#i'm going to watch instead of the book

[akai-anna]

i'll come out and say it *inhales deeply* Emma is boring

[vaguely-concerned]

are. are you telling me that if the romanced mage warden dies and alistair is king, he deadass stares greagoir down over her dead body and grants the circle of ferelden its autonomy after ordering it rebuilt somewhere safer. first you have to deliberately leave him behind so he won't die for you and then he does that for you once you're gone, even when you're broken up??? absolute and literal king behaviour of the highest order????? the actions speak louder than words of it all??????? I think I hauve covid

[aethersea]

I've always wanted to learn bookbinding, ever since I was a wee little nerd, but there are a lot of things I've always wanted to learn, and this one has both a daunting upfront materials cost and a daunting upfront research cost. however, my sister is a jewel among siblings and gave me for christmas last year a handy dandy bookbinding manual, a block of good paper, and a little bag of tools.

but I still didn't have a suitable workspace, nor any of the many important tools and materials that she didn't include in her gift. so I just read the manual and pined. until maybe a month ago I got fed up with pining, flattened a cardboard box for a cutting mat, and went to town.

and I'm real proud of myself, so here's me rambling, plus photos!

I went to the thrift store and got glue + some fabric to bind the cover, went to Michaels for a paintbrush (and later went back for a metal ruler lmao it's amazing how useful it is to have a straightedge for cutting the paper), and...could not find material for the cover boards. so I went home and pined some more. but the urges were too strong, so after a couple hours of moping I got a stack of printer paper at the grocery store (I could not bring myself to use the good paper for my first, inevitably weak attempts, I just couldn't do it) and started making a little booklet. which was a great idea, it turned out, since it makes for good practice with cutting the paper, measuring things, punching holes in the signatures, etc.

I have a big box of greeting cards from Michaels, which I used for the covers. it didn't feel like I was making a Real Book, so I got some colored paper from the stationery store and used that for end papers.

so fancy~

galvanized by this success, I ordered a stack of chipboard online to use for cover boards; and once I was confident that I could cut paper without making it look too stupid (getting that straightedge ruler sure helped lol), I made signatures out of the good paper, left them under some heavy books overnight since I don't have a book press, and then punched holes in them! (huzzah for this nice video on getting the holes right)

my sister's gift included good linen thread. it's unwaxed, but after some poking around on r/bookbinding it looks like that just means I'll have to be more careful to avoid tangles and keep good tension. I am fine with this. I can be extra attentive. (I considered just running it over a beeswax candle, but one commenter said if your wax has paraffin in it, it could melt in a hot car, ruining the spine. I can't guarantee my candle is 100% beeswax, I didn't make it, so maybe we just move on.)

I don't have good linen fabric to use for the tapes, but the important part there is that the fabric be thin, sturdy, and not stretchy. the probably-cotton I got from the thrift store fits the bill, so it'll do!

this is a french link stitch, which I got from this exceedingly good tutorial. apparently it's strong enough on its own that for a book of this size, I don't actually need tapes, but I'd already cut the things so eh here we are. and tapes plus french link will make it a stronger binding still (according to a friendly redditor on r/bookbinding), so we carry on.

specifically we carry on to the gluing step. now as I mentioned, I do not have a book press, and you....kinda need one for this step. you need to hold the book block in place with the signatures facing upwards, pressed together hard enough that the glue won't run down between them and stick the pages together (though you do want the glue to get between them just a little, just for like a 16th of an inch). you at least need some clamps and a couple boards to sandwich the book block with.

but you know what? I'm not a professional, this is my first ever book, if it's a little bit off it'll be fine. so we grab all the heaviest books off the bookshelf and improvise.

it's fine! I'm sure it's fine! and just in case it's not, I've tucked a bit of cardboard underneath to catch any glue that drips down so it won't land on the floor. see? I'm prepared! I'm acing this.

and actually, it really was fine. I used clear elmer's glue, applied with a flat paintbrush from the art supplies aisle at Michael's, and frankly I liked the way the flat paintbrush let me slip glue in between the signatures. I did poke around on a couple bookbinding sites to see what kind of glue I should use, and the gist is that although there are better options than this, elmer's glue is perfectly serviceable, and the main downside is it's not archival grade. but I don't need my first bookbinding attempts to last 200 years, that's fine.

the next step is to add the mull. mull is a specific type of fabric – extremely loose-weave linen – and the idea is to paste it down over the spine to essentially hold the tapes and signatures all in place in relation to each other.

but I don't have mull! so I'm using more of the thrift store probably-cotton, because it's thin enough and not really stretchy at all. I'm sure this will be fine too. I painted a layer of glue onto the spine, then left it to dry a bit while I measured and cut the fabric, then painted a generous stripe of glue down the center, where it'll affix onto the spine. then I added a bit more glue to the spine, just to be sure, and pressed the mull into place, rubbing it thoroughly to make sure it's firmly affixed to every signature, with no creases in the fabric or air bubbles beneath it.

honestly I might have overdone it on the glue. I've never done this before, I don't know! I think it's okay, though – I tried not to ever let it become a thick layer, just a slight coating, since the danger of too much glue is that it might crack once dry and weaken the spine.

and now we leave it in the press overnight to dry, and pick up the next step in the morning!

[fromtheseventhhell]

Personally I think it's time for Arya stans to unionize and collectively start being meaner. I'm tired of being "nice" and "fair" to other characters when she gets routinely misinterpreted and turned into a background character. We already get called bullies for pointing out what's written in the books so we might as well embrace it.

[seventh-district]

not even gonna tag this properly bc i don't wanna get Involved but i do have some Thoughts i need to get out into the void so here we go

(aaa quick edit: CW for mention/discussion of Boothill leaks)

[sneaky-snake-907]

TBOB spoilers:

[toaster-fire-art]

There's something to be said for shades of gray

(they have consumed my every thought)

[messy-does-cosmology]

Lol there is this LGBT bookshop near me run by this married couple and they mostly just stock their own self-published books and graphic novels

[frizzle-mcshizzle]

📖

📖: If you had to remove one book from the series, which would you choose?

ive talked about this before but Unraveled.

it's such an obvious cash grab, if you're writing a long series you cannot switch POV ten books in and write a .5 book that's not how it's supposed to work. its bad writing. she's obviously stretching out the series to make money, it feels like it's gonna be a plotless book with maybe one or two plot points that really don't need to be in a separate book. I genuinely feel like she's actually gone down in the target age. because originally while said 8 to 12, the first book had children being kidnapped and tortured and addressed grief and adoption in like a genuine heartfelt way. it felt more like a book for 12-14yos. with what being posted about unraveled it really feels like a book for middle schoolers which I understand is the official target age of the series but it wasn't always like that, a good children's book can be enjoyed by adults, and kotlc is no longer like that.

on top of that the series has been going down in quality since nightfall. she had a chance to save it with Stellarlune, because everyone was cutting her slack for having babies. but it just got worse. The thing is she's a genuinely good writer you can see that in the first four books which is why I'm so disappointed in where the series is going.

[leafy-m]

So I hit my 700th edit for the WHA wiki today, because I am a totally normal person

[longagoitwastuesday]

*reading a thesis about the evolution of the concept of infinity in China with a large amount of tabs open with diverse articles or word combinations to further look for information, all the while seething, blood boiling* I wish Satoru Gojo would fucking cease to exist

[uwudonoodle]

Can I just rant for a minute? I just finished one of the worst books I've ever read. (It was for a book club, otherwise I never would've picked it up.) It was Terms of Endearment (spoilers ahead), which is a recognizable and popular book, adapted into an award winning movie. I don't care. God, it was so terrible. The epitome of everything I hate about literary fiction: It's set in the most drab version of reality. Every character is an asshole, who cheats on their spouse, and then dies.

This is supposedly a story about adults, yet they all had the emotional intelligence of impulsive teenagers. I lost track of how many affairs there were. There was destruction of property, drunk driving, assault and battery, two attempts at murder, domestic violence, dysfunctional marriages, child abuse, narcissistic manipulation, and just downright cruel behavior... I'm exhausted.

I hate all of these characters. Even the most empathetic ones eventually turned on me. They were not interesting. I know people like them in real life, and I actively avoid them. I don't want to spend time with these characters (the audiobook was 15 looong hours). Who finds this entertaining (if you do, my apologies)? Even in the end when a character was dying, I had trouble drumming up any sympathy. I kind of wished more of them had died, seeing as none of them really grew or became better people.

Maybe the book club was a bad idea. I'm at the point in my life where I don't have a "to be read" list anymore, and I don't take recommendations. I just pick whatever book strikes my fancy in the moment, because my entire childhood I had miserable books shoved down my throat. I only pushed through this one because it's another member's very favorite, and she's wanted to do it for a while. We all deserve a turn to pick the book. (I think mine is next month. 🤞)

And no, I don't think it necessarily builds character to read things outside your comfort zone. My mental health took a nosedive this last fortnight. I don't want to live in reality right now let alone read about the worst version of it. I want my stories to restore my faith in humanity, not push it further over a cliff. Anyway, I'm going to go read a whimsical story about space pirates to cleanse my soul from the fictional version of "Am I the Asshole?" where everyone is unquestionably the asshole.

[fingertipsmp3]

Ughhhhhhh I hate writing and I hate not writing and I hate myself

[theotherrichardpapen]

Reading List 2023-2024 📚

The Secret History - Donna Tartt

The Song or Achilles - Madeline Miller

The Myth of the Wrong Body - Miquel Missé

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Remainder - Tom McCarthy

If We Were Villains - M. L. Rio

Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

Bones and All - Camille DeAngelis

The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt

The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

Beyond Good and Evil - Friedrich Nietzsche

Diaries - Franz Kafka

Frankenstein - Mary Shelly

Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Tales - H. P. Lovecraft

The Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri

1984 - George Orwell

The Iliad and The Odyssey - Homer

Unnatural Causes - Dr Richard Shepherd

Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and Other Misfortunes - Eric LaRocca

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson

The Trial of the Templars - Malcolm Barber

Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco

Demian - Hermann Hesse

Pride & Prejudice - Jane Austen

Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

The Atlas Six - Olivie Blake

Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo - Taylor Jenkins Reids

Ninth House - Leigh Bardugo

Vita Nostra - Maryna & Serhiy Dyachenko

Pageboy: A Memoir - Elliot Page

Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut

The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodr Dostoevsky

(updated: 03/01/24)

[ikolit]

that strange new worlds had the episode premise of having Spock temporarily turned fully human and then managed to miss in every aspect of his characterization and how that would affect his relationship with the rest of the crew is truly amazing

[nomattertheoceans]

I'm rewatching His Dark Materials and I might need to take a break for a few days, this story has too much power over my emotions.