Books To Read - Tumblr Posts

I want to write a book called “your character dies in the woods” that details all the pitfalls and dangers of being out on the road & in the wild for people without outdoors/wilderness experience bc I cannot keep reading narratives brush over life threatening conditions like nothing is happening.

I just read a book by one of my favorite authors whose plots are essentially airtight, but the MC was walking on a country road on a cold winter night and she was knocked down and fell into a drainage ditch covered in ice, broke through and got covered in icy mud and water.

Then she had a “miserable” 3 more miles to walk to the inn.

Babes she would not MAKE it to that inn.

do you have any reading recs for someone who wants to learn about bugs?

Oh absolutely! There are so many lovely popular science entomology books. I'll name a few, but there are tons more for specific bugs you might be interested in if you search around! I've got four in mind that I've read that I think provide some nice variety.

Buzz, Sting, Bite by Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson

I so enjoyed this book. It's not about any specific insect, but it's a delightful tour of a bunch of cool adaptations and the like in the arthropod world. I think it'd be a good choice if you're new to the whole thing as it's fun, light, and has lots of different groups represented. I learned about a wild interaction between ground-nesting bees and blister beetles from this one that I ended up making a little video on.

Never Home Alone by Rob Dunn

I love the household ecosystem! This book isn't just arthropods — it also covers bacteria and other organisms you might find in your home. But it's so neat! And tonally it's refreshing because it doesn't attempt to scare you about what's in your house. Rather, it invites you to engage with your fellow home inhabitants.

Honeybee Democracy by Thomas D. Seeley

This is such an interesting deep dive into honey bee behavior. I think a lot of people know bees are smart but don't quite realize how complex their social behavior gets. I also am charmed by any book that includes a chapter on incorporating another animal's behavior as a lesson to our own human society (the last chapter is basically "what can we learn from the voting system of honey bees?", an adorable thought).

The Sting of the Wild by Justin O. Schmidt

The Schmidt pain scale is a bit infamous. Dr. Schmidt made a whole collection of insects sting him, and rated them on a scale based on the pain he felt. With descriptions like "someone has fired a staple into your cheek," it's definitely not the most objective, but it is a good time. And following his journey getting stung by everything (including his grad students that followed in his footsteps in some very funny ways) is entertaining.

“I was ten years old when my parents were killed by pirates. This did not bother me as much as you might think—I hardly knew my parents.”

and this isn’t even in the top 10 funniest lines of the chapter but it’s somehow also one of the best first sentences I’ve ever read?!!!

The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone by Jaclyn Moriarty, everyone. Please read it.

It’s Time to End the Hero’s Journey

I don’t know about you, but I’ve absolutely had enough of it: the story structure known as the hero’s journey.

It’s everywhere, from Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark to just about every Bruce Willis or Tom Cruise movie you’ve ever seen even through to Barbie and The Hunger Games. A hero is called to action, refuses the call before begrudgingly accepting it, has adventures in which (generally) he is repeatedly tested, receives assistance from mentors and other helpers, is brought low by a nemesis shortly before (generally) ultimately succeeding, and comes home an enlightened person.

Brought to public awareness as a common pattern in myth by Joseph Campbell in his books, like The Hero With a Thousand Faces, it has irritatingly come to take over western, industrialized movie making and mass market fiction. We have even, to a frightening large extent, internalized our own personal narratives as hero’s journeys thanks, in part, to the self-help industry.

But this is all laziness and a terrible failure of imagination. On top of being egotistical and self-indulgent, the hero’s journey is far from the only structure possible for stories. Worse, its sharp focus on the individual and the male experience of heroism, instead of on community or other ways of moving through life, it has us longing for strong leaders of single–minded, masculine vision. And it has us dreaming of ourselves rising the occasion in the fight against tyranny and catastrophe instead of imagining ourselves working together with other people to solve systemic problems before they plunge us into exactly that sort of catastrophe and tyranny.

Oh, Have You Ever Heard This Story Before

Even if you haven’t been formally introduced to it, you encounter the hero’s journey all the time. Lifted from myths like the wanderings of Odysseus, the story of Jonah, the life of Buddha, and many fairy tales, the hero’s journey has morphed into what feels like our default mode of storytelling.

Take the “save the cat” rules for script writing, which are just the hero’s journey template. Just about every Hollywood blockbuster now follows this formula. Not just just about every Bruce Willis and Tom Cruise (and the Rock and Vin Diesel and Liam Neesen and etc) movie ever, but all the super hero movies. Even female protagonists are frequently shoehorned into the hero’s journey template (see: Angelina Jolie in “Salt” and “Mr. & Mrs. Smith”; Katniss Everdeen in the Hunger Games books and films; Mila Jovovich in all the Resident Evil movies; and even the little girl at the heart of the story of “Spirited Away”), as if the only way to be interesting is if you’re a hero just like the guys.

But This Is Not Great

While these stories make for great escapism, they’re not great for actually changing the world.

Look at the sort of places the hero’s journey goes…

At the end of the movie Edge of Tomorrow, it becomes clear that the whole point of Tom Cruise’s character’s saving the world from alien invasion is that he’s learned to be a brave, bold hero, rather than a selfish coward. This doesn’t make him less arrogant, but it means he gets the girl, the satisfaction of knowing he has saved the life of anyone he will ever meet, and a magical fresh start that wipes away the negative consequences of his previous insufficiently heroic behavior.

Or, look at Katniss at the end of the fourth Hunger Games movie (Mockingjay, part 2). She’s sitting in a sunny meadow with her husband and young children. On the one hand, oh, I get it know. This is why ordinary people pick up arms and go to war in the face of a terrible threat. She fought so hard and sacrificed so much, not just for her own survival, but so her as not yet even conceived of children could grow up in freedom. It was all worth it. On the other hand, she’s been transformed from being a fearless warrior, skilled hunter, revered leader, and the chosen one who fomented an entire revolution by staying true to her ideals and made the world safe from not one, but two tyrants into a harmless young mother, utterly unthreatening in a faded, modest calico dress, tending to her husband and young family. The whole point of her journey is that the minute she she doesn’t need to be a strong, fearless, rousing warrior anymore of unprecedented skill with a bow and arrow she can happily settle into domesticated bliss, aside from a bit of PTSD? That, deed done, she can now settle into the fate she was truly made for, that of being tame and ordinary and enjoying her subservient place in the patriarchy? I mean, ARGH!

And then there’s “Oppenheimer”, which took the incredible story of everyone and everything that converged to create the atomic bomb, drop it on Japan, and start the Cold War and turned it into the personal hero’s journey of one man. So ridiculous and, frankly, so meh. Go read The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes—which is one of the best books ever written—if you want your mind properly blown by this story. Sure, his story of the endeavor is way more challenging to the reader—you’re going to be exposed to actual information about atomic physics— than the celebrity biopic approach. But you get so much gain for your pain if you push through the reading of the story. You’ll learn so much of the history of the chemistry of the elements that make up existence, of the various genius scientists (all of whom were some pretty interesting characters) involved in the advancement of nuclear science and the Manhattan Project, and you’ll truly feel the horror of the scientists when the military comes along and takes the product of their hard work to save the free world and doesn’t give them any say on how it will be used. But Oppenheimer (in the movie about him). Oh, poor guy, gets his name drawn through the mud by a political nemesis and is a bit sad when all the people die when the bomb is dropped. Sheesh. Doing its sad little treading of the boards in the shadow of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Oppenheimer is the perfect example of how limited, narrow minded, narcissistic, and shallow the hero’s journey approach can be compared to other ways of telling the story.

We Should Be Telling All Sorts of Stories

Honestly, these hero’s journey stories aren’t the only kinds of stories we should be telling—either within in the genre of solarpunk or not. Not only is all this heroic journeying getting boring, there are major downsides to locking ourselves into this single vision of story. Like becoming fans of authoritarianism and monarchy.

David Brin had some great words about how Star Wars’ use of the hero’s journey results in main messages that are authoritarian and undemocratic, leading us, for instance, to forgive—and even fete—great evil, despite the millions of death that person (Darth Vader) has caused, so long as he performs a personal act of redemption in the end. Star Wars and its hero’s journey involving the Skywalkers has us cheering on people with a magical hereditary right to power, as if we’re fine with consigning basically everyone else to be followers.

Jo Walton and Ada Palmer also touched on the down sides and limitations of the hero’s journey, at least adjacently, in their editorial in Uncanny Magazine that called for more stories that don’t center on a single protagonist, called to action, from whom all change unfolds. Using history as their example, the point out that events generally happen because of the actions of the many, not just of one special single person. I might add, when big outcomes do hinge upon the actions, leadership, and unique talents of one single person, it’s generally someone despotic, like Hitler or Stalin. And, as pointed out to us by one of our listeners, Jon Ronson has a great podcast with one episode in particular about how trying to understand your own life as a hero’s journey can lead you to brainwash yourself straight down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories, until the call to action you hear is to undermine, if not actually overthrow, democracy.

 To the Typewriter Computer, Solarpunks!

Here’s my call to action by you. Let’s let solarpunk stories dump the hero’s journey, even as a means to explore life in a solarpunk future. Let’s use all the other story structures instead.

Let’s tell stories about endeavors—like the making of the atomic bomb—not about a person undertaking an endeavor—like Oppenheimer herding his cats at Los Alamos.

Let’s tell stories about relationships between people, or between a group of people and the natural world.

Let’s tell stories where the actions of an individual on his, her, or their own never advance the plot.

Let’s tell stories about moments, or about conflicts, where what’s interesting is the development of the moment or conflict, not of the protagonist and antagonist’s paths through them.

And when we do tell stories about a single protagonist, let’s not keep religiously following the structure laid out by Joseph Campbell and copied by save the cat.

Not every protagonist needs to be a hero! There are so many other arcs to follow.

if your support of decolonization (anywhere) is predicated on your view of the colonized people as exceptionally peaceable, equitable, environmentally conscious/“in touch” with nature, or otherwise morally superior by your own personal standards, it’s not support. the only moral high ground colonized people need to justify decolonization is …. not being the colonizer

About Blowing Up Pipelines

A while ago I saw a post about fossil fuels, under which someone posted: "What are you waiting for? Let's blow up the pipelines!" Which is very fair. But someone else came to post under it: "No! Think of the environmental harm! You need to go vote!"

And, let's be honest here: It is very likely that neither of them have actually read the book that the "blow up a pipeline" wording comes from. How to Blow up a Pipeline by Andreas Malm. Which in its core argues that sabotage is good, because voting doesn't do shit.

Now, don't get me wrong. There is a ton of important elections coming up - especially in the US, but soon in Germany as well. And you need to go vote to prevent another Trump presedency! However: There is nobody you can vote for, who will actually stop pipelines from being build, who will actually limit the size of cars folks drive, and who will actually put pressure on natural gas, coal and what not. Heck, even in the best case that on a local level there might be some who want to build out bike lanes and public transport... Those changes often take too long to bring them through during one term and if someone else is in charge next term, chances are, the projects will be cancelled.

So, basically what Malm argues in his book: Voting will not change those things, partly because of lobbyism. Protests will be ignored, partly because politicians care more about the lobbyists. Same goes with petitions. So, the usual ways that technically a democracy will leave for people to engage and influence politics do not work.

But, so Malm says, sabotage does.

Now, he does actually not directly argue for literally blowing up pipelines. But he is arguing for sabotage. He notes: "If just a few people with their keys run through a city during the night and scratch up all the SUVs, a lot fewer people will on the long term use SUVs." He even talks about something like this that he participated in in Sweden and what effects it had.

And yes, he does give ideas of how to deal with pipelines in ways that will do a lot of financial damage, which makes pipelines and hence fossil fuels a lot less attractive to energy providers. Because they are going to need to pay for all that damage.

Even with smaller sabotage... yes, there will be some environmental damage. But try to think of it this way: If enough folks do this, if there is enough damage done on the pipelines (and other forms of creating and transporting fossil fuels), then less of them will be build, will be used. And given that those pipelines and other fossil fuels will leak into the environment either way, and over time will do a lot more damage than a few cases of sabotage will do.

And I really gotta say: Yeah, no, I do agree with Malm. On all the fronts.

So, please... The book is actually super short. Just go an read it, alright?

LIES WITHIN pride post. pride within

If capitalism is so bad, what would you replace it with? I realize that sounds accusatory, but I'm just curious. What would you improve on?

well, we’re anarchists, so we’d replace with capitalism with anarchism.

by definition there is no one proscriptive answer to what an anarchist society would look like. but there’s certainly no dearth of answers either. what we know is that capitalism and statism are irredeemably evil. we can’t stay here, and we can’t go backwards; our only option is to move forward.

here are some links for reading more about what anarchism is and what an anarchist society might look like after the revolution. kropotkin’s ‘the conquest of bread’ or malatesta’s ‘anarchy!’ are classic books to start with.

Anarchism Wikipedia Article

An Anarchist FAQ

After the Revolution

The Anarchist Library

Homies: what are your favorite introductions to anarchism? hit us with your best recommendations and we’ll reblog.

my main problem with romance is that my ideal romantic hero appears to be rather different than the majority of romance writers’ ideal romantic heroes. please keep your rogues, rakes, and alpha males away from me please!! no yelling or demanding or surprise kissing or “wild uncontrollable emotions” thanks!! 

I like my heroes to be pretty calm and decent and respectable and maybe even a little uptight and then just get absolutely wrecked by how much they love the heroine. ideal adjectives include “reassuring” “safe” “respectful” “kind” “gentle” “polite” etc. 

I am a gentle soul and “”alpha males”” are very spooky scary!! I would very much like my heroes to be AT LEAST polite and respectful, even if they’re very intimidating in other aspects. 

Does anyone have any recs? Bonus points for slow burn/pining

what would you recommend to read if you want like a fucked up mystery book with twists? i love your book suggestions

oh man fucked up mysteries are my jam

basically every gillian flynn and courtney summers novel

the girl in 6E by alessandra torre

heartsick by chelsea caine

into the darkest corner by elizabeth haynes

the girl on the train by paula hawkins

horns by joe hill

the walls around us by nova ren suma

close my eyes by sophie mckenzie

the wasp factory by iain banks

invisible monsters + invisible monsters remix by chuck p

we need to talk about kevin by lionel shriver

the weight of blood by laura mchugh

the good girl by mary kubica

Free/Inexpensive Poetry Ebooks

I know a lot of people want to buy poetry books but feel they can’t justify the expense so here are some free or inexpensive poetry books that I’ve read that are legally available from publishers or from the poet.

Wendy Xu – The Hero Poems Sarah Certa – Juliet (I)

Amongst others available for free from H_ngm_n.

Ugly Duckling Presse has made their out-of-print chapbooks available for free online reading.

Also, Spit Temple by Cecilia Vicuña.

The Prettiest Girl in the Psych Ward by @nicola-blank (free) Lustmord by @nicola-blank ($1) Juliet and the Knife by @nicola-blank ($1) Taurogarchy by @mythaelogy (free) Incarnate by @sunrisesongs (free) Wishing for Birds by @elisabethhewer ($3-4 or free with Amazon subscription) Howling at the Moon by @afterthelonely ($3-4 or free with Amazon subscription) Epoch by @venettaoctavia​ (free)

There’s @mythaelogy‘s list of chapbooks if you’re looking for more recs.

List of books everyone should read

Howl’s moving castle by Diana Wynne Jones

Chrestomanci series by Diana Wynne Jones

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

The Parasol Protectorate and Custard Protocol series by Gail Carriger

The Raven Cycle series by Maggie Stiefvatar 

The Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus series by Rick Riordan

The Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer

Regency Romance books by Georgette Heyer

The Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy series by Douglas Adams

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Discworld series by Terry Pratchett

The Princess Bride by William Goldman

Portal Fantasies rated against Narnia

for @heretherebebooks

The Golden Compass: didactically better. Wonderful world building, realistic children character, plot twisting plot. Actually understands kids’ intelligence levels and they are well developed characters with flaws as well. Terrifying villains and drunk warrior polar bears. Also this book was literally written to be the antithesis of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe as the author viewed it as simplistic and overly religious. 

10/10 would recommend. Beware the golden monkey 

Stardust: subjectively worse. I’m not a Neil Gaiman fan, but I found this underwhelming. The movie was better, sorry, not sorry. Cool world but no pirates. Cute romance and I love that stars are people and the portal is super interesting. 

5/10 would recommend. Beware the Wall. 

The Phantom Tollbooth: weirdly better. This is a strange book. It’s funny and inventive and doesn’t always make sense, which is kind of the point. It’s absolutely ridiculous and so much fun. Invites and interesting perspective on life and logic. Lots of great word play and not enough women. Also, contains my favorite portal. 

6/10 would recommend. Beware nonsense. 

The Looking Glass Wars: imaginatively better. The best retelling of Alice in Wonderland and an awesome magic system, that’s actually magic. A great villain and a great hero, both women with amazing character arcs. Provides and interesting twist on familiar characters, with an actual dark side. Personally preferred over the story it’s based on. 

8/10 would recommend. Beware Charles Dodgson aka the douche Lewis Carroll

Every Heart a Doorway: creatively better. Has multiple portals to multiple lands and takes place after children have traveled to magical lands. Great take on portal fantasies and a unique take on the trope. It has an amazing emotional journey and an ongoing murder mystery as well. Loses one point for being too short. 

9/10 would recommend. Beware well meaning parents. 

In Other Lands: distinctly better. This is literally the funniest book I have read. Great queer rep and calls out portal fantasy tropes and sexist customs. Borderline satire and very clever. It has a grumpy and hysterical main character, who is well developed and goes through great character development over the book. Also has lots of magical creatures and focuses on friendship and promotes peace over violence. And there is total OTP material in there as well. 

10/10 would recommend. Beware unicorns and mermaids. 

A Darker Shade of Magic: just different. This series starts in a different world, but our world is what the character portals into. The magic is super cool and element based and there are pirates and princes and thieves. Action based, with a nice touch of romance and lots of politics that aren’t super difficult to follow but not overly simplified. Great villains and anti heroes abound. 

8/10 would recommend. Beware white. 

Daughter of Smoke and Bone: romantically better. This is the most beautiful of the novels on this list. Gorgeous prose and very mysterious. Great humor as well and a very interesting “other world” with fantastical creatures in every sense. A little slow at some points, but worth pushing through. The relationships are really well developed and dynamic and literally this book is just so pretty!!!! 

8/10 would recommend. Beware angles. 

Vampires • Werewolves • Dragons • Aliens • Faeries • Dystopias •  Angels/Demons • Animal Companions  • Mermaids

an incomplete list of unsettling short stories I read in textbooks

the scarlet ibis

marigolds

the diamond necklace

the monkey’s paw

the open boat

the lady and the tiger

the minister’s black veil

an occurrence at owl creek bridge

a rose for emily

(I found that one by googling “short story corpse in the house,” first result)

the cask of amontillado

the yellow wallpaper

the most dangerous game

a good man is hard to find

some are well-known, some obscure, some I enjoy as an adult, all made me uncomfortable between the ages of 11-15

add your own weird shit, I wanna be literary and disturbed

Can you tell us about your favorite writers and books, please? Your writing is the light!

Homegoing - Yaa Gyasi

Two sisters, separated before they even have a chance to remember the other. One is sold into slavery, the other becomes a slave-owner’s wife. Every chapter is written from the perspective of one of their descendants, spanning three generations and hundreds of years, crossing continents, beginning in Africa at the onset of slavery and taking us all the way to modern day America. The true glory of this book is that you only hear from each character once and yet you are no less emotionally invested in them. The writing is mesmerising, brutal; full of softness, and of spit. Fire and water - as the book references - fire and water, come together.

The Third Life of Grange Copeland - Alice Walker

Everyone reads The Color Purple (and rightfully so), but in my opinion, this is Walker’s better book. It follows three generations of a poor black family in the American South. It’s set after the abolition of slavery, when it was no longer legal, but the effects of it were still felt by black men and the black women they often took their feelings of powerlessness out on. It gives us ugly, brutal, abusive black male characters and without asking us to forgive them, makes us understand the cycle that made them so callous. Brilliant.

A Girl is a Half-formed Thing - Eimear McBride

Gutting. Like being suffocated within the narrator’s head. Written in an off-the-cuff stream-of-consciousness type style. It follows the life of a young woman who experiences a myriad of traumas. I have never felt such stifling second-hand grief, and for a fictional character at that. Devastating, perverse, and hard to stomach, but one of the most worthwhile reads in recent years.

Grief is the Thing with Feathers - Max Porter

A book without a genre. A mix of poetry, prose, and even drama. A semi-autobiographical account of a man left to struggle with his grief after his wife passes, leaving him to raise their two young sons. The most original format I’ve ever seen in a book. Heart-rending, darkly comic, and entirely absurd at times.

White Oleander - Janet Fitch

One of the most poetic novels I’ve ever read. A young girl navigates a series of foster homes while her mother is in prison for having killed her partner. Something about this book feels like leaving candy floss to melt on your tongue. The character of the mother manages to be simultaneously alluring and disgusting. As a reader, we buy into the enigma of her; we desire her; we almost forgive her. And we watch as Astrid, the daughter, emulates some of her mother’s mistakes, and makes some of her own. We watch her suffer, grieve, fuck, and start to bite back.

hey gyns let me plug a book for a second. its a childhood favorite of mine, but its also one of the best fairy tale books for little girls, imho. its called ‘the serpent slayer: and other stories of strong women’, and its a collection of fairy tales from around the world whose main characters are women. some of my favorite stories from it include:

neesowa and the chenoo - when an injured chenoo (an evil, cannibalistic monster) stumbles upon neesowa’s camp, she throws the monster off balance by treating him with kindness and sharing her home with him as he recovers, which pays off when another chenoo attacks her camp.

grandmother skull - a young woman, neruvana, marries a man who kills her entire family and abandons her. thankfully, the skull of her grandmother comes to life to teach her how to survive and to help her get revenge. 

beebyeebyee and the water god - a young woman, beebyeebyee, falls in love with a water god who is slain by the envious people of her village. she gets revenge.

three whiskers from a lions chin - maria wants to help her husband, who returned from war a changed man, and the local bruja sends her off to get three whiskers from a lions chin, apparently a key ingredient in a magic spell that will bring her husband back to himself. when she brings the whiskers back to the bruja, the woman explains that there is no magic spell, but that with time, and the same patience she used to get the whiskers, she can help her husband recover. 

the old woman and the devil - a brilliant old woman faces off with the devil in a bet to convince him to leave her spot in the shade. she outwits him, and undoes the harm he did as well.

duffy the lady - a version of rumplestiltskin where a housekeeper who cant knit or spin accepts a deal with a devil who will do the tasks for her for three years, if she will marry him at the end of the three years if she cannot guess his name. spoiler alert: she can. 

sister lace - a creation myth about the stars, when the emperor hears of sister lace’s incredible lace-making abilities, he has her brought to the palace and ordered to marry him. when she refuses, he has her imprisoned unless she can spin him a live rooster. her skill and blood bring the bird to life, but she remains imprisoned, until, eventually, she finds her way out. 

a marriage of two masters - a very intelligent young woman who speaks only in riddles meets a man who sees the world the same way, and as they decipher one anothers riddles, they fall in love. 

clever marcella - marcella, a genius, fascinates the prince, and they agree to marry, provided she not interfere with his rule. when she feels compelled to challenge a ridiculous ruling he made on a case, he orders her to take whatever she likes from the palace and then leave. she solves the problem as anyone in love would, compels the prince to see the error of his ways, and becomes the kingdoms chief justice.

the rebel princess - to escape an unwanted arranged marriage, judith and her ladies-in-waiting take to the open sea. when they come across a ship of pirates who decide they will each marry one of the women, the crew steal their clothes, their treasure, and their lives. by the end of the story, judith has been crowned king in place of an heir-less king who drowned. 

its just a really, really good book, with a portrayal of women that most fairy tales dont have. theyre kind and wise mentors and teachers, not wicked stepmothers and ugly hags, and an undeveloped marriage to a man isnt their be-all and end-all. i really encourage you to get a copy for any little girls in your life, especially who enjoy fairy tales. 

Happy International Asexuality Day!

Here are some books with ace and/or demisexual characters. A majority of them are the main, but in the case of some they are the love interest.

I have been seeing lots of Vorkosigan references on my dash and it has made me curious about the series but this ^  This is what has moved it from “Oh I should probably add that to my reading list’ to ‘Yes, I need to add this to my reading list’.  No sure when I will get to it since I just started the 10 book Whyborne and Griffin series and I have a backlog of Seanan McGuire books to catch up on but I definitely need to read this.

I’m halfway into the first Miles Vorkosigan book, and so far it’s basically been “How to DM Around a Diplomancer: Space Opera Edition.”

Miles: “I tell the mercenaries I’m a mercenary commander and I bought up all their contracts from their captain, so they’re part of my company now.” DM: “Roll for Bluff. :)” Miles, who has a higher Bluff bonus than most gods: “34.” DM: “They want to know when copies of the regulation handbook will be distributed and what the health insurance plan is like. (: (: (:” Miles, sweating: “UUUUUUHHH”

I just checked, for those who have a library card its available as an ebook on Hoopla.  Adds to my TBR pile.

I’m reading this queer anthology and the first story is a fairytale about a queer Latina girl whose anger was so fierce it literally poisoned the rich white men who unfairly captured the transgender soldier she was in love with and my heart is literally bursting I’m going to cry

I have to stop reading dystopian literature and watching dystopian stories (I won't) because here's a list of things that I've done reading Station Eleven (Emily St. John Mandel) and watching the HBO/Max series adaptation.

cried. so many gods be damned times

wanted to throw the book against the wall (and resisted)

wanted to cuss out the author

...cussed out the author

snapped the book shut and swore

...swore

made two playlists to fit the vibes

fainted

read fix-it fics because i was mad about a very clever narrative choice

dedicated nine songs to the universe

literally been so wrapped up in the universe i spilt milk down my shirt

screamed into a pillow

read it four times in three weeks

wanted to punch several characters

planned a new tattoo

had several flashbacks and moments of panic

related to the villain

related to the main characters

questioned my life in great detail

panicked over whether the Georgia Flu could ever happen

researched spread of viruses (again)

got distracted and tried to replicate the Georgia Flu in plague.inc

regretted ever reading the book

wished i could read it again for the first time

cried some more.

whispered 'im never going to finish this series' before binging another six episodes while drawing and crying because they changed the story for the better.

...anyway, thanks. Emily. You did a good job.