#haven’t read the books in so long

[novelconcepts]

As gently and politely as I can put this: that post I made about outliving him is meant to be an anti-suicide affirmation. It is not meant to be a blinders-on assessment of reality, of the future boiling down to whether one man lives or dies. It is meant to reassure myself and everyone else that the horrors come, and the horrors go, that nothing is permanent, that hope persists with split knuckles and blood on its teeth. Things are rough. Things will likely get rougher. My eyes are open to that, but in the end, the first thing they want from us is to roll over, surrender, die. And I will not be granting that wish. I deserve to be here. You deserve to be here. We deserve to see the sun rise. And it will. I promise.

[aimfall]

after all my rbs I have decided to give back to the bear gregor community

[am-i-interrupting]

Someone please take this idea, run with it, & tag me in it. Burdock’s sibling’s name getting drawn & Haymitch having to mentor them. Hating himself because he feels he didn’t do a good enough job at distancing himself. Unaware that they’re just happy to get to spend time with their childhood crush before they go off to what they believe to be their death.

[plum-petals]

I accidentally read 90% of The Cruel Prince in one sitting last night and didn’t get to bed until 3AM…

It’s all Jude’s fault (except not bc she’s never done a thing wrong in her life)

She’s just my type! I love pretty girls who spy, with sharp things and poison!

[jeanmoreaue]

jean moreau is nico coded.. jeremy/jean are will/nico. jean and elodie are nico and bianca

[rustbeltjessie]

I checked My Own Private Idaho out from the library, because I haven’t seen it in far too long, and when I was looking for it in the library catalog, I stumbled across a book that I’m super excited to read. Here’s the description from the Fantagraphics website:

Mannie Murphy is a gender queer Portland native. This work of graphic nonfiction, told in the style of an illustrated diary, begins as an affectionate reminiscence of the author's 1990s teenage infatuation with the late actor River Phoenix but morphs into a remarkable, sprawling account of the city of Portland and state of Oregon's dark history of white nationalism. Murphy details the relationship between white supremacist Tom Metzger (former KKK Grand Wizard and founder of the White Aryan Resistance) and the "Rose City" street kids like Ken Death that infiltrated Van Sant's films -- a relationship that culminates in an infamous episode of Geraldo. Murphy brilliantly weaves 1990s alternative culture, from Kurt Cobain and William Burroughs to Keanu Reeves and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, with two centuries of the Pacific Northwest's shameful history as a hotbed for white nationalism: from the Whitman massacre in 1847 and the Ku Klux Klan's role in Portland's city planning in the early 1900s to the brutal treatment of Black people displaced in the 1948 Vanport flood and through the 2014 armed standoff with Cliven Bundy's cattle ranch. In Murphy's personal reflections and heart-racing descriptions of scenes like infamous campfire kiss in My Own Private Idaho, the artist's story becomes a moral anchor to a deeply amoral regional history and marks the incredible debut of a talented new voice to the graphic medium.

[cellias]

ok yes the “she met a pinecone’s fate” felt so mean and out of place with the empathetic Percy we see in the book’s narrative BUT !!

when rewatching the scene my attention was brought back to what annabeth says before that— “she fought valiantly and met a hero’s fate.” i remember thinking about how brainwashed (for lack of a better word) annabeth is. she respects the gods immensely at this point in her life, all she wants is for her mother to notice her, because that’s all she knows. her father let the emotional neglect go so far that she ran away at seven years old, and her mother only communicates with her a few times.

her idea of a hero is the willingness to self-sacrifice, and the bearing of tragedy in life, but this idea disregards the fact that had the gods been more attentive and present, thalia wouldn’t have had to do sacrifice her life. her concept of a hero’s fate ignores the unjust fact that thalia was only recognized by her father in death and is hyper-focused on the honor that it is to be given a god’s time of day. we also see annabeth holding the gods to a high esteem later in the episode when she argues with medusa in favor of the story that she’s heard rather than what the person who lived through it has to say. as well as when she tries to stop percy from sending medusa’s head to olympus.

this ties into percy’s “impertinent” behavior toward the gods. we know percy thinks the gods are fucked up, he shows it in the book and the series early on when he learns about them. he’s mad at poseidon and acknowledges that it’s his fault sally is gone, unprotected and seemingly unnoticed, and that percy is kinda left to fend for himself in a new world. in the series he prays to his mom instead of his father despite seeing the tribute the other kids give to their godly parents. he rejects that side of his parentage because he feels his mom is the only one who deserves the credit for his life. he says that the gods had been unfair to thalia in the book when he learns about her. he defends himself against the Zeus’s accusation by saying “‘i’m just a kid!’” i think that line is important, and especially what annabeth says about it later on, because it shows how different their mindsets are.

percy has been protected and loved by his mom his entire life up to this point. she’s tried to give him a good life, and that’s the root of his character. he realizes the incredulity of this entire situation because he has not been fighting to survive without the love and support of a parent since he was young. annabeth left her home at a young age, was left in dangerous conditions, and fought for her life when she was only 7, and she’s been training for war ever since. she’s surrounded by kids who went through the same thing, specifically luke and formerly thalia. in the series, annabeth takes the “I’m just a kid” claim and reveals she finds it naive and ignorant, because he’s a part of something bigger than him and that he needs to accept his fate. (again, she’s been preparing for this her whole life, he’s been thrust into it after losing his mom)

when percy hears this story from grover about three demigods on the run, two of them near his age when they went through it, he is hearing a story about three kids being ignored and left to fend for themselves by their parents. he’s already angry about the gods’ lack of interference and how normal it seems to be at camp. when he hears annabeth regard thalia and her ultimate fate as heroic and respectable, he doesn’t see it as the same. he finds thalia heroic and brave, but her fate not so much. annabeth’s admiration contrasts his questioning toward the gods. percy most likely found Zeus’s decision to finally notice his daughter by turning her into a tree as anything but heroic, more pathetic.

at least that’s how i interpret the “she met a pinecone’s fate” line. I think it adds to his reputation and growing disdain for the gods and their attitude. idk what do u guys think 😫

[lovvelorrn]

i think i’m entering a new hyperfixation and oh man it’s fucking bridgerton

[girlvinland]

I got tagged by @256rem to do 6 books I want to read in 2025! I saw you want to read The Well of Loneliness too (also I may have added some of your other books to my to-read list bc they sounded good lol)!

Tagging @badbadsomegood @fenharael @ghostlystrangers @busyfish @ruruss @heraldofcrow and anyone else who sees this and wants to do it too.

[titsthedamnseason]

whew i just finished rereading my ulu reading thread so you know what that means….last time ever doing this for the like us series (��)……nobody like us reading thread starts now!!!

[alaskan-wallflower]

do you ship Purly?

ehhh, not really. it’s one of those “not for me” ships, i suppose. i think that pony and curly are definitely friends tho who get themselves into a fair amount of trouble, but honestly to me like…pony feels wayyyy too young to be shipping with anybody in my opinion. maybe if we’re talking about the That Was Then and This is Now timeline then sure, i can see him being with someone (since i think that it takes place a whole year later…idk i haven’t read TWTTIN, i just read the parts w pony in them lmao—been meaning to read that but i gotta finish my school books first…still got two more going lmao, the english book i’m reading is really good but that’s a different topic!!)

ANYWAY back to the topic at hand…no. i don’t really ship pony with anyone—i prefer him and curly much more as friends. i don’t quite ship anything in this fandom, save stevepop, but that’s just cause they’re dynamic intrigues me, and i don’t really feel that click with any other ship, yknow?

tldr; no. that doesn’t mean i don’t think ponyboy and curly wouldn’t get up to their fair amounts of trouble tho. plus i don’t really have enough on curly to get a grasp on his character, therefore their dynamic together.

[howldean]

like i genuinely can’t remember the last time i read an entire book for pleasure from start to finish before this year. it’s somewhere in the covid brain fog but it has been over a calendar year. and i’d been struggling about it for years before then. and now we’re ten days into 2025 and i’ve finished two books and am halfway through my third which i only started today. i’ve missed this so much. i love reading so bad

[rollercoasterwords]

I can’t read atwmd on my computer bc/ of a technical issue w/ ao3 so i tried to print it out onto like. standard sized paper so i could read in my spare time and it was 540 pages goodbye 🧍‍♂️

yeah that checks out the word doc i write it in is on page 574 rn 🫡 it’s 180k words babe

[songofwizardry]

belated Ramadan Mubarak!

I try to do a bit of reading every Ramadan, so, for accountability, and so that when I inevitably don’t get through them I can find my list next year—here's my (extremely very ambitious) reading list for this year!

(suggestions are very welcome, with the warning that I very much may not get through them. this year, I’m trying to learn more about Islam and liberation theology and I’m trying to read more abolitionist texts, and of course my standard queer Muslim books, I’m trying to read more poetry by Muslim poets I don’t know well, and every Ramadan I try and only read fiction by Muslim authors, so there’s some sff on here too!)

non-fic:

memoirs:

We Have Always Been Here by Samra Habib (reread)

Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H

The Colour of God by Ayesha S Chaudhry

Love is an Ex-Country by Randa Jarrar

A Dutiful Boy by Mohsin Zaidi

other nonfic:

Islam and Anarchism by Mohamed Abdou

We Do This Til We Free Us by Mariame Kaba (reread-ish? I never fully finished it)

Let This Radicalise You by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba

Qur'an and Woman by Amina Wadud (which I also never finished)

The Women's Khutbah Book by Fatima Seedat and Sa'diyya Shaikh

Qur’an of the Oppressed: Liberation Theology and Gender Justice in Islam by Shadaab Rahemtulla

With Stones in Our Hands: Writings on Muslims, Racism, and Empire by Sohail Daulatzai and Junaid Rana

fiction:

The Candle and the Flame by Nafiza Azad

Mirage by Somaiya Daud (yes I still have not read this)

The Light at the Bottom of the World by London Shah

Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion by Bushra Rehman

A Tempest of Tea by Hafsah Faisal

poetry:

Halal If You Hear Me (anthology)

If They Come For Us by Fatimah Asghar (reread)

Hagar Poems by Mohja Kahf

Bad Diaspora Poems by Momtaza Mehri

The Fortieth Day by Kazim Ali

Black Seeds by Tariq Touré

Postcolonial Banter by Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan

[confusedspaceotter]

(Meme stolen from Reddit

[sadgirlautumn]

This is a bad picture but I’m so hyped about my new books arriving today <3