Book Blog

the Forest. He or plural They. 23.

[forests-books]

Doing my writing again feels so nice. I miss reading a lot too. Fuck man

[vuldarian]

books that make you want to throw up and then walk into the nearest reservoir

[forests-books]

Indiginerds! This book is fantastic. I love the various art styles and the genuine life of theirs being told. Im so happy we found it at the library.

There’s resources in various spots too and I’m so glad! It’s so cool.

[ajaxgb]

Okay no I need to talk about the book version of Howl's Moving Castle. I love the movie but the book has such a different vibe and you, yes you, should read it.

Movie Howl is a soulful and quiet. Book Howl is a drama queen and Causing Problems and has a long string of jilted exes and couldn't shut up if you paid him.

Sophie and Howl drive each other up the wall at the beginning and it's really funny. Sophie and Howl are (despite themselves) very much in love by the end and they still drive each other up the wall and it's even funnier.

In the movie, Howl has been ordered by the king to participate in The War, and Howl is avoiding it because he is a brave conscientious objector. In the book, Howl has been ordered by the king to rescue his lost brother from the Witch of the Wastes, and Howl is avoiding it by any means necessary because he is a cowardly weasel who wants to stay as far from the Witch as possible.

In the movie, the Witch cursed Sophie because she was jealous about Howl speaking to Sophie for five minutes. In the book, the Witch cursed Sophie because Sophie had been doing surprisingly powerful magic for years without knowing it and it was actually starting to cut into the Witch's plans. (Sophie does not discover any of this until nearly the end of the book, but the reader can start to pick it up much earlier and the way Sophie's magic works is pretty darn cool.)

In the movie, there's a rumor that Howl eats the hearts of maidens, but this is implied to be nothing but nasty fearmongering. In the book, there's a rumor that Howl eats the hearts of maidens because Howl started the rumor so people would stop asking him to do wizard junk all the time.

The book lightly parodies a couple of tropes from Western fairy tales. In particular Sophie has internalized that, as the eldest of three sisters, her "destiny" is to fail so that her younger sisters will look cooler when they succeed, which is why she's so resigned to the hat shop at the beginning. (Sidebar: Sophie's sisters come up much more in the book and they're great.) There's also a really funny bit where Sophie attempts to operate a pair of seven-league boots.

In the movie, the fourth and final location that the magic door connects to is some sort of black void / mindscape / time portal dealy. In the book the fourth location is Wales, in the UK, on Earth, so that Howl can visit his family, because from Howl's perspective this is an isekai story.

[elodieunderglass]

Reveal of Welsh postdoc and rugby lad Dr Howell Jenkins (27) perennially one of the funniest things tumblr users can discover in fiction.

It’s unclear whether he finished his PhD or is still a grad student in the process of slithering out of his actual viva.

Here is Calcifer’s “silly saucepan song” that he sings to himself, which Howl sings when drunk (and Sophie doesn’t understand.) It’s a Welsh rugby song.

[spaghettinatural]

SOSBAN FACH?????!?

[str4wberry-str33t-deactivated20]

quick reminder that it’s ok to say that you love reading and that reading is your passion without reading 30+ books in a year. if you connect with books and love the power of the written word, you’re bookish. you don’t need to justify your love of reading.

[forests-books]

This book is beautiful. I hadn’t expected to fall in the world as I read it, but I did. I love the dynamics and the twisting of adventure. Viv is such a wonderful character & I love seeing her find herself and question what she wants.

I’m really happy that it’s a prequel because I really want to read more.

[adampvrrish]

trashy books have always existed but i swear this trend of bestselling books having no substance beyond what cookie cutter tropes they fit into, and the audience absolutely eating it up, all could've been avoided if the audiences all had a fanfic era in their teen years. they don't care what the book is about, all they care is if it's enemies to lovers 😈 or childhood friends to lovers 👫 like please god get some standards. because every single one of those books are written by authors who wrote bad dramione/reylo fanfiction on wattpad or fanfiction.net in their youth and now they think they're qualified to write a novel when they're really slapping a selection of tropes into 400 pages and just repackaging whatever characters they used to write for with a different name lmfao. so transparent it would be embarrassing if it wasn't overtaking the publishing industry. books and fanfiction are not interchangeable! not that all of this is inherently evil and not everyone has to be shakespeare to write a book but i feel like worthwhile books are dying while all of these carbon-copy-of-each-other books are shown front & center in every bookstore or online book communities. like girl i'm so sorry but i'm not reading your mafia king kidnaps and sexually assaults the mafia princess until she falls in love with him. what the fuck is that.

[forests-books]

This book is an amazing read. I love the characters in it, the dynamics they all go through. The reality of it is wonderful, it’s nice to see a divorce well represented from a kids perspective.

The main character has arthritis. Never does the book focus on finding her a cure for this chronic condition. It focuses on showing her realizing she can still do things with her disability. That she deserves accommodations, accessibility, and appreciation. I love this book so much.

[forests-books]

I'm in love with this book. It's so good with so many complicated and fun characters. I love the sass Howl contains and the hardass that is Sophie. She's so determined so often and it's beautiful. I love it, if you enjoy a narrator that's always fucking things up in the right way but is convinced it's wrong then you should fucking read this book.

[kosmogrl]

[forests-books]

This is a beautiful ending to the Constellation trilogy. As with the first 2 books, I was captivated at every moment and never wanted to put it down. I love this ending, it's beautiful and perfect. I hope to read even more books by Claudia Gray in the future.

I love the way this series challenges the concept of what is a soul. It makes me think of Data and the way he is told to not be human but that he has rights. It's been something on my mind for a while, I love the way I connect to those robots and their lives.

I hope to know more of them in the future which means I'll probably end up looking for or writing my own fanfiction for it. I love this series.

[forests-books]

I read both of these in the same day. I have already seen the Netflix shows.

I Am Not Okay With This: I always love telekinesis. It’s always good to me, I love and relate to characters with these abilities a majority of the time. The Netflix version varies more from the graphic novel then I thought it would. The focus on the Netflix version seems to be more around Syd’s troubles as a teen in general (that happens to have powers) where the original story follows the theme of suicide more. I find both stories captivating. I really enjoyed reading it.

The End Of The Fucking World: I think I enjoyed the graphic novel more than I enjoyed what I’ve seen of the show. I like seeing the inner dialogue of characters because it is really important for explaining a lot of things. I could empathize with the main characters more in this, although if I remember correctly the show does voice overs. I think the type of story is just something that’s easier for me to read than to watch.

[cottaegecore]

when you start reading again and it's like oh. oh . the sun actually does still shine.

[butch-king-frankenstein]

Petition to sit down all the people who make coma theories about Adventure Time and tell them “listen, this fucking show is about the last human living in a post-apocalyptic world where deadly magic has been reawakened following a global thermonuclear war that wiped out the rest of the human species, how much fucking darker do you want it to be”

[ubercream]

Even though I thought my first Creative Writing professor was kind of a douche, he made a good point about this. One of our first assignments was to write in this eerie, otherworldly style (we were mimicking a specific author whose name escapes me), so we had to write about eerie otherworldly things happening. It’s no exaggeration to say that more than half the class had a “big reveal” where we find out that the story’s strange events and themes are all in the mind of some person in an insane asylum, or someone having a drug trip.

My professor said something like, “you just successfully wrote a world that feels separate from our own, but got frightened last minute and shoe-horned in normalcy. You showed that you were afraid to commit to something different and interesting.” Though I’m typically a contrarian and a piece of garbage, I am inclined to agree with my professor. I feel like people who write coma theories and the like are afraid to accept that the world of the story is separate from our own. They like everything wrapped up in this crazy little realism box where nothing out of the ordinary happens in fiction.

[butch-king-frankenstein]

you win the Best Addition to a Post prize

[ubercream]

Thank you :)

[athenaltena]

This pretty well hits the nail on the head as to why I generally hate coma/dream theories and people who think they’re so fucking deep for coming up with it. In my book it’s LAZY, plain and simple.

[judiops]

I think the only times I can think of where “It was all a dream” really works are in pieces like Over the Garden Wall, Ink, Coraline, and Mirrormask. In all of those, the characters ‘wake up’ again in their ‘normal’ world, but there’s a very strong implication that the dream world is as real, if not more so, than the ‘real’ world, and the things they did in the dream world had a very direct impact on the waking world– not in an “I’m gonna be a better person” sense, but literally who lives and who dies at the end of the story.

Notably, in most of those, it’s stated flat-out within the first couple of minutes that the character in question is dreaming. It’s not a big reveal, it’s a fundamental detail of the setting.

If you’re gonna do a dreamworld, actually commit to doing a dreamworld.

Whatever it is you do, ACTUALLY COMMIT TO IT.

[no-internet-history]

[forests-books]

This is the first book my book club is reading. I just finished it.

It’s such a good book. I enjoyed reading it so much so that I read it in basically 3 days. Anytime I couldn’t read it, I spent the entire time thinking about it.

The fact that it starts with Desiree returning and flashes back and forth. It’s such a good storytelling method.

I can’t say much without spoiling it, but the beauty of how it’s told and realness of the characters emotions. The secrets and the lies and the despair and the loneliness and the love and the glory. The realness of growing up as a child who’s mother escaped abuse. All of it.

If you want something to read, read this.

[forests-books]

I finished this and I loved it so much. It’s the second book after Defy the Stars. I love it so much, I’m so excited to read the 3rd book. I hope to god I can get it soon.

Abel is such a fucking wonderful character. I love it all so much.

I don’t want to spoil things but I do highly recommend it if you’re into sci-fi.

The cover isn’t accurate to the description of them, so I made these picrews. The only thing missing is Naomi’s headband.