Unguided Reading

[unguided-reading]

[gorsejournal]

Susan Sontag’s annotated Finnegans Wake [via @HamishH1931]

[aristocrating]

they're meant to die by each other's sword why are they in a coffee shop

[aceday]

-abigail pent

[litepla]

Gideon the Ninth, first flower of my House.

[relaxnotshaveeyebrows]

harrow the ninth Book Of All Time actually. gaslights the audience immediately. doesn’t answer any of the questions from the last book until like 300 pages in. complete perspective shift. complete tonal shift. god is making poe references and meme references in the same breath. blink and you’ll miss it lore drops that are actually critical to understanding what’s going on. so so much grief. Book Of All Time.

[icantspellthings]

Nobody is the top or the bottom they don't even have sex they just stand next to each other and occasionally try to kill each other and that's like sex for them

[unguided-reading]

YEARS of seeing locked tomb content on my dash and I've only just realised it's harrowhaRk and not harrowhaWk

[captvreme]

[elexuscal]

also on the topic of Cozy Fantasy: I feel like the Circle of Magic books by Tamora Pierce are criminally neglected in this conversation. Like that series has so Many of the popular hallmarks: found fantasy! A magic system based on crafting! Psychic soul bonds! The two main mentor figures are literal cottage core lesbians.

But, crucially, the books manage all of this while having stakes. There are the relationship, personal level ones-- will these orphaned kids become friends? Will they learn to overcome the traumas of their respective backstories? Will they learn to master their magic?

And then there are Larger, life-threatening stakes... but crucially, not 'save-the-world' level. Pierce made the excellent choice for the first quartet (when the kids are like ~10-12 ish) to generally have the threats be natural. An earthquake, a forest fire, a pandemic; there's a pirate raid, but even then the framing feels more like a force of nature. As the kids age, the threats do become more human, but remain generally localized. A crime syndicate, a serial killer. The focus of the story remains what can we do to improve things, here, now, where we are?

They really are such delightful reads and I think they could offer a lot of insight into how stakes don't need to be End of the World to still be tense and impactful.

[fremulon]

call me a patron of the ass library the way I'm checking out that butt

[criminalizegolf]

> read library book

> it's good

Thank you library

[fiercestpurpose]

> read library book

> it's bad

Thank you library for saving me from buying it :)

[untalented-but-opinionated]

Books I Read in 2025: A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark

"Justice comes for the wicked in time. The scales of Thoth demand it."

[evidently-endless]

modern hamlet making aggressive eye contact with his uncle as he picks the lion king for family movie night

[7bitter]

the comments take this mostly as a joke but i'm so fucking serious. let me find my links. i'm not fucking around

"Heathcliff as bog creature: racialized ecologies in Wuthering Heights," Emma Soberano

Wuthering Heights and the Liverpool Slave Trade - Maja-Lisa von Sneidern

From Simianized Irish to Oriental Despots: Heathcliff, Rochester and Racial Difference - Elsie Michie

[booksandghosts]

Something that happens rarely but still stings

A number of times I have found a book that seems interesting, and seen that it’s the first or second of a series. I always think “oh, that’s fine I’ll just buy it and look online for the rest”.

Next minute I’m looking online and reading that the damn series was cancelled. The thing that gets me is that people are always optimistic that it will be back. That whatever obstacle that meant the series was not fully released will be removed and the series will be available.

Sometimes it’s that the author won’t finish the series like Melanie Rawn’s Exiles trilogy. Sometimes the publishers refuse to publish the final volume like Paul Kearney’s Sea Beggar trilogy.

Of course there are also those books series where the author is promising to finish but just isn’t. We all know at least three of those. 

[agardenandlibrary]

ah, I had this experience with the Planetfall books by Emma Newman. 4 books out and they decided not to publish the 5th and final book. Luckily each one stands well on its own but finding out there’s a 5th that I’ll probably never get to read does sting!

[asexualbookbird]

I found the Night World series in 2017, plowed through all nine of them, and then looked online for the final installment only.to learn eveeyone had been waiting dince 1997. We were holding out hope up until last year when LJ Smith passed away.

[unguided-reading]

The last book in Isobelle Carmody's Legendsong trilogy. It's been 84 24 years.

[moonsheen]

Angel Country

In an alternate early 1900s, a xenobiologist hunts down her former research partner after he steals her life’s work before his greed reshape

My cosmic horror revenge adventure is now available for pre-order! Please consider giving it an order if you like 1) cosmic horror 2) scientists full of intense amount of female rage 3) biblically accurate angels 4) lighthouses and finally 5) HOT MONSTER BOYFRIENDS

[moonsheen]

Some deep lore about this book: I partly wrote it because I was incredibly angry about media depictions of female mad scientists. A number of years ago I encountered yet another one where I got REALLY excited we were finally going to get a messy, ruthless, female scientist. Then she got immediately damsel'd in the most insulting way. This happens a lot. I've been annoyed about this one a lot. The seminal one that upset me was Mrs. Coulter in His Dark Materials. She's set up as such a cold, ruthless figure for all of the books, but the last one she suddenly became "WHAT ABOUT MY BABY!" in a way that just didn't feel consistent with who she'd been depicted and how her warped feelings for Lyra had manifested up until that moment.

So, after seeing YET ANOTHER piece of media do this, I snapped a bit. As a result, after screaming a bit at @artofchira (okay, a lot of screaming at @artofchira) I set out to do the story I wanted to do about a messy, ruthless female scientist whose attempts at redemption would not change what an absolutely ruthless egotistical mess she could be. I wanted a female scientist who actually took great pride in her work. Who DID ACTUAL RESEARCH and WROTE PAPERS and got extremely angry when she was discredited or eclipsed by her crappy male colleagues! So, I wrote Ada. And I kept writing Ada. It was honestly so weird and self-indulgent I was entirely unsure it would ever actually sell -- and yet here I am, with a pub date. So let it be known spite can ABSOLUTELY be a fantastic motivator in your writing. Be the change you want to see in the world. Be the messy, ruthless female scientist you want to see wrecking men's shit.

[unguided-reading]

Crypt: Life, Death and Disease in the Middle Ages and Beyond by Alice Roberts