Random Booknerd @ashibooknerd - Tumblr Blog

Holy places are dark places. It is life and strength, not knowledge and words, that we get in them. Holy wisdom is not clear and thin like water, but thick and dark like blood.

C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (via h-o-r-n-g-r-y)

thepositivetumbler

Good morning from California! Where are my followers today? 💐💛 #workhardplayhard #quote #quotes #inspiration #motivation #positive #life #love #lifestyle #happy #happiness #truth #girls #women #men #beauty #beautiful

universitybookstore

Banned Books Week is coming! Each year the American Library Association—and book-lovers everywhere–celebrate the freedom to read by bringing the spotlight to frequently banned and challenged titles from around the world. This year Banned Books Week runs from September 27 through October 3 with a focus on Young Adult literature. According to Judith Platt, chair of the Banned Books Week National Committee, “Young Adult books are challenged more frequently than any other type of book. […] These are the books that give young readers the ability to safely explore the sometimes scary real world.”

Some of our favorite books are those that are challenged (funny how that works!). See below for some of the banned/challenged books we’re sharing in our Children’s Books department as well as the reasons they were banned. (Also check out the American Library Association website for more frequently banned titles by decade.)

In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak. Reasons: Nudity, offensive language, sexually explicit.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin, Jr. Reasons: Mistakenly removed from curriculum instead of Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation (both authors named Bill Martin).

It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris. Reasons: Nudity, sex education, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group. Additional reasons: “alleges it child pornography”.

Captain Underpants (series) by Dav Pilkey. Reasons: Offensive language, unsuited for age group, violence.

A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein. Reasons: A suggestive illustration that might encourage kids to break dishes so they won’t have to dry them.

Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzgerald. Reasons: Teaches children to lie, spy, talk back, and curse.

Drama by Raina Telgemeier. Reasons: Sexually explicit.

Blubber by Judy Blume. Reasons: The characters curse and the mean-spirited ringleader is never punished for her cruelty.

Looking for Alaska by John Green. Reasons: Drugs/alcohol/smoking, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group.

His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman. Reasons: Political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, violence.

maggie-stiefvater-deactivated20

ok. Maggie, i'm just going to say it. I don't think you're the right person to speak on a panel about writing the other. You're not exactly Other, nor are most of your characters. There are lots of people from marginalized groups devoted to doing this education, and their voices should be the ones talking about this. Pls think about how that erases those voices in favor of maintaining the status quo--straight white voice talking. I hope you'll reconsider doing this particular panel.

Dear fancyflowercrown,

I get your concerns. This sort of panel is not the first of its kind: here’s Jim Hines’ talking about when he moderated a Writing the Other panel. When NerdCon asked me to be on it, I had the same thought that Hines notes in the comments of that post:

When I mention “Writing the Other” as a panel idea or discussion topic, most of the younger writers immediately went to race/gender/orientation. Whereas when this has come up in discussion with more established writers, they went to “You mean like writing aliens, right?”

I assumed I was asked to be on the panel because I’m write about magic and mental illness, and magic that sometimes is a metaphor for mental illness. As someone who is tired of seeing OCD and suicide treated flippantly in novels, I’m looking forward to talking about how I’d like to see writers who don’t have personal experience with those things tackle them respectfully without making the story an Issues story.

But I also assumed I was asked to be on the panel because I, like every writer, write about things that I don’t know firsthand. Yes, the Other can mean race. It can also mean gender. It can mean sexuality. It can also mean writing about someone in a profession that is not yours, from any economic background that is not yours, living an age you have yet to be, possessing a skill that you know nothing about, dwelling in a city or country you’ve never visited. I wrote about horses and Irish music because I knew horses and Irish music, but I remember being a reader who ripped authors a new one because they got either of those complicated elements wrong in a novel — they clearly hadn’t lived it or researched it well enough and yet they tackled it anyway. Now I’m the writer who cautiously steps into lives that I myself have not lived. Fear of getting it wrong stops every writer from going literary places they can’t say they’ve put their hands on. That fear means that a lot of writers choose the safest option: only writing stories about people who are just like them.

This panel is about that.

Which means it’s related to your concern. Because yes, we need racially diverse voices talking about writing racially diverse experiences — the We Need Diverse Books movement is doing some amazing things on this front. But we also need to get people like me — white bestsellers — to write racially diverse novels. As I’ve noted before, I’ve done a shitty job with it, for a lot of reasons, some my fault, some from the establishment telling me not to write about “unpopular” races. I’ve also occasionally done a shitty job talking about how I’ve done a shitty job, because it’s easy for the first reaction to be going on the defensive. I’d like to talk about that.

This panel is also about that.

urs,

Stiefvater

loitersquadtv

thebestoftumbling

girls teaching dog to bounce on mattress

poser-in-a-parkuhh

Love it!

bromojumbo

*slams fist on table* THIS IS THE KIND OF CONTENT I LIKE TO SEE

ashibooknerd

This makes me question why I don’t have a dog. Also, notice how the dog is a bully breed and isn’t biting the kid’s faces off. #nannydogs

fitmencook

Egg baked avocado, egg whites, skillet grilled red potatoes. Boom. (traduccion abajo)

Keep reading

fitmencook

Dark Chocolate & granola covered blackberries. (traduccion abajo)

Keep reading

medea-azyungele

when you’re in your twenties and start to realize how young the protagonists of the novels you read are:

teaandinanity

And at some point the protagonist goes,

And you just go,

ashibooknerd

I find this in both the fictional world and the real world. It's okay. When they grow up then they'll know that they were still just babies at 16.

zenpencils

James Rhodes - Is that not worth exploring?

okolnir

my heart is in pieces

but I have no one to blame for this of course; I talk about nostalgia and depression a lot when it comes to music, how I ~can’t~ do it anymore because of the ~time and commitment~ I need in order to do music the way I want, but in the end I have everything I need and if I actually cared enough, I should have done so much more than mourning my loss while my piano dry up in a corner like a coffin to its sound