#go read books

[speedlimit15]

"Trust Me, I'm As Anti-Capitalist As They Come And Btw Communism Killed Millions" you are literally stupid if you believe this

[erintoknow]

And what have i read this year?

a fuck ton of YA books to be frank - as a YA librarian, I kind of feel like it’s my job to focus my reading within my ‘field’ so to speak so I can try to provide better advisory to kids. It’s a fool’s errand of course, because like, the field is fucking huge as hell and anything i can read is a drop in the bucket but still!!

Of the YA titles I’ve read this year, I’d have to give a shout out to Andrew Joseph White’s Hell Followed With Us, a post-apocalyptic zombie survival story about a trans boy named Benji who may or may not be the foretold second coming that will finally end humankind’s existence on earth

Wendy Heard’s She’s Too Pretty to Burn is a fun sapphic thriller involving some avant garde activist art gone to far.

If you liked Malin Ryden’s Fallen Hero interactive fiction story, you might be down for Tess Sharpe’s The Girls I’ve Been, where the bisexual daughter of a serial con-artist is held up at a bank and forced to come clean about her past.

Special mention to Cristin Bishara’s Vial of Tears, Laura Sibson’s Edie In Between, and Mary McCoy’s Indestructible Object. All worth a look if you want something in the YA space to read.

I was able to fit in some quote unquote adult fiction as well. Robert Jackson Bennett’s Founders Trilogy staring a sapphic woman with the unique ability to ‘hear’ the spellwork writing that her world uses to do magic with was a fun read.

The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donaghue deserves special mention here too. Set in Ireland during the Spanish flu, a young woman working as a nurse and caretaker for her brother who suffers severe PTSD from the war meets and falls in love with another woman who shows up at the hospital one day as a volunteer. Equal parts heartwarming and tragic book, the ending broke my heart into a thousand pieces, 5 stars.

I also finally got to get started on the Locked Tomb series after bouncing off the first book hard a year ago. I’ve only read the first two and found them both extremely engaging, at times funny, in other parts heartbreaking. These two poor girls. I can see why the caught on in Tumblr so hard. Extremely homestuckian movements going on in there.

And of course Ryka Aoki’s Light from Uncommon Stars, a tale of a transgender runaway violinst, the legendary teacher who needs her to sell her soul to the devil in order to get own back, and the alien refugee running the doughnut store down the way said violin teacher falls in love with remains by far my favorite thing I’ve read this year. Please go read this, I beg you.

Finally I want to mention two ongoing serial fiction works I’ve been reading, one is Unjust Depths by Madiha Santana. What if Gundum, but under the ocean and also they’re communists? I’ve only read through the first arc so far – Arc 3 is currently under way as I type, I believe. It’s been a fun read and I intend to get back to it soon.

The other is a bit more unconventional, and that would be Nora [LastNameHere]’s Blood in the Bosphorus Paradox Megacampign Let’s Play. Which started as a let’s play following the eastern roman empire through an increasingly alternate history and has transformed into some kind of amazing communism versus fascism war epic. Nora’s writing and approaching LP updates through various in and out of universe textual perspectives have been extremely enjoyable to follow with over the years with a creativity, humor, and humanity I don’t often see even in published books never mind a screenshot let’s play and I consider it something of a personal victory to have gotten my partner, who has never touched the something awful forms (probably for the better on the whole) into reading it now too.

[bookwyrminspiration]

I can behave normally around books

[m3djed]

"he would not fucking say that" but you ever be looking at fanart and suddenly its "he would not fucking have abs"

[inkskinned]

this is just my opinion but i think any good media needs obsession behind it. it needs passion, the kind of passion that's no longer "gentle scented candle" and is now "oh shit the house caught on fire". it needs a creator that's biting the floorboards and gnawing the story off their skin. creators are supposed to be wild animals. they are supposed to want to tell a story with the ferocity of eating a good stone fruit while standing over the sink. the same protective, strange instinct as being 7 and making mud potions in pink teacups: you gotta get weird with it.

good media needs unhinged, googling-at-midnight kind of energy. it needs "what kind of seams are invented on this planet" energy and "im just gonna trust the audience to roll with me about this" energy. it needs one person (at least) screaming into the void with so much drive and energy that it forces the story to be real.

sometimes people are baffled when fanfic has some stunning jaw-dropping tattoo-it-on-you lines. and i'm like - well, i don't go here, but that makes sense to me. of fucking course people who have this amount of passion are going to create something good. they moved from a place of genuine love and enjoyment.

so yeah, duh! saturday cartoons have banger lines. random street art is sometimes the most precious heart-wrenching shit you've ever seen. someone singing on tiktok ends up creating your next favorite song. youtubers are giving us 5 hours of carefully researched content. all of this is the impossible equation to latestage capitalism. like, you can't force something to be good. AI cannot make it good. no amount of focus-group testing or market research. what makes a story worth listening to is that someone cares so much about telling it - through dance, art, music, whatever it takes - that they are just a little unhinged about it.

one time my friend told me he stayed up all night researching how many ways there are to peel an orange. he wrote me a poem that made me cry on public transportation. the love came through it like pith, you know? the words all came apart in my hands. it tasted like breakfast.

[reclaiming-god]

thinking about this today

[greykolla-art]

I was rereading Skulduggery Pleasant and realised it was a goldmine for cute Alastor & Charlie moments.👌

I’m gonna project genuine friendship onto these fuckers and you can’t stop me!

[pangur-and-grim]

alright, this one's a little more silly

[egophiliac]

buckle up lads we're going BACK INTO THE BOOK

[givemeureyes]

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

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

HOT, SINGLE, UNSTUDIED SPONGES. 3000 NAUTICAL MILES AWAY. Come sail the distance and read Tiger Tiger!

[stump-not-found]

A Lifetime Served in a Little Cup

pt.1 / pt.2 / pt.3 / pt.4

---

bill, babygirl, the red flags get outta there

[bone-yarddz]

Audio books but it’s Michael Sheen reading books as Aziraphale and sometimes you hear David Tennant shouting something obnoxious as Crowley.

[okidraw]

i wanted to show them the stars.

[marciaillust]

an Angel

[umblrspectrum]

nevermind i figured out how to draw her