#books i own

[starridge]

puppet hour was brutal

[kesopan]

warmth in the cold

[booksandboba]

TBR 2024

My goal for my GoodReads 2024 Reading Challenge is a lofty 200 books because I'm hoping to tackle my massive To Be Read pile this year. With the vision and concentration issues caused by my chronic condition, it's much harder to focus on reading a solid book, and so frequently default to light novels, webcomics, and manga nowadays. But... I'm still forever buying books that look great even if they just sit on my shelves in vain. I know that May is already almost over, but I'm hoping that by doing the note-taking method of summarizing each chapter as I go, it will help with the memory and focus issues and I can crack open some of these bad boys!

*Just a note to specify because I'm not sure it's the same for others, but my TBR is my list of books I already own but haven't read; books that I want to read and don't have yet, including new releases go on my Wishlist. :)

Strike the Zither (Joan He)

We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Shirley Jackson, Jonathan Lethem)

Soul Mountain (Gao Xingjian, Mabel Lee)

The Art of Prophecy (Wesley Chu)

The Ranger of Marzanna (Jon Skovron)

Blood Heir (Amélie Wen Zhao)

Six of Crows (Leigh Bardugo)

A Magic Steeped in Poison (Judy I. Lin)

A Venom Dark and Sweet (Judy I. Lin)

The Burning God (R.F. Kung)

The Wicked King (Holly Black)

Yumi and the Nightmare Painter (Brandon Sanderson, Aliya Chen)

Descendant of the Crane (Joan He)

Vampire Weekend (Mike Chen)

Winter (Marissa Meyer)

Cress (Marissa Meyer)

A Bright Heart (Kate Chenli)

The Grace of Kings (Ken Liu)

The Spear Cuts Through Water (Simon Jimenez)

Pachinko (Min Jin Lee)

The Priory of the Orange Tree (Samantha Shannon)

Peony in Love (Lisa See)

Station Eleven (Emily St. John Mandel)

A River Enchanted (Rebecca Ross)

Lonely Castle in the Mirror (Mizuki Tsujimura)

It Didn't Start With You (Mark Wolynn)

The Night Ends With Fire (K.X. Song)

To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods (Molly X. Chang)

[wasyago]

Can you draw that snail? You know the one who got out of Grian's power and started to eat Gem's lighthouse?

little guy <3

alternatively: big guy.

[sweatermuppet]

*reasonable restrictions are ones you consider fair for your own safety or wellbeing, especially for things like graphic depictions of violence in relation to your age at the time (i.e. "you can read this when you're older")

not sure if books you read were banned? here is a archive of the top 10 most banned/challenged books from 2001-2022, hosted by the American Library Association

as well as the Wikipedia page for the Most Commonly Challenged Books in the United States

Wikipedia page for Books Banned by the Government, organized by region/country

[pineapple-frenzy]

Book 2 au with Zuko and Katara Lee and Huamei

Katara is separated from her friends, and so she's left to travel the earth kingdom on her own. She stumbles across Zuko, who is similarly travelling on his own. They decide that pairing up and travelling together would be best

[egophiliac]

can't believe that skeleman has turned on us, and Halloween Prom is tomorrow.

(what a top-tier UM...we are about to be just totally obliterated in the absolute silliest way. what possible use could this power have outside of bringing us to the brink of utter holiday disaster.)

[tom-bakers-scarf]

Spotted this in a second hand bookshop and the whiplash I felt was so strong that I think I’ve discovered another 12 stages of grief

[givemeureyes]

day 1 without ao3: i have gone through all 5 stages of grief multiple times and have invented a 6th. i will not disclose what the 6th stage of grief is.

[podddcasttt]

Friendly reminder that if you talk about how representation is important and how there's not enough diverse media, I implore you to seek out the media that already exists. And if you live in an area with a public library, go to see if they're available at your public library. And then go check them out.

As a librarian, it is demoralizing to see how low the circulation statistics are on lgbt+ books and books by BIPOC authors. I include them in displays and readers advisory, but people still don't check them out as much. Libraries only have a finite amount of resources, including space. We don't get a book then keep it forever. If not enough people check it out, we have to get rid of it to make room for more books. And when James Patterson Book #69 gets checked out 30 times in one year and cool, subversive Sci fi novel with a Black trans woman main character has never been checked out once, the librarian (me) has to make a hard decision.

If you're looking for something tangible and easy to do this pride month, look for lgbt+ books (there are millions of lists online that you can find. It's easier than it's ever been to find diverse books) and check them out from your library.

No time to read? Look for a short story or poetry anthology and just read as much as you have time for. Or just check out a book cus it looks interesting and read as much as you can. We have movies too.

As cool as it would be for me to just keep the books I want and get rid of the ones I don't, I have to listen to the community on matters of collection development. And the community tells me what books they want by checking them out and leaving the ones they don't want on the shelf.

If you think this doesn't apply to you because you live in a progressive area and obviously the books are being checked out, you're wrong. I once worked in a community with a large lgbt population. Those books were not getting checked out. If you want to tell me you live in a conservative area and your library doesn't have any diverse books, you are legally obligated to check the catalog before replying to this post. I currently work in a conservative community and we have lgbt+ and bipoc books. And if you still cannot find any, you are legally obligated to see if your library has a collection request form that patrons can fill out before replying to this post.

[cammy-mcspammy]

My interpretation on how human bill came to be, ig? (ALSO SORRY, I MEANT DD&MD.. or idk how to abbreviate it)

[wondereads]

New shelves!!! I’m so excited to finally be able to display all my books for the first time since I started college! It took me a good two days to get all these up, and they’re all double-stacked, but I should be getting a fourth bookshelf once I unpack enough to fit it in my room. I can’t wait to read my physical books again after a semester abroad!

[aethersea]

another thing fantasy writers should keep track of is how much of their worldbuilding is aesthetic-based. it's not unlike the sci-fi hardness scale, which measures how closely a story holds to known, real principles of science. The Martian is extremely hard sci-fi, with nearly every detail being grounded in realistic fact as we know it; Star Trek is extremely soft sci-fi, with a vaguely plausible "space travel and no resource scarcity" premise used as a foundation for the wildest ideas the writers' room could come up with. and much as Star Trek fuckin rules, there's nothing wrong with aesthetic-based fantasy worldbuilding!

(sidenote we're not calling this 'soft fantasy' bc there's already a hard/soft divide in fantasy: hard magic follows consistent rules, like "earthbenders can always and only bend earth", and soft magic follows vague rules that often just ~feel right~, like the Force. this frankly kinda maps, but I'm not talking about just the magic, I'm talking about the worldbuilding as a whole.

actually for the purposes of this post we're calling it grounded vs airy fantasy, bc that's succinct and sounds cool.)

a great example of grounded fantasy is Dungeon Meshi: the dungeon ecosystem is meticulously thought out, the plot is driven by the very realistic need to eat well while adventuring, the story touches on both social and psychological effects of the whole 'no one dies forever down here' situation, the list goes on. the worldbuilding wants to be engaged with on a mechanical level and it rewards that engagement.

deliberately airy fantasy is less common, because in a funny way it's much harder to do. people tend to like explanations. it takes skill to pull off "the world is this way because I said so." Narnia manages: these kids fall into a magic world through the back of a wardrobe, befriend talking beavers who drink tea, get weapons from Santa Claus, dance with Bacchus and his maenads, and sail to the edge of the world, without ever breaking suspension of disbelief. it works because every new thing that happens fits the vibes. it's all just vibes! engaging with the worldbuilding on a mechanical level wouldn't just be futile, it'd be missing the point entirely.

the reason I started off calling this aesthetic-based is that an airy story will usually lean hard on an existing aesthetic, ideally one that's widely known by the target audience. Lewis was drawing on fables, fairy tales, myths, children's stories, and the vague idea of ~medieval europe~ that is to this day our most generic fantasy setting. when a prince falls in love with a fallen star, when there are giants who welcome lost children warmly and fatten them up for the feast, it all fits because these are things we'd expect to find in this story. none of this jars against what we've already seen.

and the point of it is to be wondrous and whimsical, to set the tone for the story Lewis wants to tell. and it does a great job! the airy worldbuilding serves the purposes of the story, and it's no less elegant than Ryōko Kui's elaborately grounded dungeon. neither kind of worldbuilding is better than the other.

however.

you do have to know which one you're doing.

the whole reason I'm writing this is that I saw yet another long, entertaining post dragging GRRM for absolute filth. asoiaf is a fun one because on some axes it's pretty grounded (political fuck-around-and-find-out, rumors spread farther than fact, fastest way to lose a war is to let your people starve, etc), but on others it's entirely airy (some people have magic Just Cause, the various peoples are each based on an aesthetic/stereotype/cliché with no real thought to how they influence each other as neighbors, the super-long seasons have no effect on ecology, etc).

and again! none of this is actually bad! (well ok some of those stereotypes are quite bigoted. but other than that this isn't bad.) there's nothing wrong with the season thing being there to highlight how the nobles are focused on short-sighted wars for power instead of storing up resources for the extremely dangerous and inevitable winter, that's a nice allegory, and the looming threat of many harsh years set the narrative tone. and you can always mix and match airy and grounded worldbuilding – everyone does it, frankly it's a necessity, because sooner or later the answer to every worldbuilding question is "because the author wanted it to be that way." the only completely grounded writing is nonfiction.

the problem is when you pretend that your entirely airy worldbuilding is actually super duper grounded. like, for instance, claiming that your vibes-based depiction of Medieval Europe (Gritty Edition) is completely historical, and then never even showing anyone spinning. or sniffing dismissively at Tolkien for not detailing Aragorn's tax policy, and then never addressing how a pre-industrial grain-based agricultural society is going years without harvesting any crops. (stored grain goes bad! you can't even mouse-proof your silos, how are you going to deal with mold?) and the list goes on.

the man went up on national television and invited us to engage with his worldbuilding mechanically, and then if you actually do that, it shatters like spun sugar under the pressure. doesn't he realize that's not the part of the story that's load-bearing! he should've directed our focus to the political machinations and extensive trope deconstruction, not the handwavey bit.

point is, as a fantasy writer there will always be some amount of your worldbuilding that boils down to 'because I said so,' and there's nothing wrong with that. nor is there anything wrong with making that your whole thing – airy worldbuilding can be beautiful and inspiring. but you have to be aware of what you're doing, because if you ask your readers to engage with the worldbuilding in gritty mechanical detail, you had better have some actual mechanics to show them.

[raisinchallah]

why isnt anybody properly repressed in modern fiction like repression has been a staple of human creativity since the dawn of time but tbh i think we have been seeing a steep decrease in severely repressed fictional characters since the 80s not sure what we are going to do about it are we suddenly all too good for repression or something personally i love repression

[maibeloved]

More gravity falls doodles! Currently reading and decoding Journal 3! Its…its alot 😭

[vor-leser]

i love that in the book poseidons sole motivation for hunting ody for A FULL DECADE is just because of his son polyphemus,, like,,, hes not even trying to teach him a lesson like in the muscial,,, just a very passionate dad!!!

also close-up under the cut cause the face rendering kind of slays