seeker of truth, goodness, & beauty

jules. 30s. hopeless wanderer, dreamer, romantic, bookworm & pluviophile.

[stormsouls]

end of june reading update

currently reading:

the fellowship: the literary lives of the inklings

harry potter and the chamber of secrets

dawn of the firebird

book club decided to do a byob (bring your own book) kind of thing for july, so i can read whatever i want, or talk about whichever book i want. some of the ladies are doing powerpoint presentations. it'll be a lot of fun, i think!

i'm going to try and reread all of hp before the end of the year, and i thought it might be fun to read all the books from the goldsboro fellowship membership. so we'll see how those self-assigned challenges go.

what i read:

i kind of don't remember a lot of it, tbh. nothing was terrible, but nothing stood out either. that seems to be the theme of the year at this point.

harrow the ninth

royal assassin (officially dnfing this series)

the unicorn hunters (expectations were too high)

the second death of locke (see above)

the bone raiders (this was fun)

looking glass sound (read in a day?!)

[manda-kat]

Did you know that races and nations in fantasy stories aren't always representative of real life people? Sometimes a race of evil creatures who are born wicked is NOT a stand-in for whichever race the writer hates.

An evil nation can represent things like corruption, despair, sin, sickness, hatred, self-doubt, trauma- anything that poses a threat and must be overcome by good can be represented by an army of evil. Often an evil race represents evil itself and the hero defeating them is good triumphing over evil. Call it cliche, but it's rarely racist. Would it be less problematic if the good guys killed good people rather than evil monsters? If the heroes represent pure good, then their villains being evil isn't racist. It's normal.

Not to mention that even in the scenario where the evil army in a story represents a real group, it still might not be racist. Great example: Fantasy Nazis. Is it fair to say that every person in Nazi Germany was pure evil? Absolutely not. Do we need to address that nuance in a fantasy story about their victims? No!

Some people don't read stories in good faith. They make a checklist of forbidden tropes and use them as proof that a story is problematic. Instead of policing the words creatives are allowed to use, we should focus on what they use those words to say.

[fillyreports]

Also I think if you see a fantasy race and immediately think "well they're terrible! They must represent X race!" Perhaps. The problem is you.

[ryebreadgf]

zendaya wearing real 3000-year old ancient iranian earrings with no known track of provenance to the odyssey premiere. nasty work. even worse than the kim kardashian marilyn dress to me. they could have promoted modern greek jewelry designers but chose to do this instead. very tacky at best. especially in this geopolitical climate

[stormsouls]

Used bookstores have me so spoiled that the idea of spending over $7 on a paperback is unheard of. What do you mean this paperback is almost $20? Insane.

[sawbuckplus]

That markup is why a lot of publishers are dropping the mass market format.

[stormsouls]

On the note of my complaining about book prices:

There are so many books I want to read, and I would love to buy some of them but I'd like to spend less than $10 a book. Which would be doable if I liked ebooks, but I really don't. Not that I have anything against them specifically, I've just noticed that I retain almost nothing when I read a book in digital format.

I digress, my point is, I'd read a lot more if I could get these books for affordable prices!

Technically, I could do purchase suggestions at my public library. But my library is also where I work and I'm familiar with what circulates well and what doesn't in this community. Unfortunately, most of what I'm interested would not get checked out enough to justify the library using its budget just for me.

[stormsouls]

Used bookstores have me so spoiled that the idea of spending over $7 on a paperback is unheard of. What do you mean this paperback is almost $20? Insane.

[stormsouls]

Need a shirt that says "I survived the 4 day AI in Libraries conference"

[shadow-wizard-moneygang]

A reminder to anyone being plauged with people begging for money on gofundme claiming to be in Gaza that a gofundme is only supported in 20 countries: All three north american nations (Canada, US, Mexico), Australia, and 16 nations in western Europe. To start a gofundme you must show proof of physical address in one of these nations, a bank account, and an official ID from said nation.

[stormsouls]

Read The Devils by Joe Abercrombie, and I felt like I was reading a book that written just to be adapted into a movie directed by Guy Richie. I love Guy Richie movies but apparently I do not enjoy books that feel like they’ll be adapted into a Guy Richie movie.

[elvisomar]

[satorugojowidow]

Which of the three remaining european countries in the World Cup colonized your country?

Spain

France

England

Remaining time: 1 day 1 hour

[teathattast]

[thefurriestofchows]

oh,

oh this is absolutely beautiful

[wakingfromthewater]

I saw some James Webb Telescope scientists give a talk and one of them said this was her favorite image because she had waited and worked 25 years to see this.

[teathattast]

200k notes is insane who the hell are u people

[podcastwizard]

LIKES TO CHARGE REBLOGS TO CAST

[the-goddess-of-annoying]

you people aren't CASTING

[the-goddess-of-annoying]

NO

[coffeeismycallsign]

Got the courage to tackle Beyond Good and Evil.

[stormsouls]

PSA: stop 👏🏻 calling 👏🏻 books 👏🏻 that 👏🏻 aren’t 👏🏻 romantasy 👏🏻 romantasy 👏🏻

[alwaysbeenjessica]

breakfast! spending my morning with a new read (which is blowing me away) and beginning a new journal .𖥔 ݁ ˖𖦹⭒°｡⋆

[plotsjotsandespressoshot]

Morning page time