Fragmented thoughts @fragmentedtoughts - Tumblr Blog

Wanna make a monster? Take the parts of yourself that make you uncomfortable — your weaknesses, bad thoughts, vanities, and hungers — and pretend they’re across the room. It’s too ugly to be human. It’s too ugly to be you. Children are afraid of the dark because they have nothing real to work with. Adults are afraid of themselves.

RICHARD SIKEN || “Black Telephone” from Spork Press Issue 1.3 (2002)

Seemed appropriate to read a book about submarines while soaking in the tub

#booklr #books #paperback #the hunt for red october #bubble bath #read a book #currently reading

To love an old book is to love flaws, character and, in a way, everyone before you who has read that copy of the book you are currently holding.

I love old books. I live for libraries and second hand bookstores, the smell of old paper as much as the scent of a crisp and pristine new novel, the yellowed pages, the mug stains, cracked spines, notes left on margins, old bits and pieces that at some point were used as a bookmark... but ask me to leave my mark on a book.

I dare not break the illusion that the physical object before me is still new, undiscovered, ready for someone else to pick it up and not know I had it before them. Old books comfort me, there's less pressure: I can take them with me to the beach and carry sand grains back home, I can reach for them while I'm soaking in the bathtub and not worry the pages might crinkle from the steam, I might leave them open face down for a moment while I answer the door bell, or leave a sticky note on a margin with a thought or comment for someone else to find later when that book is no longer mine.

I read somewhere that the reason older books are "fat" is because you leave a bit of yourself between the pages every time you read it. I wouldn't mind it if it were true.

#booklr #books #bibliophile #library #second hand books #used books #ramblings

shisasan

The Maria Laach monastery library

I can't believe the last installment of this series is coming out in November!

I liked this book so much more than the previous two, it being fast paced and more focused on the original characters rather than going off on interminable tangents that feel off topic.

#booklr #books #bibliophile #outlander #diana gabaldon #written in my own heart's blood #ink

I won't call this anything but what is was: a struggle.

I read a review on Goodreads that made me think about "classics" a lot. Its main point was that sometimes we forgive poor writing because of the author, and Hemingway is a lot of that!

#Hemingway #a farewell to arms #literature #penguin classics #paperback #secondhand #classic literature #books #unpopular opinion

This book had me in tears at multiple points.

It took me a while to get through it (purely because of the sheer size of it), but it was well worth it. I feel like I am in love with all the characters yet again.

#diana gabaldon #a breath of snow and ashes #outlander #books #reading #bookaholic #booklover #candle

awrldalone

some things we should start romanticising

bike rides, especially when listening to music. the wind in your hair, the songs in your ears, every sound being quiet and living in your own bubble of lyrics. (edit: in some countries this is illegal and it can be dangerous - i had not thought of that and i apologise)

sitting in a bus. you’re going back home, maybe you’re reading a book or just looking outside of the foggy glass.

making tea. warming up the water, bringing it to a simmer and closing the gas, pouring it into a ceramic mug, the perfume of tea leaves: it’s a ritual.

buying a new book. walking in a book store, reading the first page of a book that sounds interesting, choosing a book because of its cover, never having heard of that book.

reading the last page of a book. that one doctor who episode where the doctor says he rips the last page of each book he reads, reading the last line and feeling like all the air in your lungs is gone.

that one specific moment when you are coming back from a party and you’re walking the few last steps before getting home.

writing your name on a new notebook. scribbling messy letters or trying hard to make it look pretty.

tying shoe laces. where are you even going?

picking a flower. getting off the road and into a patch of grass just to pick a yellow wild flower, pressing it in a book, or putting it in a glass of water.

finally getting to bed. the cold bedsheets, closing your burning eyes, the small sounds of the city.

-c. 23.07.20 6.15pm

macrolit

“A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped to a foot.”

— Keeping On Keeping On, Alan Bennett

A quick peak at my currently reading/TBR reveals exactly what a mess I've been recently.

Amazing variety though: a modern literary classic, two thrillers, a fantastic historical fiction (dual acception of that adjective thank you very much), and the second novel of an upcoming author.

#books #bookworm #reading #book cover #bookaholic #booklover #tbrstack #currently reading #shelfie

briyarmara

29.01.17

“Spend your free time the way you like, not the way you think you’re supposed to.” ― Susan Cain, Quiet

Madame de Pompadour and Louis XV's Court are brought to life like characters in a novel and feel so very distant from the historical figures you learn about in school. So much so the last chapter left me feeling saddened despite the fact this amazing woman died over three centuries ago.

#madame de pompadour #nancy mitford #historical biography #louis xv #french court #book cover #bookworm #booklr

bauliya

so women are supposed to grin and bear the books, the comics, the movies, the plays, the tv shows, the stories, the sci-fi, the translated ancient poems, the fucking millennia of men writing about their self inserts torturing women and it being declared as High Art by other men, we’re supposed to read it in our free time, study it in classrooms, include their styles in our own writing, accept their cultural influence as natural, watch it in the cinema, write about it, talk about it, accept it, aspire it, but men can’t tolerate three seconds of female wish fulfilment of a woman snapping the wrist of a creep without feeling personally kicked in the balls.

darkshrimpemotions

This reminds me of something I observed in college while I was doing my honors thesis on women in modern horror films. I watched a LOT of horror during that time as part of my research, and sometimes that was done with my family around.

And my dad and brothers? Were deeply disturbed by the movie Jennifer’s Body. I was flabbergasted. It’s not scary! It’s not even that gory. But they were horrified by it. These men who grew up on 70s slashers were legitimately shook by 90 minutes of Megan Fox eating a few teenage boys, mostly off-screen.

Similarly, my all-male reading panel for my thesis? Were so disturbed by my synopsis of the film Teeth that they couldn’t even talk about it. One of them said he couldn’t look at his wife for a week after reading it.

Again, grown-ass men who study and teach media for a living. Who definitely watch and enjoy horror movies. One of whom was a huge Tarantino buff. We watched and read worse in his intro to mass media class! But one movie about a girl whose vag could bite was enough to haunt him.

Then of course you have things like the Gone Girl backlash–men yelling that Amy Dunne is evil and women clamoring to assure everyone that they know she is not someone to emulate–the backlash against Carol Danvers, and, more recently, the griping from MRAs against the upcoming film Hustlers, which is about strippers scamming their Wall Street clients.

My conclusion? Most men–at least most straight, cisgender men, who are both my sample population and most of the ones whining that Carol is a “villain”–are perfectly fine with, and desensitized to, media where men do violence to women (horror movies), or men do violence to men (horror and action movies). They’re even sort of fine when women do violence to women (“ooooo cat fight!”).

But they get intensely uncomfortable when women are depicted doing any kind of violence to men, especially in films that tilt the balance of power to the other side of the m/f gender binary beyond a single moment or scene.

So woman as flesh-eating monster with men as her preferred cuisine? Woman who responds to unwanted sexual contact by biting it off? Woman who frames her cheating husband for murder? Woman whose response to harassment–behavior that many of the loudest whiners know is both creepy and reflective of their own thoughts/actions–is to break something?

Too scary. Unacceptable. Disturbing. These men hate being presented with the idea, even in fiction, that their position of power is socially constructed, that it could easily be flipped the other way. It terrifies them.

In feeling that terror, they experience a tiny modicum of what living, existing, moving, being perceived as a woman in the world is like.

And they flinch every time.