#BUT I highly recommend this book

[vfdinthewild]

“Vote for DUCKS by @beatonna in this year's @goodreads Choice Awards”

-from this tweet about our friend Kate Beaton’s new book

#vfd #lemony snicket #asoue #a series of unfortunate events #kate beaton #hark a vagrant #vote for ducks #beatonna #tumblr darling #it's probably too late for you to vote in this poll now #BUT I highly recommend this book #one of the best I read last year #it's a graphic memoir of Kate's two years in the Alberta oils sands #and the tolls that industry takes on the environment and mind #trigger warning for violence against women and misogyny though #vote #for #ducks #vote for

[lonicera-caprifolium]

"... What I thought was that if you-- maybe just once a year-- if we could come here at the same time, just for an hour or something, then we could pretend we were close again-- because we would be close, if you sat here and I sat just here in my world..." "Yes," he said, "as long as I live, I'll come back. Wherever I am in the world, I'll come back here--" "On Midsummer Day," she said. "At midday. As long as I live. As long as I live..."

(from Philip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass)

#good omens #ineffable husbands #aziraphale #crowley #aziracrow #his dark materials #both the books and the tv series are GORGEOUS #I highly recommend if you've never given them a chance #HDM

[ryuki-draws]

That's all that's left. Fifty-seven pages of research, two bottles of morphine and one ticket back to the Capital. The train departs at dusk.

An illustration for a Patho AU inspired by Bulgakov I'll probably never write properly but it's been worming in my brain for over two years now.

#pathologic #pathologic 2 #daniil dankovsky #pathologic bachelor #patho bulgakov AU #this piece has been in my WIPs for at least a year too #finally finished it properly #I'll keep shoving A Young Doctor's Notebook and Morphine into Patho fans' faces #there are film adaptaions too #I enjoyed both but the british TV series is more easily digestable #the russian film is a heavier watch #but the book is the best #it's short too #highly recommend it

[geryone]

Holy Feast and Holy Fast, Caroline Walker Bynum

#quotes #quote #Caroline Walker Bynum #id in alt text #literally just started this book tonight but I’m really enjoying it #& I got a cheap used copy online so I highly recommend if you have any interest!! pick up a copy & we can chat about it!!!

[sinlizards]

my final piece for @turnabout-cinema! had an absolute blast working on this one :]

#wocky kitaki #turnabout corner #ace attorney #apollo justice ace attorney #aa4 #left over sales are available till dec 15th if you missed out on the initial run! #i think physical books are sold out but still highly recommend the digital zine + merch everything is so high quality #also this was the first aa zine i was able to apply and im so glad i did such a great project ;_; #my art #fan art #undescribed #zine #2022

[fella-lovin-fella]

losing my mind over this, actually.

#this book is so so good so far #it's Less by Andrew Sean Greer #if you wanna check it out #im only halfway through #but i highly recommend #bi mlm #mlm blog #gay mlm #mlm love #mlm post #mlm thoughts #trans mlm #mlm poetry #mlm books #queer poetry #queer books #nblm account #nblm textpost #trans nblm #bi nblm #nblm post #nblm yearning #nblm #mlm #t4t #t4t nblm #t4t mlm #ftm mlm #mlnb #dantes talking again

[alivehouse]

you arent too stupid to get back into reading. i dont know i feel like i see this sort of weird self depreciating sentiment a lot thats like 'oh social media ruined my attention span too badly for me to read books anymore' or 'i cant read anything other than fanfiction' and i promise thats not true. yes it can be hard to get back into it if you havent read anything in a while but it not impossible and you *can* work your way back up to it if its something you want to do. just pick up something pick up anything and chip away at it. if you cant finish it its fine to put it down and pick up something else. but just try at least give it an honest effort. like not to sound an ad for a public library but its not impossible for you to start reading

edit: t.erfs are not welcome on my blog. try reading something other than uselessly reactionary 2nd wave theory from the 70s?

#also if you havent tried audiobooks i highly recommend giving them a try #sometimes thats the only way i can force my brain to absorb information. and thats ok! its the same book!

[poetrysmackdown]

what makes a poem a poem? does it have to be written in a certain way? is this question a poem if i want it to be?

Fun question! This is just my personal sense as an avid reader and less-avid writer of poetry, but for me it’s useful to distinguish (roughly) between poetry as a genre and poetry as an attitude or philosophy through which language and the world can be understood. And of course these two go hand in hand. I see poetry the genre as essentially a type of literature where we as readers are signaled, somehow, to pay closer attention to language, to rhythm, to sound, to syntax, to images, and to meaning. That attentive posture is the “attitude” of broader poetic thinking, and while it’s most commonly applied to appreciate work that’s been written for that purpose, there’s nothing stopping us from applying that attentiveness elsewhere. Everywhere, even! That’s how you eventually end up writing poetry for yourself, after all. There’s a quote from Mary Ruefle floating around on here that a lot of folks have probably already seen, but it immediately comes to mind with this ask:

“And when you think about it, poets always want us to be moved by something, until in the end, you begin to suspect that a poet is someone who is moved by everything, who just stands in front of the world and weeps and laughs and laughs and weeps.”

Similarly, after adopting the attentive posture of poetics, there’s plenty of things that can feel or sound like a poem, even when they perhaps were not written with that purpose in mind. I’ve seen a couple of these “found poems” on here that are quite fun—this one, for example. The meaning and enjoyment you may derive from the language of a found poem isn’t any less real than that derived from a poem written for explicitly poetic purposes, so I don’t see why it shouldn’t be called poetry.

That said, I do think that if you’re going to go out and start looking for poetry everywhere, it’s still important to have a foundation in the actual language work of it all. Now, this doesn’t mean it has to be “written in a certain way” at all! But it does mean that in order to cultivate the attentiveness that’s vital to poetry, one needs to understand what makes language tick, down at its most basic levels. It will make you better at reading poetry, better at writing it, and better at spotting it out in the wild.

Mary Oliver’s A Poetry Handbook is an extraordinary resource to new writers and readers, and a great read for more experienced folks as well. Mary Oliver’s most popular poems are all to my knowledge in free verse, and yet you might be surprised to find her deep appreciation for metrical verse (patterns of stressed/unstressed syllables), as well as for the most minute devices of sound. In discussing the so-called poetry of the past, she writes,

“Acquaintance with the main body of English poetry is absolutely essential—it is the whole cake, while what has been written in the last hundred years or so, without meter, is no more than an icing. And, indeed, I do not really mean an acquaintanceship—I mean an engrossed and able affinity with metrical verse. To be without this felt sensitivity to a poem as a structure of lines and rhythmic energy and repetitive sound is to be forever less equipped, less deft than the poet who dreams of making a new thing can afford to be.”

In another section, after devoting lots of attention to the sounds at work in Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, she writes,

“Everything transcends from the confines of its initial meaning; it is not only the transcendence in meaning but the sound of the transcendence that enables it to work. With the wrong sounds, it could not have happened.”

I hope all this helps to get across my opinion that what makes a poem a poem is not just about the author's intention, and not just about meaning (intended or attributed), but also about sound and rhythm and language and history, all coalescing into something that rises above the din of a language we would otherwise grow tired of while out in our day-to-day lives.

I'll always have more to say but I'm cutting myself off here! Thanks for the ask

#ask #discussion #does this even answer the question? lol #anyways even if you're not huge on mary oliver i still highly recommend a poetry handbook #i admit her poetry is only to my taste about 60-70% of the time. but her handbook is a great resource and can stand alone #i actually think oliver wrote a whole other book just about metrical verse too. for people who are into that #also if you're someone who's less interested in the question 'what is poetry?' and more into questions like #why is poetry? can poetry survive? what the fuck happened to poetics in the twentieth century? #i recommend the witness of poetry by czeslaw milosz #an older book—actually a collection of lectures—but an absolute game-changer for me #not a poll

[epitomereally]

psalm 40:2 by unicornpoe

Dean meets an angel who says he's from the future. It all gets a lot more complicated from there. Supernatural, Castiel

Here is my bind for @no-name-publishing in a Renegade Mini-Exchange! This is such a wistful and tender story about learning to accept and love yourself, even when you feel unlovable, and I was absolutely ecstatic when I peeped it on his wishlist.

Lots of firsts for me this bind: first time working with leather, first time CHISEL-TRIMMING (:elmo fire emoji: insert here please), only second time power sanding (which I love tbh), first time BEADING a cover. I absolutely loved working with leather and the effect of beading, and wish I could take a video to show how sparkly the beads are in the sunlight! I also used ~ * f a n c y * ~ endpapers by Claire Guillot that I just knew I had to have for this bind the second I saw them, and will absolutely be returning to her for future binds.

All the typesetting choices are inspired by the 1611 King James Bible, as well as the beading which forms a cross when the book is fully opened. It's my first Supernatural bind—what's a girl to do besides make Biblical references? (jk, @clovenhoofbindery made a totally non-Biblical bind of the same fic and I have been LOSING MY MIND at how perfect and gorgeous it is)

Materials:

Leather: Siegel leather pre-pared leather in espresso

Title font: KJV1611

Body font: Adobe Jenson Pro

Dropcap: Goudy Initialen

Decorative images: King James Bible 1611 (Wikimedia Commons)

Some more details, just for fun :)

#let out a little shriek when i was matched with kam #an icon an idol a legend #love his work so much and am so honored that my book coexists with them!!! #and THIS FIC #highly recommend #no spn knowledge needed #and your heart will be broken anyways #(and repaired) #my fanbinding

[triaelf9]

Dealing with Dragons: Cimorene sketch ^_^

Been re-listening to Dealing with Dragons recently (anyone who knows me knows I will not shut up about how formative this series was for me re: many things but mostly dragons) and so I got the urge to draw Cimorene again (I sketched her like a year or so ago, but can't find it, so I thought a redesign with my new style was perfect!)

Also, my fav book reviewer (I have one of those now?? What??) Just covered the first book of the series, so if you want to check out a great reviewer AND my favorite book of all time, here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMaKkwHQQKM

Not me trying to speak into existence an Enchanted Forest Chronicles graphic novel series that I get to adapt, whatttt noooo... ^_-

#enchanted forest chronicles #dealing with dragons #Cimorene #books #nostaltic books #fantasy #cool Princess #I also love her other princess friend #Morwen is also great #also so many cats #this is also where I got my CATS ARE BASICALLY DRAGONS thing #Kazul my love #what a fantastic series tho #highly recommend the audio book #if you like high fantasy with a subversion of tropes and with a fairy tale story structure #yes I know the book doesn't say she has freckles but it's my design so of course she has #this is also where I got my love of long braids

[entropyvoid]

Golden Hour (+ lineart below cut)

I took a picture of the lines for once and did some basic crappy photo editing on my phone, so you could probably print this out and use it as a coloring page or something if you so wish lol. Do with it what you will.

#honkai star rail #dr ratio #veritas ratio #aventurine #aventurine hsr #cherallart #as you can see i forgor i wanted to draw his glasses til like. last second #i can’t believe it’s been like 2 whole months since I last did a whole like. watercolor illustration #part of that’s been bc I’ve been having a bit of a rough semester bc adhd med issues (which are resolved now) #but I really wanted to draw aventurine and ratio. my boys #i’ve been LOVING penacony so far so I needed to get something nice out #anyway I did this while my s/o and I alternated between reading a 500 pg long history book out lout to each other #it’s called ‘the inheritance of rome’ and kinda covers what happened after the collapse of the western roman empire #and tries to identify and explain all the cultural echoes and reverberations and transformations that rose from its ashes #throughout europe north africa and the middle east. anyway it’s super interesting and I highly recommend it #the late antique period is not something often covered/talked abt in public ed hist classes. at least not when I was goin through em #or the transitory period between it and the early medieval period at least #i still got 150 pages left and a final paper due on it in like 4 days but it’s only a 5 pg minimum and I’m a wordy bitch so #i think i can make it #anyway back to that I go

[melisusthewee]

Rafael Federman as Eduardo Strauch in La Sociedad de la Nieve/Society of the Snow (2023)

requested by Anon

#la sociedad de la nieve #society of the snow #eduardo strauch #rafael federman #trying to find eduardo is like playing where's waldo #they took the fact that he was the middle cousin and just middle child coded him right out of the movie #his book is really interesting though i highly recommend reading it! #it's a crime that we didn't get any proper interactions between him and marcelo #THEY WERE BEST FRIENDS I WANTED TO SEE MORE #also he was 100% that guy who goes to europe and makes it his entire personality #and i love that about him

[themightynyunyi]

Without you I am lost I keep you at any cost

#marauders #james potter #regulus black #jegulus #james x regulus #nyudoesart #I had this flower frame in procreate for a year now I wanted to use it for an entirely different fanart #but i never finished that so I recycled it #the quote of from jay and the coffee - beautiful vulnerable unreliable unreachable broken #which is the perfect song for the fic on ao3 #whatever happened to the young young lovers? #10/10 highly recommend #that fic caused my marauders donwfall #when its done im prob gonna custom print it so i can reread it as a physical book

[heavenlyyshecomes]

can you recommend me some books? i'm looking for something gentle and hopeful without being saccharine? i just can't bear to read anything dark right now

sure !!

ms ice sandwich, mieko kawakami tr. louise heal kawai

the summer book, tove jansson tr. thomas teal

the order of the pure moon reflected in water, zen cho

concerning the book that is the body of the beloved, gregory orr

tweet cute, emma lord (this is like the one romance novel I've read so adding it)

a month in siena, hisham matar

still life with oysters and lemon, mark doty

goodbye tsugumi, banana yoshimoto tr. michael emmerich

schoolgirl, osamu dazai tr. allison markin powell

the rest are from my tbr:

summer of salt, katrina leno

meet me at the museum, anne youngson

the liar's dictionary, eley williams

also check out my book recs + ref tags for better recs!!

#i don't read a lot of this genre sorry #highly recommend storygraph bc it gives u mood based recs it's nice #book recs #ref #asks

[bluheaven-adw]

SHUDDUP EVERYONE I HAVE DOOMSLUGS!!!

*MANIACALLAUGHTER!!!!*

A friend made one for me and I literally screamed when I opened the box because there were TWO OF THEM!!!!! HOLY SHIT LOOK AT HOW ADORABLE THEY ARE!

..... I might have named the blueish gray one J.....

No I will not change my mind on this.

#sorry kiddo!! I gotta find some way to do embarrassing mom stuff from half a world away!!! #💙💙💙 #for those not in the know #doomslug #is from a book series by #brandon sanderson #called #Skyward #if you like space/sci-fi and don't mind YA then I highly recommend the series

[wilderflcwers]

"For both bonobos and chimpanzees, the bodies of the dead evoke many emotions. Even if the process often begins with trauma and confusion, typically corpses shift to a liminal status; not alive, but equally not a lump of meat. They're more intensively manipulated than hunted animals, and carried for longer. In some – if not all – cases, the eaters must know what and who they're consuming. Cannibalism is very probably a powerful means by which individuals and groups process the impact not only of killings carried out on emotional impulses, but other deaths too. In other words, it's about grieving. [...] "Shift these scenarios to Neanderthals, and add into the mix their far greater cognitive sophistication, and lives that revolved around using lithics. Suddenly it's not difficult to envision how skills in carefully taking apart hunted carcasses might be transposed into a grieving process that involved butchery and cannibalism as acts of intimacy, not violation."

Rebecca Wragg Sykes, Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art

#quotes #rebecca wragg sykes #kindred: neanderthal life love death and art #what could be a better way to start off this new year than #💛💛💛 cannibalism 💛💛💛 #& 💖💖💖 grief 💖💖💖 #this book is excellent btw if you're interested at all in neanderthals i HIGHLY recommend it #it is dense with data but the author takes care to write about it in an accessible way #& with a sense of profound wonder that suffuses everything #like even if you don't read through the whole thing i encourage picking up a copy just to peruse the little creative writing vignettes #at the top of each chapter