#booksphere

[abookwormguidetoread]

Hi bookworm, Here is my monthly wrap up. I read 8 books and I didn't talk about most of them. Tell me know if you want me to talk about any of these books. And about the ratings I think they have limitations and kind of vary in perspective. It's not like i don't rate..(i rate it very exclusively in my Goodreads review) Also how many books you have read in Feb? May your heart filled with love and days with books. Happy reading!!! #thebookishdreamers #booknerdigans #bookishlovegroup #bookstagramuk #ukbookstagram #readersofinstagram #bookcommunity #booksphere #booksconnectus #bookclubcommunity #currentlyreading #monthlywrap #currentread #amreading #readalong #weekendreads #whatimreading https://www.instagram.com/p/CpVAEGgvdiI/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[ryin-silverfish]

So You Want to Read More about Chinese Mythos: a rough list of primary sources

"How/Where can I learn more about Chinese mythology?" is a question I saw a lot on other sites, back when I was venturing outside of Shenmo novel booksphere and into IRL folk religions + general mythos, but had rarely found satisfying answers.

As such, this is my attempt at writing something past me will find useful.

(Built into it is the assumption that you can read Chinese, which I only realized after writing the post. I try to amend for it by adding links to existing translations, as well as links to digitalized Chinese versions when there doesn't seem to be one.)

The thing about all mythologies and legends is that they are 1) complicated, and 2) are products of their times. As such, it is very important to specify the "when" and "wheres" and "what are you looking for" when answering a question as broad as this.

-Do you want one or more "books with an overarching story"?

In that case, Journey to the West and Investiture of the Gods (Fengshen Yanyi) serve as good starting points, made more accessible for general readers by the fact that they both had English translations——Anthony C. Yu's JTTW translation is very good, Gu Zhizhong's FSYY one, not so much.

Crucially, they are both Ming vernacular novels. Though they are fictional works that are not on the same level of "seriousness" as actual religious scriptures, these books still took inspiration from the popular religion of their times, at a point where the blending of the Three Teachings (Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism) had become truly mainstream.

And for FSYY specifically, the book had a huge influence on subsequent popular worship because of its "pantheon-building" aspect, to the point of some Daoists actually putting characters from the novel into their temples.

(Vernacular novels + operas being a medium for the spread of popular worship and popular fictional characters eventually being worshipped IRL is a thing in Ming-Qing China. Meir Shahar has a paper that goes into detail about the relationship between the two.)

After that, if you want to read other Shenmo novels, works that are much less well-written but may be more reflective of Ming folk religions at the time, check out Journey to the North/South/East (named as such bc of what basically amounted to a Ming print house marketing strategy) too.

-Do you want to know about the priestly Daoist side of things, the "how the deities are organized and worshipped in a somewhat more formal setting" vs "how the stories are told"?

Though I won't recommend diving straight into the entire Daozang or Yunji Qiqian or some other books compiled in the Daoist text collections, I can think of a few "list of gods/immortals" type works, like Liexian Zhuan and Zhenling Weiye Tu.

Also, though it is much closer to the folk religion side than the organized Daoist side, the Yuan-Ming era Grand Compendium of the Three Religions' Deities, aka Sanjiao Soushen Daquan, is invaluable in understanding the origins and evolutions of certain popular deities.

(A quirk of historical Daoist scriptures is that they often come up with giant lists of gods that have never appeared in other prior texts, or enjoy any actual worship in temples.)

(The "organized/folk" divide is itself a dubious one, seeing how both state religion and "priestly" Daoism had channels to incorporate popular deities and practices into their systems. But if you are just looking at written materials, I feel like there is still a noticeable difference.)

Lastly, if you want to know more about Daoist immortal-hood and how to attain it: Ge Hong's Baopuzi (N & S. dynasty) and Zhonglv Chuandao Ji (late Tang/Five Dynasties) are both texts about external and internal alchemy with English translations.

-Do you want something older, more ancient, from Warring States and Qin-Han Era China?

Classics of Mountains and Seas, aka Shanhai Jing, is the way to go. It also reads like a bestiary-slash-fantastical cookbook, full of strange beasts, plants, kingdoms of unusual humanoids, and the occasional half-man, half-beast gods.

A later work, the Han-dynasty Huai Nan Zi, is an even denser read, being a collection of essays, but it's also where a lot of ancient legends like "Nvwa patches the sky" and "Chang'e steals the elixir of immortality" can be first found in bits and pieces.

Shenyi Jing might or might not be a Northern-Southern dynasties work masquerading as a Han one. It was written in a style that emulated the Classics of Mountains and Seas, and had some neat fantastic beasts and additional descriptions of gods/beasts mentioned in the previous 2 works.

-Do you have too much time on your hands, a willingness to get through lot of classical Chinese, and an obsession over yaoguais and ghosts?

Then it's time to flip open the encyclopedic folklore compendiums——Soushen Ji (N/S dynasty), You Yang Za Zu (Tang), Taiping Guangji (early Song), Yijian Zhi (Southern Song)...

Okay, to be honest, you probably can't read all of them from start to finish. I can't either. These aren't purely folklore compendiums, but giant encyclopedias collecting matters ranging from history and biography to medicine and geography, with specific sections on yaoguais, ghosts and "strange things that happened to someone".

As such, I recommend you only check the relevant sections and use the Full Text Search function well.

Pu Songling's Strange Tales from a Chinese Studios, aka Liaozhai Zhiyi, is in a similar vein, but a lot more entertaining and readable. Together with Yuewei Caotang Biji and Zi Buyu, they formed the "Big Three" of Qing dynasty folktale compendiums, all of which featured a lot of stories about fox spirits and ghosts.

Lastly...

The Yuan-Ming Zajus (a sort of folk opera) get an honorable mention. Apart from JTTW Zaju, an early, pre-novel version of the story that has very different characterization of SWK, there are also a few plays centered around Erlang (specifically, Zhao Erlang) and Nezha, such as "Erlang Drunkenly Shot the Demon-locking Mirror". Sadly, none of these had an English translation.

Because of the fragmented nature of Chinese mythos, you can always find some tidbits scattered inside history books like Zuo Zhuan or poetry collections like Qu Yuan's Chuci. Since they aren't really about mythology overall and are too numerous to cite, I do not include them in this post, but if you wanna go down even deeper in this already gigantic rabbit hole, it's a good thing to keep in mind.

[definitely-not-iorveth]

Okay so for the books you shouldn't read: The book me and my friend have an irrational dislike for. As I said, you have to be a little hater sometimes and this is my area, my expertise, my indulgent little treat. Its called "A Little Life" and our journey started out because everyone and their grandma was recommending it to us, and at the same time YouTube fed us a bunch of videos on why its the best book ever and you should NEVER read it. Curiosity piqued, right? Because apparently its both so well written and emotionally devastating (source: lots of people on yt are bawling their eyes out over it) that it exists in a quantum of "read but don't". Many have positioned themselves on the "read" side, evident by how much they wanted to convert us at the time. We both have not read it. And you're going to be like "How can you un-recommend a book you haven't even read" but at this point its part of the principle and also the joke. Because we looked up excerpts, summaries, interviews with the author, We did everything with this book you could do before actually caving in and reading it. So why didn't we? Real talk: Yes, it is actually well written. The reason we decided against giving in to the hype is the truly, marvelously terrifying summary and list of content warnings. The book deals with the life of a friend group but specifically this one man, whose life is just one trauma after another and involves some truly horrific abuse of all kinds. especially the end is supposed to be a gut punch. Its a personal thing. I won't be reading it because I know I'm not going to like it, but I only know that because of research, which I did because I see that book every time I enter a book store. This may be cathartic if you enjoy a good cry and reading about these things, but for me it seemed kind of.. voyeuristic? In the way it seems to love senseless misery after misery without point to it and I am simply not an enjoyer of that. You need to chew your blorbos but please spit 'em out, eventually. Also this entire thing is a while back so I may have forgotten some facets but this is long enough already.

Conclusion: If you enjoy emotional pain, this ACTUALLY IS a book rec. Heed the content warnings though. If not, and I urge you to look up videos of the collective booksphere despairing over "A Little Life" to see how bad this will be for your feels, do not read this. I do dislike the cover though Cheers.

i enjoy emotional paint but NOT TO THIS DEGREE

there's only so much character abuse i can take, and i like my endings happy kthx

definitely will not be picking this one up

[lesbianpiracy]

on all levels except physical i am a 2013 tumblrina militantly defending the concept of fanfiction against 'real books'

[agnesmontague]

to sort of piggyback off the earlier post—i don't mean to sound elitist or snobby at all, but i think the reason i shy away from most genre books that fall into the YA category or get breathlessly recced by online bookspheres is this... strange juvenile way most of them are pitched to the audience, even for adults?

like, just telling me the stuff contained in the book in a few keywords tells me surprisingly little; in fact, many of my favorite books have very boring pitches if you tried to lay them out in the punchy made-for-twitter way: the bell jar, for example, is just "girl goes to new york and has a mental breakdown". sounds kind of depressing and not terribly exciting, but the instant exciting appeal isn't the point, and not why so many people like it. contrariwise, i don't like having books recommended to me with just "it's got vampires! it has sword fights! it has sexy dresses!"—sure, it's got nice things, but what does the book actually, yknow, do with them? i'm not an 8-y/o where the mere promise of monsters or sword fights is enough to entice me into giving my time and attention, and it can feel kind of insulting to both myself and the book to be treated like that on both ends.

maybe SFF as a whole isn't really for me in that regard, but i don't think it's a genre-wide problem so much as it is more of a social media problem or the way a lot of book fandom tends to work. idk. but less buzzwords and more thoughtful recs would help everyone imo.

[hapalopus]

Can't decide what's my most obscure fandom. Spektrum has like 2 other fans on all of tumblr, but in the Danish booksphere it's one of the top YA series of all time. Het Huis Anubis has been virtually forgotten, except it got 400 episodes, 3 movies, 9 books, 3 adaptations in other languages, 2 musicals, and a fucking theme park ride. Avatar has a tiny fandom, sure, but it's also the highest grossing movie of all time so. No. Moo Mesa is fondly remembered by many Americans and still gets the occasional crossover or callback in TMNT. The Troop?? I guess The Troop might be the most obscure thing I'm a fan of.

[booknerdstudies]

08/11/19

after a long book buying ban, I finally purchased where the crawdads sing. I’m super excited to dive into this one soon cause it seems to be all over the online booksphere—so I cant wait to see what the hype is about!

insta // booknerd_reads

[the-knights-who-say-book]

do you ever watch booktubers? if so, do you have any favorites? i'm looking for more people to follow in the whole booksphere...

i do, though not as much anymore! here are all the ones i like (disclaimer: i don’t have the same taste in books as all of these people and don’t take recs from all of them, i watch different booktubers for different types of videos)

ProblemsofaBookNerd

LilyCReads

polandbananasBOOKS

Katytastic

xreadingsolacex

A Clockwork Reader

Hailey in Bookland

PeruseProject

paperbackdreams

sapphicauthor

Books with Brandie Shanae

nosaferplace

sarawithoutanH

LovingDemBooks

The Princess and the Scrivener isn’t strictly booktube but they do plenty of book stuff and i love their channel

[natalhea]

🌊🌊🌊 Bonjour amis lecteurs, Grande nouvelle aujourd’hui : INTO THE DEEP fait partie des 80 romans sélectionnés pour @leplib2023 !! 🥳 🌊🌊🌊 Le PLIB (Prix Littéraire de l’Imaginaire Booksphere) est un prix organisé sur internet depuis plusieurs années et qui rassemble plus d’une centaine de #bookstagrammers, #booktubers et autres critiques littéraires en ligne ! Cette sélection de 80 romans marque la 1ère étape du concours : la 2nde aura lieu du 1er au 20 novembre : tous les jurés devront alors voter pour 25 romans qui accèderont à la 2e étape du concours ! 🌊🌊🌊 Cette année, pour la 1ère fois, le PLIB est scindé en 2 catégories : Adulte et Jeunesse/Young Adult. Seule la littérature de genre peut concourir, que ce soit en science-fiction, en fantastique ou en fantasy. INTO THE DEEP est classé dans la catégorie Young Adult / Science-Fiction (même s’il s’agit en réalité d’un roman fantastique qui s’adresse plutôt à un public adulte 😅). 🌊🌊🌊 Je tenais avant tout à faire ce post pour marquer l’événement, pour remercier les jurés qui ont voté pour INTO THE DEEP au 1er tour, mais surtout, pour inciter ceux qui ne connaissent pas encore mon roman à le découvrir ! Dans ce petit post, j’ai donc réuni une compilation de toutes les publications que j’ai déjà consacrées à mon roman sur ce compte : toutes sont garanties sans spoilers, et elles permettront à ceux qui le souhaitent d’explorer l’univers, la mythologie et les personnages de mon roman, avant de, qui sait, oser plonger dans l’aventure ? 😇🧜‍♀️ 🌊🌊🌊 À tous ceux qui ont déjà lu et aimé mon roman, j’adresse donc, une fois de plus, un grand merci ❤️ Et aux petits nouveaux, vous êtes plus que bienvenus : découvrez, parcourez, lisez, et succombez aux abysses 😊 🌊🌊🌊 PS : j’ai une grande, très grande nouvelle à vous annoncer 😉 Rdv ce week-end pour en savoir plus 🤫 🌊🌊🌊 @snagfiction #intothedeep #intothedeepbook #snagfiction #plib2023 #plib2023jya #sfff #scifi #sciencefiction #fantastic #fantastique #bookstagram #bookstagramfrance #livrestagram #sirene #sirène #mermaid #writersofinstagram #writers #merci #thankyou (à Mariana Trench, Pacific Ocean) https://www.instagram.com/p/CkIvcRiqJRX/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[abookwormguidetoread]

Hi bookworm, How have you been? Been a while after finishing it but definitely has touched my heart and soul. It's such cute adorable book that you definitely want to cuddle at night. I recommend to everyone who felt ever left lonely because I know you will find your home one day somewhere. I think i deserve more hype because it is truly worth it. May your heart filled with love and days with books. #thebookishdreamers #booknerdigans #bookishlovegroup #bookstagramuk #ukbookstagram #readersofinstagram #bookcommunity #booksphere #booksconnectus #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #booksofinstagram #bookish #bookphotography #bibliophile #bookaesthetic #readstagram #bookishpost #bookworld #ilovebooks #bookishlyengaged #bookstagramit #readreadread #readingislife #allthebooks #featuremybooks #literaturelover #booktography #bibliofeature #bookcollage https://www.instagram.com/p/Co99nZxuBQP/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[ryin-silverfish]

Chapter 27-28: Spooky Scary Skellington

(Finally getting back to the book club after a few busy months...)

Chapter 27:

-The White Bone Spirit is one of the most iconic demoness of JTTW, and, as JTTW Research's post on her origin suggests, is likely inspired by the White Tiger Spirit + the giant skeleton nearby in 大唐三藏取经诗话.

-However, when Tripitaka asked about the origin of said giant skeleton at the bottom of a fiery pit, the Monkey Pilgrim gave the strange answer that "This is the place where the Heir Apparent, Ming Huang, changed his bones."(此是明皇太子换骨之处)

-What does that even mean?

-Well, at first, I thought it was just referring to "Corpse Release"(尸解), where Daoists attain immortality by leaving behind a fake corpse——usually a transformed object such as cane, clothes or shoes——to literally trick death.

-Then I finally got to read "Birth of JTTW"(西游记的诞生) by Cai Tieying, in which he traces the "changing of bones" to a legend in the Song dynasty record, 默记.

-Summary: an assassin was sent to kill Tang Minghuang (after he basically abdicated due to the An Shi Rebellion), hit him with a hammer in his sleep, and the hammer just bounced off his head with a clang.

-Minghuang woke up and was like "Yep, I've been expecting this"; ever since he had consumed jade and a golden elixir of immortality under the advice of the famous Daoist Ye Fashan, his bones were transformed into literal jade.

-So if the assassin wanted to kill him for good, he gotta split open Minghuang's skull and take out the elixir——an advice the assassin promptly followed.

-That peculiar little trivia aside, there is a theory about SWK's ability to see through demonic disguises in the Chinese JTTW booksphere, which might explain why Tripitaka never seems to trust him on that regard.

-Unlike in TV adaptations, the "Fiery Eyes and Golden Vision" doesn't work like an X-Ray; rather, it's more like an infrared thermal camera.

-This means SWK can't literally see through a demon or immortal's disguise and perceive their true form, just the general "aura" around them in the form of demonic or auspicious Qi.

-Thus, when this aura is hidden by ambience Qi, altered to fit one's general appearance or less on-the-nose(as later chapters would show), SWK's magical vision also takes a dive in accuracy.

-Furthermore, prior to WBS, none of the demons they encountered had used a human disguise in order to capture Tripitaka.

-So even if SWK said "Hey master, I can totally see through demonic disguises" after he killed the demoness(which he didn't), without precedents, it's gonna sound like he pulled the ability right out of his ass, as a shoddy excuse to justify murdering humans——something Tripitaka did witness before.

Chapter 28:

-Fun fact: during the Qing dynasty, there's a big-budget opera adaptation of JTTW called 升平宝筏, exclusively performed in the royal palace. In this version, the White Bone Spirit and Yellow-robed Demon are actually sworn siblings!

-After Yellow-robed Demon kidnapped the princess, she was the one who helped talk her into accepting the marriage. So when she was killed by SWK, Yellow-robed Demon was furious, and, as revenge, kidnapped Tripitaka + turned him into a tiger later.

-Combining different arcs, much like adding unnecessary romantic subplots, is actually quite common in Qing opera adaptations of JTTW. This change, however, makes more sense than the others.

-First, it explains the "family" that WBS offhandedly mentioned, secondly, the two arcs are already sequential, so making the two demons related doesn't seem like that far of a stretch.

-The burning of FFM is heartwenchingly described, and arguably where most villainous characterizations of Erlang come from. However, hear me out——I don't think he actually did it.

-At the end of Chapter 6, after Erlang caught SWK, his brothers was like "Enough talk, let's take him to the celestial realm." To which Erlang replied that sorry, they were not recognized as part of the celestial bureaucracy and literally not allowed to meet the Jade Emperor.

"But don't worry, I'll go report to the Jade Emperor together with the devarajas, you six stay behind on FFM to do a thorough search of the mountain(搜山). Once you are done, return to Guankou, and right after I get the rewards, I'm heading straight back to share it with y'all."

-Indeed, in the next chapter, after the Jade Emperor gave him a lot of gifts, he said his thanks and returned to Guanjiangkou, where his temple was at.

-My theory is, Erlang did not lead the burning personally, or give a direct order to——he was still in the Celestial Realm, making reports while FFM burned.

-And his six sworn brothers, being hunters and martial men, interpreted "search the mountain" rather liberally in his absence and left out the details once he returned with their reward.

-Just as usual, another job well done, let's get the victory party started.

-Of course, whether Erlang was personally there, leading the burning, makes little difference to the monkeys of FFM; it wasn't him, but he sure as hell wasn't NOT involved either.

@journeythroughjourneytothewest

[mccleans]

It deserved SO much more hype than it got omg .... I felt it was reasonably popular in Ireland? But on the online ya booksphere it was unheard of. Probably for the best tbh so as little people as possible were exposed to preteen me woobifying caine <3

agreed!!! i think it was too gorey and not sexy enough in comparison to the mortal instruments and all those types of books. still annoyed that the society netflix show got a chance and fucked it up bc now we'll probably never get a gone show

[swampthingfromhell]

Realtalk tho, Crowley is 100% team edward (their devotion to each other and the forbidden romance get to him) Aziraphale is team jacob (the friends to lovers appeal). Aziraphale originally picked the first one up because he’d heard in the booksphere that it dealt with the theme of immortality. They went to the midnight release of breaking dawn and everyone there loved crowleys whole look.

It’s 2008, and Aziraphale has something to say.

[hardbackednooks]

The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie

The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie

Click here to view the Goodreads page and read the book description.

1/5

I honestly don’t know how The Blade Itselfcame to be so highly recommended in the Reddit and Twitter bookspheres. It’s often described as “gritty, grimdark fantasy with biting humor and a tinge of hope,” but honestly, the only gritty thing about this was the sand-in-your-mouth feeling I got from the inconsistent…

[paperprincessinspo]

Interesting Articles from the Booksphere

Interesting Articles from the Booksphere

9 New Books Editors Have on Their Reading Lists

Do you have a million books on your to-be-read list, but are unsure where to start? Let us make it easy (or at least easier) for you. Three of our BookBub editors — Zan, Hannah, and Diana — shared recent releases they’re excited about, from nail-biting bestsellers to humorous book club suggestions. Check out our list of editor recommendations…

[ginnyzero]

I’m gonna add onto this. DON’T try to give professional writers “concrit” either. Guess what? We’ve got editors for that and the book you’re so lovingly/hatingingly tearing apart because you, oh random stranger, think that you’re going to “help” us become better writers was probably not only written two years ago, it’s fucking published, we can’t change it, and the next book has different problems. Oh, yeah, and if we’re emotionally healthy people, we don’t go and read reviews of our professionally published works (self pubbed counts) because reviews are for READERS.

I’m not sure how many times the booksphere is going to implode because of this. But man, it’s like villain of the week whenever it does. 

You wanna have a go at my slice of life pacing or my third omni “head hopping,” you go ahead and do that. I won’t even see it. Pbbbbth.

Bestie I’m afraid to tell you this... but if you don’t want any negative feedback on things you write and only want the positives— you might be in the wrong business. I don’t think the person meant for it to escalate as it did, though they were harsh but part of being a content creator and sharing means having the criticism. Every writer needs criticism to grow and become better, no one is perfect enough to just know what their writing needs sometimes a different perspective is needed.

First of all, don’t call me your bestie.

And this isn’t a business.

I’m a fucking fanfic writer.

I write for a fandom, for free. I do not get paid, so how the fuck is it a business?

I’m not a fucking professional writer trying to get published. This is a hobby. A hobby which I decided to share.

So, no, I’m not trying to get random, anonymous assholes with no clout to send me rude messages and “feedback.”

Crazy that you’re defending someone who was just straight up rude. Maybe you should learn some manners, too.