honeysluiced

[honeysluiced]

hello phati sari, i was wondering if you had any book recommendations? i've been wanting to start reading more in this new year :)

Hi hi hi!

This makes me feel very special! I love sci-fi and fantasy and don't really stray from that -- here are a few of my favourite books and series.

Series:

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

Magonia and Aerie by Maria Dahvana Headley

The Divine Cities by Robert Jackson Bennett

Pivot Point and Split Second by Kasie West

Eon and Eona by Alison Goodman

The Lord of the Rings by J R R Tolkien

The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer

Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson

Lightbringer by Brent Weeks

The Lotus War by Jay Kristoff

The Lynburn Legacy by Sarah Rees Brennan

The Infernal Devices by Cassandra Clare

The Lumatere Chronicles by Melina Marchetta

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

Starbound by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner

The Colours of Madeleine by Jaclyn Moriarty

Study by Maria V. Snyder

Harry Potter by J K Rowling

The Stormlight Archive (ongoing) by Brandon Sanderson

The Bone Season (ongoing) by Samantha Shannon

The Witchlands (ongoing) by Susan Dennard

Standalone:

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black

Between the Lives by Jessica Shirvington (also titled One Past Midnight)

Fairytales for Wilde Girls by Allyse Near

The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith

Thanks for asking :) Hope you find your next read here!

#book recs

[honeysluiced]

what's a book or series that you genuinely love? I'm always seeing your commentary on "not so great" (bad) books (no hate, love ur commentary) but I'd love to know the ones you like best.

Ah tumblr search function you fail us yet again (inexplicable fondness).

"The ones I like best" is a very broad category that I will try to narrow down I guess?

My favorite book of all time remains The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by NK Jemisin. The other books in the trilogy are still excellent (I have yet to read anything by NK Jemisin that is not excellent) but specifically the first book of the inheritance trilogy remains my favorite. Other standouts of hers include the short story The Effluent Engine and the second book of the Dreamblood series, The Shadowed Sun (though, again! I cannot stress enough that I'm not even sure NK Jemisin could write a bad book/story if she wanted to!)

I routinely recommend all of Alyssa Cole's romances: not only are they incredibly inclusive, the characters navigate believable conflicts based around their characterization and not simply Because Of The Plot. Her contemporary romances are some of the few contemporary romances I enjoy: it's not usually my genre, but anything Alyssa Cole writes I will read. Shoutout to her expansion into horror, she's also one of the few authors who will get me to read THAT genre. Standouts include Can't Escape Love (novella), A Duke by Default, and Let It Shine (also a novella). Another author who I cannot stress enough: just go read her entire backlog okay. She's got historical romances in a range of time periods. She's got contemporary romances. She's got horror, god help me.

The other author who can convince me to read horror is T Kingfisher, aka Ursula Vernon. Her fairytale retellings are A+ and always contain horror elements, and she is another author who has yet to write a dud for me. Standouts include Nettle & Bone (NETTLE AND BOOOOOOOOONE), The Raven and the Reindeer, and The Seventh Bride.

Tamora Pierce is sort of a no-brainer here for me. Her books are not always perfect by any means, but they are always progressive for the time they are written and she continues to improve and take feedback into account. Plus you probably owe the existence of your favorite stabby ya lady to her. Tortall owns my heart because I read it first but she has a lovely magic school series in a different world where friendship is literally magic and social commentary the norm.

The Dragonriders of Pern is not for everyone. Much of the sexual politics in the early novels are, as I have discussed elsewhere, outdated, but the books evolved as Anne McCaffrey's understanding did, and there are soulmate dragons and impeccably rendered closed time loops (multiples! Happening at the same time!) and a constant discussion and tension of evolving social norms and the needs of society: at what point does technology become Too Much? Does it at all? What happens when the people in charge stop giving a shit about their responsibilities? Seriously the impeachment plot in Dragonseye/red star rising is nearly prescient. Most of these conflicts originate early on but don't truly come to fruition until later, and please take my word for it and simply don't read the books written by her son. They are bad.

The Witchlands series by Susan Dennard! Tbh I think this series deserves more love than it gets. It's not perfect, it can improve, but that's the thing: it routinely does. Dennard puts time and care into her work from all sides and discusses openly her early and middle mistakes, from a technical level to a 'needing a sensitivity reader' level.

Sarah Rees Brennan! Y'all know I love Sarah Rees Brennan, right? You should. She likes to explore tropes and genre convention and snappy, snappy dialogue. I haven't reread The Lynburn Legacy yet this year, but that's an anomaly. In Other Lands is pretty widely acknowledged as superior portal fantasy, I think. Tell The Wind and Fire was constrained by the book it was retelling and I think suffered for it, but that just means it wasn't as good as I personally think it could have been, not that it wasn't good at all. The Demon's Lexicon trilogy is her first series and yes, okay, it shows a little, but have you ever thought to yourself, hey. What if Supernatural was actually, like. Good. And wanted to actually explore in a thoughtful manner morality and what it means to be a person and nature vs nurture and how complicated your relationships with parents can be. Because if so, go give The Demon's Lexicon a shot.

The Rivers of London! We will excuse magic cops this once because they are specifically *magic* cops and because Nightingale literally fought nazis and Peter is pretty critical of the met in general. These books almost make me like London, and as a bonus Peter is fully aware that King Arthur was Welsh (look this is important to me okay)

Lockwood & Co! I am on the final book now and really enjoying my feral child soldier ghosthunters. I want to give them all soup. I want to wrap them all in blankets. My inexplicable attraction to the actor playing Kipps in the show is irrelevant to book enjoyment but I am still flabbergasted, by all accounts it doesn't make sense.

The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold is space opera. I love it. I admittedly love the Cordelia and Ekaterin novels most, but that is a matter of my eternal love for ladies who are generally nice but willing to fuck shit up, they're all good.

Artemis Fowl! Criminal mastermind child WHO JUST NEEDS FRIENDS OH MY GOD. I cried at the end of the third book. It's fine! We're all fine! Colfer does an excellent job of portraying the fairies as having a culture different from ours with real reasons that they haven't taken over the world, and if you don't love Holly you're wrong.

I have more but I'll stop here for now I guess. Whoops.

#book recs

[honeysluiced]

parent-child dynamics are soooo crazy. i love you i resent you i can't stand you i adore you i pity you. and still watching your hair get a little more grey every time i see you makes my stomach feel weird

#sick to my stomach

[honeysluiced]

#poetry #fuck

[honeysluiced]

reposting this incredible hobie analysis by @lizzytheowl577 i stumbled across in a youtube comment section

Spoilers ahead 

Ok so Hobie was all set to betray Miguel the moment he realized that Miles might be in trouble. The first thing to tell us this is that Hobie actively congratulates Miles when he stopped the cannon event from happening. Presumably every Spider-person who the event isn't for gets an alert when one is about to happen to keep them from interfering, this includes Hobie. He knows Miles just broke the rules in a major way and he's estatic about it. If I remember right, he's the only person who actually congratulates him on the rescue (Other than Pavitr of course). 

Next, when Miguel orders all of them to come to the Spider-Lobby (I don't think it had an official name and if it did I forgot it) Hobie puts his arm around Miles then says "I don't follow orders and neither does he". I initially read this as Hobie trying to keep Miles safe from Miguel, in a "We'll run right now if we have to kind of way" but the more I think about it, I don't think this is the case. I think Hobie believed that Miles knew he was breaking a cannon event and that's why he tacked on "and neither does he" at the end. 

Once Hobie realizes that Miles is ecstatic to go to the Spider-Lobby, he starts to second guess himself. He asks Gwen how much Miles knows, discovers he knows basically nothing and on the spot switches to talking Miles out of joining. Telling him to make his own watch and that he wouldn't like being in this group.

When Miles asks why Hobie is even there, he's says he's there to look out for his drummer. What he doesn't say is that he's doing that by trying to help Miles. Through this whole conversation, he is stealing bits and pieces of equipment from the lab, and it's implied he uses those pieces later on to make a new watch for Gwen to use. From at least that point, probably earlier, he knows that Miles isn't going to sit quietly while his dad dies, and Gwen is eventually going to want to help him. Which is why he delivers the watch to Gwen instead of trying to go straight to Miles. 

Later on, when Miles is getting angry about all the other Spider-People telling him to let his dad die, Hobie eggs him on. This is not just something he does impulsively. He realized early on when Miles talked about his parents that all he needed was a few nudges to go against Miguel's system. When Miles started showing signs of discontent, he decided to pick that moment to egg him on because that was the most effective time to. Then, Miles gets trapped in the energy prison. 

Hobie helps him get out of it, but the way this is done is genius. He holds up his hands and mouths "palms". To everyone else this would look like he was trying to just calm Miles down. If they just see his hands, it looks like a "calm down" gesture, if they read his lips, "calm" and "palm" are pronounced similarly enough that seeing him mouth one word, they'd assume in that instance he's saying "calm" as in "calm down". This in turn does two things: It gives Miles the element of surprise, and it doesn't make it look like Hobie helped. Those two things give both of them time, Miles get a few stunned seconds of a head start, and nobody chases or tracks down Hobie meaning he has time to make the new watches. He even throws away his current watch because he knows it can be tracked and Miguel might go after him after realizing he didn't help try to catch Miles. 

Basically Hobie is an incredibly intelligent character and they were able to demonstrate this really well in the short amount of time he actually got on screen.

#spiderverse #across the spiderverse #atsv #hobie #hobie brown #miles morales #across the spider verse #across the spider-verse #spiderverse analysis #spider-verse analysis #spiderverse theory #smitsv #smatsv #atsv spoilers #across the spiderverse spoilers #across the spider-verse spoilers #spiderman #spider man #spider-man: across the spider-verse #spiderband #spiderpunk #hobie spiderverse #spider punk #across the spider verse spoilers #gwen stacy #spider gwen #spiderman 2099 #spider man 2099 #miguel o'hara #spider society

[honeysluiced]

When I'm reading a romance novel and I find out the male lead looks like a football player and not lithe and effeminate like a wounded gazelle

[honeysluiced]

[honeysluiced]

“three guys who should’ve, for three different reasons, been friendless.”

#trc #the raven cycle #quote

[honeysluiced]

the years by alex dimitrov

#jesus #poetry

[honeysluiced]

WE’LL BE ALRIGHT. on (accepting) premature endings

motion sickness, phoebe bridgers // fairycosmos // for m, mikko harvey // play with dynamite, amanda fagan // sue zhao // francis forever, mitski // fleabag // jamie anderson // when love arrives, sarah kay and phil kaye // francis forever, mitski // the light that shines when things end, i wrote this for you // high school in jakarta, NIKI

#web weaving #web weave #parallels #on loss #on grief #on broken relationships #on healing

[honeysluiced]

give me back my girlhood it was mine first.

sylvia plath // elly smallwood // kristin chang // jen mazza // taylor swift // sadie sink in all too well (10 minute version)

#on girlhood #on growing up #parallels #web weave

[honeysluiced]

lenù and her fear of losing lila in her life

from the first part of the neapolitan novels

#my brilliant friend #elena ferrante #the neapolitan novels

[honeysluiced]

“What if God played God?” Victor pushed off the wall. “What if EOs were part of His plan? What if these people, the ones you’ve spent your life slaughtering, were supposed to come back the way they did? What if you’ve been attempting to undo the very work of that higher power you worship?” “Don’t you ever wonder if it’s our fault?” Victor tipped his head. “Tell me, is it blasphemy, or simply arrogance, taking credit for God’s work?”

– V.E. Schwab, Vengeful

#vicious #litedit #v e shwab

[honeysluiced]

The person you are right now is as transient, as fleeting and as temporary as all the people you’ve ever been.

Daniel Gilbert, Will You Be the Same Person in a Decade? (via funeral)

#good to know rip #lit

[honeysluiced]

-on childhood

@jupiter-suggestion / @honeytuesday / geloyconcepcion on instagram / @thundersoon / @gaycommunist / little women / @inanotherunivrse / the florida project / seven- taylor swift /boyhood

#jesus fuck #on growing up #on childhood #on life #parallels #web weaving #web weave #im acc tearing up

[honeysluiced]

a little larger than the entire universe - fernando pessoa // hafsa qasim // rosewater1997 // iphigenia in forest hills - janet malcolm // img // genesis 3:6

#wow #parallels #web weaving

[honeysluiced]

Margaret Atwood