to the Future Brazil - Terry Gilliam+ Tron+ Ghostbusters* Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure* The Princess Bride* Labyrinth* The Terminator & Terminator 2* - James Cameron+ Akira The Fifth Element Robocop Beetlejuice ^Nightmare Before Xmas* Jurassic Park - Steven Spielberg+ The City of Lost Children* The Iron Giant* 12 Monkeys Groundhog Day* The Sixth Sense Ghost in the Shell (1995 anime) Gattaca* Donnie Darko* Starship Troopers (tongue in cheek adaptation of Heinlein’s classic) The Matrix*

After 2000 Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon My Neighbor Totoro or Spirited Away - Hayao Miyazaki ^Underworld Minority Report Lord of the Rings Primer ^The Incredibles Shaun of the Dead*  Pan’s Labyrinth - Guillermo del Toro Moon* Marvel Cinematic Universe ^Idiocracy Inception* &/or Interseller - Christopher Nolan+

[illthdar]

11/11/11 Tag

Tagged by @silver-wields-a-pen

1. Who is your favourite oc?

To be honest, I flip-flop a lot on that one. Generally, it is the OC that is being tormented or experiencing the most growth in whatever character arc in the Illthdar series.

2. What themes do you struggle writing?

I struggle with fight scenes and romance. Fight scenes because it calls for a snappier text style that my over-wordy self has a hard time balancing. Romance because I crave a specific brand of romance that isn’t often depicted in fiction - the slow kind that builds very carefully over months/years. The sexual tension, the overdone tropes, associated with romance just kind of make my toes curl or make me want to throw books across the room and scream “you aren’t in love yet!” Writing my own version while still adding those snippets that readers crave - the glances, the fumbling, the derp - is hard for me.

3. What’s been the best thing about writing your wip?

The world exploration and the slow unfolding of events and discovery of life on in the world as a whole. I took to writing Illthdar from the perspective of an immigrant - someone who sees the new place they are living with eyes wide open and with none of the rose-tint that natives would have, as well as that naivete and innocent trust that the people around them mean well. This perspective lends itself greatly to the steady exposure to the evil that can be found under the surface of any world, but is especially compounded in the world of Illthdar.

4. What themes has your favourite story included?

The Illthdar series covers several themes: prejudice, platonic/romantic love, good vs. evil, power and corruption, survival, courage/heroism, and war

5. What time of day do you prefer writing?

I typically write in the evenings, after the kiddo has gone to sleep - which is typically around 8PM - and I normally call a quits at 10PM.

6. What’s your favourite relationship trope to write?

The comrade or friends relationship is my favourite to explore. I feel like I don’t see enough of those outside of the friends-to-lovers trope in fiction and I like to explore as many versions of it as I can.

7. What detail about your ocs has surprised you?

(Warning, these are relating largely to later books in the series) The detail about Date Toshiiro’s fingers was not something I originally thought was so important but later turned into something much bigger. Tundra’s past and his life’s mission also took me by surprise somewhat. Seth’s arc is something I don’t think anyone could have anticipated. Magnilla also takes some interesting turns. Vyxen, for me, is especially heartbreaking. Scyanatha’s progress wasn’t something I really saw coming. The same could be said for Nyima. Abaddon’s arc is hints upon hints upon hints of so much stuff that I think will be really awesome to see when it’s all laid out in the end. Zercey/Lerki/Inari have so far been largely predictable in the writing process, though there have been legitimate times where I’ve wondered about where they’re headed.

That’s just the main cast! There’s a ton of things I found interesting about the secondary characters in the series, but it would take forever to write it.

8. Thoughts on including romance in other genres?

I’m going to be real: the suspension bridge trope that’s seen in horror bothers me. Romance in horror - where X character feels forms a very quick and strong bond with Y character is creepy on so many levels, I don’t even know where to start.

9. Favourite writing snack?

There isn’t any one specific snack I’ll reach for when I write. Normally, I’ll have something before I’ve sat down so I’m not usually nibbling as I go. When I do have something, it’s usually something like a fried egg sandwich with some token bits of salad greens.

10. Favourite villain trope?

The villain in waiting. This person has been there this whole time, they’ve been bugging you forever to the point that you’ve convinced yourself they’re just there for the comedy relief but, surprise! They’re gonna cut you up and they are absolutely not sorry. This is the person who, in hindsight, you should have seen it coming, but was so long in waiting to make their move, the only emotion you have left to give is the desire to have gotten to them first.

11. Best scene you’ve written?

Without getting into spoilers for future books, the best scene is a toss up in Guardians of Las between the scene with Vyxen and Scy emerging from the forest during the battle or Tundra and Nyima’s conversation on the balcony.

Tagged by @bigmoodword

1. using one sentence summaries, can you tell me about your wips?

Illthdar: When everything defies logic and reason, nothing and no one is safe.

2. what inspired them?

A lot of things inspired the Illthdar series: common fantasy book/game tropes, classic literary works (J. R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Lewis Carroll, L. Frank Baum, H.P. Lovecraft, J. M. Barrie...), my life as an immigrant, society today on a whole.

3. which of your ocs do you most identify with?

While not specifically my OC (she was originally designed by @guardians-of-las-vyxen), I can relate very strongly to the emotions she experiences in the series. When I write, I try to put a little of my own humanity into all of my characters, in terms of qualities, people who know me personally and have read the first book see that that reflected strongest in Zercey.

4. if you’ve ever cried while reading, which book cued the waterworks?

Honestly, nothing will crush a heart more than Pamela Denise Smart’s “Who's Afraid of the Teddy Bear's Picnic?: A Story of Sexual Abuse and Recovery Through Psychotherapy” Massive trigger warnings for anyone who has experienced childhood sexual abuse, however. An added plus to it was that it’s also a coming-out book as the author happens to be a Lesbian.

5. how do you conduct research for your wips and what’s the most interesting thing you’ve discovered in said research?

I have a terrible habit of doing things to characters first, then researching the potential outcomes after the fact. Were some of the OCs real, they would not like me at all. I won’t give spoilers, however. That said, I think this is a better way to write a bit of reality into a story: the outcomes are not pre-scripted, just as anyone’s life journey is never linear. Forcing the OCs to “deal with” whatever consequence without the benefit of having an desired outcome in mind, puts character and reader on the edge of their seats, I feel, because the threat is real.

6. thus far, which scene has been the most difficult to write?

Again, without spoilers for the future books, for Guardians of Las the hardest scene would have been the mock-fight between High Elder Culvers and High Elder Trenfal.

7. which of your ocs do you like the least?

Currently, as it does depend on who is feeding my sadism, where I am at in writing the series it I can’t decide if I hate Maraxis or Lord Rhett, the most. Maraxis is every bit the villain that you have to live with in life - which makes him frustrating to an extreme degree. Lord Rhett, on the other hand, is the self-righteous, might-equals-right, stereotypical kind of evil - the cliche villain that we don’t have to look at very hard to recognise.

8. which pov and tense do you prefer to write in?

I like third person limited. It allows me to explore the minds of different characters on a deeply, keep the cards to the plot close to my chest out of open sight to the readers, and help the readers connect to the world without a million I-statements.

9. do you write poetry?

In my late teens, I tried, but ultimately saw the paper fit to use only as kindling.

10. who is your writing role model?

Gosh, I don’t even know. I don’t think I have one. I think the narrative voice of each author has its pros and cons, so it’s hard to point to just one and say “I want to be like that.”

11. if you could give your younger writer self some advice, what would it be?

Revision isn’t a dirty word, nor is the suggestion of it a blemish upon your name. It’s a compliment; the one giving the critique sees in you potential to grow and improve. And that is worth everything.

Tagging: @aslanwrites, @bigmoodword, @english-undergrad, @elizabethsyson, @garrettauthor, @haileyavril, @igotablankpage, @imaghostwriter, @jessawriter, @kobalt-ink, @mvcreates

My questions for you:

 What was the very first story you ever wrote?

What does your ideal writing space look like?

How long do you give yourself to research for your WIP?

What do you think is your greatest weakness as a writer?

What do you think is your greatest strength?

Name one of your bad habits as a writer.

Where do you find inspiration for your OCs?

What OC would like you the most?

What OC would like you the least?

Name something you do that you think no other writer does.

Have you ever done NaNoWriMo?

[isfjmel-phleg]

I've been recording audiobooks of the Oz series for the convenience of allieinarden, who hasn't read the entire series yet. But not just the Oz books. L. Frank Baum, tired of writing about Oz, attempted to end the series and start another. He only got two books into that other series before crossing it over with Oz due to popular demand, and The Sea Fairies and Sky Island are mostly forgotten today. But I'm including them with the Oz books for the sake of continuity (they introduce characters who will later go to Oz and feature others who have appeared before in The Road to Oz) and because they're pretty good in their own right, particularly Sky Island, which Baum believed was among "the two best books of [his] career" (the other being The Patchwork Girl of Oz) and the one "which will probably always be considered [his] best work."

Sky Island is an old favorite of mine. Maybe because of the opening scene of dialogue, which goes a longer way toward character establishment than Baum usually bothers with. The main characters are well-defined: Mayre "Trot" Griffith[s] is decidedly different than Dorothy--blunter, more inclined to adventure for its own sake, but no less indomitable, like all Baum's heroines. Button-Bright from The Road to Oz is now supplied with a real name (or part of one--he can't remember all of it) and sort of a background, though still shadowy enough to be mysterious, and he's grown up a lot since his last appearance, displaying a new ingenuity. And Cap'n Bill provides the necessary voice of reason, with awkward, vaguely piratey dialect.

As ever, Baum is concentrated on world-building, and Sky Island inherits Oz's color-coded-for-your-convenience structure, but that's more or less where the similarities end. It's a much darker place than Oz, full of characters who are capable of doing dreadful things, such as patching (slicing two people in half down the middle and then reattaching them mismatched, leaving the victims with horrendous identity crises). Government systems are unique, detailed, and more than a little satirical. And perhaps a bit thought-provoking. Then there's this:

In this country [of the Pinkies] the women seemed fully as important as the men, and instead of being coddled and petted they performed their share of the work, both in public and private affairs, and were expected to fight in the wars exactly as the men did.

Pretty radical for 1912. And as usual, there are many influential female characters in the story: our heroine, Tourmaline the Queen of the Pinkies, Coralie the Captain of one of the Pinkie tribes' army, Rosalie the Witch (who prefers to avoid doing magic because it makes her head ache but will come through in a pinch), Polychrome the Rainbow's Daughter (who has acquired new legal skills since last we saw her), etc. 

Also, you know that character with an umbrella with an animal's head handle and the umbrella can fly? No, not Mary Poppins. Button-Bright, twenty-two years before Mary Poppins was published.

(Baum also wrote about Orks long before Tolkien did, but his were much different. He also wrote about a clockwork robot and something that sounds a lot like a cell phone. In 1914.)

It's in the public domain and has gorgeous illustrations. Take a look.

[mask131]

Deltora Quest review: The Forests of Silence (Series 1 - 1)

The first book of the series. The Forests of Silence, the book of the Golden Knight and the topaze. 

SPOILERS AHEAD! SPOILERS AHEAD! SPOILERS AHEAD!

It’s actually not the first book I read when I entered the Deltora Quest series. It’s the third I read. Yes, because through a series of weird circumstances, I started reading the series by the books in the middle, and only started properly the series after two books. And apparently I did well.

Most people remember this book as being kind of boring and not really a good start for the series, the Deltora spirit really kicking in at book 2. 

I also think this book is not as interesting, thrilling or memorable as the other ones in the series, but it’s due to its nature as the opener of the series, and the whole franchise. This book is like a long prologue, an introduction, here to present the setting, the characters, the quest, the ennemies, and how we got here. 

That is also why this book is the only one in the entire Deltora series to be split in two. The first part, “The Belt of Deltora” is a huge introduction/flashback, telling the story of Endon, the last king of Deltora, Jarred his faithful friend, and how the Shadow Lord destroyed the Belt and invaded Deltora. The second part is “Under the Shadow”, and depicts how the three heroes of the quest (Barda, Lief and Jasmine) got together, started the quest, and obtained the first stone, the topaze, after vanquishing their first ennemy, Gorl. 

Due to being an introduction to the whole series, the adventures of our heroic trio are really compressed. Hence why a lot of people think of it as not being quite entertaining or interesting, it’s because things are fast and quick, without any plot twist or big reveal. 

While at first I wasn’t liking much this book, every time I read it I love it more. The picture of the golden knight, a shining armor filled with darkness, its host long dead and consumed by greed and evil, is a picture that really stuck in my mind (and reminds me a bit of the creepy library episode of Doctor Who with the man-eating shadows). The part with the Wennbar was really good, and showed just how twisted, dark and weird Deltora can be. I wished we could see more of the Forests of Silence - they are built up as such a dreadful place, filled with monsters and horrors, and we can only see two of them. Lief keeps telling of the frightening stories he heard as a child about it, but we never know exactly what are these stories. 

I also like that Gorl is completely oblivious to the state of Deltora and doesn’t realize that he is used as a guardian by the Shadow Lord. While at first I was a bit disappointed to see that all the Guardians weren’t servants of the Shadow Lord, I ended up realizing that it was just as fun to see the Shadow Lord use Deltora’s native evil and monsters, to make them the doom of their own land, without them actively trying to destroy the country. It’s really fun.

Also, when you know the end, there’s so much foreshadowing and irony in this book it nearly killed me! Seriously, that’s just so... arrrgg! 

I also like how a lot of things are presented are as mundane stuff, when they are later revealed to be deeply disturbing. Like the Grey Guard. Reading the first book, you just think they are badly behaved, cruel and evil men that came with the Shadow Lord, but are just humans. You couldn’t guess that they actually are artificial creatures made by the Shadow Lord. Not in a thousand years. 

And of course, I must like how the whole presence of riddles, enigmas and hidden codes and messages date back to the royal dynasty of Deltora. Again foreshadowing a lot of stuff, but also showing that we are in a setting highly inspired by fairy tales. Even though here we are much more in a fantasy stuff, between Tolkien and Baum. The real fairy tale elements will only come with book 2...

Also, I’ll add at the end of each post the french cover of the books, the one I grew up with.

Edit: Also, I think Rodda never adressed what was the whole thing with the “Wenn” stuff? I mean, there are the Wenn species, and the Wennbar, alright... But why is the road named “Del-Wenn”? It leads to believe that the road used to link two cities, Del and Wenn. But I don’t think there is a city ever described as “Wenn”, isn’t it? Or maybe they explain it in the companion books. 

Edit 2: Despite the fact it wasn’t the book I liked the most in the series, and that I wasn’t interested in it as much as the other ones, I still remembered quite well all of its content. Unlike other books in the series that I entirely forgot and sometimes keep forgotting between reads. 

Edit 3: I just realized that each book seems the reflect the value that its stone is supposed to represent. Here we have the Topaze, symbol of Faithfulness (translated in French as loyalty). And that’s what the three main characters have to show toward each other. Faith and loyalty. Lief believing Barda thinks of him as a burden, Barda trying to not put Lief in danger because he thinks of him as too young and inexperimented, Jasmine having to help these unknown people and get out of her comfort zone and safe routine to help those that would become her friends... 

[a-bit-of-lit-blog]

i noticed y’all have been enjoying my novel masterposts. so im just going to keep posting because im obsessed with books like that T.T

for my study-like-rory studyblr friends who want to read all the books mentioned in gilmore girls (because hello?? who doesn’t??), here’s a list! pls let me know if i missed a book, but i think it’s quite a complete list! enjoy!!

#

1984 – George Orwell

A

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain

Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay – Michael Chabon

An American Tragedy – Theodore Dreiser

Angela’s Ashes – Frank McCourt

Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl – Anne Frank

Archidamian War – Donald Kagen

The Art of Fiction  – Henry James

The Art of War – Sun Tzu

As I Lay Dying – William Faulkner

Atonement – Ian McEwan

The Awakening – Kate Chopin

Autobiography of a Face – Lucy Grealy

B

Babe – Dick King-Smith

Backlash – Susan Faludi

Balzac & the Little Chinese Seamstress – Dai Sijie

The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath

Beloved – Toni Morrison

Beowulf – Seamus Heaney

The Bhagava Gita

The Bielski Brothers – Peter Duffy

Bitch in Praise of Difficult Women – Elizabeth Wurtzel

A Bolt From the Blue & other Essays – Mary McCarthy

Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

Brick Lane – Monica Ali

Brigadoon – Alan Jay Lerner

C

Candide – Voltaire

The Canterbury Tales – Chaucer

Carrie –Stephen King

Catch – 22 – Joseph Heller

The Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger

The Celebrated Jumping Frog – Mark Twain

Charlotte’s Web – EB White

The Children’s Hour – Lilian Hellman

Christine – Stephen King

A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess

The Code of the Woosters – PG Wodehouse

The Collected Short Stories – Eudora Welty

The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty

A Comedy of Errors – William Shakespeare

Complete Novels – Dawn Powell

The Complete Poems – Anne Sexton

Complete Stories – Dorothy Parker

A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole

The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

Cousin Bette – Honore de Balzac

Crime & Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Crimson Petal & the White – Michael Faber

The Crucible – Arthur Miller

Cujo – Stephen King

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime – Mark Haddon

D

Daughter of Fortune – Isabel Allende

David and Lisa – Dr. Theodore Issac Rubin

David Coperfield – Charles Dickens

The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown

Deal Souls – Nikolai Gogol (Season 3, episode 3)

Demons – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Death of a Salesman – Arthur Miller

Deenie – Judy Blume

The Devil in the White City – Erik Larson

The Dirt – Tommy Lee, Vince Neil, Mick Mark, & Nikki Sixx

The Divine Comedy – Dante

The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood – Rebecca Wells

Don Quijote – Cervantes

Driving Miss Daisy – Alfred Uhrv

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde ­– Robert Louis Stevenson

E

Complete Tales & Poems – Edgar Allan Poe

Eleanor Roosevelt – Blanche Wiesen Cook

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test – Tom Wolfe

Ella Minnow Pea – Mark Dunn

Eloise – Kay Thompson

Emily the Strange – Roger Reger

Emma – Jane Austen

Empire Falls – Richard Russo

Encyclopedia Brown – Donald J. Sobol

Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton

Ethics – Spinoza

Eva Luna – Isabel Allende

Everything is Illuminated – Jonathon Safran Foer

Extravagance – Gary Kist

F

Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 911 – Michael Moore

The Fall of the Athenian Empire – Donald Kagan

Fat Land:How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World – Greg Critser

Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson

The Fellowship of the Ring – J R R Tolkien

Fiddler on the Roof – Joseph Stein

The Five People You Meet in Heaven – Mitch Albom

Finnegan’s Wake – James Joyce

Fletch – Gregory McDonald

Flowers of Algernon – Daniel Keyes

The Fortress of Solitude – Jonathon Lethem

The Fountainhead – Ayn Rand

Frankenstein – Mary Shelley

Franny and Zooey – JD Salinger

Freaky Friday – Mary Rodgers

G

Galapagos – Kurt Vonnegut

Gender Trouble – Judith Baker

George W. Bushism – Jacob Weisberg

Gidget – Fredrick Kohner

Girl, Interrupted – Susanna Kaysen

The Ghostic Gospels – Elaine Pagels

The Godfather – Mario Puzo

The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy

Goldilocks & the Three Bears – Alvin Granowsky

Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell

The Good Soldier – Ford Maddox Ford

The Gospel According to Judy Bloom

The Graduate – Charles Webb

The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald

Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

The Group – Mary McCarthy

H

Hamlet – Shakespeare

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – JK Rowling

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone – JK Rowling

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – Dave Eggers

Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

Helter Skelter – Vincent Bugliosi

Henry IV, Part 1 – Shakespeare

Henry IV, Part 2 – Shakespeare

Henry V – Shakespeare

High Fidelity – Nick Hornby

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire – Edward Gibbons

Holidays on Ice – David Sedaris

The Holy Barbarians – Lawrence Lipton

House of Sand and Fog – Andre Dubus III

The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende

How to Breathe Underwater – Julie Orringer

How the Grinch Stole Christmas – Dr. Seuss

How the Light Gets In – MJ Hyland

Howl – Alan Ginsburg

The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Victor Hugo

I

The Illiad – Homer

I’m With the Band – Pamela des Barres

In Cold Blood – Truman Capote

Inferno – Dante

Inherit the Wind – Jerome Lawrence & Robert E Lee

Iron Weed – William J. Kennedy

It Takes a Village – Hilary Clinton

J

Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte

The Joy Luck Club – Amy Tan

Julius Caesar – Shakespeare

The Jungle – Upton Sinclair

Just a Couple of Days – Tony Vigorito

K

The Kitchen Boy – Robert Alexander

Kitchen Confidential – Anthony Bourdain

The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini

L

Lady Chatterley’s Lover – DH Lawrence

The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2000 – Gore Vidal

Leaves of Grass – Walt Whitman

The Legend of Bagger Vance – Steven Pressfield

Less Than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis

Letters to a Young Poet – Rainer Maria Rilke

Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them – Al Franken

Life of Pi – Yann Martel

Little Dorrit – Charles Dickens

The Little Locksmith – Katharine Butler Hathaway

The Little Match Girl – Hans Christian Anderson

Little Woman – Louisa May Alcott

Living History – Hillary Clinton

Lord of the Flies – William Golding

The Lottery & Other Stories – Shirley Jackson

The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold

The Love Story – Eric Segal

M

Macbeth – Shakespeare

Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert

The Manticore – Robertson Davies (Season 3, episode 3)

Marathon Man – William Goldman

The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov

Memoirs of  Dutiful Daughter – Simone de Beauvoir

Memoirs of General WT Sherman – William Tecumseh Sherman

Me Talk Pretty One Day – David Sedaris

The Meaning of Consuelo – Judith Ortiz Cofer

Mencken’s Chrestomathy – HR Mencken

The Merry Wives of Windsor – Shakespeare

The Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka

Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides

The Miracle Worker – William Gibson

Moby Dick – Herman Melville

The Mojo Collection – Jim Irvin

Moliere – Hobart Chatfield Taylor

A Monetary History of the US – Milton Friedman

Monsieur Proust – Celeste Albaret

A Month of Sundays – Julie Mars

A Moveable Feast – Ernest Hemingway

Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf

Mutiny on the Bounty – Charles Nordhoff & James Norman Hall

My Lai 4 – Seymour M Hersh

My Life as Author and Editor – HR Mencken

My Life in Orange – Tim Guest

My Sister’s Keeper – Jodi Picoult

N

The Naked and the Dead – Norman Mailer

The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco

The Namesake – Jhumpa Lahiri

The Nanny Diaries – Emma McLaughlin

Nervous System – Jan Lars Jensen

New Poems of Emily Dickinson

The New Way Things Work – David Macaulay

Nickel and Dimed – Barbara Ehrenreich

Night – Elie Wiesel

Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen

The Norton Anthology of Theory & Criticism – William E Cain

Novels 1930-1942: Dance Night/Come Back to Sorrento, Turn, Magic Wheel/Angels on Toast/A Time to be Born by Dawn Powell

Notes of a Dirty Old Man – Charles Bukowski

O

Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

Old School – Tobias Wolff

Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens

On the Road – Jack Keruac

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch – Alexander Solzhenitsyn

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey

One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life – Amy Tan

Oracle Night – Paul Auster

Oryx and Crake – Margaret Atwood

Othello – Shakespeare

Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens

The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War – Donald Kagan

Out of Africa – Isac Dineson

The Outsiders – S. E. Hinton

P

A Passage to India – E.M. Forster

The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition – Donald Kagan

The Perks of Being a Wallflower – Stephen Chbosky

Peyton Place – Grace Metalious

The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde

Pigs at the Trough – Arianna Huffington

Pinocchio – Carlo Collodi

Please Kill Me – Legs McNeil & Gilliam McCain

The Polysyllabic Spree – Nick Hornby

The Portable Dorothy Parker

The Portable Nietzche

The Price of Loyalty – Ron Suskind

Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

Property – Valerie Martin

Pushkin – TJ Binyon

Pygmalion – George Bernard Shaw

Q

Quattrocento – James McKean

A Quiet Storm – Rachel Howzell Hall

R

Rapunzel – Grimm Brothers

The Razor’s Edge – W Somerset Maugham

Reading Lolita in Tehran – Azar Nafisi

Rebecca – Daphne de Maurier

Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm – Kate Douglas Wiggin

The Red Tent – Anita Diamant

Rescuing Patty Hearst – Virginia Holman

The Return of the King – JRR Tolkien

R is for Ricochet – Sue Grafton

Rita Hayworth – Stephen King

Robert’s Rules of Order – Henry Robert

Roman Fever – Edith Wharton

Romeo and Juliet – Shakespeare

A Room of One’s Own – Virginia Woolf

A Room with a View – EM Forster

Rosemary’s Baby – Ira Levin

The Rough Guide to Europe

S

Sacred Time – Ursula Hegi

Sanctuary – William Faulkner

Savage Beauty – Nancy Milford

Say Goodbye to Daisy Miller – Henry James

The Scarecrow of Oz – Frank L. Baum

The Scarlet Letter – Nathanial Hawthorne

Seabiscuit – Laura Hillenbrand

The Second Sex – Simone de Beauvior

The Secret Life of Bees – Sue Monk Kidd

Secrets of the Flesh – Judith Thurman

Selected Letters of Dawn Powell (1913-1965)

Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

A Separate Place – John Knowles

Several Biographies of Winston Churchill

Sexus – Henry Miller

The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafron

Shane – Jack Shaefer

The Shining – Stephen King

Siddartha – Hermann Hesse

S is for Silence – Sue Grafton

Slaughter-House 5 – Kurt Vonnegut

Small Island – Andrea Levy

Snows of Kilamanjaro – Ernest Hemingway

Snow White and Red Rose – Grimm Brothers

Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy – Barrington Moore

The Song of Names – Norman Lebrecht

Song of the Simple Truth – Julia de Burgos

The Song Reader – Lisa Tucker

Songbook – Nick Hornby

The Sonnets – Shakespeare

Sonnets from the Portuegese – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Sophie’s Choice – William Styron

The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner

Speak, Memory – Vladimir Nabakov

Stiff, The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers – Mary Roach

The Story of my Life – Helen Keller

A Streetcar Named Desire – Tennessee Williams

Stuart Little – EB White

Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway

Swann’s Way – Marcel Proust

Swimming with Giants – Anne Collett

Sybil – Flora Rheta Schreiber

T

A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

Tender is the Night – F Scott Fitzgerald

Term of Endearment – Larry McMurty

Time and Again – Jack Finney

The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffeneggar

To Have and to Have Not – Ernest Hemingway

To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

The Tragedy of Richard III – Shakespeare

Travel and Motoring through Europe – Myra Waldo

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – Betty Smith

The Trial – Franz Kafka

The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters – Elisabeth Robinson

Truth & Beauty – Ann Patchett

Tuesdays with Morrie – Mitch Albom

U

Ulysses – James Joyce

The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (1950-1962)

Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Harriet Beecher Stowe

Unless – Carol Shields

V

Valley of the Dolls – Jacqueline Susann

The Vanishing Newspaper – Philip Meyers

Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray

Velvet Underground – Joe Harvard

The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides

W

Waiting for Godot – Samuel Beckett

Walden – Henry David Thoreau

Walt Disney’s Bambi – Felix Salten

War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

We Owe You Nothing – Daniel Sinker

What Colour is Your Parachute – Richard Nelson Bolles

What Happened to Baby Jane – Henry Farrell

When the Emperor Was Divine – Julie Otsuka

Who Moved My Cheese? Spencer Johnson

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Edward Albee

Wicked – Gregory Maguire

The Wizard of Oz – Frank L Baum

Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte

Y

The Yearling – Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

The Year of Magical Thinking – Joan Didion

OTHER RESOURCES:

19th Century Novels Masterpost

20th Century Novels Masterpost

21st Century Novels Masterpost

Rory Gilmore’s Reading List

Series Masterpost

[randomsofmine]

March Wrap Up 2017

A good reading month. There were a few ok books but that was balanced by some excellent books. In total I read 16 books and completed 1 book carried over from February. That worked out to 4586 pages read, which makes March my second best reading month so far. I also completed my Goodreads reading goal of 50 books. I don’t think I want to change the number, I might just keep it at 50 and see how far above my goal I get. My reading is going to change soon as my job role will be changing which means less time to listen to audiobooks so that will affect my years total. I also plan on spending April reading all my biggest books on my tbr pile. This is inspired by Tome Topple, a readathon created by @thoughtsontomes which will be taking place this month (for more information please see here). Looking forward to diving into some really chunky books.

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach I am a science geek. My degree is in forensic science. So this sort of book is endlessly interesting to me. And it was brilliant. Scientific to satisfy my geek side but also extremely approachable and with a bit of humor. It looks at how cadavers are used for science (currently and historically). There were some bits that were gross (don’t eat while reading some parts of this) but overall it was fascinating and gave me a lot to think about. I will definitely be picking up more of her books. 4/5

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly I don’t think this needs explanation. I wanted to read the book before seeing the movie. These women's contributions not only to science but also to the different communities around them are truly inspiring. The book itself was very good, the jumps in timelines were a little jarring but I was always able to pick up what was going on. Ad it had some excellent space science information. 3.5/5

Wizard of Oz by L.Frank Baum This was way darker than I remembered.I didn’t enjoy it as much as I did when I was younger or as much as the Judy Garland adaptation.Dorothy was a tad annoying. 3/5

The Bridgertons by Julia Quinn

The Viscount Who Loved Me 4/5

The Viscount Who Loved Me: The Epilogue II 3.5/5

Continuing my read through of Julia Quins works.Sweet and funny,romance candy.

A Quick Bite by Lynsay Sands Urban paranormal romance.I picked this up as a re-read (according to Goodreads) and thought I knew what this was about. I think Goodreads is wrong.I do not believe I have ever read this book before.It was not the book I thought it was (which I now need to find). It was ok. Not great. Some of the dialogue was a bit cringe worthy. 2.5/5

The Lady Helen Mysteries by Alison Goodman

Lusus Naturae: A Lord Carlston Story 3/5

The Dark Days Pact 4/5

A novella and sequel to last years The Dark Days Club. The novella was fine, I don’t think it added anything. It was the meeting between the two main characters, from Lord Carlston’s prospective. The Dark Days Pact was an excellent sequel. Just as on the edge of your seat as the first book. Lady Helen is still learning her role, what that really means and how to live with it within respectable society. It ended on a cliffhanger and I can’t wait till next year for the 3rd book.

Hope and Red (Empire of Storms, book 1) by Jon Skovron This was amazing and will definitely be going on my favourite list for this year. Its a sci-fi fantasy with pirates and science experiments. Thats the easiest way to describe it. Its dark and a bit bloody and fast paced. Theres a lot of in-built slang but you can pick up the meaning quite easy. The characters are fascinating and I felt the main characters were quite unique.  5/5

Star Wars Rogue One: The Ultimate Visual Guide by Pablo Hidalgo I picked this up at the Star Wars Identity exhibition. Its a coffee table book about Rogue One. It’s incredibly detailed. You get minute details about characters, worlds, ships and weapons. There were character details about characters that appeared for a minute or two in the movie. A prefect gift for the Star Wars nerd. I enjoyed it so much. 5/5

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by J.K Rowling This was the audio version of the book, as read by Eddie Redmayne. This was just pure comfort reading. He is an excellent narrator and the book was full of interesting tidbits about the creatures from the Harry Potter world. 4/5

The Truth (Discworld, book ) by Terry Pratchett Newspapers and journalists come to the Discworld! This was another fun adventure with a tongue in cheek poke at journalism. We had the opportunity to view the Night Watch from the outside and met a few new characters that I think come back in later books. 4/5

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green This was another re-read (although via an audiobook this time). The first time I read this I loved it and was an emotional mess by the end. This time round I still enjoyed it nut knowing what was going to happen and being able to recognise the books flaws did diminish my enjoyment a bit 3.5/5

The Lord of The Rings by J.R.R.Tolkien

The Two Towers 5/5

The Return of The King 5/5

Continuing my re-read of Tolkiens work, I carried over Two Towers from the previous month and completed Return of The KIng. I always forget exactly how long Return of the King takes to end. That would be my only complaint. The world building and the writing are beautifully done. I will be reading The Silmarillion and The Unfinished Tales this year but I’m putting them on hold to read The Complete Sherlock Holmes stories with a friend.

Vampire Academy 10th Anniversary Edition (Vampire Academy series, book 1.5) by Richelle Mead This was a bind up of the first book in the series and 3 novelleas. I read the novellas as I only finished the series last year and wasn’t in the mood for a re-read. They were all pretty good. I think the 3rd one was my favourite because... well of Dimitri. 3.5/5

After Alice by  Gregory Maguire I still have no idea of what to make of this book. It really should have been in two parts. One part the elder sister of Alice’s story and the other Ada’s adventures. I could have done with being able to skip the elder sisters story which was hard to do as the chapters alternated sometimes. I didn’t really enjoy that bit, it made the book drag for me and was a bit pointless. Ada’s adventures were pure Carroll-esque. They were bonkers and zany and full of known characters. I don’t know if this books adds anything to the Wonderland world, like Wicked did for the Oz world, but it was an interesting read.3/5

[tialovestelevision]

Where the Wild Things Are

I know the premise of this episode, and that means I need to give some background on me. Hello, I’m Tia. I’m a 35-year-old transgender woman from the Deep South. I didn’t realize I was trans until my late 20s, but… well, that’s a story for if I blog something about the nature of gender. What’s a story for now is that, when I wasn’t quite a preteen, my parents converted from “nonpracticing conservative-but-vague Christian” to “hardcore fundamentalist Church of Christ Christian.” My mother, who had introduced me to Asimov and Tolkien and Hawking and Baum and to Meat Loaf and Led Zeppelin and these great, beautiful, PASSIONATE works of television (Star Trek!) and cinema and music and literature eliminated all of that from her life and replaced it, over time, with Bible readings and Carmen and goddamn Veggie Tales and did I mention Carmen? And my father, who’d ecouraged me to learn as much as possible even if he didn’t understand what I was learning, who brought me the Stones and Dylan and protest and war and gotten me my very first computer - a real PC clone! - when nobody else I knew had one because that was the future… he closed off to new information, to the world as a whole. I refused to homeschool even though I was badly bullied because I knew that school would keep me a link to the world. I played their sympathy to study astrophysics over the summer, and learned there to measure the distance to the stars and to see that the universe was far older than my preacher said it was. I was hit. Not as often as some others I knew. What my father did to me would not, under legal definitions, count as child abuse. What he did to my brother, who was far more obedient to what he wanted his children to be but far less able to play the part when he was disobedient, who couldn’t keep his mouth closed to keep himself safe, and who was younger and smaller… that might have. Probably did. But what he did to me still shaped me. The things I heard spoken from that pulpit changed me more, I think. I spent so long being taught the fear of God that it took moving away from faith and wandering through a dozen different belief systems before I could see the wonder of God. This is a story about spirits trapped by fundamentalist Christian abuse and possession. I don’t know how much the nature of that abuse is going to be relevant to what actually happens in the episode, but I think it’s important to know the context I come at this topic from. The author, they say, is dead - what the author intended to say with a work is far less important than what the reader or viewer takes from it - and the reader, the viewer, is very much alive, and comes to everything they read and watch with the context of the life they’ve lived hovering around them. Those are the glasses through which we see our entertainment. With that out of the way… we watch. 1. Previously On gives us a reminder of the romantic relationships so far in the show - Buffy/Riley, Anya/Xander, Willow/Tara. Then we get Buffy and Riley fighting a vampire and a demon. “You get Fang, I’ll get Horny.” Heh. Demon is dead. Vampire is staked. That was a workout. Vampires and demons don’t ever work together, except all the times we’ve seen them do so. But I think Buffy and Riley are going to have sex instead of telling Giles. Yep. . 2. We’re in a house. Is it the frat house? It is. Buffy and Riley are asleep in Riley’s room. Remind me to talk about the Kuzuis at some point - that’s a fascinating story of how the TV industry works. Riley heard a noise… dripping. Creepy music. He’s in the bathroom. His room doesn’t have its own. There’s a leaky faucet. He turned it off. We cut to an ice cream truck in a residential neighborhood. It’s Xander and Anya. Xander wants to go to a party at the frat house, but Anya is worried because the Initiative is there and she used to be a demon. Also, she thinks Xander doesn’t find her attractive because they didn’t have sex last night, which is the third time that’s happened. “I don’t understand. I’m pretty. I’m young. Why didn’t you take advantage of me?” And there are children outside the truck. Xander is very, very fired. 3. Buffy and Riley are talking about the demon and vampire. They think Adam did it, because duh. Giles wants them to see if they find any more odd pairings. Riley speaks Giles’s language when explaining the party, but Giles is going to the Expresso Pump for a meeting of grown-ups that will be of no interest to any of his friends. Buffy can’t keep her hand off of Riley. They’re going off for a quickie before Buffy’s class. 4. Sun’s down and it’s party time, I think. But Buffy and Riley are still having sex. They’re getting yet another condom. Building is unnaturally cold, but that doesn’t seem to be bothering Buffy and Riley. The fireplace just exploded and set an Initiative guy on fire. 5. Spike is trying to rob Anya, but she’s not afraid of him. Looks like the party’s still on even after someone being on fire. Buffy and Riley are at the party. The guy who got burned just lost his eyebrows. Willow and Tara and Xander are there. Buffy keeps staring at Riley and doesn’t hear anything anyone is saying. Anya, meanwhile, is hanging out with Spike. She’s commiserating. They’re both not scary demons any more, and everything is complicated. Love always ends badly. “I’ve seen a thousand relationships. First there’s the love and the sex, then there’s nothing left but the vengeance.” Spike suggested that they do vengeance together… Anya eviscerate Xander, Spike stakes Drusilla. Sounds like a lovely bonding moment. They’re not going to do it, though. 6. Now we get to watch painful minor character flirting. Yay? And one of the minor characters just had an orgasm while standing there and talking to the other. Three orgasms. Xander is talking to a girl. And flirting. He’s going to get eviscerated. So eviscerated. Buffy, meanwhile, wants to go have sex with Riley. The wall is making people have orgasms. Willow is with Tara and talking and they keep staring at each other. Tara loves to ride horses and invited Willow to go with her. Willow tried to touch Tara’s shoulder but Tara was suddenly disgusted. Tara look terrified and ran off to the bathroom. And Spike’s there with Anya. Xander feels all jealous, but Spike shut him up. Spike needs a drink. Anya and Xander fight hilariously. Xander found people playing Spin the Bottle. One is the girl he was flrting with earlier; she invited him to play. 7. Spike is drinking with an Initiative gut. The guy didn’t recognize him, but knows he looks familiar. Xander spun the bottle and it pointed at the girl from earlier. They’re going to kiss. Wow, she’s fairly aggressive with it. Now she’s horrified by what she just did and running away. Xander found the orgasm wall. And someone sobbing in a closet. It’s Julie, cutting her hair off. Willow is trying to find Tara. She went to the bathroom, where she washed her face then heard something from the bathtub. She’s checking it out. One of the guys… no, a ghost. Under the water. Drowning. Now he’s behind her. 8. Riley and Buffy heard Willow scream but aren’t getting up. Willow is searching for Xander and Willow. Found them both. Tara doesn’t like the house because it’s haunted. And now the bottle’s gone mad and exploded and seriously injured someone. They’re going to get Buffy. But Riley’s door just grew a tree that’ll keep them from getting in, and Buffy and Riley are still having sex. In… space? That’s a really long zoom-out shot of their bed. 9. Tara just walked away from the door, and there’s an earthquake. Tara’s on a balcony. The quake is emptying the room, but got strong enough that everybody fell down. And Spike’s strapped to a chair.Graham is possessed by a Fundamentalist spirit that’s preaching to Forrest. Forrest is getting him down to the Initiative, though. Anya’s still in the building and a screaming ghost just ran through her. And the quake is starting again. 10. Spike is trying to break loose of his chair, and Xander got Julie out. She’s mostly bald now. Forrest and Graham are locking the Initiative down. Xander and Spike are going to back inside… well, Spike talked himself out of it, so Xander’s going back in. And got thrown out by a spirit. “Or… it could get Watcher time.” 11. Giles is singing. “Behind Blue Eyes.” With an acoustic guitar. He’s… really good. Xander is creeped out, though. He wants to go back to the haunted house. Giles saw them, but is finishing his song. Willow once had a crush on him, and Anya is staring. Hard. Very hard. 12. Now the tree from Riley’s room has taken over the house, and Buffy and Riley are still having sex. 13. “In the midst of all that, did you really think they were keeping it up?” *awkward silence* “Oh, for a different phrasing.” THAT is writing. 14. Now we learn the backstory of the dorm. It was a house for disadvantaged children and adolescents run by Genevieve Holt. She’s still alive, so they’re going to visit her. “I treated them as if they were my own flesh and blood… gave them hugs and praise when they were good, and punished them when they were dirty.” Oh god, Anya’s face here. 15. Nitpick: I’m watching this with Netflix’s subtitles on so I can get all the dialogue. Netflix’s subtitles for the show miss out on a lot of capitalizations - they never capitalize Slayer, for example. Calling. Things like that. Here, they missed one that’s really important for the cultural context of the story. “Without me, they would have been shut out of the Kingdom.” They didn’t capitalize Kingdom. In Christian writing, you capitalize that when you’re talking about Heaven. 16. Anya’s face here. This is a woman who has committed incredible, often disproportionate, acts of cruelty. Who delighted in it. And listening to this woman describe what she did to children has her utterly disgusted. I think, even if I didn’t know this thing happens, even if I didn’t see the hints of it in my own youth… holy fuck, Emma Caufield, you are amazing here. Head and Brendon are also doing a good job, but wow. It’s Anya’s scene, and it’s almost all in her face, and she’s incredible. 17. The house isn’t haunted by actual ghosts - it’s haunted by the energy of what Holt did to the children there. Intense emotion, pain, sexual energy and repression. The poltergeists are draining Buffy and Riley’s life energy through the sex they’re having, while influencing them to have more sex. 18. Willow, Tara, and Giles are going to bind the spirits long enough for Xander and Anya to get Riley and Buffy out. Anya can sense the haunting, which is a neat talent. Willow and Giles and Tara have called the spirits to Tara’s room, so Xander and Anya really should be going in. Which they’re doing. The tree’s taken over - good thing Xander brought a machete. Wind kicked up when Xander tried to open the door. The spirits threw Tara’s table across the room, and they lost the spirits. Xander got dragged into the bathroom and Anya thrown off the balcony. Xander’s being drowned now. Anya’s up, and the spirits are screaming. She’s going up the stairs… her ankle’s hurt. Her hand got impaled by the tree but she’s tough as all fuck and got Xander out of the tub. Tree’s still attacking them as they head for Riley’s room. They're through the door, and just opened it. The tree’s gone and the house is safe. 19. The last scene was all right and wrapped things up. Overall: Emma Caufield. Anya makes this whole thing work. From the moment she’s having drinks with Spike, this is her episode, and she nails it hard. Seriously, she’s utterly brilliant here. Particularly in her scene at Holt’s house and in the frat house with the tree attacking them… she’s just wonderful. I’m not really sure what to say about the rest of the episode. Fundamentalist sexual repression is incredibly harmful, leaving those subject to it with both serious issues surrounding sex and badly incomplete information about it. That’s deliberate - Fundamentalist Christianity is the Christianity of judgement, or punishment for “sin.” In a world where suffering can leave an impression on a place, certainly that - plus decades of intense physical, emotional, and spiritual abuse of children - would do so. This episode is very triggery. But it’s also worthwhile, because it’s the first real time the writers have given a story to Anya to tell, and good God does she nail it.

[tarotx]

Tagged by @frazzledsoul :) 

Name: Becky

Nickname: Mom (By by son and by me when talking about me to or about my cats)

Zodiac: Capricorn 

Height: 5′5″ 

Birth month: December

Ethnicity: My ancestry is of Irish-Welsh-German descent 

Orientation: Actively Straight

Favorite fruit: Strawberries and Tomatoes

Favorite season: Fall (I adore Halloween, the cooling but not cold temperatures and the rustic colors)

Fav books:  Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, Haunted Summer by Anne Edwards, The Crystal Cave and The Hollow Hills by Mary Stewart, The Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling, The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare, Christy and the cat jail by Miriam Young, The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, A wrinkle in time by Madeleine L'Engle, The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster, Dead zone, Firestarter, The Green Mile, Dreamcatcher and many more by Stephen King, The Odd Thomas series by Dean Koontz, To kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and too many Romance books to mention (Example authors Nora Roberts and Julie Garwood). I also read a lot of poetry (My favs will always be Blake, Byron, Coleridge, Shelley, and others from that British Romantic era because it’s what I first fell in love with). Right now I’m just into Gilmore Girls Fan fiction. Yes, you can say Obsessed...

Favorite flowers: Cherry blossoms (I’ll stick with this because I do love them. I just love the look and/or smell of flowers instead of having a real favorite).

Favorite Scent: Apple Cinnamon scent. I have candles burning right now that spell like Apple pie. I love Pumpkin spice as well. 

Favorite animals: Cats and dogs.

Favorite beverages: Coffee, Tea, Hot chocolate and fruity alcoholic drinks. I love wine but I’m pretty new to it. 

Last thing I googled: How to spell Madeleine L'Engle

Favorite music artist:  I’m not artistic or historical knowledgeable. I love what I love. Britney Spears, BSB, Madonna, Amy Grant, Taylor Swift (All of her music fit GG), George Michaels, Prince, Garth Books, and of course Simon and Garfunkel since I was a wee babe, I adore Mumford and sons ever since a few years ago. Carly Rose, Bea Miller, Fifth Harmony from s2 Xfactor. And of course Lorde and Ed Sheeran for a couple of years. Right now I’m eating up everything that reminds me of Gilmore Girls. Especially Rory and Logan. 

Song that’s currently stuck in your head: Where you lead by Carole King (I watch too much Gilmore Girls :p

Last movie I saw: Disney's Moana

What am I wearing right now: Jean skirt and black pullover shirt with a tank top and skirt type bathing suit underneath. 

Why did I choose my url:  Tarot cards (tarot) and mystery (x) are what filled my life when I picked my internet name back before my son was born (2007). 

Do I have any other blogs: Not any worth mentioning.

What did your last relationship teach you: I’ve only been in the current one 

Religious or spiritual: Spiritual

Favorite color: The range of color around sea green-blue

Average hours of sleep: 5

Lucky number: I don’t have one.

Favorite characters: TV characters are always what comes to mind first. The Doctor (favs: Nine and Eleven) Jack Harkness, Lorelai Gilmore, Logan Huntzberger, Rory Gilmore, Oliver Green, Sara Lance and of course Buffy Summers. Thinking outside TV: Who come to mind are Steve Rogers, Ariel and Robert E. Lee Prewitt, Matt Garth and Ralph Stevenson (I often find myself on a Montgomery Clift fix). I know my list is blinding white. I need more diversity. Right now my favorite poc are Carter from Person of Interest and Amaya Jiwe from Legends of Tomorrow.

Number of blankets you sleep with: 1 or 2

Dream trip: Ireland and I want to see all the Byron and Shelley History. 

Blog Created:  2010. I keep the same blog, but my interests diverge (same so I’ll keep this wording). 

Number of followers: More than I deserve and less than I want.(ditto)

Dream job:  Something other than what I’m doing currently....

Tagged: I won’t tag anyone because I feel odd doing that. If you see this then I would love to read your version if I haven’t already :)