CallieB, fandom writer and rocking that cool-but-weird vibe on a daily basis. My fleet of ships is spectacularly varied, but I'm planted quite securely in the Harringrove fandom at the moment with no plans to depart. I do take prompts although I am historically slow at filling them! I rarely shut up, so come talk to me about Billy Hargrove angst, why I'm conflicted about shaving my legs, or the true beauty of emotionally constipated boys (as long as they're fictional).
Hey heyyyy, thank you for giving me the excuse to talk more about books! This is a hard one because I'm not great at reading popular books, I tend to discover them years after they've stopped being cool, but let's give it a try.
Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston - This is probably my most controversial book opinion... but I just didn't rate this book that much. Maybe it's because I watched the movie first? I just found it kinda bland and I didn't feel very connected to the characters. I can actually understand why book-lovers were disappointed by the movie, because tonally they're extremely different, but personally I just didn't enjoy the style of this one. I've also read One Last Stop by the same author and felt similarly meh, so they're clearly just not for me.
Red Rising by Pierce Brown - I really tried with this one! I didn't mind the first one but the second one got bleaker and bleaker and I never made it to the third book, which is unusual for me. The writing is good but it's just so harrowing and unpleasant and nothing EVER works out for our heroes and I just couldn't take it in the end.
Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid - Is this an unpopular opinion? I don't think so, I think most people agree that the book isn't very good, it's poorly written and the characterisation is incredibly shallow, but I guess it still fits in here because lots of people still love it? I feel a little bad though because clearly the author wasn't trying to do anything magical, she was just having some fun with some hockey porn and now it's blown up unexpectedly, but yeah.
Hiiiiiiiiiiiii thanks for giving me an excuse to talk about books! I ended up writing an entire thesis on the subject so I put it under a cut. It will happen again.
1: book youâve reread the most times?
Oooof okay so there are SO MANY, this is impossible to answer because I love books and I love reading and I do a LOT of rereading! I'm going to be cheeky and allow myself three. And they're weird ones, too, because I'm a sci-fi girl through and through but the ones I've reread the most are all classic literature!
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - Enough said, really. The is THE book. The ultimate. The classic. The origin of romance stories everywhere. It's so well-written and delightfully easy to read in spite of being so old. I can practically quote it inside and out.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë - I studied this book at school with an absolute fantastic teacher, which really goes to show the difference a good teacher can make. This book was seminal in my development as a person and a woman. I adore everything about it.
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie - Honestly I could name any Agatha Christie - I own all 70+ novels and I've read them so many times they're falling apart! There are a lot of excellent ones but ATTWN is the best-known classic for a reason. I love how creepy and clever and compelling it is. I love how Christie can paint the picture of a character in two sentences. I love the circular nature of the ending. Perfection!
2: top 5 books of all time?
Again, this is super hard to answer, but I guess I'll give it a try! These are not in any order because I love them all.
The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez - This book is so beautiful and exquisite and I'm obsessed with it. It's so hard to explain anything about it because the author is so much more intelligent than I am, but it the worldbuilding is amazing and the characterisation is incredible and the literary devices used are beyond anything I've ever seen before. This book does it all. The Vanished Birds by the same author is also delicious in every way and I am on the edge of my seat waiting for him to write something else!
Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson - This is a massive hard sci-fi tome set just a little ways into our future, in which a collaboration of a hundred international scientists travel to Mars and colonise it for the first time. It explores all the big questions about how we might set up a brand new society if we had the opportunity to start from scratch and it's just so, so good. There's quite a lot of hard science in there but you can skim those sections if you're an idiot like me.
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky - Yes, we're sensing a theme here! This is another insanely good sci-fi novel about a community of sentient spiders. No, really! Scientists develop a gene that will makes apes progress super-fast through evolutionary stages to become conscious, except for reasons it's accidentally given to spiders instead. Kinda like Red Mars, it's all about how community and society develops in a brand new environment, but with some fundamental differences due to the species it's applied to. The whole thing is played out against the human race dying out in the background, clinging to their stale concepts and lives as the spiders progress and flourish... you'll just have to take my word for it, because it's amazing.
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman - I mean, it's a classic for a reason! And yes, it's technically a trilogy, but I stand by it because it's all so excellent. I won't get into it because I don't think there are many people alive who aren't familiar with these books but I will say that my love for Will Parry is unparalleled and never-changing.
Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel - This woman is the writer I wish I could be! Her characterisation is out of this world, and she has a gift for writing about one thing and somehow also writing about twelve other things and yet drawing it all together in a uniquely fascinating way. This book is about a pandemic that kills off most of humanity and forces the survivors to live in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Except it's also about art and music and human connection, because survival is insufficient. I read it in 2020, which probably wasn't a great time to read a book about a pandemic ending the world, but I didn't even care because of how incredible it is.
You didn't ask, but I really really struggled to narrow this question down so I'm also going to throw in some honourable mentions without saying anything about them and hopefully that means no one will yell at me about it. Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. The Painted Veil by W Somerset Maugham. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. Babel by RF Kuang. Infinity Gate by MR Carey. Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. In Memoriam by Alice Winn. Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino. Shhh, you saw nothing!
3: do you have a guilty fav?
I don't know if I do, really? I mean, I don't tend to feel shame over the books I read, because I think all reading is valuable. But hey, it's an excuse for another list, so in no particular order:
Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind - I think this is the closest I come to embarrassment over a book I like, because this book (and the entire 15+ series that follows it) is so objectively bad. The reason I love it is nostalgia and nostalgia alone! I was 18 and I had never read adult fantasy before, and an acquaintance put this book in my hands. My flabber was ghasted. I had never experienced anything so wonderful in all my life! I devoured the series at a ridiculous speed, and only realised afterwards that actually there are many, many other fantasy series in the world that aren't shit like this one. There's a lot wrong with this book, but all I need to tell you is that there's a section in the middle where our Chosen One hero is interrupted from his fairly prosaic quest to defeat the evil wizard with his magic sword by a hot dominatrix whose life goal is to have extremely graphic and sadistic sex with him until he's broken under her heel. I think the author's kink is showing, and not in a good way! Anyway, I am a little ashamed of letting nostalgia cloud my judgement here, but there we go.
A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J Maas - I mean, I don't know if this is really a guilty fave, I had a lot of fun with this series and it's obviously insanely popular for a reason! I'm sticking it here because romantasy is not my usual bag and also the number of times our heroine experienced orgasmic pleasure when her love interest's tongue scraped the roof of her mouth made me wonder if Sarah J Maas has ever kissed anyone before. But I still enjoyed myself immensely, so please don't come at me!
Anything by Agatha Christie - Look, she's one of my favourite authors, but you do have to read her with a massive pinch of problematic salt. There are a LOT of racial stereotypes in her books, not to mention classism and sexism and probably a whole bunch of other things I'm too blinded by gentle English murder-solving to notice. It's of its time and you just have to go with that! But I think that counts for this category.
Were you looking for an essay? I don't think you were! But you asked me about books and I just can't help myself. Ask me more stuff about reading, I dare you!
hello everyone. my name is harrowhark nonagesimus welcome to my meal. i have never cooked before but god asked me to try because he wants us all to eat & exist in union <3 of course i will oblige him because i harrowhark nonagesimus am the most devout worshipper of the locked tomb and the king undying. first up on the menu is soup. i hate flavours so i didnât put any salt or anything. but donât worry i put something better :) haha you guessed it! i sectioned my tibia and put it in the soup :) yeah :) so i can explode people :)
I don't think I've ever read a book that so badly needs to be read twice, back to back, possibly a third time for luck, in order to make it legible, as Harrow the Ninth. This is not a complaint.
So I wrote a thing, and it's Downton Abbey! Completely new and unexpected for me but it was super fun and poured out of me at a rather alarming rate. It's complete now, so, enjoy!
My Vegetable Love
Jimmy had taken his promise to be friends very seriously, after all Thomas had done for him, and after a while heâd realised it wasnât so very difficult. Thomas was amusing in his sharp-tongued way, and yet sometimes he was exceptionally kind to Jimmy, which at first Jimmy was bewildered by but after a while became accustomed to.
That was it, thereâthe complacency. Jimmy had got used to Thomas's surprising sweetness. But then againâhow could he have known it wouldnât last?
It had all settled into something very comfortable and pleasant, and so Jimmy couldnât understand why it was changing. He just didnât understand, couldnât see how Thomas could carry on like this when he was supposed toâ
Jimmy sat upright suddenly, staring unseeingly at the wall opposite his bed. His mouth fell open, as a revelation hit him like a hammer to the temple.
âThe bloody gitâs only gone and got over me, hasnât he?â he exclaimed.
Tumblr: HEATED RIVALRY IS SETTING THE WORLD ON FIRE!
Tumblr: No for real though the world actually IS on fire and we should all be deeply concerned about climate change but also BUDDIE MIGHT BECOME CANON!
My brain: What if, and I'm just spitballing here, but what if we wrote 30k of Downton Abbey fic, a fandom for which we've read some good stuff (like a decade ago) but never written before, and y'know, due to the age and relative obscurity of the show the fandom is, if not dead then at the very least in a nursing home, because we've got some time off and for some reason a Thommy idea just attacked us and won't let us go?
This is why I'll never be famous, I swear. Good thing I don't want to be.
Tumblr: HEATED RIVALRY IS SETTING THE WORLD ON FIRE!
Tumblr: No for real though the world actually IS on fire and we should all be deeply concerned about climate change but also BUDDIE MIGHT BECOME CANON!
My brain: What if, and I'm just spitballing here, but what if we wrote 30k of Downton Abbey fic, a fandom for which we've read some good stuff (like a decade ago) but never written before, and y'know, due to the age and relative obscurity of the show the fandom is, if not dead then at the very least in a nursing home, because we've got some time off and for some reason a Thommy idea just attacked us and won't let us go?
This is why I'll never be famous, I swear. Good thing I don't want to be.
amandla
baratheonpilled
prguitarman
