happy in a library

29 🪐she/her 🪐 books, movies and a little bit of studying

[reading-like-a-kid]

"True friends are always together in spirit."

Anne Shirley & Diana Barry

[reading-like-a-kid]

"People laugh at me because I use big words. But if you have big ideas, you have to use big words to express them, haven't you?"

Anne Shirley

[quick-nip]

(via Saturday Morning Cartoons: Baopu #15) by Yao Xiao

words to remember

[ceylonsilvergirl]

THIS HAS MADE AN ACTUAL DIFFERENCE IN MY LIFE!!

Implementing this has improved how I feel about myself, and HOW I SEE OTHER PEOPLE!!

I’m not a burden to put up with. I’m a person who deserves respect, but does have some idiosyncrasies.

Other people aren’t barely tolerating me, they’re being patient and considerate and working hard to be polite.

And I find that when I acknowledge the good I see in other people, they feel respected and appreciated.

[reading-like-a-kid]

Beth March

"Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott

[everythingfox]

Orange dog behaviour

[sunsbleeding]

[storybookprincess]

i know it’s been said before, but it bears repeating: a big, big part of maintaining your confidence & self esteem as a creator is fully embracing the concept of “you don’t have to be good like them.  you can be good like you.”

for example, i’m not someone who’s particularly good at coming up with complex, elaborate plots or incredibly unique ideas.  it’s just not how i choose to write.  and it would be easy for me to look at someone with an elaborate, super unique plot & decide that because i don’t write like that, i’m not a good writer.  after all, unique plots are good, and my writing lacks those, so my writing must not be good, right?  well, no, actually.  i just have different strengths, like taking a simple premise & digging super deep into its emotional depths.  that’s what i do well & it isn’t any better or worse than people who do elaborate world building or come up with really creative and unexpected plots.

your writing is never going to be all things to all people.  it just isn’t.  inevitably, you’ll have to make creative choices that favor certain aspects of writing over others.  there is truly no getting around that & it’s honestly a good thing, because it means you’ve developed your own style.  but you’ll always encounter other creators who posses strengths that you don’t.  it doesn’t mean one is better than the other or that your writing isn’t good enough. 

comparing yourself like that would be like taking a piece of pizza & a cupcake & going “oh no, that cupcake is so sweet & my pizza isn’t sweet at all.” or “gosh, the garlic crust on that pizza is delicious and my cupcake doesn’t have ANY garlic.”  obviously your pizza isn’t sweet.  obviously your cupcake doesn’t have garlic.  a food can’t have every single delicious flavor at once.  the cupcake is good like a cupcake.  the pizza is good like a pizza.  so you don’t have to be good like them.  you can be good like you.

[curlicuecal]

This also means that sometimes you will get writing advice on how to improve your cupcakes and sometimes you will get writing advice on how to add garlic to your cupcakes because the reader doesn’t get that you’re not making a pizza

The best advice comes from people who generally like what you’re going for

[velartis]

Cyril Connolly

[thelonelybrilliance]

Persuasion, and hope

I was just reflecting on what an uplifting story Persuasion is, despite its bleak beginnings and stark lines between heroes and villains. As Austen’s last novel, some critics have dared to attack it for containing lesser subtlety—almost a fairytale of sorts. While I’ll have to defend fairytales another time, I’d like to defend Persuasion against a jab about its subtlety.

It isn’t a typical happy ending tale. This isn’t a case of a princess having a fleeting meeting with her prince, a brief period of disappointment and longing, and then bliss. This story comes to us after eight years of Anne Elliot’s suffering. She didn’t have just a fleeting meeting; she had a real chance at love, and threw it away.

Elizabeth Bennet arrives on the scene not yet one-and-twenty, never having been in love. Marianne Dashwood has probably thought she was in love half-a-dozen times.  

But Anne. Anne screwed up. Now, I don’t blame her—she was young. She was basically unsupported in every area of her life except by one, much older friend who was basically a surrogate mother figure—and that’s the voice that told her to let go of Wentworth the first time around. I don’t blame Anne for listening to that voice.

But can you imagine the guilt? The misery of looking around at your foppish father and your querulous sisters, and thinking, I chose this? And eight, eight years go by. Reinforcing the permanence of that choice every day.

I guess I resonate with this because I feel like one of my greatest fears is missed chances. As if I, like Anne, listened to the wrong advice and threw love away before I knew what it was. Or maybe I never got the opportunity because there’s something wrong with me—I’m just trapped by a refrain that, this is my life, this is my life, so nothing good and unexpected and beautiful could happen…

What a hopeless refrain! Yet it permeates much of Persuasion…because after eight years, Wentworth returns…and seemingly wants nothing to do with Anne. Yes, we can imagine her bitterly thinking (for even Anne, with her patience and goodness and sweetness, had some bitterness mixed in by the force of cruel circumstances)—this is my life. He comes back, he doesn’t want her, he throws the possibility of a relationship with a younger, spunkier woman in her face—and Anne just has to suffer through it. She has no one to confide in, no one who is looking at her. The one person who she might have shared everything with is angry with her. And one of the sharpest truths is that he is still in love with her, and that’s where his anger comes from—but all she can see is his indifference, because as every woman knows, we can’t see inside men’s heads.

It seems so hopeless.

And then. Anne keeps living, because this is her life. She sucks it up, she continues to be patient, to be good. She doesn’t wallow, as much as she probably wants to. And it is that persistence that shows Captain Frederick Wentworth what he’s missing—that resentment isn’t going to mend his heart, she is–and he cannot live without her. This is his life, and he can’t imagine Anne not in it.

They get their happy ending. And I get a bit of hope—all of us readers do, if we are struggling with the mundane realities of every day, with the fear that we blew our big chance at a golden future.

Of course our lives aren’t novels. (At least, they haven’t inspired any yet). But our lives are not without hope. And the uplifting message of Persuasion is that sometimes living out the lives we have is what draws in the sunshine we have felt so lacking for so long.

[firawren]

I've been thinking about the fact that some readers of Sense and Sensibility don't believe Willoughby truly loved Marianne, even though everyone in the book believes it and the narrator makes it clear how much he cared for her, at the end. And I think this reading of him takes away from one of the messages of the book, which is that love is not enough.

Willoughby loves Marianne, but that's not enough to stop him from hurting her, it's not enough to make him give up his cushy lifestyle and marry her, and it wouldn't have been enough to keep him happy with her long-term. Marianne loves Willoughby, but it wouldn't have been enough for her to be happy with him long-term either.

Edward loves Elinor, but that's not a good enough reason to break his promise to Lucy, because integrity and honor and responsibility are just as important to him. Brandon loves Marianne, but that's not reason enough to court her, because he knows her feelings lie elsewhere and she doesn't respect and esteem him yet.

Love is important to all these characters, and is a vital part in making the marriages that they ultimately end up in strong and happy, but it's not the only thing that makes them work.

Of course, Sense and Sensibility is hardly the only Austen novel to make the point that you need more than love or romance or passion to make a relationship work. But I think it's interesting how we get to see this play out in the villain of the novel. Willoughby does some truly horrific things, but his character shows that even really bad guys are capable of feeling love and guilt and remorse. But none of these feelings are ultimately strong enough to change him. Because love is not enough.

[bethanydelleman]

Exactly this!

Also, I asked a friend of mine who is a psychologist if there really are people incapable of love (people say this a lot about Willoughby) and she answered:

So my thought is that definitely your ability to have a healthy attachment depends on early experiences. Is anyone totally incapable of love on a fundamental level...no but with enough trauma probably almost impossible to attach in a healthy way and trust others

Willoughby did fall in love with Marianne, we are told so by both him and the narrator, but he feared poverty more than he cherished love, which is why he was never the romantic hero that Marianne imagined him to be! Colonel Brandon is the one willing to make real sacrifices for love, he is the one mixing love and responsibility.

Love is not enough.

(also Austen making a joke at the end that Elinor and Edward weren't enough in love to marry on 300/year, balancing love and prudence)

[oldfashionedbooklove]

I’m hugely struck by what Willoughby said himself: « I did not then know what it was to love. But have I ever known it?—Well may it be doubted; for, had I really loved, could I have sacrificed my feelings to vanity, to avarice?—or, what is more, could I have sacrificed hers? »

[fictionadventurer]

The discussions of Elizabeth Gaskell always seem to focus on who she's not. She's not Dickens, she's not Austen, she's not Elliot, and she's definitely not one of the Brontes. At best, they'll say she has Dickens' social justice concerns and Austen's country houses, but who is she? What makes her perspective unique?

As I consider this, I keep coming back to, "She's kind."

She is so kind.

There is a compassion in her writing unlike anything I've seen from other authors. She wants to see people. Know them. Understand them. And when she does, she loves them, faults and all.

When she laughs at people, it's not the satire of Austen or the caricature of Dickens--it's a fond, loving laugh that likes these people in all their ridiculousness.

Even when she's pushing a very clear message about how people should or shouldn't act, you never get the sense that she's judging people who fail to live up to that standard--she's just trying to understand how they got to the place where they made the wrong decision.

In her world, people are kind and deserve to be treated kindly. But that doesn't mean that she ignores the darkness in life. She sees the darkness and sin and squalor and says that's why we need to be kinder to each other. Her kindness comes not from ignoring reality but by paying so much attention to reality that she comes to care deeply for everyone. And I just go crazy over it.

[writers-bane]

You're afraid to write because you care too much about your craft. Not because you suck.

You want it to be perfect. Worthy. You're scared it won't be good enough. But the thing is, everything you write is worthy if you write it with heart.

That fear doesn't make you a fraud, or lazy. It makes you a perfectionist who doesn't write as much as they should because their fear is choking them. Your writing will never be perfect—nothing ever is.

So stop waiting for the perfect moment and go pour your heart out. Unleash your wild—and slightly disturbing—imagination onto those pages. Go create magic that only you can make.

GO WRITE THE THING YOU KEEP THINKING ABOUT DAY AND NIGHT. And make sure you write it for yourself before anyone else!

[reading-like-a-kid]

Amy March

"Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott