#fine books

[giftideasfromaycaramba]

An American Story - Kwame Alexander, pens a powerful picture book that tells the story of American slavery through the voice of a teacher struggling to help her students understand its harrowing history.

Gift a copy:

#mustread #aycarambabooks #shopsmall #bookswelove #american history #givebooks #finenooks #kwame alexander #black American history #slavery #darecoulter #beautiful books #aycarambabooksdotcom #fine books

[penpanoply]

#this is fine #books #and a cat

[songthursh]

Alright, I will start with this one then - everything starts with the glorious revolution and everything starts with the night watch 🌸

#discworld #terry pratchett #samuel vimes #havelock vetinari #vimes x vetinari #vetvimes #lord vetinari #glorious revolution #lilac #the night watch #night watch #Am I doing it right at all #AAAAA #I love this book I hate it so much #Blame my sweet gf for spoiling me with such amazing literature also #AND FOR MAKING ME GO THROUGH THESE BOOKS IT'S JUST... UGGGH #Also also it's not Carrot I swear he wasn't there also Vimes should've been armorless but I realized it a bit too late BUT THAT'S FINE #my art

[jamesbondlexicon]

Fine Books magazine celebrates 60 years of Bond novels with Ian Fleming taking the cover spotlight in April 2013

#james bond #magazine cover #fine books #ian fleming #2013 #bond on the cover

[suntails]

reality

#blinks so cutely at u. im baaaack #i only have it in me to do one piece for 7.7 i think. i just dont think the rest grabs my brain id rather draw other stuff :D #ive started a new job (NOT animation) by now so im re-adjusting to job hours vs fun hours but the job is easy breezy so im happy!!! #i work in an office i answer the phone like twice a day and i file some paperwork and i eat candy at my desk. its the best #AND im lined up to take over as supervisor in a few months. smiles lovingly at the camera. the dream <3 #speaking of dreams haha idia my guy umm so how u doing buddy. u doin okay? will u recover from this buddy pal chum guy? :D #he'll be fine im proud of him #twst #twisted wonderland #idia shroud #book 7 spoilers #ch 7 spoilers #suntails

[flowersforfrancis]

#dark academia #city academia #chaotic academia #academia aesthetic #romanticism #city aesthetic #classic academia #dark romantica #light academia #london aesthetic #art gallery #museum #art aesthetic #fine art #art galleries #Dark academics #books and reading #books and literature #literature aesthetics #baked goods #wine aesthetic #the secret history #francis abernathy

[life-imitates-art-far-more]

Charles-Amable Lenoir (1860-1926) "À la Recherche du Temps Perdu" ("In Search of Lost Time") Oil on canvas

#paintings #art #artwork #genre painting #female portrait #charles amable lenoir #oil on canvas #fine art #french artist #portrait of a woman #red hair #book #books #literary painting #french literature #blue dress #dresses #clothing #clothes #1k #2k

[peakvincent]

new game is to type one through ten in your tags and see what comes up. i think my favorite of mine is ‘my uncle told us he spent seven and a half hours in a sensory deprivation tank once’ but ‘gideon the ninth motherfucker’ is a close second

#one is that bad laptops can still handle custom content #two stupid old men who i lovehate :( #goddamn it i wish the three funniest women alive would tell me what i just saw #the f in rpf stands for fourth wall #ten pounds of trauma in a five pound bag #me and alice will both read it and i think that brings you up to like six!!! #my uncle told us he spent seven and a half hours in a sensory deprivation tank once #goal was one book per store and we ended up with six stores and eight books which actually i think is fine #gideon the ninth motherfucker #thinking about the ten inexplicable minutes where jay and i were very in on brandon saad/roberto luongo #*

[wizzard890]

So there’s a trend that I absolutely hate in online discussions of (non-satirical) genre, particularly genre that’s influenced by the gothic. This trend makes my eyes roll back in my head until I can see through my own skull. It makes me want to bite a car in half. It makes me want to step into the jellyfish tank at the New York Aquarium and beg for the sweet sweet annihilation of a thousand stings. 

I call this trend: Oh Just Be Sensible, and it goes like this:

“Why do vampires always end up covered in blood when they feed, I don’t spill soup all down the front of my shirt when I eat dinner. Real toddler energy.”

“Why do people always cut their hands to swear oaths, everyone knows it would hurt way less on the [insert body part with fewer nerve endings]”

“Vampires shouldn’t be feeding from people’s wrists, it damages the tendons, if doctors don’t take your blood from your wrist, vampires shouldn’t either! No one will be able to flex their fingers the next day.”

(This comes up a lot with vampires, I mention, as I stride purposefully into the glistening mass of jellyfish.)

There are direct answers for some of these when it comes to the practical visual language of a particular medium (for example, you cut your hand on stage / on set because you can hold a blood pack in there, and even if you don’t have an effect, the gesture and its purpose can be discerned from the nosebleeds) but what really gets me is how thematically boneheaded this sort of observation is. 

Like, let’s go down the list here. 

Why do vampires end up covered in their victims’ blood? Well Scoob, do you think it could maybe have something to do with their bestial, inhuman nature? Or with the erotic and sensual abandon with which they can approach violence, now that they’re untethered from human morals? 

Why do people cut their hands to swear oaths? Aside from what I mentioned above, do you think maybe it’s because it adds a layer of gravity to see two people swearing an oath to one another with blood dripping from their clasped hands? Do you think it’s maybe to evoke a unity of body, something greater and more primal than a unity of word? Or maybe to remind us of the dire consequences of breaking a blood oath?

Why are authors having vampires feed from people’s wrists if it damages their tendons? Damn, maybe that’s because it’s where the pulse is. You know, the pulse? The heartblood, the thing that races when you’re scared or turned on or both? The thing that stutters when you’re close to death and could, should the author choose, ring in the vampire’s ears like a chime or a great pounding thunderclap. Maybe in a story about undead beings who drink blood, we can sacrifice a bit of sensible reality in order to enforce the emotion and thematic heft of a scene? 

Images like these communicate what is happening between two characters, not just the events that are transpiring! No one making stories forgot to consider ~sensible~ little observations, because it would be absolutely inane to consider an observation with the creative value of a wet paper towel. This stuff is part of our visual language for a reason! Themes also need to be communicated! 

God, like, okay, I’m exhausted and the aquarium staff keeps yelling at me when they find me here, but let me just wrap up by saying that relationships, character and meaning are expressed in so many ways beyond dialogue or internal monologue, and those expressions are so rarely sensible. 

(Also all this shit looks cool as hell, do you really want your protagonists swearing to die for one another by dabbing their slightly bleeding elbows together, grow up.)

#me: don't make me tap the sign #sign: fun allowed #(thematic clarity and character relationships should trump sensible realism every time) #(realism is fine! but monocle popping smirky little 'hmm I think dan brown was an idiot' smugness is just....bad!) #(it's bad and it makes for bad writing!) #my thoughts about books

[yrsonpurpose]

ways of saying i love you, without saying i love you.

#rwrb #rwrbedit #red white and royal blue #alex x henry #firstprince #mine* #userninz #userveronika #chrissiewatts #usernuria #usersteen #userclara #usermegsb #another gifset ticked off the list of ones ive wanted to make lmao #the book was FULL of these oooohh they really were saying it without Saying It #i cheated with a couple of them but thats fine i make the rules here #underrated line is alex calling henry brave #bc how often does henry hear things like that 😪😪 #also we deserved that scene of henry telling alex 'you are good' i wouldve died right there

[shakespearesdaughters]

#romanticism #romantic academia #light academia #chaotic academia #dark academia #books and literature #academia #classic academia #aesthetic #romantic aesthetic #art academia #art galleries #cozy academia #love aesthetic #Fine art #bookblr #studyblr #studyspo #books #literature #art #college #dark acadamia aesthetic #dark academia moodboard #mood board #light academia aesthetic

[theladysunami]

I listen to a lot of audiobook murder mysteries, which has me thinking:

Shen Yuan transmigrating into a murder mystery… as the killer!

There are a couple of ways the story could go.

First Option: Shen Yuan lets his System know, in no uncertain terms, he will not be murdering anyone.

Its response: [Alternate Plotline Initiated. New Assignment: Designated Red Herring].

Poor Shen Qingqiu finds himself stuck in a whole murder mystery series, and any time anyone is murdered, he somehow ends up being the number one suspect!

The victim? Probably picked a fight with Shen Qingqiu at some point. (Shen Qingqiu tries to avoid such arguments, but it never seems to work!)

The murder weapon? Yeah, Shen Qingqiu is almost guaranteed to have touched it. (Shen Qingqiu is severely tempted to start wearing gloves 24/7.)

The body? Either Shen Qingqiu finds it himself at some inopportune time, and/or it was stashed somewhere “only” he is supposed to have access to. (At some point it's just: Shen Qingqiu opens a door… sees a body… closes the door. “Time to call the cops, yet again.”)

Shen Qingqiu ends up a tad paranoid about the whole thing, setting up cameras outside his house, in his office, in his car, etc. just to (hopefully) stop people from planting evidence any of those places.

If anyone asks about the truly absurd number of (eventually dropped) murder allegations, Shen Qingqiu insists he's cursed. Even with genre blinders on (making the number of convoluted murders in the area seem normal somehow), it's hard for anyone to argue the point.

For Shen Qingqiu's day job (when he's not busy being charged with murder) he works as a professor at a university with a highly regarded Criminology & Criminal Justice program. I'm thinking the original goods was a literature professor, with a strong distaste for cops, who was known for grading anyone in the criminal justice program exceedingly harshly. Naturally one of his students is the protagonist, Luo Binghe.

After his transmigration, professor Shen Qingqiu suddenly becomes a very kind and doting professor with a real passion for literature. This leaves Luo Binghe quickly smitten and makes him a very motivated amateur detective, since he's determined to prove his beloved's innocence as quickly as possible and as often as needed!

Second Option: Shen Yuan takes over after the original goods already committed the murder.

He wakes up with a splitting headache (the victim attempted to defend themselves presumably), looks at his bloody hands… looks at the victim… looks at the weapon… looks at his bloody hands again. “Damn it, Airplane.”

He decides he doesn't want to try and hide a body actually, just to be caught by the protagonist later and charged with a whole slew of things in addition to murder, so he calls the cops himself. He might as well take advantage of the fact he has a concussion and literally doesn't remember a thing. Maybe he can get the charges reduced somewhat and get a lighter sentence.

Of course the first cop that arrives at the scene is Yue Qingyuan, who as the #1 Xiao-Jiu stan gives Shen Qingqiu way too much benefit of the doubt. The most obvious evidence also keeps being erased or damaged by weird as hell coincidences.

Shen Qingqiu knows he certainly isn't responsible for damaging evidence and wonders if the System is working overtime behind the scenes to ensure there actually is a mystery for Luo Binghe to solve. (After all, it wouldn't be much of a story if Shen Qingqiu was already charged and sentenced before Luo Binghe had a chance to even do anything.)

To his complete bewilderment, after a few days leave to recover from the concussion, Shen Qingqiu is actually allowed to return to his university teaching job. He decides to make the best of it, since who knows how long he'll be a free man.

As in the first scenario, a few months later and Luo Binghe is absolutely smitten, not to mention all the other students and faculty that have come to adore him.

As Shen Qingqiu has successfully endeared himself to pretty much anyone and everyone local that could actually charge him or provide eyewitness testimony, not to mention all the shady shit about murder victim Qiu Jianluo the ongoing investigation keeps digging up, the plot stalls for a bit until the state police (aka Huan Hua Palace) are finally called in by Qiu Haitang.

Unfortunately for the ‘HHP’ folks, the protagonist himself is on Shen Qingqiu's side, and Luo Binghe is perfectly happy to muddy the waters by conveniently “losing” evidence, sending them after every single red herring he comes across, and “accidentally” digging up dirt on all the shady dealings going on in their department.

The System keeps trying to motivate Shen Qingqiu to hide evidence, lie, or do literally anything suspicious to progress the plot further, but all its punishment protocols involve sabotaging Shen Qingqiu's coverup attempts (of which he has none) or revealing information to the protagonist (who is complicit by this point) so it's fresh out of luck.

Eventually the System gives up and Shen Qingqiu is congratulated for “getting away with murder!” despite the fact he didn't actually do anything.

“Seriously? Does it even count as getting away with murder when the original goods was the actual murderer? I didn't kill anyone!”

[...]

#BingQiu #Shen Qingqiu #Luo Binghe #SQQ #LBH #Scum Villain's Self Saving System #SVSSS #SVSSS Idea #Story Idea #* I know nothing about the Chinese justice system... but the 'original book' would have been written by Airplane so it's fine.

[die-rosastrasse]

Women & Books in Classical Art

Charles Edward Perugini, Carl Holsøe, Alfred Stevens, Edward Hughes, Alberto Piza, Léon Bazile Perrault, Alfred Stevens, Gabriel Schachinger, George Lawrence Bulleid

#art #paintings #art detail #classical art #painting #women in art #fine arts #books #literature #light academia #19th century art #victorian art #Art #art academia #academia aesthetic #cottagecore #cottagecore art

[andthebeanstalk]

Me: hm, I want something to put on the TV as background noise... Huh. Looks like YouTube is recommending something called The Last Unicorn. That's perfect, it's probably some old shitty animation that has aged poorly! I can watch it ironically!

Me, 2 hours later as the credits roll: *crying, cheering, buying the book, composing the songs*

Me, 2 weeks later: So I have compiled all of the quotes from the book that I think could make good tattoos, and also, HOW HAVE I NEVER LEARNED ABOUT HOW THE LAST UNICORN FUCKING SLAPS??? This gay-ass little fairytale fed my soul! Watered my crops! Transed my gender! Can't believe I heard of this story from youtube recommendations, of all places!!

#original #the last unicorn #tlu #peter s beagle #molly gru #schmendrick #schmendrick the magician #two of my favorite characters in anything right there in the center of the story! and I'm glad I saw the film first! #my reading ability has diminished due to trauma disability etc. but it seems like having a visual reference actually really helped! #no wonder i only ever want to read fan fic! turns out reading is not actually Superior to other types of Storytelling. it's just different. #to say otherwise is snobbishness I have been eminently guilty of in my life! #but like it is easier for me to consume tv and movies and that is fine actually. also that's why I'm doing a graphic novel lol #because i wanted to make something i would actually be able to read if i found it at a library. altho the audio book IS gonna be bomb #the audiobook is for visually impaired readers and anyone who wants or needs it! accessible stories for everyone! yeah!! #my gender was already transed but now I've gained an ADDITIONAL gender! which one? I'll never tell 😘 #i am so powerful i have so much fuckin gender. my wife has no gender. and she is equally as powerful. #and also she has STUDIED THE BLADE #mostly zoro's blades from One Piece #normally YouTube recommends me shit movies like idiocracy or smth this is like if every day ur cat brought you a piece of rotten food and #then one day it brings you a BEAUTIFULLY ANIMATED TALE FEATURING MY BELOVED TWINK FUCK-UP WIZARD FRIEND AND MY ALL-TIME HOMEGIRL MOLLY GRU #and also it's soft and beautiful and funny and fucking weird!! i wrote melodies to the songs in the books on my ukulele

[morganbritton132]

Eddie, posting to TikTok: Look, I love my husband. I adore this man and I have for the majority of my life. He is the shining star in my sky.

Eddie: And I know. I know he wants to read more this year. And I know that when you’re dyslexic, it can be really difficult and I’m happy every time he accomplishes what he wants but…

*Flips camera to show Steve reading on the other side of the couch*

Eddie, gesturing: What kind of demented book handling is this? That book is bent in half. It’s a hardback!

#Robin in the comments: …that’s my book #my HC is that Steve reads trashy spy thrillers #for the record: I’m not a book purest. treat your books however you want #this is actually based of the time my little sister asked if she could borrow one of my books and I said no and then felt bad so I bought #her the book and she immediately broke the spine. which is fine if it’s your own book but I know she would’ve done the same to mine #eddie munson tiktok saga #eddie munson #steve harrington

[contact-guy]

In September I watched Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes and it ruined my life I really cannot stress how much I love these movies

#then read the books and loved them in an entirely different way #but GOD early 2010s queerbaiting hits like a fine wine #sherlock holmes #john watson #ritchie holmes