David Cusick was a Tuscarora (Haudenosaunee) artist who self-published the first known English-language record of Indigenous stories told BY an Indigenous writer-illustrator. His book is called David Cusick’s Sketches of Ancient History of the Six Nations and you can read it for free online.
the like meta narrative of all about eve and applause will never not make me crazy. what do you mean lauren bacall who loved bette davis and like went to the hotel she was staying at just to like sneak around and see her then played bette davis’s character in the musical adaptation of all about eve which is about eve who follows around margo played by bette davis because she wants to become (like) her. what do you mean anne baxter who played eve in the film then replaced lauren bacall as margo on broadway… eve becoming margo for real… what do you mean rita hayworth was in consideration or whatever to replace lauren bacall instead of anne baxter rita hayworth who had an affair with gary merrill who was of course married to bette davis after they met on the set of all about eve. and this is before i even get into the lore of the wisdom of eve and the two mrs carrolls (or the tallulah bankhead lizabeth scott possible alternate origin story. which lends its own insanity bc while people do compare margo to tallulah already like. bette played multiple tallulah roles adapted for the screen. and of course I mean there’s already the bette replacing claudette colbert in all about eve of it all) and of course the earlier cycles at play in women and fame an obsession which all about eve is of course about like bette davis following greta garbo around because she was obsessed with her.
@madeofstarrynights @mollflounders to be honest idk what yall wanted exactly and its probably not this. but!!! you've enabled me to make this so here. have the more researched more sourced more insane version of this! if i understand how publishing google slides works you should just be able to click through but idk if it works well on mobile
honestly i have no real idea of what you’re after here but you’ve enabled me, a guy who keeps being tormented by evil urges to go to grad sc
i'll also go ahead and screenshot the slides in case that's easier and drop them under the cut!
okay not to make an already crazy long post even longer but I remembered that I left out my Ida Lupino tangent and it’s a good tangent!!!! Ida Lupino was supposed to play Margo in a radio production of All About Eve at some point but got sick and was last minute replaced by Claire Trevor (much like, perhaps, Claudette and Bette…) for the broadcast, but Ida Lupino playing Margo after Bette would have been sooooooo fun because in her acting career Lupino is often quoted as describing herself as “a poor man’s Bette Davis” and especially in her early career was like constantly compared to Bette and because of the like entertainment media landscape at the time it was often framed like Lupino was going to take over her career in a way by often playing a similar type and for the same studio.
(first two are from the same article, last is a different one)
just finished the show Tipping the Velvet and would love to know why i don't hear more about it all the time. practically no posts about it in the tag either. horny butch4butch and butchfemme lesbian romance in the 1800s. toxic as hell d/s where the butch is the sub and with a dash of politically loaded obsession with ancient roman aesthetics. lesbian drama that takes the main up and down the social strata until she lands on socialism. sally hawkins is there. it exists and was made in 2002. they didn't think the bbc would let them include huge dildos in it but it did
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Anne of Green Gables is a 1908 novel by Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery (published as L. M. Montgomery). Written for all ages, it has been considered a classic children's novel since the mid-20th century. From Wikipedia: “Set in the late 19th century, the novel recounts the adventures of 11-year-old orphan girl Anne Shirley sent by mistake to two middle-aged siblings, Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, who had originally intended to adopt a boy to help them on their farm in the fictional town of Avonlea in Prince Edward Island, Canada. The novel recounts how Anne makes her way through life with the Cuthberts, in school, and within the town.
In writing the novel, Montgomery was inspired by notes she had made as a young girl about two siblings who were mistakenly sent an orphan girl instead of the boy they had requested, yet decided to keep her. She drew upon her own childhood experiences in rural Prince Edward Island, Canada. Montgomery was inspired by the ‘formula Ann’ orphan stories (called such because they followed such a predictable formula) that were popular at the time, but distinguished her character by spelling her name with an extra ‘e’.
Since its publication, Anne of Green Gables has been translated into at least 36 languages and has sold more than 50 million copies, making it one of the best-selling books worldwide. It was the first of many novels; Montgomery wrote numerous sequels, and since her death another sequel has been published, as well as an authorized prequel titled Before Green Gables. This prequel was written in 2008 by Budge Wilson to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the book series. The original book is taught to students around the world.
The book has been adapted as films, television films, and animated and live-action television series. Musicals and plays have also been created, with productions annually in Canada, Europe and Japan.”
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"The Yellow Wallpaper" (original title: "The Yellow Wall-paper. A Story") is a 1892 short story by American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman. From Wikipedia: "The story is written as a collection of journal entries narrated in the first person. The journal was written by a woman whose physician husband has rented an old mansion for the summer. Forgoing other rooms in the house, the husband confines the woman to an upstairs nursery. As a form of treatment, the husband forbids the journal writer from working or writing, and encourages her to eat well and get plenty of air so that she can recuperate from what he calls a 'temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency', a common diagnosis in women at the time. As the reader continues through the journal entries, they experience the writer's gradual descent into madness with nothing better to do than observe the peeling yellow wallpaper in her room.
In ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’ Gilman portrays the narrator's insanity as a way to protest the professional and societal oppression against women. While under the impression that husbands and male doctors were acting with their best interests in mind, women were depicted as mentally fragile. Women’s rights advocates of the era believed that the 'outbreak' of this mental instability was the manifestation of their setbacks regarding the roles they were allowed to play in a male-dominated society. Women were even discouraged from writing because it would ultimately create an identity and become a form of defiance. Gilman realized that writing became one of the only forms of existence for women at a time when they had very few rights. After the birth of her first daughter, Gilman suffered postnatal depression and was treated by Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, the leading expert on women's mental health at the time. He suggested a strict 'rest cure' regimen involving much of bed rest and a blanket ban on working, including reading, writing, and painting. After three months and almost desperate, Gilman decided to contravene her diagnosis, along with the treatment methods, and started to work again. Aware of how close she had come to a complete mental breakdown, the author wrote 'The Yellow Wallpaper' with additions and exaggerations to illustrate her criticism of the medical field. Gilman sent a copy to Mitchell but never received a response. Gilman was ultimately proven right in her disdain for the 'rest cure' when she sought a second opinion from Mary Putnam Jacobi, one of the first female doctors and a strong opponent of this theory, who prescribed a regimen of physical and mental activity that proved a much more successful treatment. Gilman added that 'The Yellow Wallpaper' was 'not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked'.
'The Yellow Wallpaper' has been adapted into film, stage plays, and audio plays many times."
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It's funny how the nature of an object—let's say a strawberry or a pair of socks-is so changed by the way it has come into your hands, as a gift or as a commodity. The pair of wool socks that I buy at the store, red and gray striped, are warm and cozy. I might feel grateful for the sheep that made the wool and the worker who ran the knitting machine. I hope so. But I have no inherent obligation to those socks as a commodity, as private property. There is no bond beyond the politely exchanged "thank yous" with the clerk. I have paid for them and our reciprocity ended the minute I handed her the money. The exchange ends once parity has been established, an equal exchange. They become my property. I don't write a thank-you note to JCPenney.
But what if those very same socks, red and gray striped, were knitted by my grandmother and given to me as a gift? That changes everything. A gift creates ongoing relationship. I will write a thank-you note. I will take good care of them and if I am a very gracious grandchild I'll wear them when she visits even if I don't like them. When it's her birthday, I will surely make her a gift in return. As the scholar and writer Lewis Hyde notes, "It is the cardinal difference between gift and commodity exchange that a gift establishes a feeling-bond between two people."
Wild strawberries fit the definition of gift, but grocery store berries do not. It's the relationship between producer and consumer that changes everything. As a gift-thinker, I would be deeply offended if I saw wild strawberries in the grocery store. I would want to kidnap them all. They were not meant to be sold, only to be given. Hyde reminds us that in a gift economy, one's freely given gifts cannot be made into someone else's capital. I can see the headline now: "Woman Arrested for Shoplifting Produce. Strawberry Liberation Front Claims Responsibility."
This is the same reason we do not sell sweetgrass. Because it is given to us, it should only be given to others. My dear friend Wally “Bear" Meshigaud is a ceremonial firekeeper for our people and uses a lot of sweetgrass on our behalf. There are folks who pick for him in a good way, to keep him supplied, but even so, at a big gathering sometimes he runs out. At powwows and fairs you can see our own people selling sweetgrass for ten bucks a braid. When Wally really needs wiingashk for a ceremony, he may visit one of those booths among the stalls selling frybread or hanks of beads. He introduces himself to the seller, explains his need, just as he would in a meadow, asking permission of the sweetgrass. He cannot pay for it, not because he doesn't have the money, but because it cannot be bought or sold and still retain its essence for ceremony. He expects sellers to graciously give him what he needs, but sometimes they don't. The guy at the booth thinks he's being shaken down by an elder. "Hey, you can't get something for nothin'," he says. But that is exactly the point. A gift is something for nothing, except that certain obligations are attached. For the plant to be sacred, it cannot be sold. Reluctant entrepreneurs will get a teaching from Wally, but they'll never get his money.
Sweetgrass belongs to Mother Earth. Sweetgrass pickers collect properly and respectfully, for their own use and the needs of their community. They return a gift to the earth and tend to the wellbeing of the wiingashk. The braids are given as gifts, to honor, to say thank you, to heal and to strengthen. The sweetgrass is kept in motion. When Wally gives sweetgrass to the fire, it is a gift that has passed from hand to hand, growing richer as it is honored in every exchange.
That is the fundamental nature of gifts: they move, and their value increases with their passage. The fields made a gift of berries to us and we made a gift of them to our father. The more something is shared, the greater its value becomes. This is hard to grasp for societies steeped in notions of private property, where others are, by definition, excluded from sharing. Practices such as posting land against trespass, for example, are expected and accepted in a property economy but are unacceptable in an economy where land is seen as a gift to all.
Lewis Hyde wonderfully illustrates this dissonance in his exploration of the "Indian giver." This expression, used negatively today as a pejorative for someone who gives something and then wants to have it back, actually derives from a fascinating cross-cultural misinterpretation between an indigenous culture operating in a gift economy and a colonial culture predicated on the concept of private property. When gifts were given to the settlers by the Native inhabitants, the recipients understood that they were valuable and were intended to be retained. Giving them away would have been an affront. But the indigenous people understood the value of the gift to be based in reciprocity and would be affronted if the gifts did not circulate back to them. Many of our ancient teachings counsel that whatever we have been given is supposed to be given away again.
From the viewpoint of a private property economy, the "gift" is deemed to be "free" because we obtain it free of charge, at no cost. But in the gift economy, gifts are not free. The essence of the gift is that it creates a set of relationships. The currency of a gift economy is, at its root, reciprocity. In Western thinking, private land is understood to be a "bundle of rights," whereas in a gift economy property has a "bundle of responsibilities" attached.
FINAL RESULT: The majority of voters haven’t read this book, but enjoyed this excerpt. 😊
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants is a 2013 nonfiction book by Potawatomi professor Robin Wall Kimmerer. From Wikipedia: “Braiding Sweetgrass is about the role of Indigenous knowledge as an alternative or complementary approach to Western mainstream scientific methodologies. The book explores reciprocal relationships between humans and the land, with a focus on the role of plants and botany in both Native American and Western European traditions. Kimmerer is known for her scholarship on traditional ecological knowledge, ethnobotany, and moss ecology.
The book received largely positive reviews, and has appeared on several bestseller lists. The Appalachian Review notes that Kimmerer's writing does not fall into ‘preachy, new-age, practical bring-your-own-grocery-bags environmental movement writing’ nor ‘the flowing optimism of pure nature writing.’ The reader is compelled to act and change their view of the environment as the book ‘challenges the European immigrant ecological consciousness’ through ‘Native American creation stories and details of sustainable, traditional, ecological management practices of Native Americans.’ Kathleen D. Moore in The Bryologist says that Braiding Sweetgrass ‘is far more than a memoir or a field guide. I would call it a wisdom book, because I believe that Robin has something world-changing to pass along, an ethos she has learned by listening closely to plants’.
Kimmerer received the 2014 Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award for her book Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. The book has also received best-seller awards amongst the New York Times Bestseller, the Washington Post Bestseller, and the Los Angeles Times Bestseller lists. It was named a ‘Best Essay Collection of the Decade’ by Literary Hub and a Book Riot ‘Favorite Summer Read of 2020’.”
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It had begun with Christmas and the gift of dolls. The big, the special, the loving gift was always a big, blue-eyed Baby Doll. From the clucking sounds of adults I knew that the doll represented what they thought was my fondest wish. I was bemused with the thing itself, and the way it looked. What was I supposed to do with it? Pretend I was its mother? I had no interest in babies or the concept of motherhood. I was interested only in humans my own age and size, and could not generate any enthusiasm at the prospect of being a mother. Motherhood was old age, and other remote possibilities. I learned quickly, however, what I was expected to do with the doll: rock it, fabricate storied situations around it, even sleep with it. Picture books were full of little girls sleeping with their dolls. Raggedy Ann dolls usually, but they were out of the question. I was physically revolted by and secretly frightened of those round moronic eyes, the pancake face, and orangeworms hair.
The other dolls, which were supposed to bring me great pleasure, succeeded in doing quite the opposite. When I took it to bed, its hard unyielding limbs resisted my flesh-the tapered fingertips on those dimpled hands scratched. If, in sleep, I turned, the bone-cold head collided with my own. It was a most uncomfortable, patently aggressive sleeping companion. To hold it was no more rewarding. The starched gauze or lace on the cotton dress irritated any embrace. I had only one desire: to dismember it. To see of what it was made, to discover the dearness, to find the beauty, the desirability that had escaped me, but apparently only me. Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs—all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured.
"Here," they said, "this is beautiful, and if you are on this day "worthy' you may have it." I fingered the face, wondering at the single-stroke eyebrows; picked at the pearly teeth stuck like two piano keys between red bowline lips.
Traced the turned-up nose, poked the glassy blue eyeballs, twisted the yellow hair. I could not love it. But I could examine it to see what it was that all the world said was lovable. Break off the tiny fingers, bend the flat feet, loosen the hair, twist the head around, and the thing made one sound—a sound they said was the sweet and plaintive cry "Mama," but which sounded to me like the bleat of a dying lamb, or, more precisely, our icebox door opening on rusty hinges in July. Remove the cold and stupid eyeball, it would bleat still, "Ahhhhhh," take off the head, shake out the sawdust, crack the back against the brass bed rail, it would bleat still. The gauze back would split, and I could see the disk with six holes, the secret of the sound. A mere metal roundness.
Grown people frowned and fussed: "You-don't-know-how-to-take-care-of-nothing. I-never-had-a-baby-doll-in-my-whole-life-and-used-to-cry-my-eyes-out-for-them. Now-you-got-one-a-beautiful-one-and-you-tear-it-up-what's-the-matter-with-you?"
How strong was their outrage. Tears threatened to erase the aloofness of their authority. The emotion of years of unfulfilled longing preened in their voices. I did not know why I destroyed those dolls. But I did know that nobody ever asked me what I wanted for Christmas. Had any adult with the power to fulfill my desires taken me seriously and asked me what I wanted, they would have known that I did not want to have anything to own, or to possess any object. I wanted rather to feel something on Christmas day. The real question would have been, "Dear Claudia, what experience would you like on Christmas?" I could have spoken up, "I want to sit on the low stool in Big Mama's kitchen with my lap full of lilacs and listen to Big Papa play his violin for me alone." The lowness of the stool made for my body, the security and warmth of Big Mama's kitchen, the smell of the lilacs, the sound of the music, and, since it would be good to have all of my senses engaged, the taste of a peach, perhaps, afterward.
Instead I tasted and smelled the acridness of tin plates and cups designed for tea parties that bored me. Instead I looked with loathing on new dresses that required a hateful bath in a galvanized zinc tub before wearing. Slipping around on the zinc, no time to play or soak, for the water chilled too fast, no time to enjoy one's nakedness, only time to make curtains of soapy water careen down between the legs. Then the scratchy towels and the dreadful and humiliating absence of dirt. The irritable, unimaginative cleanliness. Gone the ink marks from legs and face, all my creations and accumulations of the day gone, and replaced by goose pimples.
I destroyed white baby dolls.
But the dismembering of dolls was not the true horror. The truly horrifying thing was the transference of the same impulses to little white girls. The indifference with which I could have axed them was shaken only by my desire to do so. To discover what eluded me: the secret of the magic they weaved on others. What made people look at them and say, "Awwwww," but not for me? The eye slide of black women as they approached them on the street, and the possessive gentleness of their touch as they handled them.
If I pinched them, their eyes—unlike the crazed glint of the baby doll's eyes—would fold in pain, and their cry would not be the sound of an icebox door, but a fascinating cry of pain. When I learned how repulsive this disinterested violence was, that it was repulsive because it was disinterested, my shame floundered about for refuge. The best hiding place was love. Thus the conversion from pristine sadism to fabricated hatred, to fraudulent love. It was a small step to Shirley Temple. I learned much later to worship her, just as I learned to delight in cleanliness, knowing, even as I learned, that the change was adjustment without improvement.
FINAL RESULT: The majority of voters haven’t read this book, but enjoyed this excerpt. 😊
The Bluest Eye is a 1970 novel by Toni Morrison. It was Morrison’s first novel. From Wikipedia: “The novel takes place in Lorain, Ohio (Morrison's hometown), and tells the story of a young African-American girl named Pecola who grew up following the Great Depression. Set in 1941, the story is about how she is consistently regarded as "ugly" due to her mannerisms and dark skin. As a result, she develops an inferiority complex, which fuels her desire for the blue eyes she equates with "whiteness".
Literary critic Lynn Scott argues that the constant images of whiteness in The Bluest Eye serve to represent society's perception of beauty, which ultimately proves to have destructive consequences for many of the characters in the novel. Scott explains that in the novel, superiority, power, and virtue are associated with beauty, which is inherent in whiteness. She further asserts that white beauty standards are perpetuated by visual images in the media as well as the attitude of Pecola's family.
The novel received minimal critical attention when first published; however, it was placed on many university reading lists in black-studies departments, which promoted further recognition. Morrison was praised for her handling of difficult themes: critic Haskel Frankel said, "Given a scene that demands a writer's best, Morrison responds with control and talent." The first major sign that the book would succeed was an extremely positive review in The New York Times in November 1970. Despite initial controversies surrounding the subject matter of The Bluest Eye, Morrison was eventually recognized for her contributions to literature when she received the Nobel Prize in 1993, over 20 years following the original publication of the novel.
The Bluest Eye has frequently landed on American Library Association's (ALA) list of most challenged books because it contains offensive language, sexually explicit material, and controversial issues, as well as depicting child sexual abuse. The ALA placed it on the Top Ten Most Challenged Books Lists for 2006 (5), 2014 (4), 2013 (2), 2020 (9),and 2022 (3). Ultimately, it became the 34th-most banned book in the United States 1990–1999, the 15th-most banned book 2000–2009, and the 10th-most banned book 2010–2019.”
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Fingersmith is a 2002 historical crime novel set in Victorian-era Britain by Sarah Waters. From Wikipedia: “The novel follows Sue Trinder, an orphan raised in "a Fagin-like den of thieves" by her adoptive mother, Mrs Sucksby, is sent to help Richard "Gentleman" Rivers seduce a wealthy heiress. Posing as a maid, Sue is to gain the trust of the lady, Maud Lilly, and eventually persuade her to elope with Gentleman. Once they are married, Gentleman plans to commit Maud to a madhouse and claim her fortune for himself.
The book is notable for its eroticism and depiction of pornography. Reviewers have praised Waters' negotiation of sexual themes; a review from The Guardian described it as "erotic and unnerving", while The New York Times praised its "illicit undertow". Literary critics have also focused on the novel's sexual themes, and identified its engagement with debates surrounding feminism and pornography. In Fingersmith, Waters uses her depiction of lesbian love between Maud and Sue to challenge a variety of hetero-patriarchal norms, and respond to different feminist arguments about pornography. Outside of discussions about sexuality, the struggles that Maud and Sue both face as women in Victorian society, and their often exploitative relationships with men are also of interest to feminist critics. The novel's title is likely intended to reflect the erotic themes of the novel. Fingersmith is an archaic term for a petty thief, but given the content of the novel, it can also be assumed to have intentionally sexual connotations.
Upon release, Fingersmith was generally well-received among the British press. According to Book Marks, based on mostly American publications, the book received a "positive" consensus, based on five critic reviews: one "rave", three "positive", and one "mixed". Fingersmith was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and the Man Booker Prize, and was the winner of the CWA Historical Dagger for Historical Crime Fiction.
Fingersmith has been adapted several times, but its most famous adaptation is likely the 2016 South Korean film The Handmaiden, with the setting changed from Victorian era Britain to Korea under Japanese colonial rule. At the 71st British Academy Film Awards, the film won the category of Best Film Not in the English Language.”
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Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is an 1818 novel written by English author Mary Shelley. From Wikipedia: “Frankenstein tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment.
In 1816, Mary, Percy Shelley, John Polidori, and Lord Byron had a competition to see who wrote the best horror story. After thinking for days, Mary Shelley was inspired to write Frankenstein after imagining a scientist who created life and was horrified by what he had made. Shelley started writing the story when she was 18, and the first edition was published anonymously in London on 1 January 1818, when she was 20. Her name first appeared in the second edition, which was published in Paris in 1821.
Frankenstein is one of the most well-known works of English literature. Infused with elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic movement, it has had a considerable influence on literature and on popular culture, spawning a complete genre of horror stories, films, and plays. Brian Aldiss has argued for regarding it as the first true science-fiction story. In contrast to previous stories with fantastical elements resembling those of later science fiction, Aldiss states, the central character "makes a deliberate decision" and "turns to modern experiments in the laboratory" to achieve fantastic results.
Frankenstein has been adapted many times. Since the publication of the novel, the name "Frankenstein" has often been used, erroneously, to refer to the monster, rather than to his creator/father.”
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"This is just about the first painting I ever really loved," my mother was saying. "You'll never believe it, but it was in a book I used to take out of the library when I was a kid. I used to sit on the floor by my bed and stare at it for hours, completely fascinated-that little guy! And, I mean, actually it's incredible how much you can learn about a painting by spending a lot of time with a reproduction, even not a very good reproduction. I started off loving the bird, the way you'd love a pet or something, and ended up loving the way he was painted." She laughed. "The Anatomy Lesson was in the same book actually, but it scared the pants off me. I used to slam the book shut when I opened it to that page by mistake."
The girl and the old man had come up next to us. Self-consciously, I leaned forward and looked at the painting. It was a small picture, the smallest in the exhibition, and the simplest: a yellow finch, against a plain, pale ground, chained to a perch by its twig of an ankle.
"He was Rembrandt's pupil, Vermeer's teacher," my mother said. "And this one little painting is really the missing link between the two of them-that clear pure daylight, you can see where Vermeer got his quality of light from. Of course, I didn't know or care about any of that when I was a kid, the historical significance. But it's there."
I stepped back, to get a better look. It was a direct and matter-of-fact little creature, with nothing sentimental about it; and something about the neat, compact way it tucked down inside itself—its brightness, its alert watchful expression—made me think of pictures I'd seen of my mother when she was small: a dark-capped finch with steady eyes.
"It was a famous tragedy in Dutch history," my mother was saying. "A huge part of the town was destroyed."
"What?"
"The disaster at Delft. That killed Fabritius. Did you hear the teacher back there telling the children about it?"
I had. There had been a trio of ghastly landscapes, by a painter named Egbert van der Poel, different views of the same smouldering wasteland: burnt ruined houses, a windmill with tattered sails, crows wheeling in smoky skies. An official looking lady had been explaining loudly to a group of middle-school kids that a gunpowder factory exploded at Delft in the 1600s, that the painter had been so haunted and obsessed by the destruction of his city that he painted it over and over.
"Well, Egbert was Fabritius's neighbor, he sort of lost his mind after the powder explosion, at least that's how it looks to me, but Fabritius was killed and his studio was destroyed. Along with almost all his paintings, except this one." She seemed to be waiting for me to say something, but when I didn't, she continued: "He was one of the greatest painters of his day, in one of the greatest ages of painting. Very very famous in his time. It's sad though, because maybe only five or six paintings survived, of all his work. All the rest of it is lost—everything he ever did."
The girl and her grandfather were loitering quietly to the side, listening to my mother talk, which was a bit embarrassing. I glanced away and then—unable to resist-glanced back. They were standing very close, so close I could have reached out and touched them. She was batting and plucking at the old man's sleeve, tugging his arm to whisper something in his ear.
"Anyway, if you ask me," my mother was saying, "this is the most extraordinary picture in the whole show. Fabritius is making clear something that he discovered all on his own, that no painter in the world knew before him—not even Rembrandt."
Very softly—so softly I could barely hear her—I heard the girl whisper: "It had to live its whole life like that?"
I'd been wondering the same thing; the shackled foot, the chain was terrible; her grandfather murmured some reply but my mother (who seemed totally unaware of them, even though they were right next to us) stepped back and said: "Such a mysterious picture, so simple. Really tender—invites you to stand close, you know? All those dead pheasants back there and then this little living creature."
FINAL RESULT: The majority of voters haven’t read this book, but enjoyed this excerpt. 😊
The Goldfinch is a 2014 novel by Donna Tartt. From Wikipedia: “The Goldfinch centers on 13-year-old Theodore Decker, and the dramatic changes his life undergoes after he survives a terrorist attack at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that kills his mother and results in him coming into possession of Carel Fabritius's painting The Goldfinch.
Early on, the trade publications Kirkus Reviews and Booklist both gave the novel "starred" reviews. Booklist wrote, "Drenched in sensory detail, infused with Theo's churning thoughts and feelings, sparked by nimble dialogue, and propelled by escalating cosmic angst and thriller action, Tartt's trenchant, defiant, engrossing, and rocketing novel conducts a grand inquiry into the mystery and sorrow of survival, beauty and obsession, and the promise of art." The novel was 15th in the decade-end list of Paste, with Josh Jackson writing, "'Literary fiction' can sometimes be code for 'lightly plotted,' but every so often a book comes around that is as engagingly told as it is beautifully written. Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch is such a novel." Ema O'Connor strongly criticized the portion in which Theo is outside of New York, but lauded the first hundred pages highly and chose the book as one of the decade's 24 best: "It's a crime novel, an art history thesis, an LGBTQ coming-of-age story, and a meditation on toxic masculinity all wrapped up in 976 pages." Patrick Rapa of The Philadelphia Inquirer listed it as one of the decade's 20 best. Kakutani listed the book as one of the greatest of the 21st century as part of a poll by Vulture, arguing, "In the hands of a lesser novelist, [its] developments might feel contrived, but Tartt writes with such authority and verve and understanding of character that her story becomes just as persuasive as it is suspenseful."
I can tell what this is from based on this excerpt, but I haven't read it
I started reading this, but didn’t finish it (or I am reading it currently)
I haven’t read this book, but I like this excerpt!
I've read this book before, and I don't like it
I haven't read this book and I don't like this excerpt
Voting ended onMar 22, 2025
Please reblog the polls, but KEEP IT SPOILER-FREE to make people read the excerpt with an open mind 💖📚 Title and author will be revealed after the poll's conclusion.
Note: this excerpt is too long for Tumblr’s alt text character limit, so for this poll, the alt text is below the read more.
In 1999 the RAND Corporation published a report (the first and, so far, last of its kind) with a "conservative estimate" that more than 307 million tissue samples from more than 178 million people were stored in the United States alone. This number, the report said, was increasing by more than 20 million samples each year. The samples come from routine medical procedures, tests, operations, clinical trials, and research donations. They sit in lab freezers, on shelves, or in industrial vats of liquid nitrogen. They're stored at military facilities, the FBI, and the National Institutes of Health. They're in biotech company labs and most hospitals. Biobanks store appendixes, ovaries, skin, sphincters, testicles, fat, even foreskins from most circumcisions. They also house blood samples taken from most infants born in the United States since the late sixties, when states started mandating the screening of all newborns for genetic diseases.
And the scale of tissue research is only getting bigger. "It used to be, some
researcher in Florida had sixty samples in his freezer, then another guy in Utah had some in his," says Kathy Hudson, a molecular biologist who founded the Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University and is now chief of staff at NIH. "Now we're talking about a massive, massive scale." In 2009 the NIH invested $13.5 million to develop a bank for the samples taken from new borns nationwide. A few years ago the National Cancer Institute started gathering what it expects will be millions of tissue samples for mapping cancer genes; the Genographic Project began doing the same to map human migration patterns, as did the NIH to track disease genes. And for several years the public has been sending samples by the millions to personalized DNA testing companies like 23andMe, which only provide customers with their personal medical or genealogical information if they first sign a form granting permission for their samples to be stored for future research.
Scientists use these samples to develop everything from flu vaccines to penis-enlargement products. They put cells in culture dishes and expose them to radiation, drugs,
cosmetics, viruses, household chemicals, and biological weapons, and then study their responses. Without those tissues, we would have no tests for diseases like hepatitis and HIV; no vaccines for rabies, smallpox, measles; none of the promising new drugs for leukemia, breast cancer, colon cancer. And developers of the products that rely on human biological materials would be out billions of dollars.
How you should feel about all this isn't obvious. It's not as if scientists are stealing your arm or some vital organ. They're using tissue scraps you parted with voluntarily. Still, that often involves someone taking part of you. And people often have a strong sense of ownership when it comes to their bodies. Even tiny scraps of them. Especially when they hear that someone else might be making money off those scraps, or using them to uncover potentially damaging information about their genes and medical histories. But a feeling of ownership doesn't hold up in court. And at this point no case law has fully clarified whether you own or have the right to control your tissues. When they're part of your body, they're clearly yours. Once they're excised, your rights get murky.
Kathy Hudson, who has conducted focus groups about the public's feelings on the tissue issue, says she believes that tissue rights have the potential to become a bona fide movement.
"I could see people starting to say, 'No, you can't take my tissues,' " she told me. "All I can say is, we better deal with the problems now instead of waiting until that happens."
There are, essentially, two issues to deal with: consent and money. For most people, knowing if and how their tissues are being used in research is a far bigger issue than profiting from them. Yet when this book went to press, storing blood and tissues for research did not legally require informed consent, because the law governing such things doesn't generally apply to tissue research.
The Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects, also known as the Common Rule, requires informed consent for all human-subject research. But in practice, most tissue research isn't covered because: (1) it's not federally funded, or (2) the researcher never learns the identity of the "donors" or has firsthand contact with them, in which case it's not considered research on humans. So in the end, the Common Rule doesn't actually govern most tissue research.
Today, if doctors want to gather tissues from patients strictly for research purposes—as in Henrietta's case—they are required to get informed consent. But storing tissues from diagnostic procedures like, say, mole biopsies, and using them in future research doesn't require such consent. Most institutions still choose to get permission, but there's no uniformity in the way that's done. A few hand out enough information to fill a small book, explaining exactly what will be done with all patient tissues. But most just include a short line in an admission form saying that any tissues removed may be used for education or research.
FINAL RESULT: TIED! 🎀 The majority of voters haven’t read this book before!
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a 2010 nonfiction book by American author Rebecca Skloot. From Wikipedia: “The book is about Henrietta Lacks and the immortal cell line, known as HeLa, that came from Lacks's cervical cancer cells in 1951. Skloot became interested in Lacks after a biology teacher referenced her but knew little about her. Skloot began conducting extensive research on her and worked with Lacks' family to create the book. The book is notable for its science writing and dealing with ethical issues of race and class in medical research. Skloot said that some of the information was taken from the journal of Deborah Lacks, Henrietta Lacks's daughter, as well as from "archival photos and documents, scientific and historical research." It is Skloot's first book.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks was awarded the National Academies Best Book of the Year Award, the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Young Adult Science Book award, and the Wellcome Trust Book Prize, awarded annually to an outstanding work of fiction or non-fiction on the theme of health and medicine. It also won the Heartland Prize for non-fiction, among others, including a Salon Book Award, and a 100 New York Times Notable Books of the Year. The paperback edition had spent 75 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list. The book was the 2011 winner of the National Academies Communication Award for best creative work that helps the public understanding of topics in science, engineering or medicine.
The book was developed into a 2017 film of the same name.”
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