#thelibraryiscool

[zielenna]

12 and 17 :)

Hi! :)

I think you heard most of this already, but here goes.

12. Any books that disappointed you?

Quite a few! I tend to avoid books I am not confident I will enjoy, but it still happened. First one was Lee Mandelo's Summer Sons, which I only read 70 pages of. And you know, that one is on me, I should have known that a novel marketed as a follow-up to Dream Thieves would not be great, but I thought it would make a decent breezy summer reading, and I was compelled by the premise of estranged friends, ghosts, campus politics, southern gothic, and blood magic. And to be fair, the campus part was almost solid; I do believe that the author had been in a graduate program. But the prose was so clunky! It was possibly the worst-written book I read in the last couple of years. It wasn't just unremarkable, it was so bad that I had difficulty parsing it, and I am quite sure that wasn't intentional.

Unfortunately, my quest for a novel with ghosts intervening between estranged friends led me to another disappointment, Bryan Washington's Family Meal. I was mostly bothered by two things. First, there was much of "therapy-speak," both in dialogue and in narration. People told one another that the other person didn't get to say X to them, and apologized each other for trauma dumping. Second, possibly as a result of the author's other stylistic choices (spare, simple prose; limited access to characters' interiority), the descriptions of various locales and characters' actions were dominated by proper nouns - so I knew the exact demographic make-up of every neighborhood they drove through, I knew the names of Japanese ingredients they cooked with, and I knew that the love interest was Thai and used they/them pronouns - but I couldn't tell you anything about their personality. This made the novel feel rather flat.

17. Did any books surprise you with how good they were?

Well, because I am so picky, I am rarely positively surprised… Zola's Bête humaine surprised me with how well it was constructed. I can't recall it in detail as it's been a while since I read it, but I remember being impressed with how intricately the various plotlines were interconnected, how self-contained each chapter felt, and how effectively they cumulated. It felt very clean, like a classical tragedy. The novel also had a very striking center, towards which the plot and the characters gravitated, and from which the violence which the novel examined had originated. Funnily enough, Zola seems not to have been aware of it, as the novel explicitly provides a different account of the original crime - one which accords with his ideas about heredity, but isn't really persuasive.

Other than that, I was surprised by how much enjoyed Esther Yi's Y/N (it was even more to my taste than I expected) and, frankly, the Chaucer texts that I read this fall. I don't recall having a strong response to him in my undergrad, and it took me long weeks in the summer to read Troilus and Criseyde when I was assigned it in my second year. But now I had a really good time!

Actually, it was every easy for me to compate Y/N to Family Meal, which reinforced my opinions of both.

Y/N, a character's first impression of Seoul: "I drew aside the little curtain at my window. The proportions were startling. Row after row of perfectly rectangular apartment towers—thirty floors on average—obscured my view of a mountain range. Entire families were sitting on leather couches as high up as mountains. When the Han River appeared alongside the elevated track of the highway, I was shocked by its breadth. The river was a giant black snake with a muscular back, winding through the constructed landscape with a calm magnanimity I found menacing."

Family Meal, a character's first impression of Tokyo: "The publisher flew me to Tokyo to work with Hana on her edits. We’d been given a three-month deadline. But she and I spent most of our days in tiny dives around her neighborhood instead. We rode bikes past the financial district. We ate dinner with her ex-boyfriend, a stocky guy with dyed hair who blushed at the sight of me. The rest of the time, I slumped in the sento beside my rental in Setagaya, wading in the bathwater beside salarymen and shop owners and bankers."

I told you that what struck me in Y/N was its resistance to cliche. And that is a stylistic choice I sympathize with more than with the transparency of Family Meal.

[tiffanyachings]

✨ shuffle your ‘on repeat’ playlist and list the first 10 songs that play, then tag 10 people ✨

tagged by @thewholedamnboulangerie! <3 you even get some annotations:

time machine 2 - daisy the great feat illuminati hotties < so great when there's a song you like and then there's an even better alternative version of it

good luck babe! - chappell roan < WHO amongst us isn't listening to this

explode! - mother mother

stay soft - mitski < it's a point of pride for me that my favourite mitski songs are ranked lowest on the mitski in order of sadness playlist

boss bitch - doja cat < fully margaret encino's fault

panic attack - liza anne < fully adaine abernant's fault

mirror - jesse detor

i'm just another person oh god - daisy the great < ALL I HAD I WANT IT BACK!!!!!!!

shelved - the mountain goats

i wanna keep yr dog - illuminati hotties

tagging @thelibraryiscool @rather-impertinent @smallvoids @starkey @timeisanoctopus @janeeyre2011 @jameszmaguire @cosmonauthill @fannyprices @xiradax if you want to - no pressure :)

[canonicallyanxious]

tagged by @honeyginger [thank you!! see their 5 songs here] for the following challenge: 🎶✨when you get this you have to put 5 songs you actually listen to, publish, then send this ask/tag 10 of your favourite followers (non-negotiable, positivity is cool) 🎶✨ 

"5 songs you actually listen to" is a very broad category of music lol but i'm just going to list 5 of my current/most recently discovered faves:

[anyone who does this tag you don't have to write little blurbs about your songs sdkfmlsdmfkls i'm pretty sure you can just list them or really do whatever the hell you want but i wanted to talk about these jams for a hot sec soz]

been thinkin' - Hikes [link to bandcamp]

love the nostalgic and wistful air of this song, love the simplicity of the lyrics, love the guitar riffs that make this song so easy and fun to listen to on repeat, love the gender frontman Nay Wilkins exudes from their every pore, and maybe i did impulse purchase the vinyl of the album after listening to one [1] song off the tracklist [this song] and what about it

Mood - DPR IAN

listen i won't lie to you i found this song by obsessively stalking the insta stories of Mix Sahaphap who i definitely have a normal amount of thoughts and feelings about but the man has taste okay idk what else to say here

ellipse - Sweeps

just pure and unadulterated vibes babey

Scrawny - Wallows

I know this song isn't about being transmasc but the lyric "i can still have wisdom and look like a child / scrawny motherfucker with a cool hairstyle" is absolutely about being transmasc sorry i don't make the rules

Witchyman - Cain Culto

how could i not be completely obsessed with a good witchy queer vibe and a funky phantom-of-the-opera-esque hook i ask u [also if u have a moment pls take some time to enjoy this absolutely bonkers music video thanks]

tagging: @persimmonyms @pronouncingitwang @boxesfullofthoughts @tristealven @parkshuppy @thelibraryiscool @braveveth @quintincoldwater @flowersandstarlight @fcntasmas and anyone else who wants to post 5 songs i am serious about this i am making grabby hands at all of ur music recs gimme gimme

[moderngothicbooks]

9 People I Want to Know Better

I was tagged by the marvellous @dauen, thank you love!

Last song: Outro: Ego by BTS

Last show: I rewatched Downton Abbey for the millionth time, it’ll never get old for me

Currently watching: Grey’s Anatomy, series 18

Currently reading: The Leviathan by Rosie Andrews

I'm tagging: @leillee @frithams @riversrunningfree @thawinoakenshield @therefugeofbooks @fflewddurfflam7 @thelibraryiscool @starduststudyblr and @starrystvdy (feel free to ignore this!)

[amongtomesandtales]

☀️ Sunny Reading Tag ☀️

Thank you for tagging me @yourneighborhoodbibliophile​!

🥞 Favourite book

I tend to not really do favourites, but the first two that spring to mind are The Gods of Tango by Carolina de Robertis and Circe by Madeleine Miller.

🌾 Tropes that make you go "asfgrthgj"

Couples/Groups of people with a past in common who’re then reunited, found family, grudging rag-tag group of allies-turned-team-turned-friend-turned-family, aaand I’m always a simp for an unhinged lover when their partner is in peril, hurt, gone missing etc.

🌻 Comfort book

Probably a toss between Grace Draven’s Entreat Me, Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden and/or Stephanie Victoire’s The Other World, It Whispers (honestly there’s just something about Victoire’s writing that is so soothing to me, even if the stories aren’t necessarily happy/comforting)

🌙 Death in a book you would take back

Oooh this one is interesting... I can’t really come up with any recent book death that I wish didn’t happen, so I’d have to go a bit back in my reading history to find ones that affected me to that degree. So, while I don’t want to promote the series, I’d probably say Fred Weasley OR the little match girl in H.C. Andersens The Little Match Girl story (my boy H.C. truly did six-year old me dirty by killing her off)

💡 Book you wish you could read again for the first time

Hmm, I’d probably say Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi and/or Butter Honey Pig Bread by Francesca Ekwuyasi. The first I remember as a powerful read and the second I thorougly loved as an audiobook, but now kind of wish I’d given it the time to sit down an immerse myself... OR I might go for Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith or Tipping the Velvet. Her books are just perfect reading experiences for me - you just get sucked in and - unless something literally drags you away - you won’t look up until you’ve finished.

Tagging without pressure: @thelibraryiscool​, @natreadsthings​, @readingoals​, @aliteraryescape​, @aliteraryprincess​, @myonetruebook​ and @mariscranes​ if any of you guys want to do this! 🌻

[fiercestpurpose]

✨ get to know me ✨

tagged by @cindyfelicia (not really but let's pretend)

last song: Satellite Heart by Anya Marina (yes, from the Twilight soundtrack)

last show/currently watching: I don't understand the difference between these two categories so I collapsed them. I don't watch TV. Probably the last thing I watched was The Sandman.

currently reading: Fire on the Mountain (for class), Mort, Interview with the Vampire

current obsession: I Was A Teenage Exocolonist, which is an interesting coming-of-age story about being a teenager and also an explorer of a new planet

tagging @twoheartsoneclara @englishgradinrepair @thelibraryiscool @jewishevelinebaker @wizardysseus and @nativehueofresolution but only if you want to!

[medlit-study]

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, Cadfael Chronicles by Ellis Peters, Piranesi by Suzanna Clarke

Doomsday Book ~~ added to TBR (ok there are some weird parallels with my life atm and this plot so I think I HAVE to read it) | on my TBR | couldn’t finish it | did not enjoy | it was OK | liked it | loved it | favorite | not interested

Cadfael~~ added to TBR | on my TBR | couldn’t finish it | did not enjoy | it was OK | liked it | loved it | favorite | not interested

Piranesi ~~ added to TBR (this sounds like just the kind of thing I want to read soon tbh) | on my TBR | couldn’t finish it | did not enjoy | it was OK | liked it | loved it | favorite | not interested

[natreads]

13 and 23

Thank you!

13) what was the worst book you read?

I Capture the Castle... I’m so sad

23) new favourite author of the year?

I read a few authors for the first time this year whose work I ended up loving (Murakami, Ann Patchett, Elizabeth Gaskell), but I wouldn’t say I discovered a whole new favorite? I just haven’t read enough by them and didn’t necessarily adore whatever other book by them I picked up this year. I must say I’m the most eager to read even more by Gaskell, though

2020 reading asks

[tiffanyachings]

last, current, next read

tagged by @silvermarmoset - ty!! 🕯️

last: the priory of the orange tree, samantha shannon - oh man. i really wanted to like this but unfortunately do not get the hype at all. did we all read the same book?? i could talk at length about the things that bothered me (for starters, tané’s entire storyline. babygirl you had so much potential and it was executed so badly) but suffice to say that i thought it was too long and convoluted, and despite most characters being in their late 20s felt a bit too YA for me. the aesthetics are great though, if they manage to turn it into a screen adaptation i will watch it

current: the archive of alternative endings, lindsey drager - a pretty short read, especially after priory! i grew up on grimms’ fairy tales (and, incidentally, in the same area as the grimm brothers) and hansel and gretel was probably my favourite as a child, so of course i would enjoy different perspectives on the story through a millenia of sibling relationships. of course i would! the book doesn’t really have a linear plot and is a bit rambling and meandering - which i suppose fits the subject matter - but it covers a lot of themes i enjoy (storytelling, siblings, woods, queer relationships etc) so i’m having a good time!

next: i’ve been putting off nona the ninth for four months by now (partly because i'm still having a lot of fun in my sandbox with the first two books and also. right headspace reasons) but it's very hard having a hyperfixation that you constantly have to dodge spoilers for so i think i might have to read that soon. i also got octavia’s brood from the library which is an anthology of scifi stories from social justice movements which sounds like. very much my thing.

tagging @timeisanoctopus @rather-impertinent @thelibraryiscool @cosmonauthill @jameszmaguire @nerysvevo if you'd like to

[canonicallyanxious]

tagged by @inmyarmswrappedin to post the movie posters for my 9 favorite films - thanks for the tag Ardi!!

Most of these are relatively recent watches because absolute hell if i can remember literally anything i put into my eyeballs before the past five years skdjnfsdkjfsn but I feel pretty good about this list i think so we will stand by it

Movies depicted here include: Moonlight (2016), Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), Your Name Engraved Herein (2020), Mulan (1998), Minari (2020), Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), Coco (2017), The Half of It (2020), and Pacific Rim (2013)

Honorable mentions because I won’t be able to live otherwise if I don’t shout these fuckers out: Parasite (2019), The Princess Bride (1987), The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), Saving Face (2004), The Old Guard (2020), Dead Poets Society (1989), The Way He Looks (2014)

Tagging @thelibraryiscool @braveveth @toneelspeelster @boxesfullofthoughts @parkshuppy @pronouncingitwang if you feel like it!

[readingbooksinisrael]

@thelibraryiscool said:

I'm having a good time with it! There’s a bunch of cultural things that can be tricky to make choices about, but that’s good practice in general. It’s a chunky book though, so the whole thing will take a while)

That’s great. Yeah, totally. Do you want to be/are learning to work in translation and interpretation? (That’s what it sounds like.)

[oldshrewsburyian]

1, 2, 13)

1. Tell me about that imaginary bookshop you dream about running.

Threadbare Scholar, ideally located in Jericho, or maybe the Lower West Side, specializing in history (new and old, secondhand and otherwise.) There would also be a take-a-book, leave-a-book section for used genre fiction. And a cat.

2. Do you like reading aloud? Are you good at it?

Yes, and (by listener consensus) yes.

13. Pick a book you would adapt for the screen, given unlimited budget and creative freedom.  

Ooh. Well. I would really love to see an adaptation of Josephine Tey’s Brat Farrar with the wonderful Emma Thompson as Aunt Bee. Or I could cast my dream-team Sherlock Holmes, and insist on adapting all my favorite canon stories. Heck, with unlimited budget, I could run a real-time 30-year saga. Mwahahahaha.

[skamfairy]

Derry girls

ooh yay thank you!!

my favorite female character: i love them all but orla, she’s my everything 

my favorite male character: james obviously

my favorite book/season/etc: season 2 because the finale made me hella emotional

my favorite episode (if its a tv show): oh this is so hard because every episode is a treasure but i really love that one where they go to a peace initiative thing with a bunch of boys from a protestant school and theres that whole scene where they have to think of things they have in common but they just fill two blackboards with differences sajasjhhsajjash it’s so good i can’t. i love it. my favorite cast member: okay i even know less about the cast. i don’t follow any cast things so i’m so bad at this question everytime ashshjahjs i’ll just say all of them? i don’t know I DONT KNOW!my favorite ship: OKAY not to be boring but i don’t have any ships in derry girls. i haven’t really thought about ships is that weird? i just ship them together as friends forever sahjajhsjhasjha a character I’d die defending: orla, michelle, clare, all of them but i’ve never had to before so this is hard to answer lmao like who would ever dislike them or anything? it’s impossible!a character I just can’t sympathize with: i can’t think of anyone a character I grew to love: aunt sara she’s hilariousmy anti otp: derry girls not being friends?? IM SORRY MY ANSWERS WERE BORING but it’s just cos derry girls is just such happy viewing for me i don’t have any negative thoughts or anything. i’m just happy with whatever happens as long as they are friends and together shjjashjhs 

send me a fandom to answer these questions about!!! pls

[harry-leroy]

Comedies and Authorship

Thank you for this!

Comedies: What’s a trope or cliche you enjoy in media? 

That thing when you’ve got two of the leading male characters go from being friends to being enemies because their differences got in the way of them ever being united, but at the end of the day, they both have more similarities than differences, and when united they would be unstoppable, but they just can’t get over one another. This ultimately comes to affect more than just the two of them, and that impact it has on other characters is interesting to watch. Ex: Aaron Burr + Hamilton in Hamilton or Ross Poldark + George Warleggan in Poldark. 

I also love student/mentor relationships, but this is an unhinged kind of student, and they’re nearly just as good (or even better) than their mentor, but they don’t have the rank or the authority yet. This is why I love the show Endeavour so much because Morse is a lad who needs to have some chill but he won’t ever chill as long as he lives :’). Ex: Endeavour Morse + Fred Thursday in Endeavour or Thomasina and Septimus in Arcadia. 

Authorship: You can pick any writer to write your biography, who is it? 

Ahh this is a hard one! I’m going to assume that I could choose living or dead? For living, I’m gonna go with Sarah Ruhl. She writes plays, so maybe a biographical play (?). The way she commands language is absolutely stunning and I aspire to have that kind of control over it. I’m gonna go read Eurydice again because I’m just thinking about it.  

For a dead author, I’m gonna go with Aldous Huxley, because in a world in which I believe in people’s spirits coming back from the dead, I’m fairly certain that he has something against me. I had a myna bird (like in his book Island) come and attack me on a beach on July 26th (Huxley’s birthday) in the summer where I was having a real Huxley kick, and I remember that because it was so bizarre. Not that I do believe in it, but I think it’s kinda funny to have a story of a famous dead author coming back on his birthday to haunt a future writer. So now I’m curious (saying that we could believe in that story) as to what he would really think of me. 

[dukeofstratford]

if you get this (if you want to!) answer with 3 random facts about yourself and send it to the last 7 blogs in your notifications, anonymously or not! let's get to know the person behind the blog 💖

1.) I did a cappella for 4 years in college.

2.) I’ve never acted in a Shakespeare play, but I was in a small production of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged).

3.) I love Old Bay Seasoning.

[natreads]

Corelli's Mandolin! Beautiful for about 9/10ths of it, and then it ROYALLY screws up the ending. In the, gee this is emotional and poweful, I sure hope there's not that one twist that would mess it all up and make it insignificant.... what's that? no, is it- yep, it's that precise "twist". It's also one of those books that seems incapable of maintaining its fictionality through to the end? As if to become a Serious Novel it must ultimately render its characters prosaic. and does it badly? Ugh!

Aahhh I hate that. I shall not read!

Send me anti-recommendations