Is it bad that I feel slightly bad that I keep coming to the library to use its quietness and its desk space and its pleasant atmosphere for writing but I never check out books?
Why would you feel bad? You’re using the library for one of its intended purposes. The desks, WiFi, space etc are LITERALLY there for you to do exactly what you’re doing AND each time you go in you add to the foot traffic numbers that prove hey people are coming in to use our stuff mr. government so keep funding us.
I think it's a bit sad that with more and more public spaces vanishing, people are feeling bad about not "buying" stuff to "earn" their time at a library.
A library is like a park, you're allowed to just. Exist in it.
I check out books every 4 weeks, when the learning period from my current books is up, but I go much more frequently with my kid to just sit there and read to them, and that's okay. In my school days, we'd go and do our research for presentations there, just reading, never checking out.
Some libraries can even get you hooked up with social workers and local aid programs. The important thing is investigating what YOUR library can do for YOU.
“One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.”
― Carl Sagan.
i just got my library card renewed after a very long time - do you know what all i can do with it other than taking out books? because i know there's more things but i feel like it's a silly question to ask
Not at all, and welcome back to the library life! Your millage may vary based on which of these services your library has available, but here's a few things I know of off the top of my head that are pretty common:
The library might have CDs, movies, and even newspapers you can borrow as well
Libby, an app that uses your library card to borrow and download ebooks and audiobooks to enjoy on your mobile device or e-reader
Kanopy, a streaming service for TV shows and movies
Hoopla, which has a whole bunch of stuff like shows & movies, comics, and magazines
Your library might have a makerspace that gives you access to things like 3D printers, button makers, computers with a bunch of Adobe software, ect
Sometimes they host book clubs or other fun community events!
my "#library guides" tag also has a number of posts about services like these if you'd like some more info. Your library's website should also list what services they offer, and/or you could ask a librarian there. Have fun!
An awesome 'What's More Punk Than The Public Library' t-shirt, which you can buy here. Made by the Mount Pleasant Library Friends.
[ID: A black t-shirt with white cut-out text in the middle that reads: WHAT'S MORE PUNK THAN THE PUBLIC LIBRARY?]
children’s book illustrators r literally the cornerstone of society im not kidding. where would we be w/o that little business worm in the apple car or the brambly hedge animals making their feasts and flying their kites like literally WHERE . do not even get me started on frog and toad
I went down a rabbit hole this summer researching romance novel covers and painting fanart in this style and
this is an EXTREMELY fun style to work in, and also
many of the most iconic romance novel covers you’re probably picturing when you think “classic painted romance novel cover” were produced by one prolific, masterful artist
Her name was Elaine Duillo, and she had a long and extremely productive career spanning from the mid 60’s to her retirement in 2003. She worked mainly in acrylics.
She did illustration work in other genres as well, but she really found her niche in romance novels. She pretty much redefined the aesthetic conventions of the genre, popularizing male models and male nudity and sexualizing men to cater to the female gaze in a way that simply wasn’t the norm before her work. You know Fabio? she’s the one who started using him as a model, and essentially launched his career. And honestly, just look at her work:
Intelligence doesn’t make you less prone to taking on bad ideas, it just makes you better at defending them to other people and to yourself. Smart people can believe some truly ridiculous things, and then deploy all the reason and logic at their disposal to justify them, because a belief doesn’t begin in your mind. It begins in your feelings.
This reminds me of someone saying smart and educated people fall for cons, pyramid schemes and all kinds of bullshit way too easily because they don't think that, as smart educated people, they could ever be fooled.
It's New Release Tuesday! We caught up with Alexis Nedd (@alexisthenedd) to talk about her debut novel, Don’t Hate The Player, which is out today. Alexis is a Brooklyn-based pop culture “fanthropologist” who has only ever loved things in a big, obsessive way. As the Senior Entertainment Reporter at Mashable.com, she covers television, movies, and video games, focusing on sci-fi and fantasy universes like Game of Thrones and the MCU. When she’s not writing for money, Alexis is writing for no money on her socials, where her feeds consist of deep dives on weird history and analyzing pop culture as an artifact of society.
Don’t Hate The Player is a YA romance novel that follows two competitive eSports players as they navigate school, parents, and other IRL stuff, while preparing for their biggest (and only) tournament yet. As real life and online life collide, both find the boundaries between online and IRL slipping into each other.
Can you start by telling us a little bit about Don’t Hate The Player?
In one corner, we have Emilia Romero, a popular, high-achieving Puerto Rican girl who secretly plays Guardians League Online with the elite Team Fury. No one in her real life knows she games, and everything hinges on it staying that way. In the other corner is Jake Hooper, a quiet, detrimentally empathetic nerd who’s had a crush on Emilia for years. He plays GLO with Team Unity and thinks he’s otherwise invisible.
When Guardians League Online announces a huge tournament in their city, Jake is shocked to see Emilia competing. Jake is now the only person who knows her secret, and they have to work together to keep it...all while the tournament brings their teams closer and closer to an ultimate Fury vs. Unity showdown.
Outwardly, Jake is an awkward, suffering bundle of anxiety, quite successfully hiding his integrity and wit. What was enjoyable/difficult about writing a neurodivergent romantic lead?
I started working on DHTP around the same time I learned I had ADHD. Getting that diagnosis as an adult ushered in a really strange and painful period of reevaluating my childhood, knowing that I was neurodivergent and didn’t get the help I needed. I gave a lot of the traits I used to think made me “wrong” or “bad”—the anxiety, the spinning thoughts, the self-deprecating coping mechanisms—to Jake because writing them into a lovable character felt like correcting the narrative I had grown up writing about myself.
It was difficult to excavate all of that because that level of self-evaluation totally sucks and takes forever, but by the end, I could look at Jake and think, “if I can’t hate him for feeling this way, I have no business hating myself for having felt that way.”
DHTP comes alive in its use of online gaming maps and chatrooms. How did you approach getting those virtual places right?
I made my first internet friends when cameras on phones or laptops were still rare, so I got to know a lot of people through chatrooms and forums. People’s personalities, real or constructed, come off so strongly in those rapid-fire conversations. That solved one of the problems I knew I’d have coming into this book—how do I introduce the reader to a group of characters who aren’t going to show up until the end and make them seem like part of the story the whole time? Answer: Spy on their group chat.
It was so fun to play all five roles in those chapters and determine who uses acronyms or memes, who always punctuates, what their in-jokes say about them, and so on. Truly some of my favorite parts of DHTP are in those chats.
How important do you think it is to meaningfully include online culture in YA literature?
After the year we just had, when most social interaction moved from the analog space to the digital, I consider the transformation of “online culture” into just “culture, full stop,” complete. I say this knowing I am a fully discourse-poisoned individual, and other people or writers may have the freedom to think less about that all of the time. A significant chunk of life takes place on screens these days, so if I’m writing about life... I’m going to write about the screens.
One of the big themes of DHTP is that what happens online is real whether you like it or not. So what looks from the outside like a mummy and a snake beating a guy up outside a space church can actually be the beginning of an IRL love story. Just because it’s silly doesn’t mean it’s not important.
What makes a good beginning to a story?
I don’t have any definitive advice on this, but with DHTP and the second novel I’m currently working on, I think my favorite method is putting your main characters in a situation designed to make them act the most themselves. For DHTP, we meet Jake at a party he was invited to out of politeness, so his discomfort and anxiety are front and center. Until he meets Emilia, who is only at the party because it’s in an arcade where she can indulge her gaming obsession without her parents watching. There, now we know some important things about both characters, and from here, it’s a 75k+ word journey to get them to kiss.
What’s the first book you remember loving?
This is the hardest question anyone has ever asked me. Are you sure you wouldn’t like a nice explanation of string theory instead? I’m sure I had others, but one of my formative obsessions was A Series of Unfortunate Events because as a child, I was so often frustrated with adults who didn’t believe a single word I said just because a child was saying it. Those books capture that frustration and, more importantly, do not resolve it, which I think was kinder than telling young people that everything would be OK if we read a lot of books and placed value on facts.
As a writer, how do you practice self-care when juggling work commitments and the creative processes of writing and editing?
I simply do not. After two years of working full-time and writing this book (most of it during a global pandemic), I have mastered none of the skills required to unplug and take care of myself beyond remaining alive and upright. I do not want to project the image of someone who has the self-care matrix figured out.
You don’t have to have it figured out to make something you’re proud of. You can be exhausted and smelly and know you should probably work on that soon and still create. I don’t recommend it, but it’s possible. Ask for help when you can.
What would Emilia or Jake’s blog look like if they were on Tumblr? What kind of content would they (re)blog?
Emilia’s blog would be a secret Guardians League Online stan account. She’d reblog fanart and write incredible deep dives on strategy and lore. No one would know it was her blog, but talkswithknox.tumblr.com would be required reading for people who want to know the deep magic of the game.
Jake is mostly here to read good takes on his dashboard and learn something he didn’t know when he logged in. He has never written an original post, and that’s fine.
Thanks so much for taking the time, Alexis! Don't Hate The Player is on shelves from today (and it's really, really good).
snowghoul
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