A Rushed Blog

Call me A. I'll review books and adaptions and movies/series I read from time to time. Reblog stuff related to books and adaptions I read and watch respectively from time to time.

[ngalitzine]

horny jail

[moreghostthangirl]

Anne Boleyn cried the day of her third miscarriage but not on the day of her execution. Instead, she stayed up talking to God until the early hours. Instead, she reflected on her childhood, remembered the days when Mary would fashion her long black hair into braids. Instead, she wondered what it would’ve been like if she’d only been his mistress, or if she’d never married him, or if she’d given birth to a son. Instead, she thought back to when her affection had been more important to him than good relations with Rome. Instead, she got dressed. Wore a red petticoat under her dark grey gown. Her mother’s ring on her left hand instead of her wedding band. Instead, she walked up to the scaffold with steady hands and addressed the crowd, spoke fondly of the King. They tied a blindfold around her head and she closed her eyes. Thinking of God, thinking of Elizabeth. She didn’t feel the sword.

‘Anne Boleyn on the day of her execution’ by Cassie Lewis  (via moreghostthangirl)

[roka-bilion]

Ode to Lord Byron.

[englishlitty]

“The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history.”

-The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde, 1890

[antigonick]

Pauline’s book recs : a MASTERPOST

It’s time for a summer cleaning, so I thought I would organise my book recs once and for all. I’ll try to update this post once in a while and I also added it to my info page so that you can access all those links super easily. HAVE FUN.

CLASSICAL LITERATURE (ANTIQUITY) Where should I start? The fundamental works Where should I start? The mythology-oriented works Where should I start? The translation edition A very touristic overview of Ancient Greek literature Different texts for Antigone Different texts for Elektra  Different texts and translations for The Odyssey

CLASSIC BOOKS (ALL ERAS) First things first : a few favourites Where should I start? My first classics A very touristic overview of literature reading Modern classics Reading women : a few favourites Where should I start? English and US literature  Where should I start? Modern Italian literature Where should I start? German and Austrian literature Where should I start? Russian literature Where should I start? Renaissance literature Where should I start? French Medieval literature Where should I start? Victorian literature Reading classics to children Children literature for adults  Short-length classics Short stories One last thing: books I don’t want to check out

POETRY First things first : a few favourites Second things second : a bunch of recs Where should I start? Poetry Learning French? Easy French poetry Narrative poems  Mystic poems Poems about separation Poems about love Poems about happiness Poems about exile

DRAMA First things first : a few favourites

NON-FICTION First things first : a few favourites On feminism On translation On literary analysis and adaptation On biographies and diaries On writing theory On art history On reader-response theory On Sufism Literary interviews Essays

YEARLY SUMMARY Best of 2015 : Fiction Best of 2015 : Poetry 2015 - 2016 awaited releases 2016 Summer reading list Best of 2016 : Fiction Best of 2016 : Poetry

THEMATIC LISTS By character Works featuring Persephone Works featuring Kassandra Works featuring mermaids Works featuring the femme fatale archetype Works featuring female villains Works with Nature as a character Works with introspective characters Works with narcissistic characters Trope : Star-crossed lovers Trope : Friends to lovers Trope : Villainous love Trope : Toxic mother figure By theme Rewriting Greek and Roman myths LGBTQ (a terribly lacking list) Introspection and self-discovery Melancholy and sadness Happiness and hope Symbolism and atmosphere Moral corruption Spiritual decadence Sex politics and philosophy The female rage World War I Southern Gothic Great love stories Unusual love stories Dystopias Crime novels Medieval historical fiction Beach reading Travel reading By book Books similar to The Secret History Books similar to Wuthering Heights Books similar to A Grief Observed Books similar to The Brothers Karamazov Recommended editions of Romeo and Juliet Recommended editions of Shakespeare’s Sonnets Recommended translations of Tristan and Yseult Books adapted to the screen (1) Books adapted to the screen (2) By author Favourite French writers Favourite Contemporary writers What to read? By Women French writers What to read? By Anne Carson (And some prep reading for Anne Carson) What to read? By Richard Siken What to read? By Roland Barthes What to read? By Agatha Christie What to read? By E. A. Poe What to read? By Priya Sarukkai Chabria If you love Angela Carter  If you love Louise Glück  If you love Virginia Woolf  If you love Sylvia Plath  If you love Marguerite Duras If you love Emile Zola

[the-secret-historian]

This list is everything. No really, it has everything!

[arottencrowd]

I have two brain cells and I only use them to find ways in which classic literature is gay.

[boykeats]

do you have any favourite love letters from the past?

“You have fixed my Life – however short,” Wilfred Owen to Siegfried Sassoon

“I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia” / “Throw over your man, I say, and come,” Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf

“Love is my religion – I could die for that, I could die for you,” John Keats to Fanny Brawne

“I know Hyacinthus, whom Apollo loved so madly, was you in Greek days,” Oscar Wilde to Alfred Lord Douglas

[readwatchreview]

My condition is not unhappiness, but it is also not happiness, not indifference, not weakness, not fatigue, not another interest - so what is it then?

Franz Kafa, Diaries (1910-1923)

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

What are your favorite feminist writers? Apart from Virginia

Audre Lore, Adrienne Rich, Simone de Beauvoir, Erica Jong, Jeanette Winterson etc. etc. Tons of them, really.

[themaninthegreenshirt]

Sylvia Plath, Notre Dame [1956]  

[yrdogteeth]

I bestow upon thee; concept playlists

•classical music to sip tea to while contemplating philosophy and the next marble bust you’ll buy

•stealing books from the Oxford library with friends you never thought you’d find, in the snow, yelling about Ovid, lighting candles

•folky music for sitting on your front porch in the lazy evening sun, surrounded by your closest friends, gazing at a wheat field and singing along with a guitar in your arms

•feeling listless; like you’re walking the world alone, wandering with no destination, held in the arms of the earth and happy with that

•songs to sing LOUD in the car on a road trip going nowhere in particular

•staring out the window of a quaint coffee shop, watching the raindrops cling to the glass and thinking of all the poetry you’re going to write for that lover you left behind

•looking back on a long relationship and realizing all the ups and downs you’ve had as one, suddenly seeing it all in slow motion like a silent film

•laying back on your bed, smiling uncontrollably, thinking of all the beautiful, bucolic times you’re going to have in the sun with that person you can’t stop thinking of

•a rock in your rib-cage, sobbing on the floor, feeling empty; things are coming to an end and you can’t bear to see them go

•the first day of summer – sprawling yourself in the green & vivacious grass, heart shaped sunglasses perched on your nose; youth in all its glory

•songs that bring back days of your old glory, reliving your childhood and your golden days, tracing over the old scars and remembering how you got them

•the smell of old books, melancholy, songs that are so potent with a sort of wild and tragic longing that they’re almost dangerous

•looking out a car window; letting your eyes cling to weeping trees and then letting them snap back again. feeling self centered and tragical.

•ethereal, asleep on the floor of a baroque church, wearing all white and bathing in crystalline water, rising from ashes, walking upon the fallen bodies of those who came before you.

•on a train through the country, many trees passing, wanting to abscond into them. leaving your town to get away from your love who does not love you. finding yourself somewhere on the way.

•literally just songs that remind me of Oscar Wilde and Bosie Douglas

•stuff that i’m listening to right now! always changing, songs that i’m playing on repeat

[readwatchreview]

Early morning tea and CMBYN

[maisiewilliams]

10 Female Written Short Stories Everyone Should Read

I have seen a post circulating for a while that lists 10 short stories everyone should read and, while these are great works, most of them are older and written by white men. I wanted to make a modern list that features fresh, fantastic and under represented voices. Enjoy!

1. A Temporary Matter by Jhumpa Lahiri — A couple in a failing marriage share secrets during a blackout. 

2. Stone Animals by Kelly Link — A family moves into a haunted house.

3. Reeling for the Empire by Karen Russell — Women are sold by their families to a silk factory, where they are slowly transformed into human silkworms. 

4. Call My Name by Aimee Bender — A woman wearing a ball gown secretly auditions men on the subway. 

5. The Man on the Stairs by Miranda July — A woman wakes up to a noise on the stairs. 

6. Brownies by ZZ Packer — Rival Girl Scout troops are separated by race. 

7. City of My Dreams by Zsuzi Gartner — A woman works at a shop selling food-inspired soap and tries not to think about her past. 

8. A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor — A family drives from Georgia to Florida, even though a serial killer is on the loose. 

9. Hitting Budapest by NoViolet Bulawayo — A group of children, led by a girl named Darling, travel to a rich neighborhood to steal guavas. 

10. You’re Ugly, Too by Lorrie Moore — A history professor flies to Manhattan to spend Halloween weekend with her younger sister.

[astrangewoman]

I LOVE THIS POST!!

I’d like to add:

11. Good Country People by Flannery O’Connor

12. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (this one is my favorite short story of all time)

13. The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

14. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates

15. Désirée’s Baby by Kate Chopin

16. The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin

17. Impressions of an Indian Childhood by Zitkala-Ša

(I wanted to put little summaries for each of them, but I’m afraid I’d spoil the whole story if I did!)

[ellydash]

adding a few more! all by women of color, & the first four were published within the last few years

18. “My Dear You,” Rachel Khong — love, loss, & absurdity in the afterlife

19. “The Husband Stitch,” Carmen Maria Machado — a feminist retelling of the folklore story “The Green Ribbon”

20. “Inventory,” Carmen Maria Machado — one woman’s retrospective list of her life’s sexual encounters

21. “Boys Go to Jupiter,” Danielle Evans — what happens after a white college student poses for a photo in a Confederate flag bikini

22. “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere,” ZZ Packer — a Black woman attends Yale University

[roominthecastle]

me [angrily yet softly, through gritted teeth, while crying]: i love to write

[orplid-deactivated20181205]

Virginia Woolf and her lover, the English poet Vita Sackville-West

“Look here Vita — throw over your man, and we’ll go to Hampton Court and dine on the river together and walk in the garden in the moonlight and come home late and have a bottle of wine and get tipsy, and I’ll tell you all the things I have in my head, millions, myriads — They won’t stir by day, only by dark on the river. Think of that. Throw over your man, I say, and come.”

- Virginia Woolf’s 1927 Love Letter to Vita Sackville-West

[whisperthatruns]

Mushrooms

Overnight, very Whitely, discreetly, Very quietly Our toes, our noses Take hold on the loam, Acquire the air. Nobody sees us, Stops us, betrays us; The small grains make room. Soft fists insist on Heaving the needles, The leafy bedding, Even the paving. Our hammers, our rams, Earless and eyeless, Perfectly voiceless, Widen the crannies, Shoulder through holes. We Diet on water, On crumbs of shadow, Bland-mannered, asking Little or nothing. So many of us! So many of us! We are shelves, we are Tables, we are meek, We are edible, Nudgers and shovers In spite of ourselves. Our kind multiplies: We shall by morning Inherit the earth. Our foot’s in the door.

Sylvia Plath

[ruled-by-neptune]

I think it’s time to watch Pride and Prejudice again. I just can’t get enough.