The crown can rest til morning

pronouns: he/him & she/her || booklr & writblr

[lizziethereader]

“This Again?” Challenge day 9: A song of ice and fire 

(if we’re talking about gunfire, that is)

[jennaroo]

Nothing like reading a beat up old fave on the beach 🖤

[clarabosswald]

HIS DARK MATERIALS Season One (2019) | BBC/HBO, Bad Wolf Productions

[ramoorebooks-deactivated2024011]

Famous authors, their writings and their rejection letters.

Sylvia Plath: There certainly isn’t enough genuine talent for us to take notice.

Rudyard Kipling: I’m sorry Mr. Kipling, but you just don’t know how to use the English language.

Emily Dickinson: [Your poems] are quite as remarkable for defects as for beauties and are generally devoid of true poetical qualities.

Ernest Hemingway (on The Torrents of Spring): It would be extremely rotten taste, to say nothing of being horribly cruel, should we want to publish it.

Dr. Seuss: Too different from other juveniles on the market to warrant its selling.

The Diary of Anne Frank: The girl doesn’t, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the ‘curiosity’ level.

Richard Bach (on Jonathan Livingston Seagull): will never make it as a paperback. (Over 7.25 million copies sold)

H.G. Wells (on The War of the Worlds): An endless nightmare. I do not believe it would “take”…I think the verdict would be ‘Oh don’t read that horrid book’. And (on The Time Machine): It is not interesting enough for the general reader and not thorough enough for the scientific reader.

Edgar Allan Poe: Readers in this country have a decided and strong preference for works in which a single and connected story occupies the entire volume.

Herman Melville (on Moby Dick): We regret to say that our united opinion is entirely against the book as we do not think it would be at all suitable for the Juvenile Market in [England]. It is very long, rather old-fashioned…

Jack London: [Your book is] forbidding and depressing.

William Faulkner: If the book had a plot and structure, we might suggest shortening and revisions, but it is so diffuse that I don’t think this would be of any use. My chief objection is that you don’t have any story to tell. And two years later: Good God, I can’t publish this!

Stephen King (on Carrie): We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not sell.

Joseph Heller (on Catch–22): I haven’t really the foggiest idea about what the man is trying to say… Apparently the author intends it to be funny – possibly even satire – but it is really not funny on any intellectual level … From your long publishing experience you will know that it is less disastrous to turn down a work of genius than to turn down talented mediocrities.

George Orwell (on Animal Farm): It is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA.

Oscar Wilde (on Lady Windermere’s Fan): My dear sir, I have read your manuscript. Oh, my dear sir.

Vladimir Nabokov (on Lolita): … overwhelmingly nauseating, even to an enlightened Freudian … the whole thing is an unsure cross between hideous reality and improbable fantasy. It often becomes a wild neurotic daydream … I recommend that it be buried under a stone for a thousand years.

The Tale of Peter Rabbit was turned down so many times, Beatrix Potter initially self-published it.

Lust for Life by Irving Stone was rejected 16 times, but found a publisher and went on to sell about 25 million copies.

John Grisham’s first novel was rejected 25 times.

Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen (Chicken Soup for the Soul) received 134 rejections.

Robert Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) received 121 rejections.

Gertrude Stein spent 22 years submitting before getting a single poem accepted.

Judy Blume, beloved by children everywhere, received rejections for two straight years.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle received 26 rejections.

Frank Herbert’s Dune was rejected 20 times.

Carrie by Stephen King received 30 rejections.

The Diary of Anne Frank received 16 rejections.

Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rolling was rejected 12 times.

Dr. Seuss received 27 rejection letters

[cidermoon]

Now this…THIS inspires me.

[studyingmeblr-deactivated201812]

Don’t give up people.

[wondrousworldbuilding]

This also helps one realize that one opinion, even informed and correct, is not the One Opinion. Listen. Learn. Keep going.

[prismatic-bell]

@all-that-feminist-drama

[ramirezbundydahmer]

When the Nazi concentration camps were liberated by the Allies, it was a time of great jubilation for the tens of thousands of people incarcerated in them. But an often forgotten fact of this time is that prisoners who happened to be wearing the pink triangle (the Nazis’ way of marking and identifying homosexuals) were forced to serve out the rest of their sentence. This was due to a part of German law simply known as “Paragraph 175” which criminalized homosexuality. The law wasn’t repealed until 1969.

[crypto-keynesian]

This should be required learning, internationally. 

[stripedsilverfeline]

You need to know this. You need to remember this. This is not something to swept under the carpet nor be forgotten. 

Never. Too many have died for the way they have loved. That needs stop now. 

Make it stop? 

[hollowoutmybody]

I did a report on this in my World History class my sophomore year of high school. It was incredibly unsettling.

[pearlclam]

My teacher shown the class this. Mostly everyone in the class felt uncomfortable. 

[sashadechagny]

I have reblogged this in the past, but it is so ironic that it comes across my dash right now. I a currently working as a docent at my city’s Holocaust Education Center (( I say currently because I’ve also done research and translation for them )) and out current exhibit is one on loan from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ((USHMM)). This is a little known historical fact that Paragraph 175 was not repealed after the war and those convicted under Nazi laws as a danger to society because they were gay were not released because they had be convicted in a court of law. There was no liberation or justice for them as they weren’t considered criminals, or even victims for that matter. They were criminals who remained persecuted and ostracized and kept on the fringes of society for decades after the war had been won. Paragraph175 wasn’t actually repealed until 1994. And it was only in May 2002, that the German parliament completed legislation to pardon all homosexuals convicted under Paragraph175 during the Nazi era. History has forgotten about these men and women — please educate yourselves so this does not happen again. Remember this history. Remember them.

[jehovahhthickness]

@mindlesshumor ok how the fuck did I miss this when I’ve studied The Holocaust like nobody’s business??? wtf

[thereadersmuse]

Because the history we have left regarding it is literally the contents of this first hand account.

It is a thin little book.

When I first opened it, I wondered why it was so thin.

Why there wasn’t other books like it.

Other first hand accounts.

By the time I finished it, I didn’t wonder anymore.

[jeaniefranklins]

Further reading:

I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual: A Memoir of Nazi Terror by Pierre Seel

An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin by Gad Beck

The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals by Richard Plant

Branded By The Pink Triangle by Ken Setterington

Bent by Martin Sherman (fiction; however, it’s often credited with bringing attention to gay Holocaust victims for the first time since the war ended)

[gemfyre]

This is one of the memorial sculptures in Dachau.  It was erected in the early 60s and is missing the pink triangles.  Because in the early 60s, homosexuality was still a crime in most of the world. Our tour guide explained why the pink triangles have not been added later - if they were, then folks would assume that they had always been there.  This way people ask “why aren’t there pink triangles?” and somebody can explain why - because in some ways, the rest of the world was as bass-ackwards as Nazi Germany.

[freefalasteen]

Apparently, this wasnt taught in schools in the 70s-80s, cuz when I mentioned it to my mom, she had no idea that gays were held in concentration camps. She thought it was just jewish people.

[ninja-muse]

Finished!

[aqua-regia009]

Ashling - Tristan Elwell Book cover for the fantasy novel by Isobelle Carmody

[speciesbarocus]

Jusepe de Ribera - The Sense of Touch.

[manuscripts-dontburn]

New arrivals and new, very beautiful, bookmarks by the Bookdepository

[ninja-muse]

Say Nothing - Patrick Radden Keefe

In brief: A portrait of the IRA and the Troubles in Northern Ireland, with a focus on trauma, revenge, and fear—and on one particular woman who was disappeared.

Thoughts: This was everything I like in true crime and a good piece of narrative non-fiction to boot. It’s well-written, impeccably researched and cited, and manages to portray a very difficult and complicated subject even-handedly and with compassion for all sides. It also deals a lot with morality and ethics and generational pain and anger, carries the story up to a couple years ago, and asks questions about repercussions and statutes of limitations and reconciliation without answering them.

I didn’t know a lot about the Troubles going into this, just that it was a brutal and bloody and traumatic period of Northern Irish history, fought between Catholics/Republicans, Protestants/Unionists, and the British Army, and that there was a lot of distrust and paranoia that caused tensions to flare up again and again. I have a much better sense of the climate now, and the causes, and the ways of thinking in both the IRA and the Army, and have a whole new appreciation for how bad everything got.

Keefe focuses on a few key figures in the IRA, and to a lesser extent, on Jean McConville, who was disappeared, a handful of journalists and academics, and a man in the Army. You get a really good sense of these people as the story evolves, and he does that thing I love where you don’t get information until just the right time and yet the time jumps and digressions work with the story and not against it. This is also very much not a sensationalist or particularly biased piece of journalism. There are no heroes, no villains, no titillating facts, and no heavy foreshadowing.

I really liked that the story didn’t swing straight to solving the Jean McConville case once the Good Friday Agreement went into effect. Keefe continues to track the IRA people as they go their separate ways and try to deal (or not) with the terrible things they did and had done to them, as well as going into other court cases and academic attempts to document the era. McConville’s still there, as a sort of focus and example case, but really, he’s digging into the a much wider and more convoluted situation than just one crime and its resolution.

And as you can tell from me reading this in four days, it’s engagingly written and mildly addictive on top of everything! (Also my commute has sucked this week.) It hit exactly the right mix of grim and historical for me and is going to be the narrative non-fiction to beat for the year.

To bear in mind: If you don’t know what the Troubles involved, it was essentially a brutal guerilla war. Expect discussion of murder, torture, bombings, hunger strikes, jail sentences, dehumanization of the opposing side(s), and disappeared people, with a side of racism, religious bigotry, anti-colonial anger, and radical politics, among other things. There are also orphanages with systemic sexual abuse, one other glancing mention of molestation, and Margaret Thatcher.

9/10

[kingcheddarxvii]

American Sorting Hat, which is just a beat up baseball cap: aight bro by the most righteous magics bestowed upon me i’ve scoped out ur brain and ur house is uh….. DRAGON ALPHA SIGMA DONG!!! lol

wizard bros of dragon alpha sigma dong: YOOOOOOOOOOOO 

freshman wizard: *crowdsurfs*

[silentstep]

honestly I’m very very tired of fandom insisting SO LOUDLY that there is only one form of sibling relationship in the world, and it’s “constant roasting, nonetheless ride-or-die”

like yes, I’m sure that’s accurate to many people’s experience, and it’s definitely fun to watch in fiction!  but it’s not everybody’s dynamic.  stop crowing things like “you can tell these writers actually have real life siblings, because their fictional siblings insult each other constantly!”  idk man idk what to tell you. some families don’t do that

[doughtahturn]

eggos. i know im potentially gluten intolerant, but i cannot wait to be back in the states so i can eat some motherfucking chocolate chip eggos. or hell, even the plain ones! just, any kinda eggo would be awesome

[ariaste]

Only 100 days left until the release of A CHOIR OF LIES, my novel about hopepunk, recovery from grief, and fantasy tulip mania – with FOOTNOTES!

Preorders for the hardback and ebook are available now wherever you buy books :)

Publisher’s Weekly starred review | Goodreads Indiebound | Amazon | Barnes & Noble  (background art by @linovadraws)

[georgie-reads]

[triflingthing]

I take my coffee with a bit of gothic lit

[doughtahturn]

7 Book Covers in 7 Days Challenge

Rules: Each day, I will post the cover of a book that I love and nominate someone new to start the challenge. No explanation, no discussion, just post the cover and by doing so spread some literary love!

Tagging: @six-of-ravens