#the second book was probably my favorite

[hazel-janes-books-galore]

The first three books in Phantom Stallion series by Terri Farley. 

The Wild One, 2002

Mustang Moon, 2002

Dark Sunshine, 2002

[icewindandboringhorror]

Little bright colored outfit with a fun vest ~

(shoes from ebay like 10 years ago. everything else is thrifted)

[dont-hug-me-its-yuri]

Tracey, you need to stop writing fanfictions about your friends, its not normal…

[northern-passage]

Do you have any favorite horror book recommendations?

hhng... well i did a lot of reading like a month ago but i can't say much of it was very good.... otherwise im in a perpetual state of reading many books at once that i have still not finished... but from what i've read recently:

fluids & girl flesh by may leitz - these are both extreme horror novels and i actually still haven't finished girl flesh yet. fluids is about two women who meet on tinder during the pandemic and spend a few fucked up days together in a hotel where they hurt each other (and others) very badly.

girl flesh is about two (different) women who are both "famous" in different ways and find themselves kidnapped in the middle of nowhere together and it follows them as they try to escape through the texas mesa.

to be devoured by sara tantlinger - this is a novella and it's one of my top reads. about a woman who really really really wants to know what it's like to be a vulture and eat carrion. (apocalypse party who published the newest edition have quite a few interesting horror books/novellas. i have more from them on my to read list)

death in the mouth: original horror by people of color - this has been my "work read" for a while now which means i read it when i'm on break at work (this also means it's taking me forever to read it) it's an anthology of short horror stories and i've read four of them so far and have really enjoyed every single one.

not read recently but that i remember fondly:

annihilation by jeff vandermeer - i do recommend the entire southern reach trilogy but annihilation is the first one and also my favorite. you follow the biologist and the rest of her team into area x. weird stuff happens.

the luminous dead by caitlin starling - one woman in a high tech suit going on a solo caving expedition. she is guided (and sometimes controlled) by another woman who is able to talk through and manipulate the suit to get her to do what she wants.

bonus round two good horror stories i've read on itch.io lately:

childhood homes (and why we hate them) and gutless

[viillette]

it's so crazy how few historical fiction novels are like sharon kay penman's. the way that they're built out of the skeleton of the historical record seems so obvious, but there's so few people who are actually willing to commit to it in the way that she did. it seems like so often that's just a starting point which gets reformed to fit a coherent narrative, but she makes no real attempt to do that. there's themes and foils and patterns, but first and foremost it is a reconstruction. you can't really know what someone who lived that long ago was like, only what they did, and you can feel how she takes these isolated, dramatic events and builds a whole life around them. the books are nothing more than an answer to the question 'what might someone have been like, what could the history between these people have been, to possibly explain something like this?' the ability to string together a handful of facts and events from medieval chronicles to create people that feel so real, and psychology and relationships that develop so naturally that these distant, seemingly impenetrable choices suddenly feel so immediate and clear is just beyond belief. you know this probably wasn't actually how things happened, but it doesn't matter because it was something like this. the particulars are less important the crushing awareness that at one point all of this made sense. there was a time when all of this was right now. the world is unrecognizable and exactly the same. that's something which sounds very simple but is incredibly difficult to accomplish.

you come to know these people so well, their loves and hatreds and ambitions and failures, and those things are rarely resolved in the end. you know them from the time that they're children, you watch each one of them die, and none of it means anything in particular except that they were a human being. things which seem like they must be building to some tragic fallout end in anticlimax. things which seem utterly inconsequential in the moment manifest again decades later in cataclysmic disaster. and then you see it all play out again from the beginning with their children, and their children's children. all these uncanny echoes, this endlessly unfolding palimpsest of lives, each laid over the triumphs and mistakes of those who came before. i've never read anything so epic with so much mastery over the micro and macro levels of history. it's the minute, seemingly inconsequential everyday details, which build into a lifetime, which builds into generation of lives, which builds into the rise and fall of kingdoms and empires. it's the merciless endlessly turning wheel of fortune that replays the same songs in different keys again and again for all time. a person is both an individual with free will, and the prisoner of their blood and circumstances. somehow everything has infinite weight, is tied to everything that has come before and will come after, is the culmination of someone's entire existence—their pains and joys and fears and hopes—and yet is simultaneously completely meaningless, just one more victim of fate in an endless procession of lives and choices. the whole impotent tragedy of humanity is laid out in front of you and it's so repulsive and beautiful. it's deep love and unfathomable, senseless horror briefly and miraculously reverberating in a vacuum, an absurd aberration fading into silence.

if it's not obvious these books have made me cry like 10 different times

[cabeswaterdrowned]

I feel like I’m in a headspace where I really am in the mood to read urban fantasy more than anything else, part of me wants to start the Lynburn Legacy reread I’ve been wanting to start for a while and apparently unspoken is quite cheap on iBooks so that’s doable but I’m already doing my in depth trc reread buddy read with notes + rereading other things more casually. If I do the TLL reread I’ll definitely liveblog it because I want to propagandize it to my followers who are here for other modern or urban fantasy I talk about lol. Maybe I should read a Sarah Rees Brennan book I haven’t read yet? I also have been wanting to start reading the Vampire Chronicles but I think I should leave that for when I have more concentration to give over to it / my brain is processing new content better. The TVD books are another possibility, if nothing else I think that could be really funny. There are other possible candidates but if someone wants to recommend me a thing now is your chance

[ghostcheerio]

I had to reread Wuthering Heights for an English class and have become obsessed with it again, but then I remembered that I drew Heathcliff when I originally read it in 2020. I don’t know why I never posted it, as I’m still kind of proud of how it turned out!

[spock-adoodledoo]

Maomao couldn't understand at all. To achieve his goal, to want to leave the imperial throne. If his goal was to have Maomao, she thought he must be insane. Hot, almost like a burning red iron. Using this heat on Maomao would only make things hard for her. All she can return is the temperature of lukewarm water. She slowly reached out a hand towards Jinshi's cheek, touching him with a body temperature the same as that of lukewarm water. [etc. rest omitted, got lazy]

slapdash translation but T_T T_TT_TT_T_T_T_T i saw this extract posted (with a better translation) someplace, i forgot where, but i didn't know the context behind it WAAAAAAAHHJHHHHHHH screaming crying etc

I CAN DIE PEACEFULLY NOW ;_; ;_;

[comradecowplant]

LMAO after all the backlash, the Pretty Little Liars reboot retconned Imogen giving her baby to Aria & Groomer 🤣 #bullyingworks

[the-physicality]

X

[trekkele]

yeah yeah batman fans are insufferable stop pretending any one else's fans are any better

[nowtoboldlygo]

i'm not obsessed with charts, you're obsessed with charts!!!!!!!! and also mind your business!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[paradife-loft]

me reading Babel: yeah Ramy Mirza is definitely giving me ADHD vibes for sure. dunno how intentional that is tho considering I could easily see inspiration for those aspects of his personality being drawn generally from RF Kuang's experience in academia rather than written with specific intent

the condensed Ramy backstory interlude: "in the Wilson household they called him the little professor"

me: ohhhhhhh, ok nevermind then, got it 👍

[fungi-maestro]

I think with reflection on the BB movie that it was Pretty Good. Not perfect but the last movie DC put out was The Flash so it felt pretty amazing comparatively. The story seemed to give my buddy that really likes Jaime pause. Apparently it doesn't set up the origin story to make sense for what happened in the comics (she expressed some concern because in addition to the plot holes, James Gunn may be planning to reboot the DC universe soon, which could make this movie pointless), although I haven't read the comics so i can't really speak on that. Plot was okay, it's about what you would expect. There weren't any crazy marvelesque fake outs to mislead the audience. It was alright. One pretty important logistics thing is that there was one part where there were pretty extreme flashing lights. If you're photosensitive, be cautious. There's a point where some characters are in a lab with the antagonists that has strobing right after it in the form of broken ceiling lights. Not story related but I figured I should include it in my review.

[doomingthenarrative]

obsessed with her (heather from we were promised spotlights)

[artemismatchalatte]

2023 Pinterest 50 Book Reading Challenge

21. A Book that Scares You

Second Sex by Simone De Beauvior

It's around 700 pages of theory translated from another language. I have read longer books, read theory before, and read translations before (I enjoy doing so) but the combination of the length, subject and the fact it's translated might make this hard for me to get through.