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...Correct me if I'm wrong, but...doesn't he HAVE a purpose??? Or have we dropped the painting thing? Literally someone needs to explain why every Bridgerton except Anthony and Daphne are suddenly purposeless when it is plot convenient.

But I'll be excited if this is tacit confirmation that we get Benedict and Sophie's first meeting this season!

#bridgerton #bridgerton season 3 #benedict bridgerton #Instagram

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As a writer and former theatre kid, I love this so much. As an editor, I want to kill the latter two with FIRE.

#comma memes #writing memes #commas #writing

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I aspired to be a witch for years...but I regret to report that I'm actually a venerable wizard :(

Witches in rural Discworld do everything. They're de facto country doctors, midwives, morticians, veterinarians, small claims court judges, food pantries, emergency services, just whatever. And 90% of it isn't even magic (though they can do incredible things), it's working hard and helping people and being respectable and a good person and making everyone a little bit afraid of you.

(Meanwhile all those venerable wizards up at Unseen University are like, accidentally opening portals to faraway lands or creating new gods or becoming obsessed with Music With Rocks In and basically being chaotic and useless, I'm just saying)

#terry pratchett #gnu terry pratchett #discworld #witches

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Ooh The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels is starting strong with this line from chapter 1:

He had been handsome in a rather dangerous way, despite his ridiculous coat. A light in his eyes had suggested he'd known his brochure would not fool her, but he'd entertained himself with the pose anyway. She predicted his hair would fall over his brow if a breeze went through it, and that the slight bulge in his trousers had been in case she was not happy to see him--a dagger, or perhaps a gun.

#the wisteria society of lady scoundrels #is that a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me? #book quotes #books #books and reading

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WE HAVE A RELEASE DATE AND COVER!!!! I'm so excited to see what's next for Emily and Wendell!!!

#heather fawcett #emily wilde #emily wilde’s encyclopaedia of faeries #emily wilde's map of the otherlands #emily wilde's compendium of lost tales

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Do me a favor and don't ask me for a single favorite...I will bluescreen on you...

#book memes #reader memes #books #books and reading

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THE BABIES ARE HERE!!! I cannot express how grateful I am that these rereleased editions are in hard copy!

(Yes, I know that in the rerelease Thunderbird Falls is actually book 3, but I'm still waiting for Banshee Cries to arrive from my local bookshop, so as soon as that one arrives, you'll get an updated picture.)

#ce murphy #urban shaman #the walker papers #rerelease #urban fantasy #thunderbird falls

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I will always enable book acquisition, whether it be a purchase, a borrow, or a library loan. I'm basically a ferengi...if they were obsessed with books instead of gold-pressed latinum.

#books and reading #books #books and novels #reader #reading

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You Have My Attention: Guardians of Ga'Hoole First Lines

Ok, so despite my not being able to undersell the hold the Guardians of Ga'Hoole series had on me in seventh grade, I do have to credit Dom Noble's Lost in Adaptation video on the series and it's film adaptation for inspiring this post. I also wish I could have taken the series photo on my bookshelf, but this series in in my book tubs in Dad's basement in Alaska. All that said though, this series was one of my favorites for literal years, and I wish they were as well-known as like...Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH or Watership Down. So how did author Kathryn Lasky catch my attention as a reader? Let's look at those first lines.

The world spiraled, the needles of the old fir tree blurred against the night sky and then there was a sickening sensation as the forest floor raced toward him. Soren madly tried to beat his stubby little wings. Useless! He thought, I am dead. A dead owlet. Three weeks out of the shell and my life ends!

-- The Capture

Soren felt the blind snake shift in the deep feathers between his shoulders as he and the three other owls flew through the buffeting winds. They had been flying for hours now, and it seemed as if in the last minutes the darkness had begun to dissolve drop by drop, and they were now passing from the full black of the night into the first light of the morning.

-- The Journey

The tail of the comet slashed the dawn and in the red light of the rising sun, for a brief instant, it seemed as if the comment was bleeding across the sky.

-- The Rescue

Sparks flow off his beak as the owl, mad with rage, careened through the night sky. "I must find water! I must find water! This mask will melt my eyes. Glaux blood on my brother's gizzard!"

-- The Siege

It was the same. That was her first thought. It looks just like the old fir tree, the one where Soren and I were hatched. And even the shape of the hollow's opening where Mum and Da made their nest, a lopsided O--wasn't that the exact shape?

-- The Shattering

"Night gathers and your time has come," intoned Barran, the large Snowy Owl and monarch of the Great Ga'Hoole Tree. In some ways it seemed like only last night that he, Gylfie, Twilight, and Digger had traveled through that blinding blizzard and had arrived at the great tree. But in other ways it felt like forever. Now they perched, ready to take the most inviolable oath of their lives: They were to become at last Guardians of Ga'Hoole.

-- The Burning

"It's the hatchling," a young owl said as the group watched Nyroc, only son of the great warrior Kludd, begin a power dive. He grasped a charred branch from the ground in his beak and in one swift movement rose seamlessly again into the air brandishing it before him.

-- The Hatchling

"You are a mask. You are nothing more! There is nothing behind your mask, not a face, nothing! I shall fly in the fullness of the night. Under the moon and the stars I shall hunt the vole, the rat, even the fox. I shall become part of owlkind, no matter where I have to go. But I shall go! And I shall never return to the Pure Ones. I defy you. I HAVE FREE WILL!"

-- The Outcast

On a branch outside a hollow of the Great Ga'Hoole Tree, three owls hunched against the first blasts of an early winter gale. One was an Elf Owl, one a Great Gray, and one a Burrowing Owl. They were known collectively as the Band, but their fourth member, the Barn Owl Soren, was in the hollow of his beloved old teacher, Ezylryb. And Ezylryb was dying.

-- The First Collier

Octavia, the pudgy, elderly, blind nest-maid snake, slithered out onto the branch outside her old master's hollow. "Look. I might be blind, but I know that you've been out there all morning. Why aren't you in your hollows sleeping?"

-- The Coming of Hoole

"Nachtmagen!" The word hung in the air treacherous, insidious. "Do you really think so, Coryn?" Gylfie asked. "Do you think that nachtmagen has seeped back into our world with the ember?"

-- To Be a King

"Look at me, look at me!" the Great Gray hooted. His primaries sparked silver in the moonlight as he carved a steep turn, then folded his wings and plunged toward a cresting wave. He swooped up, barely escaping the grip of the sea as the spume trailed behind him like a comet's tail.

-- The Golden Tree

Threading though the roar of the waterfall, the scratch of a pen on parchment could be heard. Heard, that is, if there was anyone to listen except for the writer. But there wasn't.

-- River of Wind

"All right, Otulissa, how does this sound for the lead article?" Fritha, a very diligent Pygmy Owl and one of Otulissa's best students, had become the assistant editor of The Evening Hoot, a newspaper that she and Otulissa had started shorty after Coryn came to the tree.

-- Exile

The light of the low-hanging full-shine moon slipped into the cave, making it glow like a lantern of ice above that tiny gut of sea linking the Southern Kingdoms to the Northern Kingdoms.

-- The War of the Ember

#guardians of ga'hoole #middle grade books #middle grade fantasy #middle grade fiction #books and reading #books #books and novels #book recommendations

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I was trying to choose between Keladry of Mindelan and Princess Cimorene of Linderwall

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Illyrian wings are just hella impractical and poorly thought through ripoffs of Ferengi ears and you cannot change my mind.

#acotar #illyrian #ferengi

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Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh...

It's been that kinda writing week.

#writer #writers block #writers #writing #writer mood

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This would work on me! And for those of you IN relationships...this is an excellent date night.

#reader memes #reader #reading #books #books and reading #books and novels

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When Puck isn't doing errands for Oberon and screwing around with mortals in the woods outside of Athens, he's curating books with faeries in them! His favorites this week are below the break!

Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett

VERY scary faeries, Nanny and Granny take them more seriously than just about any other antagonists they face. Magrat gets to shine by absolutely WRECKING SHOP on the Elf Queen.

Dreamer's Pool by Juliet Marillier

The faeries are not scary so much as they require respect and careful handling, because if you fuck up an interaction, you're getting classically cursed.

Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

A wonderful mix of scary and benign faeries, with an academic twist. Also, Wendell Babmbleby, who is one of those faeries who just attaches himself to you and you have to live with the consequences.

Half a Soul by Olivia Atwater

Definitely some scary faeries, and you HAVE to know the rules or else you're going to end up being kidnapped to faerie forever. Also some really darling romance.

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

So this gets billed as faerie spice, but frankly this book isn't terribly spicy. It is Beauty and the Beast meets the unseelie court, though. Also faerie romance.

That Self-Same Metal by Brittany N. Williams

This is Shakespearean faeries and Dadspeare, and Robing Goodfellow is nonbinary! There are definitely scary faeries here, but it has a very Midsummer Night's Dream vibe.

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

A heart-wrenching exploration of humanity, family, the definition of monstrosity, and capitalism against a backdrop of HELLA scary faeries.

#faeries #fae #fairies #fae books #faerie books #fairy tale #books #books and reading #books and novels #book recommendations

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We are calling just shy of 600 words on the Leverage fic a win this weekend.

#my writing #my wips

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This is entirely the best experience in the world, and honestly I wish it happened more.

#reader #reading #reader memes #books and reading

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Yeah, ok, so we just had that bigass High Lords alliance meeting that SJM has been hyping up for like a full third of ACOWAR, and uhh...

WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL WAS THAT, FEYRE?

Not only was the entire Night Court weirdly unable to abide by the rules THEY SET, but Feyre just full-on came THIS CLOSE to fucking it entirely up by fireballing at Beron and revealing that she has a bit of everyone's power. Like, congratulations Feyre, you took an already unstable situation and flung a LITERAL FIREBALL at it.

And then Nesta--who honestly is moving into my favorite character position--steps the fuck up and SAVES it for them:

Like, Nesta gets it. She understands the bigger picture, the stakes, and the consequences of this meeting falling the hell apart. So she stood up and she SAVED the meeting after Feyre absolutely fucked it up. Without Nesta in that room, Beron walks, the rest of the High Lords dither, and Rhys probably further enfuckens Feyre's fuckup. But Nesta halts Beron through her personal authority alone--which has literally not been established by anyone else from the Night Court. This is the sheer power of Nesta's personality. And it stops Beron cold.

But does anyone recognize this monumental save? Does anyone give Nesta credit?

NO THEY FUCKING DON'T!

And to make it even worse, we get frickin' Rhysand after the fact going:

You handled it beautifully, Rhys added. All of it. Despite my explosion? [asked Feyre] Because of your explosion.

...

*takes a deep breath*

*counts to ten*

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME, RHYSAND??? She came THIS CLOSE to wrecking the only chance to ally the courts and have a fighting chance at sending Hybern packing. The explosion wasn't planned, and it required a hail Mary save that literally NOBODY in the Inner Circle saw coming and had no right to expect.

The sheer disdain and disrespect for Nesta that Rhysand has is getting SUPER old at this point, and frankly? I hope Nesta death magics his ass off a cliff.

#acowar spoilers #acowar #nesta archeron #rhysand #books #books and reading