#book thread

[ashllynlou]

in one of the MOST twenty-something year old boy moves, Rupert continuously calls the all female boarding house, Regina House, that Helen stays at "Vagina House"

here is some actual 20 year old alex hassell so you can really envision it.

[torpublishinggroup]

Celebrate Pride with Tor Publishing Group!

Rakesfall by @adamantine

They met as children in the middle of the Sri Lankan civil war. Later, in a demon-haunted wood, an act of violence linked them and propelled their souls on a journey through the ages. As they reincarnate ever deeper into the future, a truth emerges: Some stories take more than one lifetime to tell.

Running Close to the Wind by @ariaste

In this queer pirate fantasy, Avra Helvaçi has accidentally stolen the single most expensive secret in the world. To avoid capture, he flees to the open sea, where only his on-again, off-again ex aka pirate Captain Teveri az-Ḥaffār can help him survive, profit, and become a legend.

Cuckoo by Gretchen Felker-Martin

Something evil is buried deep in the desert. It wants your body and wears your skin. Welcome to Camp Resolution, a queer conversion center where everyone leaves a different person. In 1995, seven queer teens were abandoned here by their parents, but survived. Sixteen years later, they’re scarred and broken, but back to face an evil that threatens the world. 

Kinning by Nisi Shawl

In this alternate history where barkcloth airships soar and former colonies claim freedom from imperialist tyrants, the identity of the island of Everfair still wavers. Victorious in the wake of the Great War, a new threat looms. Can Everfair continue to serve as a symbol of hope for anticolonial movements around the world, or will it fall to forces within and without? 

Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea by @rebeccathornewrites

Can one of the Queen’s private guard and the most powerful mage in existence leave their lives behind to settle down in their new bookshop that serves tea? This cozy fantasy is steeped in sapphic romance and nestled on the edge of dragon country. 

The Fragile Threads of Power by V. E. Schwab

Once there were four worlds, nestled like pages in a book, each pulsing with fantastical power and connected by a single city: London. After a desperate attempt to prevent corruption and ruin in the four Londons, there are only three. Now the worlds are going to collide anew—brought to a dangerous precipice by the discoveries of three remarkable magicians.

Now available in paperback!

The Archive Undying by @emcandon

This is a story about misplaced faith, complicated love, so much self-loathing, and yeah—giant robots. Plugged into his AI god when its apocalyptic corruption renders him unfortunately immortal, sad gay disaster Sunai takes a die-again-or-die-trying approach to things. Unending life’s tough when intimacy is somehow scarier even than either of the warring police states set on turning you into a weapon or the rogue undead mecha-fragment of your old god that wants to eat you. 

Now available in paperback!

The Bell in the Fog by Lev AC Rosen

A dazzling historical mystery that dives into the shadowy, closeted world of the Navy, emerging in the gay bars of the city. It’s a whirlpool of missing people, violent strangers, and scandalous photos in 1952 San Francisco. 

Now available in paperback!

Celebrate Pride with more titles from Tor Publishing Group here!

[soracities]

"As an educator, I don’t just want you to feel what I feel. I don’t want you to consider me correct because I said it beautifully. I want to sharpen your critical thinking skills and your world-making capacities. I absolutely do not leave emotion out of that! Emotions are as central as the written, verbal, numeric, social, ecological knowledges we are able to gain to navigate this world and the next. I am just… extra cognizant of how much I can lead viewers to feel with me without further thought. The videos of mine that go most viral are ones where I show the most emotion, whatever that emotion is: hopeful, cheery, despondent, grieved, furious, combative. We love emotion. We live such isolated, stifled lives.

The challenge of reading is to navigate the narrative without the overtures of overt feelings. There is no face to latch onto, no music that sways you. Words on a page especially cannot compete with screen-time. They’re not meant to. The boredom opens up space in your mindscape to your own thoughts, opinions, and feelings."

—Ismatu Gwendolyn, "you've been traumatized into hating reading (and it makes you easier to oppress)", from Threadings on Substack

[livingfandomly]

So apparently people are getting mad at the apparent “fan service” in SotR? Well, what you see as fan service I see as real life. You really think their paths didn’t cross? That Katniss was the only person of interest for Snow? That Plutarch, Wiress, Mags and Beetee hadn’t been trying and trying for years to make a difference?? That Haymitch didn’t know who Katniss’s and even Peeta’s parents might have been? That he likely grew up with some of them? That before he became the Haymitch we met in THG he had a life and a personality beyond being a drunk? These are all real people in this world. There are probably a hundred more we could have met but they never showed up in THG because Snow probably got rid of them. This isn’t fan service, my guys. It’s just what happens.

[mythrilthread]

necro elysium (yuck!!) by @mercyisms

A confession: I LOVE fics that use the Disco Elysium format, and The Locked Tomb is just the perfect fit for this type of AUs (and going over the top with book design). And this one is so so so good!

🫀 I knew I wanted to mimic the layout of the text in DE basically as soon as I finished reading and saw the gorgeous illustration by @smapis.

🫀 The cover is inspired by the description of the card, but instead of trying to recreate it exactly (and messing with glitter) I went for the same theme and the kind of DIY arts and crafts style project vibe. Hence my first buttonhole stitch binding, with the heart painted with chromatographic ink (the color is called Unicorn’s Tears) and inked it over in hot pink with a glass dip pen. I also painted the folds of the pages and filled in some of the frames (where the narrator is YOU).

🫀 The rest of the portraits are cropped out of the aforementioned gorgeous illustration, except for Jod’s, which is a photo of a black hole (presented without comment).

🫀 I always want to play with textures for TLT fics, so this time the cover is black felt over a pink gift bag with nice leather-textured pink endpapers, and the textblock paper is a gorgeous 125gsm half-cotton that bravely took everything I threw at it.

I had so much fun working on this 🥰

[that-butch-archivist]

"Ruth Ellis, Golden Threads Celebration 1995," from the documentary Golden Threads

source: The Wild Good: Lesbian Photographs & Writings on Love, edited by Beatrix Gates

[troythecatfish]

[stars-and-branches]

How i look trying to explain comic book timelines in a way that's coherent

[knockknockwhosthereartistism]

From chp.28 of " A Human Condition"!

@sapphosscribe

Bonus: Bill's full sweater initial sketch vvv

-The planets and the bigger stars are embroidered and more 3D

-The silver thread is like tinsel and glittery

-Some of the stars have glitter in them

It’s shitty quality cause I drew it super small on the canvas but I wanted to show the full basic design since I couldn’t in the piece😭😭😭

[redravenblogs]

Dear Tumblr users

You're not better than anyone else just because you never used [insert social media site here]

You're just more annoying because you think it gives you moral superiority

[aroaessidhe]

aro & ace Fairytale books

retellings

Until The Last Petal Falls - beauty & the beast aro/aro m/m QPR (prev known as The Beast of Okeme)

The Language of Roses - beauty & the beast with an aro belle

More Than Enough - beauty & the beast ace/ace m/m

The Story of the Hundred Promises - fairytale inspired (+ a little beauty & best), aro major characters and aro themes, m/nb

Little Thieves - high fantasy goose girl retelling, demi/demi m/f

Dithered Hearts - cinderella retelling, fairy godfather is aro (and has some POV)

Create My Own Perfection - aroace medusa, short story

The Ice Princess' Fair Illusion - king thrushbeard, ace lesbian & aroace, in verse

Sea Foam & Silence - the little mermaid, demiromantic & aroace, in verse

original fairytales / fairytale vibes

Come Drink With Me (& other Tales of The Thread) - Chinese original fairytales with aro themes

The Dragon of Ynys - aroace MC

Royal Rescue - aroace MC

#aspec books / aspec database / tumblr masterpost

info included here is brief! please see my database for full details of the books

[ashllynlou]

the arrival of one of the most important characters.

[torpublishinggroup]

#1 NYT bestselling author V.E. Schwab returns to the dazzling worlds of Shades of Magic with a fantastical, perilous, and intrigue-tangled new series-starter: The Fragile Threads of Power,with commissioned artwork of Kell and Lila by lasq.draws.

WHAT’S IT ABOUT

Once, the four worlds sat nestled like pages in a book, connected with fantastical power to a single city: London. But the magic pulsed. It grew too fast, and the doors between worlds were sealed in a desperate gamble at protection.

The few magicians able to open these doors grew rarer as time passed, and now only three are known in recent memory. Kell Maresh of Red London, Delilah Bard of Grey London, and Holland Vosijk of White London have hardly been glimpsed for the last seven years. A new magician rises to claim the throne of White London: She is Kosika, who burns with religious fervor and will feed her city with blood, including her own.

And back in Red London, King Rhy Maresh is threatened by a rising rebellion, one that promises to correct the power by razing the throne entirely.

These two royals from very different empires face mirror struggles: Keep their crowns. Keep their heads. And amidst a tapestry of old friends and new enemies, a girl with unusual magic comes into possession of a device that could change the fate of all four worlds.

Her name is Tes, and she will bring the worlds together, or unravel it all.

[soracities]

"Conclusions: reading, then, is a crucial act of resistance.

Not the only way, or the primary way, but a mode of literacy we must not negate or shy away from. Reading and writing are disciplines distinct from other forms of literacy: aural and oral proficiency (speaking and listening), media literacy (video watching, noticing), financial literacy, social literacy, numerical literacy (shoutout to the baddies with math anxiety rooted in the same oppressive upbringings). There are histories, blueprints, stories we can only access through the pages they’ve been printed on. If that was not important, we would not lock university libraries behind several hundred thousand dollars paywalls. If there was not agency and power to be found in reading, the empire would not work so hard to burn your hands away. If video learning is truly as harmless and neutral as we think, why are there screens everywhere in this world? Why are there so much advertisements, so much incentives, to spend all day looking at someone else making you feel?

—Ismatu Gwendolyn, "you've been traumatized into hating reading (and it makes you easier to oppress)", from Threadings, on Substack (bolded italics my edit)

[inkskinned]

it is all chaos and entropy. the thing is that the chaos and entropy make it beautiful and lovely.

yes, it's true that nature and the universe are uncaring and unspecific, and that is terrifying. i have lived through some of the unfairness - i got born like this, with my body caving into itself, with this ironic love of dance when i sometimes can't stand up for longer than 15 minutes. i am a poet with hands that are slowly shutting down - i can't hold a pen some days. recently i found a dead bird on our front porch. she had no visible injuries. she had just died, the way things die sometimes.

it is also true that nature and the universe are uncaring and unspecific, and that is wonderful. the sheer happenstance that makes rain turn into a rainbow. the impossible coincidence of finding your best friend. i have made so many mistakes and i have let myself down and i have harmed other people by accident. nature moves anyway. on the worst day of my life she delivers me an orange juice sunset, as if she is saying try again tomorrow.

how vast and unknowing the universe! how small we are! isn't that lovely. the universe has given us flowers and harp strings and the shape of clouds. how massive our lives are in comparison to a grasshopper. the world so bright, still undiscovered. even after 30 years of being on this earth, i learned about a new type of animal today: the dhole.

chance echoing in my life like a harmony between two people talking. do you think you and i, living in different worlds but connected through the internet - do you think we've ever seen the same butterfly? they migrate thousands of miles. it's possible, right?

how beautiful the ways we fill the vastness of space. i love that when large amounts of people are applauding in a room, they all start clapping at the same time. i love that the ocean reminds us of our mother's heartbeat. i love that out of all the colors, chlorophyll chose green. i love the coincidences. i love the places where science says i don't know, but it just happens.

"the universe doesn't care about you!" oh, i know. that's okay. i care about the universe. i will put my big stupid heart out into it and watch the universe feast on it. it is not painful. it is strange - the more love you pour into the unfeeling world, the more it feels the world loves you in return. i know it's confirmation bias. i think i'm okay if my proof of kindness is just my own body and my own spirit.

i buried the bird from our porch deep in the woods. that same day, an old friend reaches out to me and says i miss you. wherever you go, no matter how bad it gets - you try to do good.

[mythrilthread]

Sansûkh (and Tasâlalkhud) by @determamfidd

I’ve wanted to try my hand at creating a lectern book basically since the moment I saw one, and what fic could fit the bill better than the most epic work in a very much epic fandom?

✨ Sansûkh retells the entire story of the Lord of the Rings and then some, so fitting all of it into a single volume was the kind of fuck around and find out idea that is common among ficbinders.

✨ So, I typeset the text in a two-column style, made it way smaller than what I usually go for (but still very much readable!), added footnotes (as opposed the original endnotes) with translation. It turned out to be 1200 pages, which I printed out twice (remember the fuck around and find out part? Textblocks over 10 cm thick do not fit into the guillotine I have access to, and using 70 gsm paper led to a textblock of just over 10 cm. So I had to scrap those 300 sheets of paper and start again with my trusty 60 gsm Ekko paper).

✨ So then, I painted the edges black, sewn 14 cm of endbands, and took a long hard look at my life and my choices. The lecterb case was only made possible thanks to this fantastic doc by @spockandawe and @lootthecoyote's excellent mathing. I’m honestly amazed it turned out so great on the first try (ok, we did construct a mock-up first, but even it only had one mismeasured part and that 100% on me). I also made an inner cover so no parts of the textblock would show indecently. Also! The case even has inner endpapers (all theoretically visible parts are lined with the same paper I used for the actual endpapers, but taking picture of this whole Object was super awkward.)

✨ Not only did I foil the spine, there’s even a foiled design (matching the one on every spread of the pages) inside the Oxford hollow (that’s the creepy black tunnel between the textblock spine and the spine of the inner cover, you can see it in the first photo).

✨ And the most amazing part: it does the thing! Stands on its own, opens nicely and all that. (Though the pages are a bit too light to want to stay put, and you have to hold it open a bit).

I’m very happy with how this turned out!