There Are Never Enough Books to Read

Sarah | 23 | She/Her | I love books and all things word based. This is a side blog to keep track and mildly organize that love. Feel free to ask me anything or stop in to chat!

[minnyarrd]

Yeah, you read that right, I convinced my university to let me research All for the Game for my degree!

Take the (anonymous) questionnaire here!

The deadline for responses is 31 December. Please share this as much as possible – the more responses I get, the better! 🧡

@korakos claims to have done no marketing for the All for the Game series, and despite the oversaturation of the online self-publishing market, AftG garnered significant sales and formed a prominent online fanbase. My research aims to figure out exactly how that happened!

This questionnaire looks into the most common modes of discovery for AftG, the formats you first read it in, and where you interact with other readers of the series. You don’t need to be a fan of AftG, you just need to have read at least the first book. It’s completely anonymous, though please take a moment to read through the participant and consent information on the first two pages of the questionnaire.

If you have any more questions (or have any issues with the questionnaire), let me know! :)

[counttwinkula]

hey did you know that uhh

i. the monster's body is a cultural body

ii. the monster always escapes

iii. the monster is the harbinger of category crisis

iv. the monster dwells at the gates of difference

v. the monster polices the borders of the possible

vi. fear of the monster is really a kind of desire

vii. the monster stands at the threshold… of becoming

[counttwinkula]

oh shit i didn't expect this to actually get notes lmao

these are all direct quotes from jeffrey jerome cohen's "monster culture (seven theses)" (full pdf linked) i highly encourage you to read it yourself!

that said, while i think cohen's writing is evocative, it can be a little dense, so while i'm here, here's my capsule summary (you can also hear me talk about this in the first episode of my podcast) (listen to @ghostswerepeopletoo)

i. the monster's body is a cultural body - The monster is a work of fiction to be analyzed through tools of literary and sociological theory.

ii. the monster always escapes - As long as the cultural fear from which the monster stems persists, the monster will reappear in retellings, reimaginings, and sequels.

iii. the monster is the harbinger of category crisis - Monsters defy binaries and challenge easy comprehension or categorization.

iv. the monster dwells at the gates of difference - The monster represents the Other.

v. the monster polices the borders of the possible - Tales of the monster exist to discourage unacceptable or taboo behaviors.

vi. fear of the monster is really a kind of desire - Subjects can vicariously participate in the disruption of the social order through the monster.

vii. the monster stands at the threshold… of becoming - Within the monster we find information about the self.

[hungryfictions]

use, and i cannot stress this enough, thriftbooks

[colorisbyshe]

if thriftbooks doesn’t have what you’re looking for, especially if you’re looking for it used/cheap, alternatives include betterworldbooks and discoverbooks.

Other tips for cheaper books is checking amazon and scrolling down to the “buy used” or “other sellers” section and then checking to see if those sellers have storerfonts off of amazon.

There is also a good chance that you might have a local, indie book store that likely also has a used book section! Indiebound might help you find those book stores!

Also, check out your local library, sometimes, they have a for sale section or might have certain times of the year where they do massive used book (dvd, cd, etc) sales to fundraise!

(It’s also worth checking directly from an author’s or publisher’s page and seeing if they have other places they sell their books. I know this is about cheaper/used books, since some of y’all aren’t built for piracy or the library, but also if you want to dodge supporting amazon AND want to more directly support artists you support, there’s a good chance they might have alternate ways to buy the books!)

[headspace-hotel]

I use thriftbooks a lot, it's so good!

[initiala]

Bookshop.org allows you to purchase from a locally owned bookshop in your area, the order gets routed to them and the local shop will do the ordering and shipping to you.

[golyadkin]

Sons Of The Labyrinth or The Things Our Fathers Do To Us

[elucubrare]

one of the reasons why “what if people went on a road trip and it was weird” is one of the oldest story types is that a lot of sense of personhood has been, historically, tied to place. the weird road trip says “what if we went somewhere else, where no one knows us, and tried out being a different person”.

Odysseus, the famous liar, goes on a weird road trip & over the course of it becomes several different people, and then comes home & is all those people as well as himself, wearing the echoes of those other people

[toli-a]

What’s that quote? There are only two kinds of stories: a man goes on a journey, or a stranger comes to town.

[golyadkin]

Sons Of The Labyrinth or The Things Our Fathers Do To Us

[angelnumbers]

this was always going to happen.

matthew stover, david levithan, margarita karapanou, aeschylus, karese burrows, richard siken

[inkskinned]

did you really let them ruin that for you?

when i was younger i worked on a farm for 3 years. during late july and august we would have unfettered access to the strawberry plots. they were all warm and ripe and fresh. i think i ate a pound of dirt back then. i think i picked enough seeds out of my teeth to build a temple. the summer hours are long; i'd come home with the bruising stain of juice running in a seam along my cheeks and fingers and jaw.

why didn't you protect your precious things from other people? you knew this could happen.

i can't eat strawberries from the store anymore, they don't taste right. something about the florescent lights and the chill of them and the way they are absent from the vine. they feel bleached and bland, a wasted party dress. i watch other people eat strawberries and miss enjoying them. none of the store-bought strawberries will have mold or bugs, okay. they will be big and bright red and perfectly shaped. but they are not the ugly and real strawberries of my summer, awarded by the soil and the hot sun up ahead and hours spent crouched, plucking.

i didn't mean to let it get ruined. i wish it hadn't been. i miss having it. but i came back to it afterward and it just wasn't the same as it had been. i know love is never wasted. but it feels like - love did this. it's not that i never loved it, you know? it's that i did.

[ripeteeth]

omfg i forgot that i never showed tumblr my greatest achievement. my pride and joy, my pi-ass de résistance

[ripeteeth]

you're welcome

[ripeteeth]

if you reblog this i am kissing you on the mouth. no that is not negotiable. we are in love now. we are dating. we are planning the wedding. i will be with you on your wedding night

[memeuplift]

[seikilos-stele]

Ursula K. Le Guin

[crystallizedtwilight]

whoops

[knottahooker]

#when you set out for revenge dig two graves#unless you’re hamlet#in which case you’re going to want to rent a backhoe (x) YOU’RE NOT LEAVING THAT IN THE TAGS BUDDY

[theglowpt2-deactivated20200101]

every word out of guillermo del toro’s mouth is the most hardcore thing i’ve ever heard and he says it all so casually like he doesn’t even realize how much of a gothic visionary he is 

[theglowpt2-deactivated20200101]

“Since childhood, I’ve been faithful to monsters. I have been saved and absolved by them, because monsters, I believe, are patron saints of our blissful imperfection, and they allow and embody the possibility of failing”

I STILL THINK ABOUT THIS EVERY DAY OF MY LIFE

[stuck-in-jelly]

Yo okie Guillermo has some of the best quotes and lines I’ve ever heard, here are just a few of his quotes that have me questioning life:

“What is a ghost? A tragedy condemned to repeat itself time and again? A moment of pain, perhaps. Something dead which still seems to be alive. An emotion suspended in time. Like a blurred photograph. Like an insect trapped in amber.”

“I knew that monsters were far more gentle and more desirable than the monsters living inside ‘nice people.’ Accepting that you are a monster gives you the leeway to not behave like one. When you deny being a monster, you behave like one.”

“When you see something or experience something extraordinary, you can’t go back to normal… I think that that’s the way I see the supernatural-as happening in mundane circumstances or to people who are unprepared”

“To learn what we fear is to learn who we are. Horror defines our boundaries and illuminates our souls”

“Any legend, any creature, any symbol we ever stumble on, already exists in a vast cosmic reservoir where archetypes wait. Shapes looming outside our Platonic cave. We naturally believe ourselves clever and wise, so advanced, and those who came before us so naïve and simple…when all we truly do is echo the order of the universe, as it guides us…”

And the last but certainly not the least:

“In fairy tales, monsters exist to be a manifestation of something that we need to understand, not only a problem we need to overcome, but also they need to represent, much like angels represent the beautiful, pure, eternal side of the human spirit, monsters need to represent a more tangible, more mortal side of being human: aging, decay, darkness and so forth. And I believe that monsters originally, when we were cavemen and you know, sitting around a fire, we needed to explain the birth of the sun and the death of the moon and the phases of the moon and rain and thunder. And we invented creatures that made sense of the world: a serpent that ate the sun, a creature that ate the moon, a man in the moon living there, things like that. And as we became more and more sophisticated and created sort of a social structure, the real enigmas started not to be outside. The rain and the thunder were logical now. But the real enigmas became social. All those impulses that we were repressing: cannibalism, murder, these things needed an explanation. The sex drive, the need to hunt, the need to kill, these things then became personified in monsters. Werewolves, vampires, ogres, this and that. I feel that monsters are here in our world to help us understand it. They are an essential part of a fable.”

[xenafay]

Violet Sorrengail from Fourth Wing🐉 Excited to see how my interpretation of her will develop and change with time.

[corvidfeathers]

chapel perilous - a handful of snippets from my in-progress project, a visual novel in which you play Lancelot, haunted by those who love him, waking in a strange chapel and trying to unravel its curse

[arthurianasuggestion]

this is so very much an in progress project but I wanted to share a little bit of it here! The chapel perilous anecdote has mulling in my head for years and since I first read it I thought it would be interesting to adapt into a full Lancelot character study.

[supreme-leader-stoat]

"This story is a tragedy because it didn't have to end this way."

vs

"This story is a tragedy because it was always going to end this way."

[papayajuan2019]

cruelty is so easy. youre not special for choosing it

[derelicthousefootage]

[chilewithcarnage]

"The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain."

-Ursula K. LeGuin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas