Book Recs - Tumblr Posts
so you read Red White and Royal Blue and want to know what to read next:
I am a big reader. So when I read rwrb and fell in love I was struggling with reading anything else afterward because of how i fucking love every single moment of that book. I’m assuming y’all have the same feelings or are interested in getting into more books (or both!) so (tldr) here are some books!
Keep reading
if you watched encanto and loved it like i did, i'd recommend reading the house of the spirits by isabel allende and one hundred years of solitude by gabriel garcía márquez! both are magical realist novels that follow several generations of south american families. they're essentials in the genre, and it seems like encanto was at least partly inspired by them!
Sick and wicked
I’ve been reading Jane Austen’s manuscript works, i.e. the short stories and novellas and plays she wrote as a teen, as well as the works in progress she left behind when she died. I need an entire separate post to sob about her last novel, Sanditon; today what’s interesting to me is the subject matter of her early stuff, and how freakin’ different it is from anything she published. It’s…lurid. Violent. Austenishly satirical and smart as hell, but, like, there’s adultery and bastardy and bigamy all over the damned place, and people get poisoned and flung out of windows and have their heads smashed in by carriage wheels—it’s like a published Jane Austen novel reinterpreted by Punch and Judy.
It’s hilarious and awesome, and if it were anyone else, I’d enjoy it as no more than a typical teenaged enthusiasm for melodrama….except
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Hi! Does anyone have any Book recommendations for someone who just finished The House ln The Cerulean Sea and is super sad because it‘s over? (It’s me. I’m someone.) I‘m talking Found Family, Magic and that feeling of being wrapped in a big blanket. Bonus Points if it‘s Queer!
Thanks!🥰
10 Classic Book Recommendations
I’ve read a lot of non-English classics over the last couple of years (all translated into English because I am not bilingual) and I thought it’d be fun to share some of my favourites!
This post contains affiliate links and they're marked with an asterisk (*) - you obviously don't need to use them.
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The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon (1002)
Originally written in Middle Early Japanese (translated by Meredith McKinney)
A collection of essays, anecdotes, poems, observations and musings from Sei Shōnagon’s time as court lady to Empress Consort Teishi in Heian Japan
This is one of my favourite classics because found myself relating to a woman who lived over 1,000 years ago and it was wonderful. Some things have obviously changed – we’re from different times and places – but this book reminded me of how similar we are to the people that came before us.
Bookshop.org UK*
Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne (1873)
Originally written in French (translated by William Butcher)
An adventure novel
There’s something wonderfully superficial about this book. By this, I mean that the book doesn’t look at anything in depth because Fogg is in a race against the clock and has no time to dwell upon things.
Project Gutenberg (tr. G. M. Towle) | Bookshop.org UK*
The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches by Matsuo Bashō (1702)
Originally written in Early Modern Japanese (translated by Yuasa Nobuyuki)
A travelogue interwoven with poetry
The opening lines are stunning and reading this book made me feel free in a time when everyone was restricted.
Bookshop.org UK*
Notes from a Dead House by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1862)
Originally written in Russian (translated by Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky)
Semi-autobiographical philosophical fiction
Bleak and depressing and so, so interesting. Dostoevsky gives us a real insight into what life was like in exile in Siberia.
This isn’t the translation I read but, apparently, this one is much better and I intend to pick it up myself very soon.
Bookshop.org UK*
The Odyssey by Homer (c. 8th century BCE)
Originally written in Homeric Greek/Ancient Greek (translated by Emily Wilson)
Epic poem
It follows Odysseus, king of Ithaca and Greek hero, and his journey home after the Trojan War.
I have read many a translation of the Odyssey over the years and I love (almost) all iterations of it but Emily Wilson’s translation is beautiful.
Bookshop.org UK*
Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1320)
Originally written in Italian (translated by C. H. Sisson)
Poetry and religious philosophy
Dante travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise with Virgil and Beatrice as his guides. Inferno will always be my favourite section of the poem but I really love Paradisio too.
Bookshop.org UK*
Poetic Edda (c.985)
Originally written in Old Norse (translated by Carolyne Larrington)
A collection of anonymous Old Norse narrative poems that tell mythological and historical stories.
This is the only translation I’ve read because I wanted something relatively accessible for my first foray into the Poetic Edda but I’ve also heard good things about the Hollander translation.
Bookshop.org UK*
Metamorphoses by Ovid (8 AD)
Originally written in Latin (translated by Rolfe Humphries)
A narrative poem that chronicles the history of the world from its creation to the deification of Julius Caesar. It includes various myths, such as Diana and Actaeon, Arachne, and Orpheus and Eurydice.
Although I’ve recommended the Humphries translation, you could pick up any verse translation and still enjoy it. I personally love Arthur Golding’s translation* from 1567 because it was the first direct translation from Latin to English and it’s a reflection of the poetry of its time.
Bookshop.org UK*
The Outsider by Albert Camus (1942)
Originally written in French (translated by Sandra Smith)
Also published as The Stranger in English
A philosophical novel
Camus wrote the best absurdist novels and this one is fantastic. I can’t really describe it but it had a great impact on 18-year-old me and it was my introduction to absurdism and existentialism (but don't tell Camus I described his novel as existentialist).
Bookshop.org UK*
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (1921)
Originally written in Russian (translated by Bela Shayevich)
Dystopian novel – inspired Huxley’s Brave New World and Orwell’s 1984
The book depicts a world of harmony and conformity within a united totalitarian state. Everyone is a number and the city’s buildings are constructed almost entirely of glass. It’s such an unnerving book.
Bookshop.org UK*
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If you pick up any of these books based on this post, please let me know what you think!
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Actors and their favourite Books II
These answers are taken from BBC's Desert Island Discs
George Clooney - War and Peace by Tolstoy
Anthony Hopkins - The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald
Martin Freeman - Animal Farm by Orwell
Lin Manuel Miranda - Moby Dick by Melville
Christopher Lee - The Sword in the Stone by T. H. White
Hugh Grant - King Ottokar's Sceptre by Herge
Nicole Kidman - Poems of Emily Dickinson
Chris Evans - A Christmas Carol by Dickens
Emma Thompson - Homer's Odyssey
Mark Gatiss - The complete Sherlock Holmes
Poll: Which Stephen King Book is the best?
To all book nerds out there: I want to start reading Stephen King and that's why i am interested about your opinions. Take the poll below and let me know your favourite King novels. I will read the top 3!
R F Kuang asking the right questions here 💆🏾♀️ here's some good recs from the replies that I added to my own tbr:
The buried giant, kazuo ishiguro (subversive arthurian tale with dreamlike prose. everyone's memory is in flux so details shift and waver. intergenerational trauma and historiography but has a melancholical and anchored character story).
Lancelot (the arthurian tales series), giles kristian
The mabinogian tetralogy, evangeline walton (retelling of welsh mythology. weird, eerie, beautiful and just gorgeously written)
The traitor son cycle, miles cameron
The dragon and the unicorn, aa attanasio (very weird arthurian prose. merlin is an astral shark demon made of electricity. creepy, dark, and dramatic).
Sistersong, lucy holland
Book of the new sun, gene wolfe (like walking through a black Magic the Gathering Card, or if Pere La Chaise stretched endlessly, in every direction, throught time).
The dragon waiting, john m. ford
The wolf and the woodsman, ava reid
City of saints and madmen (ambergris series), jeff vandermeer (like slowly unearthing a strange and unfathomable artifact that you gradually piece together into an incomplete picture).
Silver in the wood (the greenhollow duology), emily tesh (chaotic, lush and haunting and canonically promises the m/m energy that feels promised but not guaranteed by the green knight trailer)
Great classic Books under 200 pages
1. The turn of the screw by Henry James (108 pages)
One of the must read gothic horror tales: The story begins when a governess arrives at an English country estate to look two young children, Miles and Flora. At first, everything appears normal then one night a ghost appears before the governess.
2. Letters to a young poet by Rilke (80 pages)
A must read for everyone who loves poetry and writing: In 1903, a student at a military academy sent some of his verses to a well-known Austrian poet, requesting an assessment of their value. The older artist, Rainer Maria Rilke, replied to the novice in this series of letters
3. The Aleph and other stories by Borges (200 pages)
A great collectio of magical storys full of phlosophical puzzles and supernatural surprises: "The Aleph is a point in space that contains all other points. Anyone who gazes into it can see everything in the universe from every angle simultaneously, without distortion, overlapping, or confusion."
4. Hunger by Knut Hamsun (180 pages)
Hunger has been hailed as the literary opening of the 20th century and an outstanding example of psychology-driven literature. Set in late 19th-century Kristiania, the novel recounts the adventures of a starving young man whose sense of reality is slowly fading away.
5. The Sandman by E.T.A Hoffmann (40 pages)
A classic short story for every gothic horror lover. Read it and be prepared to get your mind blown.
6. Chess Story by Stefan Zweig (120 pages)
Driven to mental anguish as the result of total isolation by the Nazis, Dr B, a securities expert hiding valuable assets of the nobility from the new regime, maintains his sanity only through the theft of a book of past masters' chess games which he plays endlessly, voraciously learning each one until they overwhelm his imagination to such an extent that he becomes consumed by chess. Chess Story is Zweig's final achievement, completed in Brazilian exile and sent off to his American publisher only days before his suicide in 1942.
7. Bartleby, the scrivener by Herman Melville (70 pages)
Another great short story that will really make you think about capitalism and a man's free will: Set in the mid-19th century on New York City's Wall Street, it is, perhaps, Herman Melville's most prescient story: what if a young man caught up in the rat race of commerce and overworking finally just said, "I would prefer not to"?
8. Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin (160 pages)
This haunting and controversial novel is Baldwin's most sustained treatment of sexuality, and a classic of gay literature. In a 1950s Paris an American finds himself unable to repress his impulses: After proposing to a young woman, he falls into an affair with an Italian bartender and is confounded and tortured by his sexual identity as he oscillates between the two.
9. The Stranger by Albert Camus (123 pages)
Through the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach, Camus explored what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd."
10. We have always lived in the castle by Shirley Jackson (160 pages)
Living in the Blackwood family home with only her sister Constance and her Uncle Julian for company, Merricat just wants to preserve their delicate way of life. But ever since Constance was acquitted of murdering the rest of the family, the world isn't leaving the Blackwoods alone. 'Her greatest book ... ... the deeper we sink, the deeper we want to go' - Donna Tartt
Where the crawdads sing
Book to movie Recommendation
Sony just released the new Trailer for an upcoming adaptation to "wheren the crawdads sing". It looks amazing. It also features a breathtaking soundtrack by Taylor Swift. So excited.
Great books where the Main character is a writer
The following books are great reads about different struggles and events a writer can face during his career
1. Less by Andrew Sean Green
Arthur is a failed novelist about to turn fifty. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: his boyfriend of the past nine years now engaged to someone else. He can’t say yes--it would all be too awkward--and he can’t say no--it would look like defeat. Thus begins an around-the-world-in-eighty-days fantasia that will take Arthur Less to Mexico, Italy, Germany, Morocco, India and Japan and put thousands of miles between him and the problems he refuses to face. What could possibly go wrong?
2. Misery by Stephen King
Paul Sheldon, author of a bestselling series of historical romances, wakes up one winter day in a strange place, a secluded farmhouse in Colorado. He wakes up to unspeakable pain (a dislocated pelvis, a crushed knee, two shattered legs) and to a bizarre greeting from the woman who has saved his life: "I'm your number one fan!"
3. Wonder Boys by Michael Gabon
In his first novel since The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Chabon presents a hilarious and heartbreaking work—the story of the friendship between the "wonder boys"—Grady, an aging writer who has lost his way, and Crabtree, whose relentless debauchery is capsizing his career.
Author Recs 💋
some of my fav rafe authors!! (some write for JJ but you get the point)
these authors have series/drabbles/one-shots etc and have written in every genre, written so beautifully at 💗💗
@goldenroutledge
@loveharlow
@erwinsvow
@zyafics
@diqldrunks
@ghostofwriting
@softspiderling
@featherandferns
@hotchsstuff
@winterrrnight ——> (moved to) @starkeyvhs
@obaex
@forevermoreharrington
@lovelyjj
@rafeandonlyrafe
@jjsbank444
@cute-sucker
@boneblushed
@twinklelilstarkey
@mariespen
@rafesdrew
@blisslove
@pougeszn
@outerbankies
@mrs-cameron
@totalswag
@obxsummer
@storiesbound
@santaasi
@crvptidgaf
@oceandriveab
@rafecameronssl4t
@manheeiim
@rafesgfs
@rafesproperty
@rafecameroninterlude
Cinderella is dead by kalynn baryon
Malice by heather walter
anyways if you’re as upset about the first kill cancellation as i am, here’s a list of sapphic books and books featuring queer girls to check out! for those i haven’t read, i’ve heard they’re worth reading, so please check out any of the books on this list!!
the priory of the orange tree by samantha shannon
the jasmine throne by tasha suri
a lesson in vengeance by victoria lee
the falling in love montage by ciara smyth
not my problem by ciara smyth
i kissed shara wheeler by casey mcquiston
one last stop by casey mcquiston
she drives me crazy by kelly quindlen
some girls do by jennifer dugan
perfect on paper by sophie gonzales
the chosen and the beautiful by nghi vo
siren queen by nghi vo
city of dusk by tara sim
i’ll be the one by lyla lee
flip the script by lyla lee
watch over me by nina lacour
we are okay by nina lacour
the seven husbands of evelyn hugo by taylor jenkins reid
loveless by alice oseman
last night at the telegraph club by malinda lo
a memory called empire by arkady martine
gideon the ninth by tamsyn muir
ophelia after all by racquel marie
PLEASE REBLOG WITH YOUR OWN IF YOU HAVE RECS!! i’m looking to add more sapphic books to my tbr and i know i’m not the only one
List of queer books I read, loved & recommend!
(There isn't any particular order, I wrote these as I remembered them)
Master Of One - Jaida Jones & Dani Bennett (mlm, fantasy, very cool worldbuilding and magic system, funny, cool characters)
Legends & Lattes - Travis Baldree (wlw, fantasy, very soft & chill vibes)
The Priory of the Orange Tree - Samantha Shannon (wlw, high fantasy, cool worldbuilding, kinda reminds me of LOTR but with more dragons and feminism and lesbians)
Even Though I Knew The End - C.L. Polk (wlw, supernatural noir, cool 1930s detective story with angels & demons, I loved this one!)
The Love Interest - Cale Dietrich (mlm, science fiction, very cool concept)
The Darkest Part Of The Forest - Holly Black (side mlm, fantasy, cool fae lore)
The Weight Of The Stars - K. Ancrum (wlw, not quite science fiction but space stuff is involved, lovely and complex characters)
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe - Benjamin Alire Sáenz (mlm, fiction, very nice in general, there is also a sequel)
The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue - Mackenzi Lee (mlm, historical and vaguely fantasy, nice story but I preferred the sequel honestly)
The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy - Mackenzi Lee (wlw, the sequel to the one before, more fantasy elements than the first, asexual main character!!)
Gallant - V.E. Schwab (no romance, but in the background one of the characters(?) uses they/them pronouns, very cool dark fantasy vibe)
Stranger Than Fanfiction - Chris Colfer (gay main character, trans main character, coming-of-age, nice book)
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda (yes it's the Love, Simon book, mlm, fiction, pretty nice)
They Both Die At The End - Adam Silvera (mlm, sci-fi ish but mostly fiction, cool ideas, but the ending is sad! Very amazing book though, I haven't read the prequel yet)
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo - Taylor Jenkins Reid (wlw, bi main character, historical fiction, cool story, just a neat book in general)
This Is How You Lose The Time War - Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone (wlw, sci-fi, very cool time travel stuff!! and very beautiful, it felt like reading poetry most of the time)
One Last Stop - Casey McQuinston (wlw, background trans & pan & queer characters, sci-fi or fantasy idk, but time travel, I loooved this book, great)
The House In The Cerulean Sea - TJ Klune (mlm, fantasy, THIS BOOK oh my gosh you should read it!!, just cute and lovely and good)
Under The Whispering Door - TJ Klune (mlm, fantasy, this book is also sooo amazing, great character development and awesome relationships and stuff, it's been a while since I read it but it was so good)
And They Lived... - Steven Salvatore (nblm, fiction, about gender identity and learning to love yourself, read it a while ago but it was very nice)
I Wish You All The Best - Mason Deaver (nblm, fiction, about finding your identity and people who care about you, very cute and sweet)
The Song Of Achilles - Madeleine Miller (mlm, historical, very good in general)
Carry On - Rainbow Rowell (mlm, background wlw in the third book, fantasy, it's a trilogy, basically Harry Potter if it was gay and also better)
Silver In The Wood - Emily Tesh (mlm, fantasy, very pretty, lots of fae stuff and lovely descriptions, it has a really good sequel too)
Pretty much anything by Alice Oseman (all cute and lovely and great, though I've only read Radio Silence so far I hear only good things, Solitaire is on my to-read list)
I Kissed Shara Wheeler - Casey McQuinston (wlw, fiction, it's been a while but I liked this book)
The Falling In Love Montage - Ciara Smyth (wlw, fiction, this book was so cute and funny and deeply emotional it made me Feel way too many things, I'd definitely recommend it)
What Big Teeth - Rose Szabo (a bit of queerness all around, fantasy, werewolves and monsters, this one was pretty cool!, lots of original ideas for the world/character building)
Do you have any good reads by Argenentinian authors?
"Ficciones" and "El Aleph" by Borges "El Tunel" by Ernesto Sábato Poesía Completa by Alejandra Pizarnik "Rayuela" by Cortazar "Martin Fierro" by José Hernandez "El Juguete Rabioso" by Roberto Arlt
Book Review: The Father Thing, Philip K. Dick
My Review in a Tweet:
In retrospective, I felt like I read it more like a chore, trying to read all five volumes this year. It has some good stories that left me thinking about the implicancies, but it was mostly filled with basic or uninteresting science fiction stories.
Complete Commentary:
I'm back! I just finished the third volume of Philip K. Dick's short stories, "The Father-Thing". I have to say, from the get-go, that it was probably the weakest one so far, with lower lows and not so great highs.
The more frequent topics and themes on this anthology are:
Ideologies and their radical extremes: from absolute polarization of society to political opinions taken to their most extreme realization, the author critizices and explores different ideas of his time, some of them being direct comments on recent publications.
Humanity and evolution: what will it be of humans in the future? The fate Philip K Dick envisions for us is rather dark or depressive in most of his stories.
Technology and humanity as a trait: Our relationship with technology is an evergreen topic in science-fiction, but in this anthology, it has a withered quality.
Clash of civilizations and classes
I'll make a short commentary for every short story, already ranking them from the one I liked the most to the one I liked the least:
Upon the Dull Earth: I realized while ordering up the stories that this was the one I liked the most and not the next one on the list. It feels more like a fantasy short story, but the ending is closer to a (cosmic?) horror tale.
The Golden Man: fantastic pace, fantastic ending.
Shell Game: the absolute paranoia of this colony and the TWIST. Loved it.
Sales Pitch: PKD said many people didn't like this story's ending and that he agreed with them. I disagree with both, the ending is great, but maybe because we like more cynical stories nowadays.
The Hanging Stranger: I love the ending, more themes of paranoia.
The Last of the Masters: it's unusual to read about anarchy, but it was very interesting, specially on the efforts to preserve some kind of hierarchy and burocracy.
Foster, You're Dead!: amazing satire, still relevant today.
War Veteran: I would really like to see this story adapted in a movie or series, it has great potential as a political intrigue/thriller.
A World of Talent: I rank it this high because of how convoluted and complicated the mutants' powers were. The plot itself dragged a bit too much.
Strange Eden: I like the ethereal feel of the story and the kind of "cautious tale" of the ending.
To Serve the Master
Fair Game
Pay for the Printer: I feel like we are headed this way with automated production and the lack of appreciation for manual crafts.
The Turning Wheel
Tony and the Beetles: relevant in today's political landscape.
Exhibit Piece: I despise the nostalgic feeling present in science fiction stories that imagine such a disastrous future that anything is preferred than that present, even flawed pasts. Even then, it's well narrated.
Null-O.
The Chromium Fence: I liked this satire as a valid commentary on today's need to always "pick a side", how pointing out valid critics to either viewpoint is considered as expressing symphaty for the other one. I disliked the ending, it felt like an easy way out.
The Eyes Have It: I liked it because it was fun, but I put it lower on the list because it feels very out of place in this anthology.
The Father-Thing: I liked better the author's explanation of this story, not the story itself.
Psi-man Heal My Child!: after reading A World of Talent, it felt very repetitive and unnecessarily complicated.
The Crawlers: pretty uninteresting.
Overall, I would give this book a:
6/10.
My other 2023 readings.
Since we are nearing the end of the year, I want to start organizing my readings for 2024. I'll post one more review for sure for a comic book I read last week, and maybe two more from books I'm finishing this week.
(My three last books of the year probably)
So, my goals for next year are both broaden the type of books I read and practice more reading in foreign languages.
Send me a book you like and I'll consider it for my 2024 readings.
You get a prize if you also tell me why you like it (?
Book Review: The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss
My Review in a Tweet:
I haven't been this enraptured, this mesmerized, this captivated by a book in years, and I don't say that lightly. It's great on every aspect you could think of, and then some other you couldn't even conjure. Can't believe I neglected it for so long. Highly recommended if you like fantasty of any kind.
My Full Review:
I had it sitting on my bookshelves for months before I decided to start reading this book. It felt menacing, despite it being the pocket edition. The sheer volume, the brickness of it felt like a challenge I hadn't the courage to face.
But once I did, I realized the real danger was being unable to let it go: I was prisoner of the author, being held by his marvelous ability to thread the story of Kvothe in seamless chapters, that natural the flow of the story felt, you couldn't even tell where he jumped from present to past and back.
The vivid images still dance in my mind hours after I finished reading the book. I rushed past the other reviews I had pending so I could write this one because I neded to talk about it. My copy of the book was a present from a friend so I texted her inmediately, but that didn't suffice, I had to write longer than all caps screaming to each other.
The rich world the author builds feels vast and mysterious, with a lot of hidden things lurking just beneaht the surface waiting for both the writer and the reader to discover them. I really hope (haven't looked it up yet) that there are books in the vein of the Silmarillion and Tom Bombadil where the myths and tales of this universe are further expanded.
The prose of Rothfuss is so elegant, filled with clever descriptions and unexpected analogies that not even the most fictitious elements of his story remain ungraspable to the reader.
The characters are so diverse and interesting: each and every one of them leaves a perdurable memory, no matter how brief and casual their impact and presence on the story is.
Kvothe is our main character, but he gets to be a narrator of his own story whenever we dive into his past, becoming a somewhat unreliable narrator. The whole book feels like that: we as readers submerging in the story narrated by Kvothe himself, gasping for air during the interlusions where the omniscient narrator takes the job back to move the story in the present time.
A wonderful work of worldbuilding, characterization and narration only hindered by the bittersweet taste of finishing the book eager for more. I hope to get my hands on the sequel soon, but I probably should let this world rest a little before diving in it again.
9/10.
My other 2023 Readings.