One Nice Bug Per Day
oozey mess
Show & Tell
taylor price
#extradirty
Color Me Curious
Not today Justin
Monterey Bay Aquarium
Phantogram Three
almost home
𓃗
No title available
No title available
ojovivo
The Bright Sessions
occasionally subtle
tannertan36
ellievsbear
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
seen from Brazil
seen from India
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Germany
seen from Argentina
seen from Brazil
seen from Switzerland
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Brazil
seen from Germany
seen from Netherlands
seen from Nicaragua
seen from Israel
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Canada
seen from Ecuador
@the-book-raven
Happy #NationalBookLoversDay from all of us at The Book Raven! Today is your official permission slip to ignore your to-do list, lose yourself between the pages, and let your TBR pile grow just a little bit taller.
What worlds are you escaping to today? Drop your current read in the comments below! 👇🖤
Our Current Read:
Current Read: Demian by Hermann Hesse
This classic coming-of-age story explores the painful, beautiful journey of self-discovery, Jungian psychology, and the constant tension between societal expectations and inner truth.
Wendell Berry - Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
- Wendell Berry
The Joys of Subterranean Living (Or: Why I’m Not Moving to an Underground City)
I just finished The Wandering Earth, and while the science is impressive, I have some concerns about the "underground city" lifestyle. As a man who already spends 90% of his time indoors avoiding people, you’d think I’d be a fan. I am not.
Here is why a 2,500-year cave stay sounds like my personal version of hell:
The "Simulated" Sun: They use giant lamps to simulate daylight. I can already hear the HOA complaints: "Excuse me, the 5,000-watt bulb outside my bunker is flickering at a frequency that irritates my cat." No thanks.
Recycled Everything: In an underground city, you aren't just drinking water; you’re drinking your neighbor’s tea from three days ago. I don't even like my neighbor’s opinions, let alone their filtered wastewater.
The Commute: Imagine your elevator breaking down when you live 5 kilometers below the crust. "Sorry I'm late for the apocalypse, I had to take the stairs."
No "Away": When you live in a sealed bunker, you can’t exactly "go for a walk" to clear your head. If you open the front door to get some fresh air, you instantly turn into a human popsicle.
The Noise: Imagine 50 million people living in a giant concrete box. The echoes of a single dropped spoon would probably trigger a planetary panic.
The Verdict: Moving the Earth is a bold move, but I’ll stay up here in the fresh air with my books for as long as the Sun allows. At least up here, when I tell people to "get off my lawn," they have a lawn to get off of.
P.S. I did like the book.
Book Review Coming Soon
Happy Tolkien Reading Day! What book are you digging into today?
Albert Camus - The Stranger
Some books don’t knock at the door—they’re already inside the room, watching quietly as you enter. The Stranger by Albert Camus is one of those rare, unsettling works: slim in size, immense in consequence, and impossible to forget once its final sentence settles into silence.
At its surface, The Stranger follows Meursault, a French Algerian clerk whose life is marked by emotional detachment and startling honesty. After the death of his mother, Meursault drifts through days of swimming, work, romance, and chance encounters, responding to events with an almost clinical indifference. When an act of sudden violence alters the trajectory of his life, the novel shifts from quiet observation to moral examination—less concerned with what happened than with why Meursault does not seem to care.
Camus’s prose is famously spare, stripped of ornament and excess. The sentences are clean and declarative, mirroring Meursault’s unfiltered perception of the world. This restraint is not cold for its own sake; it is philosophical. The novel’s central themes—absurdity, the search for meaning, and society’s discomfort with emotional nonconformity—emerge precisely because the writing refuses to guide the reader’s feelings. Pacing is deliberate and measured, almost deceptively calm, until the second half tightens into something more claustrophobic and interrogative. Meursault himself is not a character one likes in the conventional sense, but he is a fascinating study in honesty taken to its extreme, and Camus ensures we sit with that discomfort rather than resolve it.
What The Stranger does exceptionally well is expose the unspoken rules by which society operates. Meursault is judged less for his actions than for his failure to perform grief, remorse, and belief in expected ways. Camus quietly indicts a world that demands emotional theater over truth. Where the novel may challenge some readers is in its emotional distance; those seeking warmth, psychological intimacy, or moral reassurance may find the experience alienating. This detachment, however, is not a flaw so much as a deliberate provocation.
This book will resonate most with readers drawn to philosophical fiction, existential inquiry, and novels that ask questions rather than provide answers. It is especially rewarding for those willing to engage with ambiguity and discomfort, and for readers interested in how form and philosophy can merge seamlessly on the page.
The verdict is clear: The Stranger is a modern classic not because it comforts, but because it confronts. It reminds us that meaning is not handed down by the universe, and that refusing to pretend otherwise can be both liberating and terrifying. Like a raven perched in stark daylight, Camus’s novel watches humanity without blinking—and once it has fixed its gaze on you, it’s hard to look away.
𝔰𝔬𝔪𝔢𝔱𝔥𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔣𝔯𝔬𝔪 𝔫𝔬𝔱𝔥𝔦𝔫𝔤
one can dream
The only weapon I desire is knowledge 📚
Albert Camus’s classic, The Stranger, is more than a story—it’s a full-on philosophical mood. A deep dive into the meaning of “weird,” “honest,” and “criminal.” It’s a classic that reminds us that in a silent universe, the pressure to be “normal” is perhaps the most absurd thing of all.
Happy Birthday Dostoevsky!
Want to feel like a Russian novelist while reading Dostoevsky? Well here you go.
Franz Kafka, 1912
crime and punishment really opens like “it was sweltering in saint petersburg. it was unbelievably hot. raskolnikov pondered how not to look suspicious while going to commit his murder. he put on his coat.”
As the leaves start to change and that first crisp cold of autumn shows up, my mind always turns to Fyodor Dostoevsky. I know - I'm a glutton for punishment. I like to put my robe on, grab a cup of coffee, sit on my couch in our sun room and dig into this grand inquisitor of the soul's books. White Nights is my go-to recommendation for anyone new to him. It’s a short, heartbreakingly beautiful story that captures a feeling we all know, but rarely see portrayed with such tenderness: profound loneliness.
The story follows a solitary Dreamer in St. Petersburg who, over a series of luminous summer nights, forms a sudden, deep connection with a young woman named Nastenka. What unfolds is a whirlwind of hope, confession, and the desperate warmth we feel when we finally find someone who seems to understand us.
This isn't the dense, philosophical Dostoevsky of Crime and Punishment; this is the author at his most lyrical and compassionate. He perfectly captures the ache of isolation and the way lonely people build entire worlds inside their own heads. The Dreamer’s brief happiness is so intense precisely because his loneliness is so deep.
It’s a quick read, but it lingers. A gentle and perfect introduction to a literary giant, and the ideal companion for a quiet, thoughtful morning.
