BookTalk Presents... @booktalkpresents - Tumblr Blog

ao3 needs a “notify me when this is finished” button. different from subscribing. i don’t have the patience for single chapter updates but what i DO have is object impermanence. i want to forget this fic exists and weeks later get hit with an email notification and ignore everything around me to immediately read 50k in one sitting

letterful

ON DEATH, WITHOUT EXAGGERATION,

or: a few of my favourite poems about dying, being dead, & the ones who are left behind. some melancholic, some upbeat, some morbid, some euphemistic, some sombre, some tongue-in-cheek, some direct, some not, all good. in no particular order:

“on death, without exaggeration“, wisława szymborska (oh, it has its triumphs, / but look at its countless defeats, / missed blows, / and repeat attempts!)

“the suicide’s room”, wisława szymborska (a lamp, good for fighting the dark / a desk, and on the desk a wallet, some newspapers / carefree buddha and a worried christ / seven lucky elephants, a notebook in a drawer.)

“the letters of the dead”, wisława szymborska (poor dead, blindfolded dead, / gullible, fallible, pathetically prudent.)

(can you see that i’m very fond of wisława szymborska?)

“harlod’s leap”, stevie smith (it may have killed you / but it was a brave thing to do.)

“not waving but drowning”, stevie smith (i was much further out than you thought / and not waving but drowning)

“a meeting”, wendell berry (he has, / i know, gone long and far, / and yet he is the same / for the dead are changeless.)

“the dead”, billy collins (the dead are always looking down on us, they say)

“memory”, hayden carruth (my dear, / how could you have let this happen to you?)

“her long illness”, donald hall (daybreak until nightfall, / he sat by his wife at the hospital / while chemotherapy dripped / through the catheter into her heart.)

“this is a photograph of me”, margaret atwood (the photograph was taken / the day after i drowned.)

“owl song”, margaret atwood (i do not want revenge, i do not want expiation, / i only want to ask someone / how i was lost, / how i was lost)

“anne sexton’s last letter to god”, tracey herd (i have just lunched with an old friend / saying goodbye and something / ‘she couldn’t quite catch’.)

“ophelia’s confession”, tracey herd (i didn’t drown by accident. it was a suicide. / at least let me call my mind my own / even when my heart was gone beyond recall.)

“the promise”, marie howe (he looked at me as though he couldn’t speak, as if / there were a law against it, a membrane he couldn’t break.)

“aubade”, philip larkin (being brave / lets no one off the grave. / death is no different whined at than withstood.)

“lady lazarus”, sylvia plath (and i a smiling woman. / i am only thirty. / and like the cat i have nine times to die.)

“edge”, sylvia plath (her bare / feet seem to be saying: / we have come so far, it is over.)

“sylvia’s death”, anne sexton (what is your death / but an old belonging, / a mole that fell out / of one of your poems?)

“a curse against elegies”, anne sexton (also, i am tired of all the dead. / they refuse to listen)

“tomorrow they’ll cut me open”, anna swir (i have many powers in me. i can live, / i can run, dance and sing. / all of that is in me, but if need be, / i’ll walk away.)

“biology teacher”, zbigniew herbert (in the second year of the war / our biology teacher was killed / by history’s schoolyard bullies)

“dedication”, czesław miłosz (you whom i could not save / listen to me.)

“dirge without music”, edna st. vincent millay (they are gone. / they are gone to feed the roses.)

the rosie probert scene in “under milk wood”, dylan thomas (remember her. / she is forgetting. / the earth which filled her mouth / is vanishing from her.)

“do not go gentle into that good night”, dylan thomas (old age should burn and rave at close of day; / rage, rage against the dying of the light)

“a quoi bon dire?”, charlotte mew (and everybody thinks that you are dead, / but i.)

“myth”, natasha trethewey (you’ll be dead again tomorrow, / but in dreams you live. so i try taking / you back into morning.)

“i watched you disappear”, anya krugovoy silver (are you there? where? / are the others there, too?)

“i am asking you to come back home”, jo carson (my mamma used to say she could feel herself / runnin’ short of the breath of life. so can i. / and i am blessed tired of buryin’ things i love.)

“the night where you no longer live”, meghan o’rourke (was there gas station food / and was it a long trip)

“condolence”, dorothy parker (but i had smiled to think how you, the dead, / so curiously preoccupied and grave, / would laugh, could you have heard the things they said.)

“death at daybreak”, anne reeve aldrich (i shall pass dawn on her way to earth, / as i seek for a path through space.)

“fear no more the heat o’ the sun”, william shakespeare (golden lads and girls all must, / as chimney-sweepers, come to dust.)

“sonnet xciv”, pablo neruda (don’t call up my person. i am absent. / live in my absence as if in a house.)

“funeral blues”, w. h. auden (the stars are not wanted now; put out every one, / pack up the moon and dismantle the sun, / pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood)

“the drowned children”, louise glück (but death must come to them differently, / so close to the beginning.)

“because i could not stop for death”, emily dickinson (the carriage held but just ourselves – / and immortality.)

oh-honey-styles-deactivated2022

FANFIC IS FOR FUN & FOR FREE.

If you don’t like someone’s fic (including, but not limited to: the trope, the plot, the characters, the american vs british lingo, pet names, smut preferences, etc) you are welcome to move along to the next fictional story, there are plenty out there! If you feel the need to pick apart someone’s FREE writing, don’t be an asshole about it on anon. And if you do like it, drop that writer (who’s putting their work out there for fun & for free) a note to let them know. Common sense, friends.

bookaddict24-7

New Young Adult Releases Coming Out Today! (September 1st, 2020)

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Note: Since so many release dates have been changed for various Young Adult novels, keep in mind that there might be some titles missing in this post.

Have I missed any new Young Adult releases? Have you added any of these books to your TBR? Let me know! ___

New Standalones/First in a Series:

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas

None Shall Sleep by Ellie Marney

Recommended for You by Laura Silverman

Sanctuary by Paola Mendoza & Abby Sher

Throwaway Girls by Andrea Contos

We Are Not Free by Traci Chee

The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Punching the Air by Ibi Zoboi & Yusef Salaam

Fable by Adrienne Young

Like Spilled Water by Jennie Liu

Lux: The New Girl by Ashley Woodfolk

Micah: The Good Girl by Ashley Woodfolk

Ever After by Olivia Vieweg

The Insomniacs by Marit Weisenberg

Flamer by Mike Curato

Not Your #Lovestory by Sonia Hartl

Find Layla by Meg Elison

Where We Are by Alison McGhee

Save Steve by Jenni Hendriks & Ted Caplan

The Bridge by Bill Konigsberg

Blood Moon by Lucy Cuthew

Forget This Ever Happened by Cassandra Rose Clarke

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New Sequels:

As the Shadow Rises (The Age of Darkness #2) by Katy Rose Pool

Wayward Witch (Brooklyn Brujas #3) by Zoraida Córdova

Majesty (American Royals #2) by Katharine McGee

Blood & Honey (Serpent & Dove #2) by Shelby Mahurin

Greythorne (Bloodleaf #2) by Crystal Smith

Queen of Volts (The Shadow Game #3) by Amanda Foody

Unbirthday by Liz Braswell

Gold Wings Rising (Skybound #3) by Alex London

The Lost Book of the White (The Eldest Curses #2) by Cassandra Clare & Wesley Chu

A Kingdom of the Flesh & Fire (Blood and Ash #2) by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Teen Titans: Beast Boy (Teen TItans #2) by Kami Garcia & Gabriel Picolo

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Happy reading!

thereadingchallengechallenge

Woohoo!! I’m so excited to see a #LoveOzYA (Australian YA) novel front and centre with None Shall Sleep by Ellie Marney riding high up there :D

I’d also like to make y’all aware of these gorgeous novels that were released this week:

The History of Mischief by Rebecca Higgie #LoveOzYA

The Reckless Afterlife of Harriet Stoker by Lauren James

The Other Side of the Sky by Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner #LoveOzYA *

* I think this one has a different release date for the US but it was released Sep 1st down under

bookaddict24-7

Ohh thanks for the awesome addition, @thereadingchallengechallenge!

inkjadestudio

Resurrecting the art of China’s dragon scale bookbinding

At his studio in Beijing, artist Zhang Xiaodong layers hundreds of sheets of thin paper on top of one another until they form a complete and impeccable image. When the chapters of his elaborate books are unfolded, the pages move like the bellows of an accordion.This ancient Chinese art, known as dragon scale bookbinding, stretches back more than 1,000 years to the Tang dynasty. Passed down between generations of royals and literate upper class families, the finished works were thought to resemble dragons, each page appearing like a “scale.”