#everyone hates Flaubert >:)

[jart-ist]

Okay Every buddys, im back. And THIS TIME we (I) have a bunch more. - Noelle replacement/self insert - Sperrywinkle - Flabbert the eternally hated pancake - ACTUAL berdly replacement/self insert - Rouxls replacement/self insert - Kris replacement/self insert hope you guys like em!

[blackswaneuroparedux]

I never realised before the loneliness and isolation of a commander at a time when such a momentous decision has to be taken, with the full knowledge that failure or success rests on his judgment alone.

- Lt.Gen. Walter Bedell Smith

General Dwight D. Eisenhower rose to that occasion with character and greatness when he made the fateful decision to launch D Day on 6 June 1944. But he couldn’t have done anything he planned without the support of his feared chief of staff, Brig. Gen. Walter Bedell Smith.

When Lt. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower became commander of ETOUSA (European Theater of Operations United States Army) in June 1942 and began assembling his staff in London, the man he requested as his chief of staff was Brig. Gen. Walter Bedell Smith, at the time the secretary of the War Department General Staff. But Eisenhower’s boss, Gen. George Marshall, balked. Smith had impressed Marshall with his ability to cut through red tape and perform necessary hatchet jobs – to get things done fast and well – and he didn’t want to let Smith go. But finally, on Aug. 5, Marshall relented. Smith arrived in London on Sept. 10. In his biography, Eisenhower: A Soldier’s Life, historian Carlo D’Este wrote, “Eisenhower once remarked that every commander needs a son of a bitch to protect him and that the stone-faced Bedell Smith was his.”

Gustave Flaubert wrote, “You can calculate the worth of a man by the number of his enemies.” By that measure alone, Smith was not just a good chief of staff – he was a great one. Most people who came in contact with Smith hated and feared him – and with good reason. Smart, loyal to his bosses, articulate, incisive, and an excellent administrator, “Beetle” Smith was also intolerant, brusque, profane, rude, and ruthless.

Smith was also famous for his quick temper. Whether the result of his personality, or pain from a duodenal ulcer that occasionally forced him to be hospitalized, its volatility caused some exasperated senior officers to violate military protocol, bypass the chief of staff, and meet directly with Eisenhower to request transfers. Tellingly, Eisenhower tolerated that breach.

The position of chief of staff is often thankless. But it’s necessary. As one of the members of Eisenhower’s staff, Air Marshal Sir James Robb, later wrote, “Ike always had to have . . . someone who’d do the dirty work for him. He always had to have someone else do the firing, or the reprimanding, or give any order which he knew people would find unpleasant.” That someone was Smith and, whether or not he actually enjoyed that duty, everyone acknowledged that he was damned good at it.

Eisenhower often entrusted Smith to represent him in high-level strategic meetings, which led some people to remark that the reason Eisenhower did so was that Smith had a better strategic mind than his boss. Eisenhower’s esteem of Smith ultimately became so great that he told Marshall that if anything happened to cause him to be unable to carry out his duties as head of SHAEF, Marshall should, “after [General Omar] Bradley, select Bedell to take my place.”

Expanding on Eisenhower’s orders to have an “allied” command, Smith freely, and with great effect, utilized the technique of layering the different sections. Thus if one section had a British commanding officer, his deputy was an American, and vice versa. Smith also was a master of promoting informal communication channels, and his relatively informal staff conferences freed Eisenhower to concentrate on the most important or critical command decisions. Though problems did occur, that Eisenhower’s staff worked as smoothly as it did was a testament to Smith’s success as chief of staff.

[sofoulandfairaday]

just finished re-reading madame bovary, almost by mistake (i was looking for a specific quote and got lost between the pages). i don't know why i disliked this book so much. i remember reading it when i was 14 and hating the main character and everyone else around her. reading it again now, flaubert's writing is wonderful, sharp and ironic, he paints characters like portraits. my copy is now almost all highlighted and annotated. emma isn't half as annoying as i remembered her and i wonder if it's because we're all implicitly biased against women, in literature like in life. she's flawed and obnoxious, but so wonderfully human and honestly quite tragic. i wouldn't bear it either if i lived in a french province with the most parochial, moral masochist, banal man in the whole world.

[luthienne]

Hi ! I was wondering if you had quotes / thoughts about feeling lost in life, when nothing feels right and choices have to be made even though they all feel like lukewarm water when you wanted a hot bath. That feeling of losing a sense of grounding and not seeing the direction in which to move. thank you xx

(I’ve been wanting to compile this from the moment I received your ask in my inbox. I know the feeling intimately, and I love the way you articulated it. Hope any of these quotes resonate w what you were looking for xx)

“What shall we do my darling, when trial grows more, and more, when the dim, lone light expires, and it’s dark, so very dark, and we wander, and know not where, and cannot get out of the forest…”

—Emily Dickinson, Selected Letters

“She had never figured out how to figure things out. She was only vaguely beginning to know the kind of absence she had of herself inside her.”

—Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star (tr. Benjamin Moser)

“But as it is / I lack myself.”

—Anne Carson, Grief Lessons; “Herakles”

“Even now I can’t explain. Something happened, a kind of earthquake that shook everything and I lost faith and touch with everybody.”

—Katherine Mansfield, Letters of Katherine Mansfield

“She felt suddenly as if she were a ghost in her own life—”

—Catherynne M. Valente, The Orphan’s Tales: In the Night Garden

“I hate seeing myself dissolve and slip and separate so that I’m living in one half of my mind, and I see the other half of me helpless and frantic and driven and I can’t stop it, but I know I’m not really going to be hurt and yet time is so long and even a second goes on and on and I could stand any of it if I could only surrender—”

—Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

“It makes me tremble. (…) To think back. I remember exactly how I thought life would be.”

—Anne Carson, The Beauty of the Husband

Emily Dickinson, “I felt a Funeral in my Brain”

“and I didn’t care / and I was alone / and there had been war / and that thing (my soul) / was a lost star / or a lost boat / adrift,”

—H.D., Child Poems: “Dedication” 

“She had a perpetual sense (…), of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.”

—Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway 

“You know the feeling? One lies in a kind of daze, feeling so sensitive—so unbearably sensitive to the exterior world and longing for something ‘lovely’ to happen.”

—Katherine Mansfield, Letters of Katherine Mansfield

“I don’t care a bit—about anything—I just seem to be asleep and can’t wake up—”

—Georgia O’Keeffe, Art and Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe

“Life is what happens to someone else; / I stand on the sidelines and wring my hands.”

—Lisel Mueller, Waving from Shore

“…it is a little thing to say how lone it is — anyone can do it, but to wear loneliness next to your heart for weeks, when you sleep, and when you wake, ever missing something, this, all cannot say, and it baffles me.”

—Emily Dickinson, Selected Letters

“My life now is a dream too, semi-detached, and seems to happen to somebody else.”

—Martha Gellhorn, from Selected Letters

“I don’t know—I don’t know anything. There is no one here I can talk to—it’s all like a bad dream.”

—Georgia O’Keeffe, Art and Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe

“…she does not know whom she wishes to catch, only that she wishes to catch someone, anyone, to be anchored, to be connected, to not be abandoned.”

—Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“I had lost my true rhythm. But what was my true rhythm?”

—Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin: Vol 1, 1931-1934 

“People kept saying It’s only a matter of time so I persevered in the hope they weren’t lying. At the same time beginning to think I might’ve been lying to myself. Wasting everyone’s time with fantasies of this career I couldn’t have. The person I could never be. There was just so much rejection and not enough of me. I got so afraid. And I lost my nerve—”

—Eimear McBride, The Lesser Bohemians

—Denise Levertov, Life in the Forest; “A Daughter (I)”

“I’m not lost. Or not lost much. Lonely. It is that and … I don’t know what to do. So I move. And cars move. And it’s almost life.”

—Eimear McBride, The Lesser Bohemians 

“What prevents you? The future. The future tense, / immense as outer space. / You could get lost there. / No. Nothing so simple. The past, its density / and drowned events pressing you down, / like sea water—”

—Margaret Atwood, “Up”

“What is there to say? I became physically ill. It was as if I had fallen into space and hung there while life passed me by.”

—Boris Pasternak, Letters Summer 1926: Pasternak, Tsvetaeva, Rilke

“And nothing else happens. The days go by, lost, wasted, and I have no drive to write, no words come… And I grow more and more solitary.”

—Martha Gellhorn, Selected Letters

“I cannot write anymore, dears. Though it is many nights, my mind never comes home.”

—Emily Dickinson, Selected Letters

“As time goes by, especially in the last few years, I’ve lost the knack of being a person. I no longer know how one is supposed to be. And an entirely new kind of ‘solitude of not belonging’ has started invading me like ivy on a wall.”

—Clarice Lispector, Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector 

“There’s a loss of personality. / Or rather, you’ve lost touch with the person / You thought you were. / You no longer feel quite human.”

—T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party

“My wings are cut and I can-not fly I can-not fly I can-not fly.”

—Katherine Mansfield, Letters of Katherine Mansfield

“Me, as ever, gone.”

—Anne Carson, Decreation; “Despite her Pain, Another Day”

“…and I am out with lanterns, looking for myself.”

—Emily Dickinson, Letters

“…why this doubt that I have about everything I do, this void that frightens me, all these lost illusions?”

—Gustave Flaubert, Intimate Notebook 1840-1841

“What I fear I avoid. What I fear I pretend does not exist. What I fear is quietly killing me. Would there were a festival for my fears, a ritual burning of what is coward in me, what is lost in me. Let the light in before it is too late.”

—Jeanette Winterson, “The Green Man” 

“Around. Around. There / should have been / a lesson somewhere.”

—Louise Glück, “The Game”

“Only occasionally do I find I have to break my peace: shout or be lost in the shuffle. But mostly I am lost in the shuffle.”

—Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

“Things went wrong. She lost confidence. She became apprehensive in crowds. I recognize how that she was feeling then as I feel now. Invisible on the street.”

—Joan Didion, Blue Nights

“She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible; unseen; unknown;”

—Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway

“You might not remember me, dears. I cannot recall myself. I thought I was strongly built, but this stronger has undermined me.”

—Emily Dickinson, Selected Letters

“I have no world to go back into, or to go forward into. Because these years have cut me away from many things – from everything: not only materially, but also mentally, spiritually.”

—Martha Gellhorn, Selected Letters

—Rita Dove, “The Venus of Willendorf”

“…for we are in such fragile skin, so close to getting lost in the in-between.”

—Eimear McBride, The Lesser Bohemians

“I do not want revenge, I do not want expiation. / I only want to ask someone / how I was lost, / how I was lost,”

—Margaret Atwood, “Owl Song”

“I felt as if the sky was torn off my life. I had no home in goodness anymore.”

—Anne Carson, “The Glass Essay”

“Let it be over, she pleaded within herself. Let it never have happened—any of it. Let me be young again, and the story just starting.”

—Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“The ultimate fantasy: the recovery of an irrecoverable past. But if I could daydream about an invented happy future…”

—Susan Sontag, As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh

“Tell me what’s the difference / between hope and waiting / because my heart doesn’t know / It constantly cuts itself on the glass of waiting / It constantly gets lost in the fog of hope”

—Anna Kamienska, Astonishments

—Denise Levertov, To Stay Alive

“I long to—ah, so much!! If that were possible I’d get back to my spirit.”

—Katherine Mansfield, Selected Letters

“I told my Soul to sing— / She said her Strings were snapt—”

—Emily Dickinson, Complete Poems; “The first Day’s Night had come,”

“Surely it is a privilege to approach the end / still believing in something.”

—Louise Glück, Averno; “October”

“There is a wild raging river flowing inside of me. I can’t dam it. I’m hurt so badly. Believe me—oh shit! Believe, believe—what’s there to believe anymore?”

— Henry Miller, A Literate Passion

“And life tasteless. And so eager, so eager that I should accomplish a miracle. People always expect miracles.”

—Anaïs Nin, A Literate Passion

“I want to be filled with longing again / till dark burn marks show on my skin. I want to be written again / in the Book of Life, to be written every single day / till the writing hand hurts.”

—Yehuda Amichai,“I Walked Past a House Where I Lived Once,”

“I want / my heart back / I want to feel everything again—”

—Louise Glück, Averno; “Blue Rotunda”

[momo-de-avis]

what are 2 books you feel you should be financially compensated for reading (beyond reimbursement for purchasing them)?

hard mode: nothing by zuzas.

now those are high stakes

first of all, this is hard for me to answer because I genuinely cannot read a book through to the end if I don't like it. I won't go past fifty pages if it's annoying me. So there are only a handful of books I can say I hated because I wasted time reading them, and even those I didn't finish.

But there are two, and one of them I actually talk about it all the time

First of all, fuck you, Flaubert. Fuck Emma Bovary. Fuck that book. Not only financial compensation, but emotional of some sort, cause you go through the 7 stages of grief reading that piece of garbage. Not after, during.

Like, every time I try to explain why I hate Madame Bovary so much I tell this little anecdote about my life. It was probably 2AM, I was still living with my mom, and I was in the living room. Back then, the History Channel---before it became exclusively devoted to Aliens, Hitler, and World War II---had a super interesting show called, I believe it was, Great Books. I caught only a few episodes, there was one on Janes Austen, another on Dostoevsky---and yes, one for Madame Bovary. Which was the one I saw that night.

And on that night, I was just chilling on my ass, and there was this expert on Flaubert explaining how the guy came up with the idea for the book. This woman had a PhD in literature. She studied Flaubert's life and history down to the letters and his intimacy. And I chuckled to myself, completely alone---and listen, you're free to believe whatever the hell yall want, but I swear on my cat this shit is true---and said to myself: "I bet this guy ran away to a cabin and dressed himself as woman to write this book." In fact, I hate Madame Bovary SO MUCH I've making this joke for YEARS, and it's why I call that pile of regurgitated french trash "literary transvesty" because it is literally a man playing dress up with no counter-balance to the absolute derailment of this woman's down-spiral. It's just the story of Emma Bovary going off her rockers, and there's no point where there might a slight indication of societal criticism. She's just a piece of shit. You know, at LEAST Tolstoi gave us Kittie and Levine as a counter-point. At LEAST Tolstoi built-up an immense backdrop with Stepane's adultery to understand the horrid treatment Anna is subjected to. At LEAST we are given a good characterisation of Karenine enough, whereas Charles Bovary is limper than a soggy sock. The only Ken doll I owned as a child had more charisma, and that bitch had no clothes.

And AT THAT POINT in the documentary, that lady expert with a whole PhD says something to this effect: APPARENTLY, Flaubert DID run off into a cabin in the fucking woods or some shit, and he did so with a locket, and what was in that locket? The hairs of his lover. Like, oh my God, I hate you so fucking much.

What I hate THE MOST about Madame Bovary is that despite being a shit book and shit story, and having been written by a guy who purposefully isolated himself from the woman he loved in the ass of the world, with a piece of her hair, as he dead ass attempted to "become a woman", whatever the hell that meant (but then again, so did every romantic writer back in the 19th century), this motherfucker was trialled in a court of law for this book (because adultery, women are frail, scandal, blah blah blah), and his defense was so amazing he actually coined a very important term in writing called Indirect Free Speech. Like, I genuinely hate this motherfucker but this absolute genius final take on his shit book just makes me hate him more. (For reference, this is where I learned this, Hans Robert Jauss explains this in his book Reception Theory)

The second book I think I deserve financial compensation for wasting the like, 3 days I wasted reading those first 100 pages or so, was Juliet Marillier's Daughter of the Forest. Oh my God. Listen, back in the day, like every teenage girl in the early/late 2000s, I was discovering paganism and that kind of crap, so I had a lot of wiccan friends. And there was Charmed. Not the rebooted crap, the OG Charmed, when Rose McGowan was closeted terf and we believed she was cool. Everyone loved Charmed. And everyone who bought into the new-pagan stuff and wiccan stuff, they were all introduced by one of two ways: either it was Charmed, or The Mists of Avalon. Either or. No other way. At least around my circle, that is.

So I had a lot of friends squealing over this one book from Marillier. I was absolutely obsessed with Arthuriana because of Mists of Avalon, and my wiccan/goth friends were all over me telling me "OH you GOTTA read Daughter of the Forest if you love Mists of Avalon". It's comforting to know the one wiccan friend who persisted with that crap went wacko and literally vanished into the horizon because I wanted to smack her in the face with that stupid book.

Basically, at the time, I was balls deep into Irish Mythology. And as I read it, I thought it was EERILY SIMILAR to the Children of Lir. Evil stepmother transforming her step-children into swans? Hm? The one thing that threw me off was that, in the story, the hero had to sew these shirts from some godawful plant that fucked up her hands, and that ISN'T in the original Children of Lir story. Then again, Children of Lir is genuinely not a compelling story. Of all Irish myths, it might be the least compelling.

However, I recently learned that IT IS the same tale, despite what Marillier sold as being "inspired by the Brother Grimm". It turns out the Children of Lir is a tale known throughout Europe, spanning from Spain to Ireland, with some variations, and it exists in Germany, where the sewing of the shirts with that weird plant is a plot point. So I guess that was a determent, considering the story is set in Ireland. Also, you can tell the story was written by a herbalist because, oh my god she goes off about plants all the time.

I basically stopped reading because the heroine is a bit obnoxious and it felt like the plot was going nowhere. And at some point, it was literally a book about plants. Like, Marion Zimmer Bradley's books can be boring (take the Forst House, which is one of my favourites, there's gotta be like 100 pages in there about Eilan's boring life picking flowers, but it builds up to her character, at least). But this one, it was going nowhere, while at the same time, Bretons were landing in Ireland? What? My anger came from when I checked the wikipedia page before I gave up because I wanted to see if there was something redeemable in that shit, like, come on, motivate me. And when I read that there's a fucking rape plot thrown in there that bears no relevance for no other reason than... I don't know, fear of men? I gave up. That was definitely when I stopped reading and decided to set it aside. It's weird cause, from what I remember, I think the author wanted to write it in pagan Ireland, but I don't remember a single mention of a pagan god? It was so convoluted, man.

And why the Children of Lir??? I 100% share the opinion of Sorcha Hegarty from Candlelit Tales regarding the Children of Lir: it is THE LEAST interesting tale in Irish Myth, and also---and these are her words, not mine---the least Irish lmao

Honourable mention: Thérèse Raquin by Zola is another one that made me SO FUCKING PISSED OFF that piece of shit book REQUIRES psychological counseling. Like, financial compensation isn't even enough to go through that crap.

[dooareyastudy]

1,11,26,27 country asks 💌

I loooveee France, absolutely my favorite country to visit 😍😍😍 I have been to Nancy, Strasbourg, Colmar, Nice, Mulhouse and a small city Saverne. Hopefully when the pandemic ends, I will continue to travel French cities 🥂

Thank u for the ask!! It makes me so happy when ppl say they like my country, it’s such a beautiful country!! It didn’t visit a lot of places around the north of the country tbh bc I am from the south of France (and I am a beach kinda girl when it comes to choosing where to go during holidays). I hope you get to visit much more of the country in the future!! ❤

1. favourite place in your country?

Anywhere in Corsica! There are a lot of places there that I love, many are famous (like the Sanguinaires, Scandola or les îles Lavezzi, if you look them up, the pictures are amazing!!) but the whole place is full of small jewels, that you can only find if you like to wander around and get lost in nature haha  

Special mention for ✨la Bretagne✨ (only had the chance to go there once bc all 4 times I planned a trip there, it ended up being cancelled for various reasons but it only makes me want to go back more!!)

11. favourite native writer/poet?

That’s hard!! I’d say Flaubert but I hate Madame Bovary too much. So, I will go with Baudelaire (special mention: Jean Genet, even if I don’t know a lot of his works).

26. does your nationality get portrayed in Hollywood/American media? what do you think about the portrayal?

I don’t really know, I never thought of it before. French people are usually represented as elegant? Is it because of the whole cliche of the Parisian style? I don’t know but that makes me laugh a lot bc this is more a person-with-a-lot-of-money style than a French style.

We are portrayed as having a bad English and I feel personally attacked by that one ngl I swear my accent isn’t that bad!! Also, there is this whole thing around la bise and honestly, I get it, it’s ridiculous, I hate it, everyone hates it and it should never go back in style after this pandemic.

Overall, those are funny stereotypes tbh. We probably have a lot of misconceptions or stereotypes about American people too (as long as there are not harmful to people, who cares?).

27. favourite national celebrity?

I really like Dany Boon, he is a French comedian and actor, he played in Les Ch’tis (not only but such a classic, I could watch it three times in a row and still laugh to tears each time).

[quidfree]

Someone asked u for ur book recs, so I’m here to ask for your anti-rec list. Are there any popular books/authors that you dislike?

Btw I’m late but ur fem tdbk? Genius

oh my god anon this is so funny

i'm actually struggling to answer because while i have attempted to read a lot of popular books i have also abandoned said attempts on page 5 because i can't stand bad writing, so it's hard to remember any examples off the top of my head. and i'm pretty tolerant where classics are concerned- old or dense writing styles don't really throw me so long as the story is good. @ audience please send me your hated books/authors so i can give my two cents.

in terms of classics i am a big 19th century realism/naturalism hater bc i can only suffer through so much over-descriptive repressed bourgeois prose about listless middle-class women lusting after bland men to fill voids in their lives and then dying dramatically. une page d'amour is my number one enemy in this vein- rarely have i come across such intensely frustrating female characters, and that's saying something. something about the whole 'mother and daughter who are obsessed to deranged levels w the obnoxious male lead to the extent that the sickly daughter essentially offs herself bc of her jealousy' vibe, you know. and zola doesn't even have the decency to throw some social commentary in there to distract from the misogyny. flaubert is the worst offender of that category of authors though- un cœur simple is so condescending a look at the serving class' inner lives it still makes me want to brain myself despite being like 10 pages long. also despite my admiration for rabelais i hate his works bc i hate weird bodily humour- i feel similarly about chaucer. outside of french classics i found 1984 really annoying to read because the main character is so intensely weird about women, and of mice and men is at best just okay in my eyes. also i'm sorry but i can't get through most of plato without rolling my eyes. it may just be philosophy ptsd but socrates is so very annoying.

otherwise just a lot of YA is really... bad. i don't even mean the super obvious shit like twilight, i just mean... i remember reading stuff like 'fangirl' or any john green book (especially the 3 books that aren't fault in our stars) and just feeling my soul wither at how incredibly unlikeable everyone was. also! many moons ago i used to like the mortal instruments for its characters and it was incredibly hard to read because the writing sucks. while im at it simon v the homosapiens agenda was also bad. ditto the divergent series. and whoever tried to convince tumblr that captive prince was not insanely bad and weird should cross the street if i see them around.

anyways im sorry i can't think of any hot takes off the top of my head but i will attempt to do so if i next come into contact with a bad popular book. what's your anti-rec list??

also re: todobaku girls- thank you, i love them, and am always happy to talk about them. send prompts!

[lizziestudieshistory]

Books of 2020 - March

Enforced isolation made me read a lot... Here are the 10 books I read!

The Way of Kings - Brandon Sanderson (The Stormlight Archive #1)    We all know I adore this series - I reread it every year after all. This time I read it to annotate the text and do a proper deep-dive into the world Sanderson is creating in preparation for Rythmn of War coming out later this year.

The Binding - Bridget Collins    I still don’t know how I feel about Collins’ book. It’s a historical fiction novel with a subtle hint of magical realism through the concept of Binding - using some form of magic (I’m not entirely sure how) to turn real memories into books. This concept is what made me and my uni friends buddy read this novel in the first place; it sounds fascinating, especially to bookish people like we us! However, this book is not really about book binding - it’s a love story between Emmett Farmer and Lucian Darnay.

If I’m honest the part two, which covered the original courtship of Lucian and Emmett, was the most interesting section of the novel. I thought their relationship was a bit cringey (as befits teenagers) and incredibly sweet. The romance made the novel. But it wasn’t the book we signed up for. I was expecting a book about the secrets about Binding - maybe a bit of a thriller/mystery but with beautiful writing and an ethereal setting? I was definitely expecting more information about Binding. Instead we got a angsty romance, endless cutting and gluing of endpapers for books and ONE scene of Emmett book binding that didn’t tell us what the process actually is.

For what the book actually is, which is an angsty gay romance in a very subtly magical alternate ‘Victorian’ society, it’s a decent book. If I’d known this I probably would have read it and considered it a lovely cutesy read. However, it’s not the book I was sold and it left me disappointed. I’d recommend giving it a shot, but it’s not a book I would necessarily read again...

The Scarlet Pimpernel - Baroness Orcsy    This was a ridiculous, over the top, and melodramatic classic adventure story. I had so much fun reading this! The Scarlet Pimpernel is a mysterious English aristocrat who, with his band of devoted fellow gentlement, travels to France during the height of the Revolution to rescue innocent French nobles from the guillotine. However, the French are at their wits end and Chauvelin blackmails the ‘cleverest woman in Europe’, darling of English society, and French wife of Sir Percy Blakeney, Lady Marguerite Blakeney, to find out the indentity of the Scarlet Pimpernel. 

From there we go on a wonderfully melodramatic romp through 18th century England and France, and watch as Marguerite tries to save the Scarlet Pimpernel. It’s a silly, over the top, novel in a similar style to The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo. I’d highly recommend it as an entry into classic literature - or just as a ridiculous fun story!

Reticence - Gail Carriger (The Custard Protocol #4)   My last full length parasolverse novel was A LOT of fun. I adored Percy and Arsenic’s slightly cringey but incredibly sweet romance bloom, alongisde the exploration of the supernatural in Carriger’s version of 1890′s Japan. The Custard Protocol was my least favourite of Carriger’s three main series (plotwise at least) but Reticence was a beautiful homage to the entire parasolverse! I adored the cameos (or just the entire wedding scene, let’s face it!), silly humour, and Percy’s happy ending.

My small niggle with this novel was the plot. As with the rest of the Custard Protocol novels I felt the plot wasn’t spectacular. It was a bit thin on the ground, particularly in the first half... This series is about character, and I love all the characters, but I wanted a little bit more from all of the novels. I wanted to see a bit more of each country (and spend a little bit less time on the Spotted Custard whilst travelling through the grey...) Nevertheless, I think Reticence was the strongest of the four Custard novels and I really loved it. Carriger’s world is my comfort blanket, it makes me smile, and I adore the world she’s created - and for that I will be forever grateful to Miss Gail!

Poison or Protect - Gail Carriger (Delightfully Deadly Novellas #1)   This novella was a lot darker than I was expecting from Carriger. The plot and on-screen action was just a silly and entertaining as I was expecting (Preshea goes to a house party to prevent the assassination of the Duke of Snodgrove, and stop his daughter marrying a gold digger, whilst falling in love with a dashing Scottish captain.) However, Preshea’s backstory was much darker than we usually see in the parasolverse, the only comparable one I can think of off the top of my head is Rodrigo’s abuse from the Templars! She suffered through years of abuse and neglect at the hands of her father and husbands, leaving her damaged and shying away from all relationships. 

The actual romance in Poison or Protect left me a little but underwhelmed. Gavin was actually what I was expecting from Connal Maccon in the Parasol Protectorate, and I’m much more on board with his ‘gentle-giant’ style romance with Preshea. I’m personally not a huge fan of the stereotypical kilt-wearing, enormous Scottish bloke... Just not my thing...but good for Preshea if she likes that! I just wasn’t that invested. 

Personally, I would have loved Preshea’s book to revolve a bit more on her relationships with women, not romantically (she has never read as bi or a lesbian) but platonically. In the Finishing School Preshea held herself aloof from the girls around her, never really having a proper friend or friendship group. Instead she was like a vampire queen surrounded by her hive - beautiful, deadly, and set above everyone around her. Preshea herself comments on it in the book! Because of this I would’ve really loved the novella to focus on Preshea learning to be friends with other women, not see them as enemies or competition, and maybe getting her man on the side. We did get this growth as a sub-plot with Lady Flo and Mis Pagril, but I think it was more important for Preshea with her Finishing School background and the abuse she suffered to find herself with other women before jumping into bed with husband number 5...

The Wilful Princess and the Piebald Prince - Robin Hobb (Realm of the Elderlings)    This was a fun little novella that expanded the backstory of the Six Duchies and explained why the Witted and Wit magic are so feared in the Farseer and Tawny Man Trilogies. It’s not Hobb’s finest work, but it did flesh out the history of the Six Duchies a little bit more. The story isn’t incredibly important to the main series but I’d highly recommend for fans of Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings and it’s best to read the tale either before of after the Tawny Man Trilogy.

Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert   A disappointing classic. Madame Bovary is supposed to be selacious and scandelous. I found it tedious and irritating. Emma Bovary was one of the most uncompelling heroines I’ve read outside of Dickens - she was a selfish snob, with no redeeming characteristics for the reader to latch onto. She’s adored by her husband, but bored in her marraige because Charles is only a middle class, mediocre doctor... She is manipulated by the men around her (both lovers and the guy who lends her money, I can’t remember his name) but is also incredibly stupid in her decisions, particularly around money and her last fateful decision at the end of the book.

The language (both French and my English translation) was dry, and the pacing was off. Important parts of the novel went by in a whirl, but then there were long stretches where almost nothing happens. I’ve read similar novels that were much better with similar themes, plotlines, and much more interesting characters. I am glad I’ve read it but Madame Bovary is not a book I would read again, nor would I recommend it unless you want to cross it off your list of classics. 

Winter’s Heart, Crossroads of Twilight, and Knife of Dreams - Robert Jordan (Wheel of Time #9, 10, 11)    This post is incredibly long and I’ve spoken about this series at length already so I don’t really have any new criticisms to rasise. However I am slowly making my way through the rest of the Wheel of Time and I’ve now reached the end of the books solely written by Robert Jordan himself. Winter’s Heart and Crossroads of Twilight really were the height of the slump, however, I did manage to read through them both quite quickly with the amount of time I have at the moment. Both books were quite slow but had hugely important moments in them for the entire series.

Knife of Dreams was a return to form for Jordan before he died and we got the resolution to several tedious plotlines that had been running through the last few books (Perrin and Faile, Mat in Ebudar, Egwene travelling to the White Tower.) Personally, I loved Elayne’s struggle to claim the Lion Throne, however, this is one of the plotlines people tend to dislike and it had a particularly satisfying conclusion at the end of KoD. I’m incredibly excited to the series conclusion that I can see coming and I can’t wait to jump into the installments written by Brandon Sanderson in April! 

Currently Reading

I’m still working through Fellowship and the Companion... It’s fallen by the wayside slightly but I am still working through it.

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens    This is my buddy read book for March/April, but it’s also a reread for me (as we know from my turbulent relationship with this book from 2019) We have just finished Book 2 Chapter 5.

The Priory of the Orange Tree - Samantha Shannon    I’m not a huge fan of this book so far, however, I don’t hate it. I think the plot and world building is quite shallow (circa. 200 pages in anway), and the writing makes me feel like I’m watching the characters through a glass screen. Hopefully it will pick up a bit, but at the moment I think it’s overrated. (I don’t think it’s helping I’ve been reading a lot of brilliant epic fantasy at the moment...)

[aritany]

10 Questions Tag

thanks @lemon-writings for tagging me in this! 

Rules: Answer the 10 questions, ask a different 10, and tag 10 people.

1. What weird writing habits do you have?

hmmmm i have several terribly odd habits but i think the main one is that i could not write linearly if my life depended on it. i’ve been told that my writing process is awfully chaotic and not very fun at all to try and follow and that that i am a bastard gremlin for having very fun snippets that exist completely out of context 99% of the time. however. in my defense. it turns out quite well in the end, and i always finish my WIPS. 

2. Have you ever read a book you hated so much you couldn’t finish it? What was it? Why?

this is hard because as a rule i don’t make myself finish books i don’t like and then they don’t really stick in my mind. however (and this might be cheating because technically i finished it but i complained the whole time) i just couldn’t get into Flaubert’s Parrot. i had to read it for a class or i wouldn’t have finished it. not my style at all, and i have a hard time reading books that are fiction and focus on one subject matter without having any sort of narrative.

3. What do you listen to while you write?

i have playlists for each WIP! most often i’ll listen to those (you can listen to the playlist for what no one wants to hear here and the playlist for where the trees whisper here) but if i get tired of that i’ll listen to the playlist radio for the playlists or just explore the playlists spotify thinks i’ll groove to. 

if i’m feeling like I really want to get into the vibe, MyNoise has hundreds of different customizable soundscapes. i really like the Irish Coast generator and the Cafe Restaurant for if i need to focus and my brain won’t turn off.

4. What does an average day of writing look like for you?

i try to write first thing when i get up after i get ready for the day - not really because i’ve set that as a rule or anything, it’s more that i just genuinely really want to write all the time - because if i do that then it sort of gets things flowing for the rest of the day. once i’ve started it’s much easier to keep going. i don’t have a set schedule for when i write but i do it every day unless i don’t have a spare minute.

5. What is a project you’ve always wanted to start, but haven’t gotten around to yet?

OKAY. okay SO. my cousin and i have this very excellent cool idea for a potential graphic novel that blends the medieval with the modern and it’s very very cool and full of wlw content. it is about a witch living in a modern glass city who is in training to become a mage for the queen, and her love story with an assassin sent to take down the monarchy. it’s currently in the ‘i think about it a lot and oh boy that sure would be cool’ since neither of us have a whole lot of free time but anyways i’m very excited to work on it one day because she is Very Fucking Smart and good at drawing things together in a way i just... *chefs kiss* (s if you’re reading this i’m obsessed with your brain) and we have somehow never worked together on a creative project so i feel that must be remedied.

6. Is there anything about your current WIP that you’re super proud of?

not to toot my own horn but there are LOTS of things in my wip i’m proud of!! i think the symbolism is very cool and it has been difficult to pull of the simultaneous chronological telling of two separate timelines in a way that makes coherent sense but like... it’s happening babey! i think the characterization is also very good in this novel compared to other things i’ve written.

7. What is a trope you absolutely can’t stand?

i know everyone says this but it’s TRUE. fucking HATE love triangles. GOD. like ok it’s one thing if more than one person is interested in a character. that’s just life and it’s realistic. but when. BUT WHEN. when the object of these characters affections waffles back and forth on who to choose twilight style i just... lose all interest in their narrative arc, because that’s usually their defining feature. it’s gross and boring and i’m tired of it. 

although i’m a slut for the character THINKING they’re interested in one character and then suddenly realizing they aren’t and that they’re in love with someone else. if it’s done well. that’s the kicker. there’s gotta be room for some nuance here.

8. Do you have an OC that’s more or less just a fantasy version of yourself?

....................................... 

... okay. so. there is not a single character that i don’t relate to on some level. i think all of my characters (at least those that I write POV for) exemplify some trait or quirk that i have, in some stretched or exaggerated way. nora from WNOWTH is the closest i have to a self-insert though. she’s funnier than i am though.

9. Have any works inspired your current WIP?

where the trees whisper - yes! i read the raven cycle and got hungry for more ley lines and psychics and magical forests. no welsh kings, though. i think TRC and WTTW are very very different stories but they share those features which overall sound suspiciously similar.

what no one wants to hear - no! this one was inspired by the fact that i haven’t read anything like it and i think it’s an important issue to talk about. mental health and toxic friendships/emotional abuse/manipulation are all very close to my heart so it’s really derived from my own experiences.

sound carries - yes! i’ve wanted to write about opera for AGES but i didn’t have a context for it that made sense until i read The Secret History and If We Were Villains. i thought you know what if we have dark academia for classic lit and shakespeare i also want it for opera students. so. opera and murder. 

10. What is your favorite WIP to write for?

right now, what no one wants to hear. i just love first drafts. so much room for mess and feelings and good ideas that make it feel like i’m really doing something. i’m very excited about the subject matter and i am a soft child for my own characters, and i’m just constantly thinking about it so it’s hard not to go a lil crazy. i’ve written 15k for it this week and i feel another big writing day brewing soooo we’ll see what happens. 

my questions: 

what is your ideal scenario for writing? 

which oc is the most difficult for you to write?

what do you love the most about your own writing?

you have 5 individual words to describe your current WIP. what are they?

who has been most influential to you as a writer?

how do you get over writer’s block?

if you were transported into one of your WIPS, which world would you LEAST want to be in and why?

what is your most hated book of all time? 

do you outline or prefer to just go with it? 

what is your favourite sort of scene to write?

i tag: @lesbianwriteblr @dustylovelyrun @raevenlywrites @nintendonianrose @raenawrites @writemares @evergrcen @whatwordsdidnttouch @marie-writess @llesbianwrites if you guys want to! 

[manuscripts-dontburn]

The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth

Author: Philip Pullman

First published: 2019

Pages: 687

Rating: ★★★☆☆

How long did it take: 11 days

Review HERE.

Kam s ním?

Author: Jan Neruda

First published: 1917

Pages: 29

Rating: ★★★★★

How long did it take: 1 day

Znáte přeci ten starý vtip, ne? Jan Neruda miloval Karolinu Světlou. A když zemřela, tak napsal "Kam s ním". :D V každém případě tento ikonický text i po více než sto letech vyloudí na tváři čtenáře upřímný úsměv, pobaví a zároveň dýchne romantickou atmosférou staré Prahy.

The Tattooist of Auschwitz

Author: Heather Morris

First published: 2018

Pages: 320

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

How long did it take: 7 days

As much as I appreciate learning about Lali (not Lale!) Sokolov and his story, this book from literary point of view is deeply average. The sparse and straightforward style of narration can be effective (case in point: Exit West by Mohsin Hamid), but for some reason here is only does the book a disservice by making the people in the book cut-outs without much differences in personality, and subsequently the reader (at least this particular reader) fails to engage with them on a more personal level. Add to it the historical inaccuracies and what you are left with is something very unremarkable.

Dreadnought: Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War

Author: Robert K. Massie

First published: 1992

Pages: 1007

Rating: ★★★☆☆

How long did it take: 40 days

I am not going to pretend that I read each page of this book, some (about 1/4) I skimmed. This is a great achievement of a research for the writer, but so very dense and detailed that the retention level is not high. I definitely feel like I learned a lot, but I also feel a lot has escaped me. Very interesting, very well written, my brain is toast.

Kristin Lavransdatter: The Wreath

Author: Sigrid Undset

First published: 1920

Pages: 278

Rating: ★★★★★

How long did it take: 3 days

This is, actually, a very simply laid-out story. A beautiful young girl comes of age, falls in love and defies her family wishes to get the man she wants. And the book is very straight-forward with it as well, not adding anything unneccessary, no deep philosophy, no side-tracks to boast its volume. But the core of the book are relationships between flawed characters, be that Kristin, naive and stubborn, or Simon, kind but also condescending, Aashild, helpful but not above scheming, and of course Erlend, impulsive, selfish and overall a bastard. The life in medieval Norway was tough, honest, difficult, lacing Christianity with superstition and all this Sigrid Undset captured beautifully. What truly elevated this volume to 5 stars for me, however, was the ending scene between Kristin´s parents.

No One Is Too Small To Make a Difference

Author: Greta Thunberg

First published: 2019

Pages: 68

Rating: ★★★☆☆

How long did it take: 1 day

First of all, I think many people angry with Greta just don´t get what she is and what she does. They criticize her for being harsh and undiplomatic, and they criticize her for speaking up without offering a sollution of her own. And it would be funny if it was not so horrible. What I got to understand from this book is that Greta asks the world to LISTEN to the people who DO have sollutions, or at least strive to find them. She is the voice that is supposed to attract attention to a problem and she is pleading, begging and demanding (as well we all should!) that we actually start treating that problem with the seriousness it deserves. That said this little book is hardly a comprehensive statement and I believe Greta and her mission deserve a better representation. By this I mean: instead of merely printing her speeches, why not edit them in a ways so that many points are not repeated in all of them? I GET the point of this publication, but at the same time the potential was not reached

The Familiars

Author: Stacy Halls

First published: 2019

Pages: 360

Rating:  ★★★☆☆

How long did it take: 3 days

Yeah..... this was fine. I liked it. Not much to discuss. If you wanna read it, go ahead, there is nothing wrong with it.

Glass Town

Author: Isabel Greenberg

First published: 2020

Pages: 224

Rating: ★★★★★

How long did it take: 1 day

I just... really love Charlotte Brontë, you know. And this book is really both imagined, but for greater part factual, journey into her own private torment. I have, also, always found her the most tragic of all the Brontë siblings, especially because of she outlived all of her siblings, and then her own pregnancy killed her. As for the publication itself, I have to say I am not a great admirer of Isabel Greenberg´s art style, especially her close-ups freak me out (though the more complex pictures were nice). However she has managed to tell the story of the Brontës in a very creative and original way, by using beautiful language and packing a punch right through my soul.

The Tales of Beedle the Bard

Author: J.K. Rowling

First published: 2008

Pages: - (audio book)

Rating: ★★★☆☆

How long did it take: 2 hours

This was, for most part, really enjoyable and makes a nice addition to the Harry Potter books.

Madame Bovary

Author: Gustave Flaubert

First published: 1856

Pages: 311

Rating: ★★★★☆

How long did it take: 9 days

1. Beautiful writing. 2. I hated everyone.

A Gentleman in Moscow

Author: Amor Towles

First published: 2016

Pages: 472

Rating: ★★★★☆

How long did it take: 5 days

I liked the gentle flow of events, I liked the atmosphere and the people I met in this book. I thought the premise was interesting and clever, and all in all the author did deliver a lot of what was promised. The only thing I missed, and I cannot tell you the specific reason if I tried, was a strong emotional connection, something that would stun me, perhaps some long lasting story elements which would ties everything together. Life of the gentleman in this book moved from episode to episode, from character to character, but there was not that one underlining goal which would have made it all so much powerful.

[ncityzen]

book asks #2

hello angel anon i love you go treat yourself to something nice in my honour 💖💖💖

2. top 5 books of all time? OKAY so in no particular order because i’m not stressing over my indecision:

 L’Écume des jours - BORIS VIAN: *my french friend pierre voice* sublime!! possibly my favourite novel of all time i’m really serious. a french teacher of mine recommended it to me years ago and i went into it knowing absolutely nothing about it at all and let’s just say it was a ride from the very first page (….literally). if anyone’s going to read it, i recommend doing as i did because i don’t think i’ve ever felt as many emotions in my entire life as i did reading this book. i’ll say just one thing and that is expect surrealism. like a lot. it’s one of those books that stays on your mind for weeks after finishing it, i promise, it’s been years and i’m still not over it

Madame Bovary - FLAUBERT: *a legion of french high schoolers approaching me with pitchforks* but i! don’t! care! i LOVE this book. some parts may get a bit heavy if you’re not used to reading heavy classics, but Flaubert’s writing style is so incredible i literally couldn’t believe it myself as i was reading. there’s one scene at the theatre that so good it hurt me

The Great Gatsby - F. SCOTT FITZGERALD: lmao everyone knows this one i guess, i really loved the descriptions and just the whole atmosphere that he created in this book. idk if you guys liked the movie but i loved watching how they translated on screen i think they did a really good job and it was as gorgeous as i’d imagined it!!

Les Misérables - VICTOR HUGO: huge classic, very long, sometimes you’ll hate yourself for having to read certain passages (the sewers of Paris?? seriously????) but as much as i adore the musical, nothing makes the book justice, honestly, it’s a masterpiece for a reason

Frühlings Erwachen - FRANK WEDEKIND: not actually a novel, it’s a play!! probably contains every single tw you could possibly imagine, but it’s absolutely amazing and it really impacted me, that’s why it’s here!

[somewheremeantforme]

10 favorite female characters

Borrowing the tag from @pythionice because creating this list was surprisingly therapeutic. Although I now want to read everything on it again.

Tagging: anyone who would like to do it, but a gentle nudge in particular to @emberglows, @ciacconas, @lantur, @muffinworry, @imthemuthafuckingcricket, and @revenantmothling. No pressure of course.

1. Robin McKinley’s Beauty: my god, this was formative. Beauty and the Beast retellings are my bread and butter; along with East of the Sun, West of the Moon, it’s my favorite fairy tale. But this Beauty - bookish, practical, waspish, kind, achingly insecure, wonderfully strong - was everything to me. I was bookish and quiet too, and I’d never met a heroine with those traits until Beauty. (Yes, Hermione Granger is a bookworm too. No, she is not quiet. I liked her, but I could never relate. Such a Gryffindor.)

2. Sandrilene fa Toren/Trisana Chandler/Daja Kisubo: Yes, this is cheating, especially because their quartet isn’t complete without their foster brother Briar Moss, but I love these kids. Separately they’re gold, but it’s when they’re together that the best of them really comes out and I fall in love all over again. This was another formative influence. I first encountered these books when I was a year or so younger than the characters, and I grew up as they did. Also, quite frankly one of the best magic systems I have ever seen.

3. Tiffany Aching: Formative influence number three! She was my introduction to Discworld, though I actually read I Shall Wear Midnight first. What can I say about Tiffany Aching that hasn’t been said a thousand times before. I could never be her, but I would willingly be her sidekick, always and forever. That speech she gets against the Fairy Queen about selfishness? Dancing with the bees? Talking down winter? Literally life-changing. I get chills to this day.

4. Jane Eyre: last of the formative influences. I met her when I was thirteen, and I frankly worshipped her the way she worshipped Miss Temple. Now we’re more like friends. This article does a great description of her: “my favorite little creep in literature.”

5. Lyra Silvertongue: I never wanted to be her - I’m far too cautious and quiet, and I like it that way - but I would love to have a daughter like her. Lyra is a name I’m seriously considering for a future daughter.

6. Emma Bovary - Emma is selfish and impractical, yes, but also so starved and lonely. What really struck me, though, is how incredibly realistically her mental illness is written - and how much Flaubert hates her for it. I don’t think I’ve ever read another book where the author both understands and hates his creation so intimately. I loved her all the harder for that, and even more since I first met her when I was just starting to recover from mental illness myself.

7. Susan Pevensie: I wanted to marry her when I was fifteen. Tumblr (and to be fair, a lot of modern writers) tends to have a pretty fraught relationship with “the Problem of Susan,” and so did I for a while. I think now my stance is what Lewis himself set out in his foreword: “one day you will be old enough to read fairy tales again.”

8. Ley from Ruin of Angels: Ley is the bad girl every sapphic dreams of. Ley is the horrible ex everyone has nightmares about. Ley is an artist. Ley is manipulative, sharp as a scalpel, secretive and ferocious. I adore her.

9. The second Mrs. De Winter. I met her in my second year of college, when I was going through a rough patch and struggling with whether to keep studying for medical school or switch to ancient history (spoiler, I switched). Meeting this painfully shy, insecure girl and watching her grow into strength was one of the best things that could have happened to me. I cried. 

(As an aside, Max de Winter is my all-time favorite literary hero, second only to Henry Tilney. If you’re reading this and you have a feeling that this is meant to push you into reading the book, it is. You know who you are.)

(Natalie, I’m sorry, but I relate to Darcy far too much to ever want to marry him. He’s all yours)

10. Tullia Minor. “Although  younger, the fiercer of the two sisters.” Encourages a man known as The Arrogant to “greater heights of daring”. Obviously she and Tarquin are made for each other, but her father arranged her marriage to the wrong brother, so she casually kills her husband and talks Tarquin into killing his wife/her sister so they can get hitched. Has three sons and goodness knows how many daughters with him. Deposes her father with him. Is the first to hail her husband as king, to which he replies (again, a man known as The Arrogant), “Please go home, I don’t want you to get hurt.” Runs her chariot over her father’s corpse in the streets. Lady Macbeth, you wish you could be this cool. I am not entirely joking when I say I got my classics degree for the sole purpose of writing a novel about her.

Bonus: Elizabeth Sloane in the film Miss Sloane. I really do not like how her character arc ended, which is why she isn’t in the list proper, but the beginning, my god. Amoral and ruthless and absolutely sharklike. We need more women like her in media. Also, I would kill for her wardrobe (hers and Lorraine Broughton’s).

Bonus 2: Astrid Dane from V.E. Schwab’s Shades of Magic. Astrid as presented in canon ticks a lot of my boxes, but is missing something to make the whole come to life. The Astrid in my head - my Astrid - owns my soul.

Bonus 3: All the women on NBC’s Hannibal. All of them. I haven't finished the first season yet so I can’t say anything more concrete, but I would marry any one of them in a heartbeat.

[kaapi-writer]

Review of The Naturalist by Andrew Mayne

TL;DR: 1 of out 5 stars.

This review has been cross-posted to my Goodreads. Feel free to add me on there!

If you're wondering just how terrible I found this book, I actually created a DNF shelf because I felt like I couldn't continue with it any further. Should probably add that I have a bachelor's degree in biotechnology, so I'm more familiar with the basis of Cray's work than the average reader.

Theo Cray is a computational biologist. We know this because he repeats this to everyone he meets - all while he secretly judges them for not knowing what that is. Actually, that's all the guy does, seemingly - boast about his profession and judge people. Off the top of my head:

> Implies a forensic tech isn't a scientist because she doesn't know about a fungal infection exclusive to frogs (!!!) - and takes a leap further and says she only collects samples, doesn't examine them. This is patently incorrect since a forensic technician's job requires at least a bachelor's degree in some sort of science.

> Says he hates explaining his work to non-scientists - because of course a freaking police detective should be able to parse a university-level explanation on phenotype plasticity so our hero isn't inconvenienced.

> Makes a crappy inside joke and then notes that his audience doesn't react. Non-STEM people don't have a sense of humour at all!

> Thinks people with doctorates in fields unrelated to medicine/science who insist on being addressed by a title they earned are just hot air. Because they're not in hospitals curing cancer.

> Calls it "emasculating" when a colleague tries to comfort him when a one-time student of his dies.

> Pretends to be humble about a research grant as if he's not been dissing non-STEM people since the first page.

> Did I mention he's scientific? Data gives him a mental boner. Totes.

> All this, and suddenly he goes off track to spend pages on explanations like DNA testing or how GenBank works. But don't you hate explaining your work to non-scientists?

If the author has written this with the intent of it being ironic and wanting us to dislike Theo - that's a great concept, but what makes it great is the apparent authorial intent behind such a premise. Off the top of my head I'm reminded of Madame Bovary. Flaubert was masterful in narrating the story at two levels - one from Emma Bovary's point of view and one as the omniscient narrator who wastes no time in poking fun at her. All we have in The Naturalist is Theo's self-absorbed, insipid monologue, filled with useless interjections about his opinion on everything.

The writing is clunky and strange in places. The dialogue attempts to be witty in places, but I don't know whether it's because I disliked the rest of the book - it fell flat. In some places, it feels like the book was written in third-person and then switched to first-person.

she felt her warm blood drip down the cold flesh of her stomach

with my spectacles and absentmindedly combed hair

My words are terse and filled with self-loathing. "It's not her that I blame."

She could pass as a Brazilian or any other beautiful mélange

Oh, and this isn't even including the plot holes.

> One of Theo's former students, from like six years ago, dies. She took one class under him in one semester. She never contacted him after that, but apparently she told everyone he inspired her(?) and when she dies of a bear attack, his first instinct is that it's his fault because he didn't caution his students enough about the dangers of nature. What?

(Spoilers under the Read More link.)

> After he's already been suspected of murdering the student, he trespasses on to the scene of the crime(!!!!) and destroys evidence, is caught and is then immediately released. What?

> He finds a vague connection (USING THE POWER OF DATA) and does not understand what the shady contact means when she texts him 1004BJ. What?

Theo Cray reminds me of the worst side of STEM - people thinking their work alone impacts the world, as if commerce and law enforcement and writers and mental health therapists don't matter. He's self-absorbed - that's acceptable. What isn't acceptable is that I'm 40% through the book and not one character seems to be capable of putting him in his place, even verbally. Frankly, it might be possible that he gets his just deserts at the hands of someone by the end of the book. But I'm not going to stick around for that long.

[mreids-researches]

An excerpt from Perversity Think-Tank by SuperVert

I used to know a girl who lived right in the center of Greenwich Village, a place long known for its appeal to the self-consciously eccentric. In this Land of the Misfit Toys she was the exception. She emitted no signs of deliberate weirdness. She never hinted at secret sorrows. She offered no claims to heresy or pretensions to kink. A Midwestern girl, she came from a comfortable but not opulent background and spoke fondly of horseback riding. She was a decent student and after college obtained a good job. She was even-tempered, upbeat, fun but not wild. She seemed — dare I say it? — the most “normal” person I ever met.But I could never trust my own perception of her normality.

I operated on the assumption that everyone has his or her psychopathologies, kinks, tragedies. If you’re patient, or if you know what to look for, or if you make yourself easy to talk to, these invariably come out. But not with this girl. Over the course of three or four years of relatively close friendship, there was nary a glimpse of anything untoward in her soul. She hadn’t been abused, she didn’t have bulimia, she didn’t hate anybody, she didn’t appear to have any sexual desires that you could find outside a romance novel. One time she persisted in a crush on a guy who, friends told her, was secretly gay, but I think this was no perversity on her part. She really just happened to like him.How could she be so normal?

(If you thought I was so normal, you can only imagine what I thought of you. I operated on the assumption that people couldn’t be all psychopathology, kink, and tragedy. In spite of your lurid interests, you’ve very sane somehow. I think this might even chagrin you, since you make up for it with that Flaubert dictum about how a writer has to be calm and orderly in his life in order to be disorderly and violent in his work. Then again, you’re also crazier than you think — or I should say, crazy in ways you don’t think you are. What you’re most self-conscious about — the perv thing — is nothing. It’s the things you take for granted, the things you don’t even realize, that freak people out. The very fact that you’re so clueless about them is exactly why they’re so disturbing. They’re the real you.)

Sometimes I suspected that she must be masterful at concealing her kinks. Sometimes I thought I was simply failing to read the signs of her secret vices. Then I came to realize that, in the context of Greenwich Village, her patent normality was her best bid for originality. She was like the first uninteresting number paradox in mathematics. (Go through numbers listing their interesting qualities: 1 is the first positive integer, 2 is the only even prime, etc. If you arrive at a number that has no interesting qualities — 39, according to one mathematician — then that is the first uninteresting one, and paradoxically that makes it interesting.) This girl was a conundrum on the order of 39. Her lack of distinction was precisely what distinguished her.

Was this deliberate? Was it a strategy? Did she realize how interesting it made her? Was her apparent normality the result of a profound perversity that had turned on all the exhibitions of perversity around her? Frankly I’m not sure. Her normality was so astonishing that it was ambiguous, like the dialogue in Sade that would be prudery in a different context. (“‘Conceal your cunts, ladies,’ an indignant Gernande says to Juliette and Dorothée” — about which Roland Barthes observes: “the same sentence serves both libertine and puritan.”) Whatever she was in the past, though, I think she may well point to a ratio that will be increasingly pertinent to the future: the pervier the masses, the normaler the perv.

[lorirwritesfanfic]

RULES: Tag ten followers you want to know better!  I was tagged by @silviasutton1989 Thanks for the tag, dear 😘

Tagging: @scarlettedragon @xxrainbowprincessxx @3pawandme @laniquelove @kingliamthirst @walkerismychoice @theroyalweisme @choicesfanatic86 @pilitella @indiacater

I apologize if you’ve already been tagged. Feel free to ignore!

Sign: Cancer

Height: 5′3″

What’s your middle name: I don’t have one.

Put your iTunes Spotify on shuffle. What are the first 4 songs that popped up?

To Build A Home - Cinematic Orchestra

Hurt Me - Lâpsley

Falling - Lacuna Coil

Black Balloon - The Kills

Grab the book nearest you and turn to page 23. What’s line 17?

"Although, under a rain of punishments, little by little, the order was restored at the class." - Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert)

[sorry if it sounds weird, my copy is in Portuguese and I'm terrible at translations]

Have you ever had a poem or song written about you? 

Yes, I used to write songs and poems when I was a teenager. Nothing worth sharing. 

When was the last time you played air guitar? 

I don’t know, I do it all the time. I'm a master in all air instruments 😂

Who is your celebrity crush? 

[I can’t pick only one. Get ready for the lists]

Male: Matt Bomer, Scott Eastwood, Chris Hemsworth, Henry Cavill, Tyler Hoechlin, Rodrigo Santoro, Oscar Isaac, Charlie Hunnam, Daniel Henney, Giacomo Gianniotti.

Female: Scarlett Johansson, Charlize Theron, Eiza Gonzalés, Alicia Vikander, Evan Rachel Wood, Dita Von Teese, Zhang Ziyi, Zoë Kravitz.

What’s a sound you hate + a sound you love? 

A sound I hate: phones ringing, doorbells, drills, alarms, clocks ticking.

A sound I love: rain falling, birds singing, wind bells, ocean sounds.

[I chose more than one again, sorry]

Do you believe in ghosts? 

I’m not sure how to respond to this question... I was raised not to believe in ghosts and I’ve never seen one, so I’m kinda skeptical about it. But it doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

How about aliens? 

Yes. I watched a lot of documentaries about it and I'm pretty sure many powerful people withhold information about this. Plus, I don’t think the forces that created the universe would concentrate all live creatures in one tiny planet like Earth. That would be a huge waste of time and space.

Do you drive? 

No. I keep stalling to get a driver’s license because I hate being evaluated and I don't like the idea of driving illegally.

If so, have you ever crashed?

-

What was the last book you read? 

In Too Deep (Portia da Costa).

Smut, smut, smut!

Do you like the smell of gasoline? 

No.

What was the last movie you saw? 

Thor - The Dark World, I guess. 

What’s the worst injury you’ve ever had?

I had a breast surgery when I was 15. I spent three months being babysitted by everyone around me (including friends at school) because I couldn't lift my arms so I couldn't do anything by myself.

Do you have any obsessions right now?

Choices, music, cooking recipes

Do you tend to hold grudges against people who have done you wrong? 

Yes, but I’ve been trying to get rid of it.

In a relationship?

Yes, I’m marrying the King of Cordonia! LOL

No.

[marinavic2]

An excerpt from Perversity Think-Tank

 I used  to  know  a  girl who  lived  right  in  the  center  of Greenwich  Village,  a  place  long known  for  its  appeal  to  the  self-consciously    eccentric.    In    this Land  of  the  Misfit  Toys  she  was the   exception.   She   emitted   no signs  of  deliberate  weirdness.  She never hinted at secret sorrows. She offered no claims to heresy or pretensions  to  kink.  A  Midwestern girl, she came from a comfortable but  not  opulent  background  and spoke  fondly  of  horseback  riding. She  was  a  decent  student  and  after  college  obtained  a  good  job. She  was  even-tempered,  upbeat, fun  but  not  wild.  She  seemed  — dare  I  say  it?  —  the  most  “normal” person I ever met.But  I  could  never  trust my  own  perception  of  her  normality.   I   operated   on   the   assumption  that  everyone  has  his or  her  psychopathologies,  kinks, tragedies.  If  you’re  patient,  or  if you  know  what  to  look  for,  or  if you make yourself easy to talk to, these  invariably  come  out.  But not with this girl. Over the course of three or four years of relatively close  friendship,  there  was  nary  a glimpse  of  anything  untoward  in her soul. She hadn’t been abused, she didn’t have bulimia, she didn’t hate  anybody,  she  didn’t  appear to  have  any  sexual  desires  that you could find outside a romance novel. One time she persisted in a crush  on  a  guy  who,  friends  told her,  was  secretly  gay,  but  I  think this was no perversity on her part. She  really  just  happened  to  like him.How  could  she  be  so normal?(If  you  thought  I  was so  normal,  you  can  only  imagine what I thought of you. I operated on  the  assumption  that  people couldn’t  be  all  psychopathology, kink, and tragedy. In spite of your lurid  interests,  you’ve  very  sane somehow. I think this might even chagrin  you,  since  you  make  up for  it  with  that  Flaubert  dictum about how a writer has to be calm and  orderly  in  his  life  in  order  to be  disorderly  and  violent  in  his work. Then again, you’re also crazier than you think — or I should say, crazy in ways you don’t think you  are.  What  you’re  most  self-conscious about — the perv thing —  is  nothing.  It’s  the  things  you take  for  granted,  the  things  you don’t even realize, that freak people  out. The  very  fact  that  you’re so  clueless  about  them  is  exactly  why they’re so disturbing. They’re the real you.)Sometimes  I  suspected that   she   must   be   masterful   at concealing  her  kinks.  Sometimes I  thought  I  was  simply  failing  to read  the  signs  of  her  secret  vices. Then I came to realize that, in the context of Greenwich Village, her patent normality was her best bid for  originality.  She  was  like  the first  uninteresting  number  paradox in mathematics. (Go through numbers  listing  their  interesting qualities:  1  is  the  first  positive integer,  2  is  the  only  even  prime, etc. If you arrive at a number that has no interesting qualities — 39, according  to  one  mathematician —  then  that  is  the  first  uninteresting one, and paradoxically that makes  it  interesting.)  This  girl was  a  conundrum  on  the  order of 39. Her lack of distinction was precisely what distinguished her.Was     this     deliberate? Was  it  a  strategy?  Did  she  realize  how  interesting  it  made  her? Was  her  apparent  normality  the result   of   a   profound   perversity that  had  turned  on  all  the  exhibitions  of  perversity  around  her? Frankly  I’m  not  sure.  Her  normality  was  so  astonishing  that  it was  ambiguous,  like  the  dialogue in Sade that would be prudery in a   different   context.   (“‘Conceal your  cunts,  ladies,’  an  indignant Gernande   says   to   Juliette   and Dorothée”  —  about  which  Roland  Barthes  observes:  “the  same sentence serves both libertine and puritan.”)  Whatever  she  was  in the past, though, I think she may well  point  to  a  ratio  that  will  be increasingly  pertinent  to  the  future:  the  pervier  the  masses,  the normaler the perv.