Bat's Book Talk

where I talk about books and writing and all sorts of fun stuff, feel free to drop in and say hi (i'm also @dimensionalhuman)

[04k96]

[okthatsgreat]

i <3 when women characters feel they aren't able to express sadness in "normal" ways because they don't feel safe enough to cry in their environment so instead they opt for the more acceptable strong emotion of rage and they get recklessly angry at the people around them in fits of misplaced sadness and terror and make irreversible decisions and hurt others. i dont care as much when this happens to a man

[mossworth]

Guys, queers. Specifically my fellow queers.

I work at a library. We do this thing where, every so often, we weed the collection. It hurts to see books go, but it's necessary to make sure there's room in the library for new materials.

I have seen so much support for the library in text, and I've seen folks pass around those beautiful "queer your library" flyers. Keep doing that. That's great. Nothing wrong with that. But you HAVE to turn your words into action. We MUST remember to actually go to our local organizations and libraries and actually, with our own fucking hands, interact with these materials we want to see more of.

My branch is medium-sized for a library, maybe a little small. We don't have as many materials as I'd like, but we have fundamentals. Tell me why, even with all the verbal support I've gotten from my local community for the library as a resource for our LGBT+ community, every single trans biography and a good chunk of our vaguely queer theory books were on the list. This isn't a scheme to take the books off the shelves, it isn't another bigoted American governmental push. The only thing we look at when we weed is how long it's been since the last time the item was checked out.

Three years.

No one in my community interacted in any meaningful way with the few books on trans life and history we physically had on the shelves for three fucking years.

I promise you the materials you want and need are there, but this isn't a horde. This isn't a static safety net. You have to use them. You MUST use them or, in the future, maybe in three years, they *won't* be there anymore.

This isn't a vague post, there's no one person I'm hinting at or calling out. I'm not even talking directly to anyone who's directly in my line of sight. I just want everyone to hear this. Big library, small library, whatever. Doesn't matter. Please, we cannot be losing our shelf visibility like this.

[alanfromrochester]

I work in a different library and can confirm, it's a decision based on popularity not censorship

we're big enough to have lots of shelf space but still have the problem on a different scale. We do have a back storage room rather than completely getting rid of some things, but having to ask for that might be a barrier for sensitive subject matter and prevent people from casually stumbling across something of interest

[paintedpigeon1]

Yep. Different library worker here, we weeded adult non-fiction recently bc it's most rarely used and we needed to clear a bookshelf of space, and there were a decent number of queer books on the list. Thankfully not all of them, but some (we had a lot lol). Our criteria is also no borrows in 3yrs. I can't borrow the whole list by myself. I do try to get these books in, and the local authority are happy to buy them, but we need space for new books every so often and we can't keep everything forever! If you want them, you have to use them!

(incidentally, the whole list was 35 pages long, which... please borrow the books you want people)

[qbdatabase]

I didn't have time to comment the first time I reblogged, but I can add now:

I'm also a librarian and queer books are almost always cut first when we have to weed for space or prioritize new releases over old items because no one reads them

I will say, when I worked at a large downtown location, we had a "browsing card" that we would check out items we found taken off the shelf and left on a table, as an example of a book that had clearly been read, just not checked out by anyone

it's possible queer books do actually get a bit of unfair treatment in this regard because people may be nervous or outright scared to check them out onto an account with their name on it. so they get browsed at a much higher rate, but if a library doesn't have a specific system in place (or need for it) to count browsed items, then it looks like they aren't being used and they get weeded

for other librarians, a browsing card is a great idea if you have enough staff for the extra work / enough items left out to justify it

for patrons, check out queer books even if you don't read them! you're not lying or committing any type of fraud. you're keeping books on the shelf long enough for pride season when people are interested in checking them out again and for people scared to use their own accounts or who don't have library cards

for anyone nervous about using their library card, libraries do not keep search histories of what you check out!! this means even if the government does come back with a warrant, *wet farting noise* too bad! it doesn't exist!

so please check out queer books!

[vtothefun]

I have to wonder how often they aren't checked out because those in an exploratory period may not feel safe enough for them to go home with them, too. Kids, for example, or folks who have ended up in a het marriage that... Doesn't feel like it's quite right (or may be physically abusive).

[mossworth]

This is most definitely one of the causes of this. That's why it's so important for folks who *can* to *do*.

It feels like such a small thing, but all movements are made up of small things! We have this mindset that in order to get everything done, everyone must be doing their (or *the*) absolute best at all times. But not everyone can do the same things, to the same degree, with the same amount of productivity or success. Not everyone can; sometimes, they're the ones that need help. Sometimes people just need help.

This post is very much so intended for the people who can. I've seen a lot of replies from folks who say they don't have to (or don't think about) checking out or requesting queer books from the library specifically because they *can* buy them, can pirate them, or already have them in their house or on their computers or phones. But in instances like that, keeping these books in circulation is less for you and more for the people who can't. The folks who come to the library, who don't have access to internet--or even electricity--at home and would never--have never--been able to interact with this "ubiquitous queer community" we have here online who has made so many of these. materials so avaliable to the rest of us.

And... if I can be a little frank. Sometimes the hyperaccessibility of these materials online (through pirating, cheap e-book copies, etc) gives people a false sense of security. It implies that these things are an infinate resource, good for "When I get around to it".

And often, you won't. There's so much to read and so much to do. So much to download and so much to sit down and stare at for hours. That kind of mental scope puts books in people's hands (or phones), but never in their heads.

But the moment your favorite document archival site gets knocked offline for breaching copyright or your go-to mega corporate audiobook distributor decides it doesn't want "those" materials anymore, what's left? What did you download? What information did you internalize? Did you ever get around to it? If you did, great, but what good does that do for the person who didn't? Are you going to be the one to redistribute that information? Are you going to communicate it in the place of the author whose words are no longer publically accesible or, mostly avaliable, but only behind hefty paywalls and financial gatekeeping? How would someone else get a hold of it? How could they, if they wanted?

[vtothefun]

This is excellent info.

What are some good books to check out for those who can?

[mossworth]

Gosh... there's so many options. I wouldn't know where to start without knowing who I'm talking to and what they're looking for. What I can recommend is for folks to check out creators like @makingqueerhistory who have spent just a ridiculously beautiful amount of time collecting queer history and book lists! You'll find something in seconds reading their page.

Personal pitch: I liked the books Tar Hollow Trans and Gay Poems for Red States. Both great.

[makingqueerhistory]

I'm glad I was tagged in this because it means I can cosign (and also add a little nugget of info).

I live in a province that is currently trying to ban queer books from libraries, and as a library patron, this is terrifying. 95% of the books I read are from the library and a lot of them are way out of my budget to buy personally.

Making Queer History would not exist without the school library I skipped class in to write articles. It would not exist without my friends with library cards for their universities sharing them and getting me access to rare texts. I would not be able to read as much as I do without Libby and Hoopla. If I have ever given you a book recommendation, know that I likely got it from the library first.

I cannot overstate the importance of protecting libraries and checking out queer books. And I want to say thank you to everyone above for being as passionate as I am about queer books in libraries.

Love y'all <3

[theangrybird599]

I genuinely didn't know this was the case. Welp my happy ass is going to the library.

[firstdayasadumpling]

‘Were there any oliphaunts?’ asked Sam, forgetting his fear in his eagerness for news of strange places.

'No, no oliphaunts. What are oliphaunts?' said Gollum.

Sam stood up, putting his hands behind his back (as he always did when ‘speaking poetry’), and began…

Frodo stood up. He had laughed in the midst of all his cares when Sam trotted out the old fireside rhyme of Oliphaunt, and the laugh had released him from hesitation.

[artbyblastweave]

The old world is dying. The new world had that thing happen where the umbilical cord gets caught around the neck as it's coming out, yuuuurk, no new world either. So it's basically just gonna be monsters forever

[artbyblastweave]

And for the last time, you can't fuck the monsters. They aren't the kind of monsters you can fuck

[toastedicarus]

Had it with all this bullshit grimdark worldbuilding just for the sake of edginess with nothing to actually say. I'm going to fuck the monsters.

[artbyblastweave]

Listen, buddy, I get it when it's monstrosity-as-a-marker-of-marginalization or it's a, a commentary on arbitrary constructions of beauty standards or whatever. That's one type of monster, that's fine. Very fuckable type of monster. But we're talking about, like, the metaphysical worldly manifestations of imperialist warmongering and rapacious depletion of the environment and systemic racism and shit like that. And I mean it's obviously not conceptually impossible to eroticize all that, you see people doing it, but it's fraught, right? It's fraught. Thin Ice. And if you're gonna go there you can't be flippant about what you're doing, man. This shit affects people's lives in real, non-metaphorical ways. When I was at CVS I just saw three or four anthromorphic personifications of the concept of medical debt pulling a little old lady apart like a wishbone

[mostlyghostie]

Found some 70s LoTRs this week to replace my crappy movie tie-in omnibus. Three quid!

Links

[subjectverb]

if i were a dead wife i would want my husband to fag out kinda. i would be fujoing out from hell

[subjectverb]

im am SO obsessed with this beautiful beautiful scene you conjure youre getting peer reviewd holy shot

[studyingcuriosity]

04/07/2017 “When trouble strikes, head to the library. You will either be able to solve the problem, or simply have something to read as the world crashes down around you.”

-Lemony Snicket

[darlingofdots]

at a conference I attended recently, a researcher pointed to the difficulty of finding material in archives because so much depends on the metadata and the terminology used to describe things changes over time. "it would be so helpful," the researcher said, "if I typed 'lesbian' into the library of congress database, it would also show me results that were categorised in the 50s, when the materials were interpreted as 'intimate female friendships'"

which is what tag wrangles at Archive Of Our Own do incredibly effectively: searching for "omegaverse" also leads to "alpha/beta/omega dynamics" and "alternate universe: a/b/o" and so on. but ao3 achieves this frankly incredible categorisation and indexing system by the power of countless volunteers putting in hours and hours of unpaid and unthanked free time, and it's completely understandable that most archives do not have that kind of infrastructure, but also how incredible that a fan-run website has better searchability, classification, and accessibility than the library of congress

[yume-fanfare]

i think it's really fun when a rly specific trope is super popular in one particular medium but in other ones it's just totally unheard of. it's the time knife. visual novel players are suuuuper used to death games but many others encountered them for the first time in squid games. the other day my mom showed me all excited the summary of a super original novel she found and it was about a girl who got reincarnated as the main character in her favorite fantasy book

[paperjoshi]

what the fuck is a time knife

[bramblepatch]

[strawberrylovely]

[pangur-and-grim]

I think they should hook it up so that everytime you get a negative review, little electrodes shock you, and everytime you get a positive one a little jellybean slides down a tube into your mouth. yum yum!

[pangur-and-grim]

okay everyone leave me alone, I want to picture this for maybe 20-30 minutes

[comicallyqueer]

Not always do they have them of course, but I find that It is often enough. Depends on the size too.

[farewell-to-lorien]

The Lord of the Rings, by Julia Tveritina.

[academic-vampire]

𝔰𝔭𝔯𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔰𝔱𝔲𝔡𝔶 𝔰𝔢𝔰𝔰𝔦𝔬𝔫

[wyrm-house]

Book Wyrms stickers by ObscurityShop

[whilereadingandwalking]

One of the most beautiful bookstores I’ve had the privilege to see in person… El Ateneo Grand Splendid, a bookstore housed in a theater, the café on fhe stage.

[michaelmoonsbookshop]

A book of Nature Myths by Florence Holbrook

1909/1926