#tumblr book club

[tmblr-university]

When you wake up and all your stuff is gone

Tumblr University's Charity Shoutout of the Week

[warrioreowynofrohan]

I think it would be fun if, along the lines of Dracula Daily, we had Dickens December, with portions of A Christmas Carol sent out daily from Dec 1 until Christmas. It’s a wonderful book, with narration that is by turns humourous, satirical, evocative, idiosyncratic, moving, and passionate, and the joy of the full text and writing can be missed even in the best adaptations. It would be fun to have it done as a tumblr book club the way Dracula Daily was, and see everyone comment on it a little at a time.

Does anyone know if someone is already doing this? I don’t think I would have time to assemble it in the next ten days, but if it already exists I would love to participate!

[spacehippieface]

Boomers: Grumble grumble, young people don't read the classics, they're always on the tiktaks and their goddamn phones, mutter grumble bah.

A bunch of dorks on tumblr: Where is my good friend Jonathan? We haven't heard from him in a while. Victor, you are a bad parent! Take responsibility for your giant corpse baby! Man, I love Dickens' descriptions. Alas, poor Ogilvy. A trip to Jurassic Park? Sure!

[mxcottonsocks]

Reading Like A Victorian

A while ago, I discovered the website 'Reading Like a Victorian', a digital humanities project from The Ohio State University and collaborators.

Since tumblr's been going through a bit of a serial-literature revival, I thought I would share...

Here are some extracts from the website's 'About Us':

RLV is an interactive timeline of the Victorian period. It focuses on serialized novels [...] and adds volume-format publications for context. 

When we read Victorian novels today, we do not read them in the form in which they originally came out. Most Victorian novels appeared either as “triple deckers,” three volumes released at one time, or as serials published monthly or weekly in periodicals or in pamphlet form. Serialized novels’ regularly timed, intermittent appearance made for a reading experience resembling what we do when we are awaiting the next weekly episode of Game of Thrones, watching installments of other TV serials in the meantime. Whenever we pick up a Penguin or Oxford paperback of a Victorian novel today, we are engaged in the equivalent of binge-watching a series that has already reached its broadcast ending [and is] a very different experience from what Victorian audiences were doing with novels. Reading Like a Victorian reproduces the “serial moment” experienced by Victorian readers [...]

More info and screenshots and so on below the cut:

[...] if reading serial installments at their original pace is valuable, it is even more valuable to read them alongside parts of novels and of other kinds of texts that Victorian readers could have been following at the same time [...] [...] a reader who, in 1847, had been following the part issues of both Dickens’s Dombey and Son and Thackeray’s Vanity Fair and then picked up Jane Eyre, published in volume form in October of that year, might notice in Florence Dombey, Becky Sharp, and Jane Eyre a pattern of motherless or orphaned girls trying to negotiate a hostile world on their own. While this figure is well known to be a character type in Victorian fiction perfectly embodied by Jane Eyre and Florence Dombey, Becky Sharp does not often emerge among the heroines who fit that type; reading the novels simultaneously foregrounds parallels between Becky, Florence, and Jane that are not at all obvious if their storylines are experienced separately

I find that, for browsing, the website is easier to use on a computer or tablet than a phone, but it's ok on phone to search for something specific.

The timeline:

Here's what the timeline looks like:

It shows 12 months at a time, and using the left and right arrows will move you back or forward by a month. You can use the 'Jump To Date' function to navigate to a different twelve-month period. Or you can use the 'Author Search' function to navigate to particular works if you know the author's name.

In the above screenshot of the timeline, which shows the period January to December 1852, there are several works shown, including:

ongoing serialised works which had at least one installment published prior to 1852;

works which began serialisation during 1852;

works published in three-volume format during 1852;

other works published during 1852

Details about each work:

You can click on the bar that represents a book's publication to get a drop-down that provides information about that book, its publication, and links to help you read the relevant serial parts.

Here's what happens if you click on Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford:

On the left of the drop-down, there's some general information about the work, its publication history, and how to use the links.

On the right, there's information and links to help you experience the book in its serial parts: it separates out the parts, indicates the month and the year they were published, and what chapters of the work were published in that part. It also provides notes on each part where helpful. There is a scroll-bar at the right of the drop-down, so you can scroll down to the later installments of the work.

[I chose Cranford as an example as it helps demonstrate the value of the Reading Like a Victorian website... From what I understand, Gaskell initially wrote 'Our Society at Cranford' as a standalone piece of short fiction, but was encouraged to write more, so further pieces also set in the fictional town of Cranford were published intermittently in the same magazine over the next year or so. While a particularly dedicated Gaskell fan who wanted to 'read along' with Cranford following the original publication could probably search 1.5-years-worth of a weekly magazine to find the 9 issues which included the material which would later be published as Cranford, the Reading Like a Victorian website has already done that work for them... and also for anyone else who might be interested, but not quite that interested.]

The links

You can then click on an individual chapter to get links to various places to read it online:

When available / where possible, the website tends to include links to:

a facsimile copy of either the relevant serial part in the original publication, or in an 'annual' or similar volume collecting together the content of that publication, or a volume-form edition of that work if the work was not published serially or if facsimile copies of the original serialised publication are not available. [Most of the facsimiles are hosted by either the Internet Archive or the Hathi Trust Digital Library, but some are hosted as part of smaller, more specific collections, such as - in the case of Cranford - Dickens Journals Online which provides online access to the journals/magazines edited by Charles Dickens);

the text, usually on Project Gutenberg (this is usually the volume-form text, so the exact content and chapter breaks and so on may be different than originally published in serial parts; the Reading Like A Victorian website will generally explain when this is the case);

audio recordings, usually volunteer recordings from Librivox (again, the recordings are usually based on the volume-form text, so the exact content and chapter breaks and so on may be slightly different than originally published in the serial parts).

So yeah, I just thought it was a cool website and worth sharing. I believe the website is already used as a resource by some University courses and for academic research, but it can also be used by book clubs and to aid personal reading, etc. I'm using it to inform a personal reading project for 2024-26 where I follow along with six or seven novels serialised in 1864-66.

To save a scroll to the top, here's the link to the RLV website again: Reading Like A Victorian (osu.edu)

[If you want to join an already-planned read-along based on the original serialisation schedule, @dickensdaily will be doing Charles Dickens's historical novel Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty from mid-February 2024 to late-November 2024, to follow along with the original weekly publication of the novel in Master Humphreys Clock from February 1841 to November 1841. I personally found Barnaby Rudge a really engaging, thought-provoking read, and I'm really looking forward to reading it again. (Anyone with particular triggers or other reasons to be wary of the content or language used in older books may find it helpful to look up content warnings for the book before making a decision to read it.)]

[mercy-is-alive]

I love listening to Jack and Van Helsing interact. Van Helsing being upset that Jack couldn't guess that vampires exist based on his ridiculously cryptic hints and behaviour is peak comedy

[posingsodomite]

URGENT MESSAGE: I'm on my knees begging you guys to SIGN UP FOR WHAT MANNER OF MAN before it starts on friday!!! 🙇🙇🙇

look me in the eyes! I'm grasping you urgently by the lapels! it's like if Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde were taking notes from my ao3 bookmarks. it has all the authentically victorian vibes I've never found in queer historical fiction and all the hot gay sex they couldn't put in the real stuff. I wish I could eat it!!

IT HAS:

erotic vampirism

hot priest

catholic guilt

celtic paganism-flavored fantasy vibes

CATHOLIC GUILT

lesbian swashbuckling

did I mention the guilt????

please!! you have to help me! I have a fatal disease and the only cure is more people talking about WHAT MANNER OF MAN ⬇️⬇️⬇️

[thethirdromana]

I had a bit of time so I've just loaded 52 chapters of North and South onto Substack. Which means that North and South Weekly is go!

It'll run every Wednesday from 12 June. Originally, North and South was published in 20 instalments, but that would mean emails of nearly 10k words each (!). I've set it up to send out a chapter a week for a year instead so the chunks are more manageable.

What's it about?

It’s the story of Margaret Hale, a young woman from a rural background in the south of England. She’s forced to move to the northern city of Milton, where she’s shocked by the impacts of the Industrial Revolution and clashes with mill owner John Thornton.

Why read it?

Such good characters!!

It's a romance but it's also about LABOUR RELATIONS.

There's literally a chapter titled "What is a strike?"

No sidelining of female characters: this is a novel that pushes back against the idea of separate spheres.

It's a really good read!

@lurking-latinist and @vickyvicarious, you said you might be interested - anyone else?

[captainblou]

I've been going through my AO3 bookmarks, and here are my absolute favourite fics I've read since I came back to the wonderful world of fanfiction:

By My Side - rated T - A 10 works long, 1 MILLION words ongoing serie by @demonicputto. It's breathtaking, I've spend evenings religiously reading it and can't wait for next part

Back to the Roots - rated E - 91K words. An oldie but GOD is it good! The first part is heartbreaking, it HURTS. But it's so, so worth it.

Trial and Error - rated E - 15K words by @fellshish. The Metatron brings in the demon Crowley to stand trial in Heaven. For tempting an angel. Uhhhh. Awkward. <== loved every bit of it, not gonna spoil, but JESUS.

I'm beginning to see the light - rated E - 12k words by @ineffabildaddy. I'm a big fan of Sam's writing, so please check their other works, but this one hit me different. Human AU, trans Aziraphale and a loooot of love.

Communicatio in Sacris - Rated E - 10K words by @voluptatiscausa. Oh is this efficient. Priest Crowley. Poems. The poem lives rent free in my head, I sometimes mutter it... holy holy holy.

The Grindr logo doesn't even have a G in it - rated E - 79K words. I have to include it, even if it's probably the most recommended fic of all time. It's for a good reason. It's awesome.

And many more, but really, those I will read again and again and again.

_______________

Also currently reading (and loving, go give some love to the WIPS!)

Don't Fall Away From Me - rated M - 160K words (WIP) by @phoen1xr0se. Came for the Muriel&Crowley dynamic, stayed for the plot going insanely interesting insanely fast

[therealraeweber]

The further we get into Dracula Daily, the more I realize how little I knew about Dracula. I really thought I knew more than this, but no. Dracula is on a ship? There is a cowboy? There is a whole side story with a mental patient eating live birds? I am so utterly shocked with how little I knew about this book, even though it's more than 124 years old. I'm also now realizing that I have no idea how it will end. I'm hoping for an Avengers Assemble moment but I have no idea if that will happen or not. How will Renfield come into play here? And Lucy? I'm so excited to keep reading.

[destaquei]

Agindo com a mente e não com o coração

[lycorogue]

I'm talking with a friend about Dracula Daily and how neat it is to revive a literary classic like that. How it was able to get published with its new chronological narrative as opposed to the original overlapping timelines.

But we both thought it would be cool if we somehow had a Dracula that included Jonathan's entries in shorthand with Mina's translation next to it.

Then I remembered the -ology books I read in the early 00s (I think... may have been late 90s).

For those who don't know, these were a series of childrens books that presented the fantastical or mythological as "factual" by designing the books like field guides or lost journals.

Their prominent series was Dragonology which had its own spin-offs. There was also Wizardology and Egyptology (which focused on the Egyptian pantheon being real) and Mythology (which was the same thing, but for Greek gods) and Monsterology, etc. Apparently there's 17 books in total in the series! I fell off at about 7!

Point being, these were awesome, interactive, fun books.

And I kind of want a Dracula stylized like them.

I want pages where it looks like Jonathan's original journal entries - written in the shorthand - are secured to scrapbook pages, with Mina's typed up translation nestled next to them. Similar to how Shakespearean plays have the original text to the left and then a modern translation on the right.

I want pages that look like Mina's and Lucy's letters back and forth to each other - printed with different handwriting fonts - are on corresponding pages. Maybe with the torn open envelopes tucked behind the letters.

I want Mina's transcriptions of John's audio recordings.

I want the telegrams being sent by Quincey or Helsing.

I want the actual newspaper clipping about the Demeter.

I want the receipts from the shipping company moving Dracula to Carfax.

I want the visual storytelling of all of these different bits of media compiled like a giant tome of a scrapbook.

I'd also love maps! Maps showcasing the route Jonathan took to and from Transylvania as well as the doomed route of the Demeter. I want a map of England with the various named locations showcased. I want a map of Whitby. I want a map of the interior of Dracula's castle.

So on and so forth.

Anyone know if this is already a thing now that Dracula is in the public domain? Anyone know of an existing shorthand translation of Jonathan's journal entries? Any graphic designers out there feeling where I'm going with this and want to team up to manifest it????

[lavinaigrette]

Much like Theb Eetle themselves, The Beetle Weekly is back by unpopular demand.

What better way to follow up Bram Stoker's masterpiece than by reading Richard Marsh's marshterpiece, The Beetle?

Or The Beetle: A Mystery, or The Peril of Paul Lessingham: The Story of a Haunted Man. This book has a lot of titles.

On December 7, 2023, read the first three chapters of The Beetle to learn why approximately ten people on Tumblr and Discord spent the entirety of the year roasting an obscure novel from 1897. If you make it that far, consider sticking around for the rest.

On a more serious note, please visit the About page and read the content warnings carefully. I'm not an expert by any means, but if you have questions, feel free to reach out and I'll do my best to answer them. Thanks!

[mercy-is-alive]

Okay @re-dracula peeps, I feel like I've missed something. Did Jonathan get bitten by the Drac?? I just thought Jonny boy was freaked out because Dracula is a verified weirdo

[itisiives]

So, does anyone want to help me achieve my dream of going to Norway by purchasing my book? Ebook coming soon!

EDIT: I was officially nominated for a semester abroad, so I definitely need some funds, lol. (Plus, nifty book cover!)

[wildfellweekly]

New Book Club for Autumn 2023!

Announcing Wildfell Weekly, a substack read-a-long for Anne Brontë's novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall!

You must go back with me to the autumn of 1827.

A new tenant has taken up residence in old Wildfell Hall and Mr. Gilbert Markham finds himself very intrigued. But the widow Mrs. Helen Graham is more than what she seems, and as rumors about her start to fly, she reveals to a doubting Gilbert the truth about the disastrous marriage she left behind.

Anne Brontë differed from her sisters Charlotte (Jane Eyre) and Emily (Wuthering Heights) in favoring a Realist rather than Romantic approach to her writing. In Tenant she explored themes of domestic violence, alcoholism and addiction, gender relations, motherhood and marriage, and the ability of women to define their own lives with an unflinching desire to depict what she saw to be true. While now considered among the first feminist novels, critics of Anne's day were shocked by a book they found coarse, brutal, and overly graphic.

So starting October 26, 2023 and until June 10, 2024, let's read together a story one nineteenth century critic called "utterly unfit to be put in the hands of girls"!

Find More Information about the Project and Subscribe Here!