books

[libraryofbooks]

Hey guys!  New blog to the community.  So I’ve gone through my library and made lists of all the books that I have yet to read - now what?

We’re a week into the new year and I would really like to start reading something but I have no idea how to choose.  The last book I read was one that my dad gave me and I read it right away.  The books I read last year were either due to watching a movie adaptation or something I randomly picked up off the shelf.

Maybe I’ll enter everything into a generator and let that pick.

[neil-gaiman]

Hello Neil, I have a question that I never have gotten a satisfactory answer to from anyone that is book sphere related.

In a lot of older books, and some newer ones, one of the first pages will have a little warning that says "If you purchased this book without a front cover it may be stolen. Please contact (phone number, email, or mailing address depending on age of the book) if you believe this may be the case."

Most people I asked did not know why but one librarian told me it was for special editions of books that had been stolen or something like that, which was still weird to me because if it is printed on every book how will you know? and also a lot of books lose their cover page when they are loved because it is the part that is opened the most, even more than any of the pages, so it has always seemed like a very good way to get a lot of false positives and not find very many stolen books.

do you know why this was and in some books still is done?

You'll find it in paperback books, not hardbacks. It's because it isn't financially viable for a publisher to have a bookshop post back unsold copies of books, so a publisher would require a bookshop to tear the covers off unsold paperbacks and post back the covers for credit. The publisher trusted that the bookshop would throw away or otherwise dispose of the coverless books, and put the bit in the front of the book to warn people not to buy a book without a cover, and to let bookshops know that selling the coverless books (they had already been given credit for) cheaply was risky.

[anexperimentallife]

[howtobeapersonwithfibro]

[ID: Two tweets by Mor the Book Dragon (@ MorTheBookWyrm) that read: Disabled MCs are NOT hard to sell, you’re just bad at writing us. 

Ash Williams (Evil Dead) is disabled

Imperator Furiosa (Max Max) is disabled

Kaz Brekker (Six of Crows) is disabled

Cinder (Lunar Chronicles) is disabled

Long John Silver (Treasure Island) is disabled

And you know what, they’re literally just five I rattled off the top of my head. There are loads of us. You just no longer consider us disabled if we’re accomplished. You think that “disabled” is a euphemism for “failure” or “useless” when is really, really isn’t. We’re awesome.  End ID]

[prince-luffy]

They really don’t connect disability with accomplishments. Remember that one post that was like “how is Ed Elric disabled” when he is literally missing an arm and leg!?

[rootbeergoddess]

Toph is disabled. She’s blind and she’s one of the best Earth Benders ever.

Professor Xavier is also disabled and he’s a super powerful mutant.

Hiccup from How to Train Your Dragon is disabled, he had to get his foot replaced at the end of the first movie.

For real, it’s not that hard to sell these character, people just don’t try

[ram-horned]

the main character of my favourite book series, the magisterium by cassandra clare and holly black, is disabled. he does a lot of amazing magic, he saves a lot of lives, he accomplishes things.

so yea, its possible to have good disabled characters if you try.

[roach-works]

just reread Heinlein’s The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, published 1966, a story about moon colonists revolting against earth authority, featuring a guy missing an arm. he had plenty of cool prosthetics but there was a tricky situation where he was loaded into a rocket without one of his prosthetics attached, and he had a bitch of a time getting loose from his seat because all the switches were on the side he was missing the arm. then when he’s on earth doing really important work, he spends the entire time in a wheelchair or a hospital bed, because he can’t stand up in the higher gravity.

1966.

c'mon.

[libraryofbooks]

21 Books That People Claim "Absolutely Changed Their Lives"

"It, somehow, gave me hope."

[libraryofbooks]

Books not on my shelf that I would like to read

Fiction

Girl Made of Stars by Ashley Herring Blake

Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant

Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli

The Class novels by various authors

The Conference of the Birds by Ransom Riggs

The Desolations of Devils Acre by Ransom Riggs (releasing February 2021)

The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place by Julie Berry

The Torchwood novels by various authors

The Upside Down of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli

 Nonfiction

Karamo by Karamo Brown

Love Yourself, Love Your Life by Antoni Porowski

Naturally Tan by Tan France

Over the Top by Jonathan van Ness

Postcards from the Edge by Carrie Fisher

Shockaholic by Carrie Fisher

The Best Awful by Carrie Fisher

The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher

Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher

[libraryofbooks]

Books on my shelf I have yet to read: Nonfiction

A Gift of Music by Betty Carlson and Jane S Smith

Aspects of Wagner by Bryan Magee

Beethoven by William Kinderman

Chanting by Robert Gass

Classic and Romantic Music by Friedrich Blume

Folk and Traditional Music of the Western Continents by Bruno Nettl

Gregorian Chant by Will Apel

History of Music by John Russell

If It Ain’t Baroque by David W. Barber

Leonard Bernstein by Humphrey Burton

Ludwig van Beethoven ed. by Joseph Schmidt-Görg and Hans Schmidt

Music A Living Language by Tom Manoff

Music, The Brain, and Ecstasy by Robert Jourdain

Musics of Many Cultures by Elizabeth May

Night Music by Theodore Adorno

Talking of Music by Neville Cardus

The Age of Mozart and Beethoven by Giorgio Pestelli

The Inextinguishable Symphony by Martin Goldsmith

The Music Lover’s Handbook ed. by Elie Sigmeister

The Music Within You by Shelley Katsh and Carol Merle-Fishman

To The Stars by George Takei

What Makes Music Work by Allan B. Novick, Paul Harmon, and Philip C. Seyer

What to Listen for In Music by Aaron Copand

Who’s Afraid of Classical Music by Michael Walsh

[libraryofbooks]

Books on my shelf that I have yet to read: Fiction

20, 000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne

Artifact by Gregory Benford

Death Comes to Pemberly by P. D. James

Goldfinger, For Your Eyes Only, and You Only Live Twice by Ian Fleming

Hard Times by Charles Dickens

Ivanhoe by Walter Scott

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens

Magic for Marigold by L. M. Montgomery

Moby Dick by Hermann Melville

Practical Magic by Alice Hoffmann

Remember Me? by Sophie Kinsella

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

The Children of Hurin by J. R. R. Tolkein

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Devil in Vienna by Doris Orgell

The Flute Player by D. M. Thomas

The Great Train Robbery by Michael Crichton

The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo

The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy

The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss

The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton

Unfinished Tales by J. R. R. Tolkein