#obscure books

[silmarillion-ways-to-die]

#obscure books #silmarillion #the silm #the silmarillion #the silm fandom #lord of the rings #lotr #tolkien #jrr tolkien #lotr rop #lotr trop #lotr memes #tolkien memes

[rachel-614]

Okay, let me tell you a story:

Once upon a time, there was a prose translation of the Pearl Poet’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. It was wonderfully charming and lyrical and perfect for use in a high school, and so a clever English teacher (as one did in the 70s) made a scan of the book for her students, saved it as a pdf, and printed copies off for her students every year. In true teacher tradition, she shared the file with her colleagues, and so for many years the students of the high school all studied Sir Gawain and the Green Knight from the same (very badly scanned) version of this wonderful prose translation.

In time, a new teacher became head of the English Department, and while he agreed that the prose translation was very wonderful he felt that the quality of the scan was much less so. Also in true teacher tradition, he then spent hours typing up the scan into a word processor, with a few typos here and there and a few places where he was genuinely just guessing wildly at what the scan actually said. This completed word document was much cleaner and easier for the students to read, and so of course he shared it with his colleagues, including his very new wide-eyed faculty member who was teaching British Literature for the first time (this was me).

As teachers sometimes do, he moved on for greener (ie, better paying) pastures, leaving behind the word document, but not the original pdf scan. This of course meant that as I was attempting to verify whether a weird word was a typo or a genuine artifact of the original translation, I had no other version to compare it to. Being a good card-holding gen zillenial I of course turned to google, making good use of the super secret plagiarism-checking teacher technique “Quotation Marks”, with an astonishing result:

By which I mean literally one result.

For my purposes, this was precisely what I needed: a very clean and crisp scan that allowed me to make corrections to my typed edition: a happily ever after, amen.

But beware, for deep within my soul a terrible Monster was stirring. Bane of procrastinators everywhere, my Curiosity had found a likely looking rabbit hole. See, this wonderfully clear and crisp scan was lacking in two rather important pieces of identifying information: the title of the book from which the scan was taken, and the name of the translator. The only identifying features were the section title “Precursors” (and no, that is not the title of the book, believe me I looked) and this little leaf-like motif by the page numbers:

(Remember the leaf. This will be important later.)

We shall not dwell at length on the hours of internet research that ensued—how the sun slowly dipped behind the horizon, grading abandoned in shadows half-lit by the the blue glow of the computer screen—how google search after search racked up, until an email warning of “unusual activity on your account” flashed into momentary existence before being consigned immediately and with some prejudice to the digital void—how one third of the way through a “comprehensive but not exhaustive” list of Sir Gawain translators despair crept in until I was left in utter darkness, screen black and eyes staring dully at the wall.

Above all, let us not admit to the fact that such an afternoon occurred not once, not twice, but three times.

Suffice to say, many hours had been spent in fruitless pursuit before a new thought crept in: if this book was so mysterious, so obscure as to defeat the modern search engine, perhaps the answer lay not in the technologies of today, but the wisdom of the past. Fingers trembling, I pulled up the last blast email that had been sent to current and former faculty and staff, and began to compose an email to the timeless and indomitable woman who had taught English to me when I was a student, and who had, after nearly fifty years, retired from teaching just before I returned to my alma mater.

After staring at the email for approximately five or so minutes, I winced, pressed send, and let my plea sail out into the void. I cannot adequately describe for you the instinctive reverence I possess towards this teacher; suffice to say that Ms English was and is a woman of remarkable character, as much a legend as an institution as a woman of flesh and blood whose enduring influence inspired countless students. There is not a student taught by Ms. English who does not have a story to tell about her, and her decline in her last years of teaching and eventual retirement in the face of COVID was the end of an era. She still remembers me, and every couple months one of her contemporaries and dear friends who still works as a guidance counsellor stops me in the hall to tell me that Ms. English says hello and that she is thrilled that I am teaching here—thrilled that I am teaching honors students—thrilled that I am now teaching the AP students. “Tell her I said hello back,” I always say, and smile.

Ms. English is a legend, and one does not expect legends to respond to you immediately. Who knows when a woman of her generation would next think to check her email? Who knows if she would remember?

The day after I sent the email I got this response:

My friends, I was shaken. I was stunned. Imagine asking God a question and he turns to you and says, “Hold on one moment, let me check with my predecessor.”

The idea that even Ms. English had inherited this mysterious translation had never even occurred to me as a possibility, not when Ms. English had been a faculty member since the early days of the school. How wonderful, I thought to myself. What a great thing, that this translation is so obscure and mysterious that it defeats even Ms. English.

A few days later, Ms. English emailed me again:

(I had, in fact searched through both the English office and the Annex—a dark, weirdly shaped concrete storage area containing a great deal of dust and many aging copies of various books—a few days prior. I had no luck, sadly.)

At last, though, I had a title and a description! I returned to my internet search, only to find to my dismay that there was no book that exactly matched the title. I found THE BRITISH TRADITION: POETRY, PROSE, AND DRAMA (which was not black and the table of contents I found did not include Sir Gawain) and THE ENGLISH TRADITION, a super early edition of the Prentice Hall textbooks we use today, which did have a black cover but there were absolutely zero images I could find of the table of contents or the interior and so I had no way of determining if it was the correct book short of laying out an unfortunate amount of cold hard cash for a potential dead end.

So I sighed, and relinquished my dreams of solving the mystery. Perhaps someday 30 years from now, I thought, I’ll be wandering through one of those mysterious bookshops filled with out of print books and I’ll pick up a book and there will be the translation, found out last!

So I sighed, and told the whole story to my colleagues for a laugh. I sent screenshots of Ms. English’s emails to my siblings who were also taught by her. I told the story to my Dad over dinner as my Great Adventure of the Week.

…my friends. I come by my rabbit-hole curiosity honestly, but my Dad is of a different generation of computer literacy and knows a few Deep Secrets that I have never learned. He asked me the title that Ms. English gave me, pulled up some mysterious catalogue site, and within ten minutes found a title card. There are apparently two copies available in libraries worldwide, one in Philadelphia and the other in British Columbia. I said, “sure, Dad,” and went upstairs. He texted me a link. Rolling my eyes, I opened it and looked at the description.

Huh, I thought. Four volumes, just like Ms. English said. I wonder…

Armed with a slightly different title and a publisher, I looked up “The English Tradition: Fiction macmillan” and the first entry is an eBay sale that had picture of the interior and LO AND BEHOLD:

THE LEAF. LOOK AT THE LEAF.

My dad found it! He found the book!!

Except for one teensy tiny problem which is that the cover of the book is uh a very bright green and not at all black like Ms. English said. Alas, it was a case of mistaken identity, because The English Tradition: Poetry does have a black cover, although it is the fiction volume which contains Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

And so having found the book at last, I have decided to purchase it for the sum of $8, that ever after the origins of this translation may once more be known.

In this year of 2022 this adventure took place, as this post bears witness, the end, amen.

(Edit: See here for part 2!)

#sir gawain and the green knight #translations #internet research #english literature #teaching things #dads are the best #long post #story telling #I STILL don’t know the name of the translator but I WILL find out #obscure books

[friendrat]

Ok, I need some help. I lost this book like 10 years ago in a fire, and I cannot for the life of me remember *anything* about it. It was a Christian middle grade or YA book. I *think* it was a portal fantasy, but it could have just been an other world fantasy. I think there may have been like shadow people, and the MC had to travel into this dark land/fortress? I'm sorry, I know that isn't a lot to go on! The one thing I can say is that it had a green and black cover. The cover kinda has the same vibes as Shadow Chaser by Jerel Law:

Like to the point that I actually thought that might have been it, but Shadow Chaser was book 3 in a series, and the one I'm looking for was either book 1 or a stand-alone.

Help a girl out? Let me know if you have an idea of what book I'm looking for, or if you know someone who might know feel free to tag them, or share this post... whatever. Thanks!

#reading #reading rat #book recommendations #obscure books #books #christian fiction #christian fantasy #Christian middle grade #Christian ya #help me find this book

[arconinternet]

A Visual Guide To Alien Beings (Book, David W. Chace, 1996)

You can read it here. It's huge.

#internet archive #book #books #obscure books #weird books #strange book #art book #art books #artbook #artbooks #alien #aliens #gray alien #grays #reptilians #ufo #ufos #uap #uaps #book cover #books covers #cover art #book cover art #1996 #1990s #90s

[ziekaramaik]

Okay, so... I was in this thrift store. I was browsing the used books sections. And something caught my attention because the author's name on the spine was "Katherine Applegate". It was book #2 of the "Making Waves" series, a YA romance book series.

And I was like... is it the same Katherine Applegate? K.A. Applegate?? THAT one???

I read the copyright page. It was dedicated to Michael. Yep, it's her all right.

I loved Animorphs as a kid. I haven't read every book by the same author(s), but I least had an awareness of them. We've all heard of Ever World, and Remnants, and The One and Only Ivan. I even vaguely heard something about some pre-animorphs book about basketball.

I NEVER heard of Making Waves. It's a series with at least 11 books that's APPARENTLY been around since 2001? Has anyone heard of this?? Was it dropped into the past via time travel??

#ka applegate #making waves #animorphs #obscure books #has anyone heard of this?

[marmot-bee-person]

I went through a phase where my hyperfixation was this obscure middle grade fantasy series, the power of poppy Pendle. I was OBSESSED. Book four’s main character is named Della, who spends the entire book stranded and trying to get back home and for some reason that’s attached itself to ducktales in my brain…

#gee i wonder why #If you can’t guess why #then why are you here #Ducktales #obscure books #middle grade fantasy

[fandom-obscurum]

Todays obscure fandom is The League of Seven!

The League of Seven is a trilogy of books about seven kids in an alternate past where electricity is illegal. It follows Archie Dent and his friends as they fight Thomas Edison and monsters called the Mangleborn.

Personal Rating - 6/10 🌤️

I remember really enjoying the first book in this series as a kid, but I never had access to the sequels. It is a very original concept with many ideas that still stick in my head, but I’ll have to revisit it before I can give it a higher rating.

#obscure media #obscure books #the league of seven

[romanov-ramblings]

More of the paintings of the Palisandre Drawing-Room of Her Majesty at the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoe Selo In the Palisandre Drawing-Room of the Empress, there was a multitude of paintings, watercolours, pastels and prints. Most of the paintings were hung along two particular walls - the wall leading to the Lilac Cabinet and the wall leading to the Maple Living-Room. The two most well-known of these paintings still reside with GMZ Tsarskoe Selo and have recently been reframed with recreated wooden frames to match the originals which were lost during the Second World War. Gosfond (The State Museum Catalogue of the Museum Fund in Russia) has a wealth of a collection that spans the entire country with a range of objects ranging from drawings, photographs, sculpture, paintings, portraits, miniatures, vases, etc. GMZ Pavlovsk is the major keeper of what was evacuated from the Alexander Palace during the war. In its collection is 1,078 items which vary from paintings, fabric hangings from the rooms, sculpture, art glass, etc. Of these, I was able to find six paintings which up until 1941 hung on the walls of the Palisandre Drawing-Room of Her Majesty. From the 1928 Catalog on the Alexander Palace-Museum (Furnishings) by I. Yakovlev and translated generously by Stephen R. de Angelis (available via www.bookemon.com), are the titles that correspond to these ten paintings: "The Annunciation." Inscription: "Ave Maria Grazia Plena." Granitsch, S. Circa. 1895. "Madonna and Child." Thumann, P. German School. Date Unknown. "Portrait (waist-high) of the Princess Helena Victoria - cousin of Alexandra Feodorovna. Copy from Swoboda, J." Kobervein, Terell G. Circa. 1897. "Portrait of Alexei Nikolaevich in his youth." Trifonov, I. Member of the Saint Petersburg Painting School and the Academy of the Arts from 1866. Circa. 1906. "Child's Head." Makovskii, K.E. (1839-1915). Russian School. Date Unknown. "Old Boyarin." Pelevin, I. Russian School. Date Unknown. "Atrium at the last sunbeams." Bakalowicz, St. VI. (1857-1928). Russian School. Circa. 1896. "Spanish Scene." Gallegos, J. Italian School. Circa. 1899. "Monastery Hospital." Topham, Frank. W.W. Date Unknown. "The Interior view of the Cathedral in Seville." Gallegos, J. Italian School. Circa. 1898. ________________________________________________________________ Please enjoy these images, and If you’d like to share them elsewhere, you can download them yourself and if you do so, PLEASE remember to credit the institution/news source/author/photographer - in this case Gosfond, GMZ Tsarskoe Selo, GMZ Pavlovsk, V.I. Yakovlev, and Stephen R. de Angelis, appropriately! Thank-you. ________________________________________________________________ Sources: Gosfond (State Museum Catalogue of the Museum Fund of Russia) GMZ Tsarskoe Selo (Tsarskoe Selo State Museum Reserve) GMZ Pavlovsk (Pavlovsk State Museum Reserve) ”The Alexander Palace in Detskoe Selo,” - V.I. Yakovlev. Circa. 1927 (Republished in 1928), translated by Stephen R. de Angelis. Link of courtesy:   www.goskatalog.ru https://www.bookemon.com/book-profile/yakovlev-the-alexander-palace-1927/545267 Also, if anyone is interested, this is the original text which Mr. de Angelis translated from, which is free for download via this website: http://elib.shpl.ru/ru/nodes/42498-yakovlev-v-i-aleksandrovskiy-dvorets-muzey-v-detskom-sele-ubranstvo-vmesto-kataloga-detskoe-selo-1928#mode/grid/page/27/zoom/1 (This is the republished catalogue, Circa. 1928)

#alexander palace #tsarskoe selo #gmz tsarskoe selo #gmz pavlovsk #romanov #imperial russia #empress alexandra feodorovna #palisandre drawing room #paintings #fine art #russian archival material #gosfond #obscure books

[thosedambluecookies]

#bookish #bookworms #six of crows #percy jackon and the olympians #popular #ya fiction #obscure books

[futurebird]

The most obscure book in the world.

There is something about reading deeply obscure books. I'm talking about books that you can't find on amazon or at most book stores. Books that aren't in the NYPL collection. Some are old vanity projects perhaps. Printed in a run of only a few hundred.

If the author went to college that library might have a copy. Or maybe they donated one to the local library in their small town. You can find them online from strange book dealers. They are never expensive, never behind glass. But they are still extraordinarily rare.

It feels almost...sacrilegious to find such books just sitting on an ordinary library shelf. Over 100 years old. Never scanned or cataloged. Totally offline knowledge. And you'll never find any reviews to help you to decide what to make of these books.

You could easily be the only person to read it in 20 or more years. So, when a book like this really touches you. When it becomes a personal treasure and masterpiece... it makes me wonder what else I've missed.

I'd love to have a contest for "the most obscure masterpiece" the challenge is to find the very best deeply obscure book --and introduce it to others. Dazzle them with what you've uncovered.

I'm not comfortable with the way that so much is able to slip away and be lost forever.

#rare books #old books #obscure books #lost books #books

[booksofdelight]

7 More Obscure Books That Readers Want You to Know About 

Finding amazing novels that aren’t well known or popular is always a thrilling experience. It is like finding a secret room in a house. Little known books that you come across by happenstance is why we walk into bookstores. That is why we made a list of 7 obscure books that readers loved and want you to know about!   7 Obscure Books That Readers Want You to Know About  It is these novels that…

View On WordPress

#Blog #blogging #book #Book Recommendations #book review #books #books to read #Fiction #lists #novels #obscure books #read #reading #writing

[usernose]

Guys I'm losing my mind right now.

I remember reading this book either in Elementary or Middle School and my friend showed me it.

This is what I remember: It's in a diary type format and it have two distinct art styles because there is two friends who are writing in it(one is really good, the other is mostly squibbles). One girl is tan, has short black hair and the other is Caucasian, has curly blonde(later dyed it blue, then blonde again) and has blue glasses. I also remember the first girl has two dads and the second one has divorced parents and an older sister.

Guys please, if you guys know what I'm talking about, please reblog with the cover of the book or sent me an ask, Please I'm begging you guys.

#please help me find this book #lost book #tip of my tongue #book from middle school #find that book #obscure books

[toastilytubular]

So, I’m looking for a book I remember starting to read in late elementary/early middle school, but stopped for some unknown reason, and I can’t remember for the life of me what it’s called!

I remember that the cover was red and white, like little red riding hood and snow. From what I remember, it was about this girl who lived alone with her mother. The girl put colorful paper (I think) onto her windows so that the rooms would be colorful. I remember there were soldiers looking for something, and one of them died because of a wolf or something completely unrelated I don’t remember. The soldiers wound up at the girl and her mother’s house and the girl ran away… and that’s where I forget everything. I know that the story has lots to do with wolves, and the girl (who I can’t remember the name of) and it’s predominantly set in winter.

Please help!!!

#find that book #what’s that book called #help #books #obscure books #books from elementary #books from middle school #name that book #wolf books #little red riding hood #those vibes #but like if red was friends with the wolf

[arconinternet]

Beep Beep the Road Runner (Book, Cecily Ruth Hoga and Fred and Jill Daunno, 1977)

A 1970's storybook-ification of the Road Runner mythos. You can digitally borrow it here.

#internet archive #book #books #kids books #kid's book #kids' books #childrens books #children's books #vintage children's books #looney tunes #wile e coyote #road runner #golden books #little golden book #little golden books #obscure books #weird books #merch #1977 #1970s #70s

[monsterfucker69420]

Book review: The Chronicles of Old Guy by Timothy Gawnes

Chronicled memoirs of a sentient tank featuring godzilla, aliens, vampires, wizards, sentient sludge, and a whole slew of other crazy shit. 

I would describe Gawnes’ writing style as taking itself too seriously while simultaneously dropping the most absurd lines known to man. It has some punctuation/grammar errors, but honestly I expect that from something self-published. I also expect self-published things to be unapologetically weird as fuck to the point that I question what types of drugs the author took, which Gawnes definitely meets the standard for. If you want to get jumpscared by something so out-of-pocket in the middle of lengthy technological combat explanations, then I would recommend this book, and the whole 7-book series because it just keeps getting weirder.

Anyway, here’s the summary. 

Chapter 1 - Cybertank vs. Megazillus. 

It starts out with Old Guy, a really old model cybertank, infodumping some shit about himself, his society of other cybertanks on post apocalyptic earth, how they gained sentience, and pondering the Big Overarching Question Throughout The Book (™): “where did all the humans go, and what – if anything – should we do about it?” (9). Humans apparently just fucked off somewhere and no one knows why or how. 

Then we get to the current scene where he’s on an outpost on this backwater planet or whatever and he goes to check out this industrial mine. And guess who’s there? God motherfucking zilla. They duke it out, as one does. An ancient alien enemy of cybertanks and mankind, the Amok, who are frequently described as insane and can form these things called “assassin clones,” join the battle. Old Guy consults this simulation of a guy named Giuseppe Vagras who I honestly don’t know is a real guy or not, and ends up giving him a medal for fighting lobsters in the middle of information combat. The Amok are destroyed and Megazillus leaves the locale. Sometimes problems just solve themselves. 

Chapter 2 - Bringing Up Baby

Old Guy goes back to his homeworld, Alpha Centauri Prime, because he was authorized to have a baby with his massive Magma class boyfriend, Double-Wide. Double-Wide is this chill guy who likes to bury himself in dirt, a completely sedentary lifestyle, while maintaining a physical library via remotes. The reason why he’s sedentary is because he would smash a bunch of shit if he moved. Bro can cause earthquakes with that ass. Anyway, after a lengthy conversation they combine their psyches to create a mind smarter than both of them, a process which is described as a euphoria that “surpasses what the early humans experienced during sex” (44). Their kid, who is later named “Smartass,” is nonverbal for a long time and only says “eeeep.” Old Guy calls his son autistic. He is so distraught over the nonverbalness of his son that he fucks off to a lone meteor for a while to sulk in his “morbid depression” (46). It’s at this point that a swarm of Amok decide to attack him, but Smartass saves them at the last second and finally becomes verbal, apparently having been awoken from some sleep paralysis or something. 

Chapter 3 - The War with the Amok

Gawnes goes into more of the lore of humans. There’s something about an exodus and humans struggling their way into sanity. Something you’ll notice throughout this series is that Gawnes likes to rant about “neo-liberal economists,” which is funny and totally valid. Of course, other alien civilizations are disgusted with their lifestyle of rapid population growth, “[making] plans to exterminate humanity with the same high drama that is normally reserved for taking out the trash” (56). 

Now the amok are like pre-exodus humans in the way that they reproduce without limitations and destroy all biological and machine life they encounter, and even destroy themselves out of boredom. They are compared to an insane man running around a village and killing everyone, even grandmas. 

The cybertanks make a decision to invade the amok, because they’re just standing there menacingly. It’s noted that some of the combat units have bumper stickers, my favorites being “Obama 2012” and “Lower Left Read Corner” (69). There’s combat and investigation scenes which I won’t go into detail here because they’re so long. 

Ch 4 - Don’t Touch That Dwarf, Hand Me The Plasma Cannon!

This is truly the weirdest chapter of the book. 

Old Guy is in the middle of getting scolded by his homie, Wiffle-Bat, for not capturing the amok, when suddenly he is attacked by a mysterious black cloud and transported to a fantasy dimension with wizards and dragons and castles and shit. Like what. I can’t make this shit up. 

He teams up with this guy called “The Wizard” (they just call him that) to defeat this other guy called “The Dark Hierophant” (“an (allegedly) evil sorcerer-king who was going to conquer the world and plunge it into an unending pit of darkness and despair” (91)) and his forces, all the while the combat planning committee is totally sexist towards his android remote of Amelia Earhart. Warrior Queen Amelia Earhart kicks ass, and they put her in charge, essentially revoking their sexist statements. Old Guy blows up some dragons and the Dark Hierophant’s castle, and I kid you not, his forces “break out their rations and sit down to have lunch,” and “set up impromptu food stands” (107).

The black cloud comes for Old Guy again, and he leaves his Earhart android behind in this fantasy world that seemingly came out of nowhere and made this chapter look like a demented fever dream. 

Ch 5 - Mondocat

Old Guy’s peers think he is seriously demented for claiming that the previous chapter actually happened to him, so they send him to another backwater planet to get rid of these things called happy leeches, which are described as “a biomechanical nuisance that the Amok have inflicted on the universe apparently just because they can” (112). There he finds the ruins of a technologically advanced civilization and a product of said civilization, a bioengineered catlike superpredator dubbed “mondocat.” They become besties. 

Ch 6 - Yet Another Vampire Story

Exactly what it sounds like. Old Guy and Mondocat go to another backwater planet to investigate some shit and encounter a civilization of vampires that originated on circa 1600’s Earth. The castle is described as tacky and all its synonyms. “The sides of the hall are decorated with garish wood carvings and heavy dark furniture that in less enlightened eras would have been termed’gay’” (137). The vampires try to seduce him, but it doesn’t work because he’s a goddamn machine. 

There’s a huge infodump about vampires and how their biology actually works in Gawnes’ universe. Pretty neat stuff. They’re all dressed like goths and are secretly bald. It turns out that vampires actually kind of suck. Pun intended. 

King Stephan tries to get Old Guy to reverse his vampirism and become human again with his advanced technology, but he is unable to. Stephan sulks back to his castle where he endlessly engages in petty politics and drinking wine in a rather haughty manner. 

Ch 7 - Deus Ex Humana

The deus ex humana in question is the Giuseppe Vagras guy mentioned earlier, who this time is a physical, biological replication that somehow manages to save Old Guy’s ass in combat with these other alien guys called the Yllg, which sounds like something Lovecraft would come up with. Old Guy basically gets his entire mind trapped inside something small like a flash drive, and reflects “I am so stupid and slow. Perhaps this is what it was like to be a neo-liberal economist” (163), all the while wallowing in self-pity and comparing himself to a king in his castle contemplating suicide or some corny shit. 

The best moment in this chapter in my opinion is when “Vagras starts to smear mud on his naked pink body” (164). 

Old Guy takes over a Yllg war machine and kills a bunch of Yllg by blasting Amazing Grace at such an intense frequency that it literally curdles them. 

Ch 8 - Endgame

The chapter where Old Guy contemplates his existence and what exactly to name this book. 

Eventually the forces of the Yllg overcome Old Guy. He presses a big red button in his mind that will have him be rebuilt into a better, fancier class. He is reluctant about this because he won’t be the same person. It doesn’t make sense because in the next book he is literally the same old guy, pun intended. 

Final Thoughts?

Is the writing bad? Yes. Did I have a good time reading it? Hell yes. 

Look, I could gripe about Gawne’s writing being way too technical and literal, leaving no room for nuance or interpretation, and being a drag to get through. But I’m just going to say that the general premises are out-of-this-world and like nothing I’ve ever read before. It’s original. It has its profound moments. It’s unintentionally funny. The entire thing is a WTF moment. 

Stay tuned for part two where I review Space Battleship Scharnhorst and the Library of Doom. 

#book review #the chronicles of old guy #tanks #obscure books #bookblr #sci-fi #mecha #aliens #wtf #long post #vampires #weird #rant

[unpretty]

society is spiraling and culture is a wasteland. i know this because i looked and most people prefer things that are fun and easy, making fun and easy things extremely popular. this is the first time that's ever happened, historically.

#original #why is every post about books and movies and music and food like this #also the posts are always about tiktok like it's a mystery why the most popular app's most popular posts are about popular interests #please learn to accept when you are simply out of step with popular culture which i know you are because you are on tumblr #i know everyone hated hipsters and their interests being more obscure than yours but at least they recognized that they were the outliers #'hipsters suck because they think their taste is sooo much better than everyone else smh' #'my tastes are extremely normal which is why i can say definitively that popular things must be popular due to a conspiracy of some kind'