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I have an immediate negative reaction to characters with my name.
Soon after my nephew was born I was re-reading a favorite book series and one of the characters has my nephew’s first and middle name. It’s one of Donald E. Westlake’s comic crime novels, so the character is also a criminal (and a snitch!). I find it hilarious, especially since my sister always refused to read the books (my dad and I were always trying to get her to read them, for a decade or more before her kid was born).
Book Discussion ish
Guys, I picked up a book and had to put it down not because it was bad or anything but because the love interests had the same names as my friends who are siblings and it was just too weird for me to read.
Have your real life friends or experiences ever affected you that way when reading before? Have names of characters been too close to people you actually knew that you couldn’t read it?
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July reads! Asterisks are re-reads, bolds are favorites (re-reads are of course favorites already), italics are dislikes.
Home Fire – Kamila Shamsie
Interesting Times – Terry Pratchett *
1066 And All That – WC Sellar and RJ Yeatman
Magnificent Delusions – Husain Haqqani
The Pleasure Shock – Lone Frank
Fire Road – Kim Phuc Phan Thi
Redemption in Indigo – Karen Lord
Dear World – Bana and Fatemah Alabed
Archangel – Sharon Shinn *
Diggers – Terry Pratchett *
Ghost Bride – Yangsze Choo
The Blue Tattoo – Margot Mifflin
Wings – Terry Pratchett *
What Unites Us – Dan Rather
Memoirs of a Polar Bear – Yoko Tawada
Barkskins – Annie Proulx
Mister Monday – Garth Nix *
Don't Ask – Donald E. Westlake *
Grim Tuesday – Garth Nix *
Drowned Wednesday – Garth Nix *
Sir Thursday – Garth Nix *
Lady Friday – Garth Nix *
Superior Saturday – Garth Nix *
Lord Sunday – Garth Nix *
Jovah's Angel – Sharon Shinn *
I finished the Mister Monday re-read on a Monday, which spiraled into finishing each book on the right day. It was amazing.
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“We like to build these little worlds where everything gets sorted out and makes sense and, if possible, the good guys win. No one would call Agatha Christie a fantasy writer, but look at the books she’s most typically associated with - they’re about tiny isolated little worlds, usually a country house, or an island, or a train, where a very careful plot is worked out. no mad axeman for Agatha, no unsolved crimes. Hercule Poirot always finds the clues. And look at Westerns. The famous Code of the West largely consisted of finding somewhere where you could safely shoot the other guy in the back, but we don’t really want to know that. We’d rather believe in Clint Eastwood. I would, anyway. Almost all writers are fantasy writers, but some of us are more honest about it than others. And everyone reads fantasy … one way… or another…”
—
Terry Pratchett, A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Non-fiction
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Has to be Mogget from Garth Nix’s Old Kingdom books. Followed or maybe tied by Suzi Turquoise Blue in the Keys to the Kingdom books also by Garth Nix.
What is your favourite bookish sidekick (animal or human)?
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I was underwhelmed. It showed pretty clearly that the writers don’t write SF (that was stated upfront) and probably don’t read it either. There was just a lack of quality and finish to the stories, and frequently the way technology was used/talked about seemed really clumsy. It was vaguely interesting, I didn’t hate it, but that’s as far as it goes. Some acquaintances on LibraryThing liked it quite a more than me though.
June’s Reading. Bolds are favorites.
Iraq + 100 – Hassan Blasim
Wolfskin – Juliet Marillier (re-read)
The Neanderthals Rediscovered – Dimitra Papagianni, Michael A. Morse
Bold Spirit – Linda Lawrence Hunt
The Children of Willesden Lane – Mona Golabek
Zinky Boys – Svetlana Alexievich
The Stranger – Albert Camus
The Meursault Investigation – Kamel Daoud
The Line Becomes a River – Francisco Cantu
The Trauma Cleaner – Sarah Krasnostein
On Sanity – Una
The Wizard and the Prophet – Charles C. Mann
The Fox Was Ever the Hunter – Herta Muller
The Orphan Mother – Robert Hicks
I am, I am, I am – Maggie O'Farrell
Dirty River – Leah Piepzna-Samarasinha
Go Tell it on the Mountain – James Baldwin
Showa 1926-1939: A History of Japan – Shigeru Mizuki
The Spider King’s Daughter – Chibundu Onuzo
Dead Souls – Nikolai Gogol
The Hello Girls – Elizabeth Cobbs
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I know Tumblr will probably hate me for saying this, but not reading books written by male authors purely because they’re male is sexist as fuck.
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My friend said she didn’t like hardcovers because they hurt me if you fall asleep while reading and drop them on your face...
(I prefer hardcovers because I have chronic pain in my hands and they’re easy to hold open than paperbacks. Because of this I can’t read mass market paperbacks at all.)
It seems like everyone prefers hardcover books, which is a little surprising because I vastly prefer paperbacks. Who else is with me?
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June’s Reading. Bolds are favorites.
Iraq + 100 – Hassan Blasim
Wolfskin – Juliet Marillier (re-read)
The Neanderthals Rediscovered – Dimitra Papagianni, Michael A. Morse
Bold Spirit – Linda Lawrence Hunt
The Children of Willesden Lane – Mona Golabek
Zinky Boys – Svetlana Alexievich
The Stranger – Albert Camus
The Meursault Investigation – Kamel Daoud
The Line Becomes a River – Francisco Cantu
The Trauma Cleaner – Sarah Krasnostein
On Sanity – Una
The Wizard and the Prophet – Charles C. Mann
The Fox Was Ever the Hunter – Herta Muller
The Orphan Mother – Robert Hicks
I am, I am, I am – Maggie O'Farrell
Dirty River – Leah Piepzna-Samarasinha
Go Tell it on the Mountain – James Baldwin
Showa 1926-1939: A History of Japan – Shigeru Mizuki
The Spider King's Daughter – Chibundu Onuzo
Dead Souls – Nikolai Gogol
The Hello Girls – Elizabeth Cobbs
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During heat waves my parents would read The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder to us/each other in an effort to feel cooler. They swear it worked, but I think children raised without air conditioning are sort of immune to most US temps (back in the 80s and 90s anyway).
Bookish Question
What do you think is the best book to read in the summer, and why?
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It’s not Tumblr, of course, but I really love LibraryThing. The average age of the user is higher, and other than in specific groups there’s less YA chat. The groups are really what make the site fabulous for me (and obviously basically any platform that’s not Tumblr is easier to have a back and forth discussion on).
skyrantz:
“Is there a site JUST for adult fiction books? Bc I’ve had it with the young adult crap.”
—
No, I’m not hating, I just hate that it’s the only thing there is! Every single time I search, YA everywhere! *screams*
Originally posted by heckyeahreactiongifs
Well, there are quite a number of us booklrs who don’t read & talk about YA, or at least not exclusively?
I recommend checking out @oldshrewsburyian, @manuscripts-dontburn, @booklrboy, @theaspenreader, @monsieurbookshire, @elenajohansen, @left-handlibrary, @literaery-me, @thesheepthewolf, @books-are-portals, @the-forest-library, @anassarhenisch and the #adultbooklr tag.
(I also have some youtube recommendations if you’re interested?)
I apologize for anyone I might have forgotten/overlooked - please feel free to add!
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booklr pride party train 🌈 🎉
If you’re here, queer, and all about them books reblog this post, then scope out the notes and make some new booklr friends!
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A good book is a good book at any age. This does not mean every book you liked as a kid is good, because kids are pretty easy to please. I still read a lot of children’s and middle grade novels, because I love being back in that frame of mind and I think children’s novels are the most important in terms of building future readers. I have a lot of nieces and nephews so I want to know what classics and what new books I should give them.
Bookish Question
Do you guys ever read children or middle grade books for the heck of it? I’ve been continuing the Warriors series from when I was a kid and I have zero shame, I think it’s still great. If so, what series do you read?
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That’s why I find writing rough reviews for every book I read really helpful. I just do it on a thread on LibraryThing, not on the book pages anywhere (unless I feel very strongly about it and have managed a fuller review).
you ever read so many books in such a short amount of time that all of their respective plotlines start melting together
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May reads. Asterisks are re-reads, bolds are favorites.
Maurice – E.M. Forster
Black Man in a White Coat – Damon Tweedy
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out – Richard Feynman
The Interior Castle – Teresa de Avila
Trumpet – Jackie Kay
War and Turpentine – Stefan Hertmans
Kokoda – Paul Ham
Bismarck – AJP Taylor
The Midwife's Apprentice – Karen Cushman *
Theatre Shoes – Noel Streatfeild *
Persepolis – Marjane Satrapi *
Unmentionable – Therese Oneill
Becoming Unbecoming – Una
The Hospital Always Wins – Issa Ibrahim
Phoenix Rising – Karen Hesse *
All The Real Indians All Died Off – Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Tinker Dabble Doodle Try – Srini Pillay
The Bolivian Diary – Che Guevara
Photographic – Isabel Quintero and Zack Pena
Sing, Unburied, Sing – Jesmyn Ward
Voices from the Second World War – Candlewick
I am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced – Nujood Ali
Truckers – Terry Pratchett *
The Bread Givers – Anzia Yezierska
Into the Silence – Wade Davis
It Ended Badly – Jennifer Wright
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Luckily I own a few omnibuses!
--Carl Sandburg’s Complete Poems
--4 Fantastic Novels by Daniel Pinkwater (Borgle, Worms of Kukumlima, Yobgorgle, and The Snarkout Boys and the Baconburg Horror - I might have picked his five novel collection instead but Borgel is a VITAL part of my life)
--Rubicon by Tom Holland
--North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
--Son of the Shadows by Juliet Marillier
Poetry, children’s books, history, classic fiction, and fantasy. Perfect.
Bookish Question
If you had to limit your book collection to only five books, which books would you choose and why?
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