Life's too short for boring books

Welcome to my book blog/literature meme collection. Sometimes I do book reviews. Spoilers don't always make it under a Read More, so tread cautiously. Regular blog over at quietrae.tumblr.com

[phantomoftheshoppera]

Wait is there like a book delivery guy who has to fight off wolves to get all these English books to castle Dracula or does Dracula have like a deal with the wolves to not eat the postman

[riovidalll]

this is the funniest fucking tweet ive ever seen because it’s so true

[andyouweremine]

[thejgatsbykid]

ok here’s a hot take: modern adaptations of pride and prejudice should replace Mrs Bennet’s obsession w/ marrying her daughters off with a determination to see them all be lawyers/doctors/engineers in their own right, and her frustration with Lizzie for refusing Mr Collins should be because she turned down the opportunity to have a lucrative and successful career in order to do what she wants, which is, like, journalism or something

[thejgatsbykid]

Like it doesn’t help the plot in the same way but within context Mrs B’s motivations can be boiled down to “make sure all my daughters are taken care of and going to be comfortable in their lives” which, back in the day, meant marrying well, but nowadays would look more like a full ride to an Ivy League, and rather than being disinterested in their romantic endeavors Mr Bennet should be completely blase about Lydia and Kitty giving each other stick-n-poke tattoos and failing Spanish and getting arrested. Elizabeth tries and fails to talk him out of letting Lydia go to “leadership camp,” a lie she told her mother to cover up the fact that she’s definitely tagging along with some college kids to Mexico for spring break. Jane is in med school and Mrs B prays every night that she comes to her senses and decides to be a neurosurgeon instead of doing doctors without borders. Lizzie tells her mother she’s majoring in women’s studies over text message and ignores 16 furious voicemails in response, partially cause she doesn’t want to hear it and partially because she’s arguing with Darcy, whose first name she refuses to know because he’s too rich to deserve one, in her opinion. So, yeah, soccer mom Mrs Bennet.

[biichama]

THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS. A HUNDRED THOUSAND TIMES THIS.

Also @amarguerite did an amazing P&P skating AU called Pride and Pyeongchang once according to basically the same logic where Mrs Bennet was trying to coach Elizabeth and a gay, genderswapped Jane as a sibling ice dancing team based on the ShibSibs and it was like one of the few moderns that I thought actually got P&P. It was so good. I was super sold on Mrs B as a coach whose own skating career had been cut short by an injury + getting knocked up from a summer romance with Mr B, who was doing her damnedest to give her kids a good career doing the only thing she knew how to do and failing that making sure they knuckled down with their schoolwork like she didn’t because she was too busy training so that they would have OPTIONS.

The whole Mr Collins thing ended up being about how Lizzie REFUSED an endorsement deal for a shady datamining app that he was proposing for Rosings Ltd and Charlotte (who had skated her last nationals and was about to retire) jumped on said deal instead so she could get a foot in the door for a media relations position at the Hunsford sports medicine clinic. It was perfect.

(Sadly, Margz took it down from AO3 since she’s trying to publish it for realsies, which, like, I can totally get, because if you’ve got a fandom that’s in the public domain why NOT take advantage of that? But gosh, it was so great. But then, everything I’ve written by her is really, really good.)

[sqbr]

Hmm. I agree that the modern equivalent of a Good Marriage is a Good Job, and modern!Mrs Bennet would absolutely be pressuring her daughters to become rich by becoming doctors or whatever.

But…

(a) I feel like Mrs Bennet’s primary motivation isn’t for her daughters to be comfortable, it’s for her to be comfortable, with their comfort a happy side effect. She wants her daughters to be rich so she can live with them after Mr Bennet dies and she loses her main source of income. She’s always wailing that WE are ruined and WE will end up on the street etc. So a modern!Mrs Bennet should want to piggyback off their success in some way, or at least focus a lot on how their success and prestige makes her look good.

(b) A key difference between Mrs Bennet and most other mercenary parents in Austen and other similar works is how short sighted and self defeating she is. She’s the reason the Bennets don’t have money put aside to look after her and any single daughters after Mr Bennet dies. Her ideas for how to land a rich husband are all terrible, and she is easily distracted by emotional reactions like with Wickham being charming or Darcy being unfriendly. She flails between Terrible Schemes and Passive Wailing For Someone Else To Fix Things. So she could be a soccer mom, but not the cold, competent sort. She’d be flipping dramatically between berating and sucking up to the ref, forcing her kids to swallow shonky supplements she got sold by a charming salesman, and curling into a useless ball of angst if her kid gets a twisted ankle. Jane loses her prestigious scholarship because of her mother, not in spite of her.

Like one of Elizabeth’s big frustrations is that while she’s not as mercenary as Mrs Bennet, she does also want her and her sisters to be able to marry well, and her mother keeps messing it up while shouting about being the only one who cares.

[liz-squids]

Mrs Bennet as Kris Kardashian Jenner. Or, more likely, a Kris Jenner wannabe. If only Jane would spend a bit more time styling her selfies. If only Lizzie would update her Instagram with something other than nature shots. (No, Lizzie, your muddy feet are disgusting, not #aesthetic.) At least Lydia is being talked about (arrested for being in a club underage).

…Pride & Prejudice: D-list Hollywood AU is something I needed, apparently.

[sugarfey]

“…Pride & Prejudice: D-list Hollywood AU is something I needed, apparently.”

Apparently I need this too!

[liz-squids]

I AM STILL THINKING ABOUT IT, DON’T WORRY

Like, Frances Bennet was a nighttime soap queen in the early ‘90s, but she had a bit too much plastic surgery and doesn’t get a lot of work these days. She’s basically Lisa Rinna? But there was a point in the late ‘00s/early ‘10s where she and her five daughters (and husband, reluctantly) had a reality TV series, and since the family has no savings, and she and her husband aren’t exactly raking it in, she’s determined to ride that shred of fame as far as it will take them. 

Mr Bennet is a writer. He wrote a couple of novels, a bunch of Vanity Fair articles, but there’s no money in that, and in any case, he thinks he’s Too Intellectual For Today’s Sorry World. (He has not, at any point in his life, been too intellectual for anything. But he has aspirations, dammit.)

Jane is actually a talented actor, but she’s too shy to market herself. Lizzie would rather direct, and what she wants to direct is small-scale feminist comedies. Mary spends a lot of time in therapy. Kitty follows Lydia everywhere she’ll go, and where Lydia wants to go is any nightclub that will let them in. 

So that’s the status quo, but then NETHERFIELD PRODUCTIONS IS SOLD! To a wealthy young man named Bingley, an out of towner who wants to blow his inheritance MAKING MOVIES, or possibly PRESTIGE TELEVISION, he hasn’t decided. Along for the ride/to protect his financial interests is his sister-turned-PA, Caroline, and his best friend, Darcy, who comes from Hollywood royalty and actually knows a thing or two. 

Alas, Darcy missed out on the schmoozing gene. It’s LA, so people suck up to him regardless, but his rudeness is captured on film by Lizzie, who sends it viral. Which doesn’t help Jane’s prospects in Bingley’s new PRESTIGE DRAMA. 

Mr Collins makes extremely bad Christian films, and Charlotte is just desperate enough for acting work that she goes for it. 

Mr Wickham is #MeToo, but in that way where he’s so young and attractive that people don’t want to believe it. 

[liz-squids]

UPDATE: Jane is injured on set, and Lizzie is so concerned that, when she’s caught in traffic, she abandons her Lyft and walks across Los Angeles to the hospital.

Which is what starts Darcy thinking, “This woman is slightly obnoxious, and publicly humiliated me, and she’s not even that attractive, but she has … redeeming qualities? I guess????”

I’m sad that I don’t know enough about Los Angeles, the entertainment industry or filmmaking to actually write this.

[sqbr]

This is all very good. I love Collins making Terrible Christian Movies. 

I feel like Mary interrupts parties to perform her audition reel: a selection of monologues from Shakespeare, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof etc.

@joomju was pondering What Lydia Did, and after discussing The Lizzie Bennet Diaries with Cam can only think of like sex tape/unfortunate porn, since it has a similar “ill-advised but causes way more scandal than it should” effect. You’d want her to be older though, or it gets Uncomfortable.

Also, I feel like Mrs Bennet would talk a lot about being a Sensitive Artist who empathises with others so much it’s selfish of them to be sad around her.

[liz-squids]

Sex tape scandal, yeah. Although if you’re in a Lydia-blaming mood, and she’s an adult, there’s always “defending her gross boyfriend against harassment accusations and standing by him”, which is at least a scandal where she has agency (but could eventually put behind her as she grows and becomes older and wiser).

(Darcy never warned people about Wickham because he knew it would get out that his sister was trans, and he didn’t think she’d want that to be public knowledge. And he was sort of right, but also Georgie would have liked the option to make that decision herself, or at least to rely on having her powerful older brother as back-up instead of warning people via the whisper network.)

You are 100% right about Mrs Bennet, but also she gets through a LOT of Xanax in a crisis.

[sugarfey]

This is one of the most glorious things I’ve ever seen.

[carlottagiudicellivevo]

mainstream fiction will never get better on the rep front if all you do is hole up in your fic niche and insist that that’s the only place good enough for you while ignoring published works that venture into similar territory

[hattedhedgehog]

My developmental progress of my Society of Gentlemen book covers (x). 

[birdadjacent]

Hi–I’m briefly returning from my tumblr hiatus out of spite because i’m lowkey salty disappointed that every list I see recommending SFF novels with queer themes are just the same couple of books over and over again.

Are those books good? Sure! But there’s so much more.

So here’s my list of lesser-known SFF novels with queer characters:

Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner: Originally published in 1987, this classic novel is set in a bisexual society and features political machinations, drama and intrigue, and lots and lots of swordfighting. This was the first novel with prominent LGBT themes that I ever read, and it aces the test of time.

Tremontaine by Ellen Kushner, Etc.: This is a serial novel and a prequel to Swordspoint, but they can be read independently of one another. Tremontaine has the benefit of being much longer, so there’s much more to enjoy, and has 100% more lesbians and PoC.

The Warrior’s Path by Catherine M Wilson: All I had to be told to be sold on this book was “historical fantasy based on the bronze age, with a matriarchal society and lots of lesbians.” These are more character-driven than plot-driven, which I think really, really works. Book 1 of 3.

The Stars Are Legion by Kameron Hurley: I would be remiss if I didn’t mention this book, even though Hurley’s work is consistently too biopunk squicky for me. This is a book about space warfare and intrigue, and there are absolutely zero male characters. It is. Very very icky, though. Lots of blood and viscera and other fluids.

Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee: Military scifi. Super interesting technology all based on every world in the empire sticking to the same calendar (no really, but it works). To put down a calendrical rebellion, they turn to a disgraced (lesbian) soldier and an undead traitor (bisexual) general. The sequel, Raven Stratagem, has a trans man as one of the major PoV characters, and it’s worth noting that the author himself is also trans.

Fire Logic by Laurie J. Marks: This is a slow-paced character driven fantasy. A country has been overrun by invaders, and though there’s an active rebellion, the situation is desperate. It focuses on three very different (though equally queer) people, who, together, can change the course of history. The sequel, Earth Logic, is also fantastic. (There is a 3rd one but I haven’t read it yet)

 Warchild by Karin Lowachee: This is a space opera, but also a portrait of the effects of PTSD on children. It’s also the book that convinced me that second-person narration is good, actually. There are several significant queer characters in this book, and the sequels, Burndive and Cagebird (PoV character in this one!), though the first book is my favorite. Major CW for child abuse, though.

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie: It’s no secret that I love this book and its sequels, Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy. If you’re hoping for overt queer romance you’ll be disappointed, but if you’re interested in reading a quasi-military scifi series set in a space empire that has no concept of gender, you’ll love this. Every person in the Radch is referred to as “she,” regardless of what body parts they have or their presentation. The first book is about an AI who used to be a spaceship, on a mission to bring down the person who killed her favorite lieutenant. 

Provenance by Ann Leckie: set in the same universe as the Ancillary trilogy, but can be read as a standalone. The planet that Provenance takes place on has three genders, and uses a neutral pronoun for the third gender. Additionally, children are viewed as genderless and choose their gender as part of becoming an adult. The book is about a young woman who comes up with an audacious plan to impress her mother–and how it all goes horribly wrong (and right, and wrong again, and right). She also gets a cute girlfriend along the way!

The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson: The titular character is from a small island where homosexuality and polyamory are widely accepted, but then the island is taken over by a deeply repressive and homophobic empire. This story is how Baru plots to take down the empire that destroys her homeland from the inside out. It’s dark but very very good (and yes the main character is a lesbian).

Dreaming the Eagle by Manda Scott: I confess I’ve only read the first book in this series, but I enjoyed it very much. This is a historical fantasy based on the Celtic queen Boudica, and it seems like almost everyone is bisexual.

The Scorpion Rules by Erin Bow: This book is divisive–people either seem to love it or hate it. It takes place in a near-ish-future Earth. An AI has taken over the world, and demands a royal hostage from the ruler of each country. If a country chooses to go to war, their heir is killed. The main character is one of these royal hostages, and her country is on the brink of war. There’s a pseudo love-triangle in this one (m/f/f), but it didn’t much bother me, honestly. I also greatly enjoyed the sequel, The Swan Riders (moreso than the first book actually)

 The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers: This is a delightful, cheerful, and optimistic space opera. Reading this book is a lot like drinking a warm cup of cocoa on a chilly night–it’s just warm and comforting. The crew of the Wayfarer is diverse, loveable, and pretty queer, too. The standalone sequel, A Closed and Common Orbit, is also a wonderful book.

Planetfall by Emma Newman: This is… an interesting book. To be honest, I had mixed feelings about it. It has a plot, but it reads more as a character study on a mentally ill, grieving woman, who loved another woman so much she followed her to a new planet, and then had to learn to live without her.

HONORABLE MENTION TO… Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings series: You know I can’t do a rec list without these. Though the PoV characters tend to be straight (with the exception of the Rain Wilds books), there are quite a few queer side characters. Most notable is one very important character throughout most of the books, who is nonbinary and (arguably) genderfluid. I’ve heard the Fitz books in this series described as “one man’s 60-year journey to realizing that gender is a social construct.” It can be frustrating, and heartbreaking, but these are genuinely the best books I’ve ever read. 

[ontologicalsynaesthesia]

Thank you!  I keep meaning to make a post like this, and several of the books on yours would have appeared on it.  Here are a few additions that I’ve never seen on other lists (restricted to books with queer protagonists):

Mission Child by Maureen McHugh

This is a quiet character story about a nonbinary protagonist who wanders through a sci fi future trying to find a life and an identity for themself.  It’s an unusual science fiction novel; you won’t find out very much about the larger world the protagonist lives in, since they don’t particularly care, and they don’t get involved in any kind of large-scale action.  McHugh’s style probably isn’t for everyone, but I think she’s one of the best overlooked SF authors out there.  Another novel of hers, China Mountain Zhang, has a gay male protagonist.

The Nemesis Series by April Daniels

A recent YA superhero duology (so far?) with a trans lesbian protagonist.  I’m not usually into YA or superheroes, but I enjoyed these a lot.  They’re well-written, fast-paced, and packed with both interesting action and really compelling character content.  Warning that the main character faces a lot of intense transphobia.

Full Fathom Five by Max Gladstone

Gladstone’s Craft Sequence is probably my favorite contemporary fantasy series that I never hear anyone talk about.  In this world, magic, religion, and economics all run on the same metaphysical system, and the characters range from priests to necromancer lawyers to lich CEOs.  Colonialism and capitalism are major themes. The protagonist of Full Fathom Five is a trans woman, and the book can be read as a standalone, though I think the whole series is worth reading.  There are several queer side characters throughout the other books.

The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi

The first book in a science fiction trilogy that has so much going on that it’s a little hard to summarize.  One of the two main characters is a lesbian whose pining for her lost love drives her.  There are a huge number of interesting science fiction ideas, and there’s a lot of very visually interesting action, but I found it all a little much; it was too confusing and not cohesive enough for me, and I didn’t continue the series.  It’s on this list because I think it’s a matter of taste; I’ve talked to some people who loved it.

The Terra Ignota series by Ada Palmer

The most interesting contemporary science fiction series being published, imo.  This series is about (the breakdown of) humanity’s attempt at a utopia 400 years in the future.  Major themes of religion and philosophy, with a lot of hard questions about both.  It makes this list because one idea the series explores is the utopian society’s attempt (and failure) to abandon gender, and a lot of characters are what we would consider queer, though that isn’t really a meaningful concept in-universe.  The reader is thrown into a very complex world with a huge number of characters and a lot of concepts that are only gradually explained, so I’d warn away people who don’t like that style of “sink or swim” SF writing.

[birdadjacent]

Excellent additions; I hadn’t heard of most of these! Thanks!!

[birdadjacent]

I’m back and I have a few more books!

The Tensorate by JY Yang: A series of novellas that draw from various Asian cultures, the people in these books are not assigned a gender at birth, but choose one as part of becoming an adult. The first two books follow a set of identical twins, children of the Protector, who come to see that their mother’s rule is corrupt and work to bring about change. These are short but expansive, and left me both satisfied and wanting more. Really looking forward to additional installments in the series.

A Matter of Oaths by Helen S Wright: So, confession, I’m still in the middle of reading this one, but I’m honestly shocked that it hasn’t become a beloved classic in the queer SFF community. Originally published in 1988, the book recently got another release, and now with a non-whitewashed cover! As I haven’t finished the book yet, I can’t reveal too much about the plot, but so far it seems to be focusing on a prestigious patrol ship who is taking a chance on a skilled young man with a mysterious past. Lots of people of color, breaking gender roles, and love that doesn’t depend on gender at all. I have a feeling this is going to be a favorite of mine.

An Accident of Stars by Foz Meadows: I loved portal fantasy as a kid, so this filled a niche I didn’t realize I’d been missing as an adult. Saffron Coulter, a young bisexual woman, follows a chance encounter into another, much more magical world, and has adventures there. But rather than being an idyllic fantastic romp, it realistically shows the effects of battle and trauma, and asks the question of what happens when you go home. I’m looking forward to picking up the sequel (which I haven’t read yet). 

And a special shoutout to: The Books of the Raksura by Martha Wells: These get a special shoutout because, while the protagonist’s main relationship is with a female character, pretty much the entire species is poly and bi, including the POV character. Also, the gender roles are so different among the Raksura compared to humans, I think that this is a series that would generally appeal to queer people. It’s not a main focus, but a nice background thing that was really refreshing. The first book is about an orphan who has spent most of his life alone, no idea what he is, who has given up on finding his people. Of course, this is when they find him. There are a lot of great found family feelings with this series, and also? Moon’s snark is to die for. He’s wonderful and overdramatic 110% of the time and I love him very much.

[lesmiserabelles]

for when you’re in the book shop trying to figure out whether it’s gay or not

[liberlibelulaart]

Guys, guys! Do you know the novel THE GOBLIN EMPEROR by Katherine Addison (Sarah Monette)? Well, the honor of making the Spanish cover fell onto me, and I’m so happy to finally share it with you! (And the author loved it and I’m about to explode of happiness)

[myjetpack]

For the @guardian review.

p.s. you can now pre-order my book of postcards: https://goo.gl/Y4vvmP

[hildyj]

[zenthisoror]

01/11/2018 ~ It’s a Sheep

Back with one of my favourite scenes from the Discworld series. Ink and digital colours.

Nightmare fuel, tearjerker, and hilarious all in one scene, Vimes and the dark, in the dark.

[astrosoeur]

the signs as literary last words

Aries: “Here is the battle of day against night. I see black light.” - Victor Hugo Taurus: “Either the wallpaper goes, or I do.” - Oscar Wilde Gemini:  “Does nobody understand?” - James Joyce Cancer: “I must go in, the fog is rising.” - Emily Dickinson Leo: “I haven’t had champagne for a long time.” - Anton Chekhov Virgo:  “More light.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Libra: “A certain butterfly is already on the wing.” - Vladimir Nabokov Scorpio: “Lord help my poor soul.” - Edgar Allan Poe Sagittarius: “Kill me! Or else you are a murderer!”  - Franz Kafka Capricorn: “But the peasants…how do the peasants die?” - Leo Tolstoy Aquarius: “On the contrary!” - Henrik Ibsen Pisces: “I can feel the daisies growing over me.” - John Keats

[tuinendraws]

Inktober day 19 - Scorched

“Your car is on fire.”

An illustration of a scene from Good Omens: the Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch.

[jillbearup]

Turns out people really like me waffling about Narnia on Twitter.

So here’s a more hopeful spin on Susan Pevensie. (From the author’s pen to your eyeballs.)

[believethesigns]

all i can say is that C.S. Lewis is iconic™

[welcometomybrainstation]

howl straight up charging at the witch of the waste without using any magic at all is less absurd when you remember he plays rugby

[sylvester-malone]

Him having played rugby always fucks me up, because I usually picture Howl as this willowy, androgyne (you know, like in the movie) and then I’m like

Wait

He’s

Probably

Fucking stacked

Look at those thighs. Jesus.

And now picture that in a crimson and gray suit, flowing pink-ish hair smelling of lavender and vervain and running a flower shop. No wonder all the girls in Ingary were going nuts over him.

[welcometomybrainstation]

^^VALIDATION

tbf howls position, as i understand it, is more about speed than slamming ppl left and right (with legs like these you can run away from all the problems) but like, 1) most rugby players are thicc af and 2) anyone who plays rugby has the instinct to tackle a bitch ingrained in their soul

howl is some kind of jock-nerd paradox. Imagine seeing this guy playing rugby and then floating into ur ethics class smelling of lavender and vanity

[girlronanlynch-deactivated20190]

“—softly, with hands as gentle as rain, I shall strangle him.”

— Angela Carter, The Erl-King (via liquidlightandrunningtrees)

[prideprejudce]

tbh nothing frustrates me more then when people brush off classics like pride and prejudice or jane eyre because they don’t fit into today’s modern standards of feminism and social justice etc.

remember that these novels were published in the 19th century. and that some of the things that were written in these books may seem trivial to us today but would have absolutely fucking shook readers in the victorian era

like,,,,,elizabeth rejecting mr collins because she doesn’t love him even though it would have been considered her duty in her family to marry him? or jane eyre not agreeing to marry mr rochester unless it was on her own terms? hell even anne brontë wrote a lesser known novel about a wife leaving her abusive husband with her five year old son to live a better life?? do y’all realize how unheard of that would be in the 1800′s?? where women were considered more of a commodity than actual human beings??

even though they might not be up to todays standards of modern feminism and romance, they were still HUGE building blocks for equality for that time period. so if you’re a reader who says to themselves ‘I read classics with modern standards applied and I can’t get past that’ then you are most likely going to be disappointed when reading classics and not fully understand their significance to that time period