#salvage the bones

[iambic-stan]

last book read + last stethoscope used, part 10

The stethoscope: MDF's Procardial Titanium Cardiology scope in Botswana agate and rose gold. I love this stethoscope so much. True--she has appeared in this series before (in the first shy installment), but she matched this book best...and she was the last used. I don't make the rules. (I do?)

The book: Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones, part 1 of her Bois Sauvage trilogy. I could go on about how I loved the protagonist, Esch, and felt the unrequited love she felt for her classmate that only a 14-year-old can feel quite so desperately. And of course I could talk about the harrowing account of Hurricane Katrina depicted here, but I'd rather talk about this series as a whole. Of everyone I've read so far in my life, few capture the unique circumstances brought on by systemic poverty in the rural South like Ward does. But few can make you long for a place that means suffering like she does. It's a mind-boggling paradox to me. I'll admit that I'm biased because where I grew up isn't far from this region, sure. Ward grew up in DeLisle, Mississippi, just north of the Gulf Coast, and places the titles in this series in the fictional Bois Sauvage, situated somewhere nearby. Bois Sauvage is breathtakingly beautiful to read about, and Ward's descriptions have a way of working on all of your senses. The way she writes her characters is unflinchingly honest while reserving judgement. Circling back around to the book--I probably enjoyed this one the least because it was the most graphic.

Here are the other two, which I recommend wholeheartedly. You don't need to read them in any particular order, and each book introduces a completely different cast of characters.

#cardiophile #cardiophilia #stethoscopes #heartbeats #auscultation #MDF instruments #Jesmyn Ward #Salvage the Bones #Where the Line Bleeds #Sing Unburied Sing #Bois Sauvage #books #reading #last book last stethoscope #lbls

[sesame-sim]

Books I'm considering next

I mentioned before I add a new book every 5 sim years in my bookish save.. I'm torn about what book to add in next for Year 55. I know It seems too soon to be thinking about it bc I'm posting Year 50 right now, but in actuality I'm halfway through playing Year 53 so I need to give myself some time to finish reading and do prep like take notes, make a timeline.

Below are the ones I'm currently considering. They each have things about them that I really want to play and things about them that would be difficult to show with sims. Opinions welcome! I would love if somebody just tells me they have a clear favorite and then I don't have to decide lol.

In alphabetical order (info on each after the cut)

Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys (memoir)

Dust Child (historical fic)

Magic Lessons and the Practical Magic trilogy (fantasy)

Refugee High (nonfic)

Salvage the Bones ; Sing, Unburied Sing (fic)

She's Not There (memoir)

The Glass Castle ; Half Broke Horses (memoir)

To Kill A Kingdom (fantasy)

War and Speech (YA)

Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys (memoir of Viv Albertine, member of British female punk rock group The Slits. I'm interested in the aesthetics of this. She's also dated Mick from The Clash, has been friends with various ppl like Sid Vicous. But should I hold out for the possibility of a bands EP or GP in the future? And there's another memoir of hers I could also read before playing. It's more focused on her family rather than her music career)

Dust Child (historical fiction about a half Vietnamese half black man who is trying to find out who his father is in the present time intertwined with the story of two sisters who leave their small town to become bar girls in Saigon in past time. I actually haven't read this yet but I became interested in playing something with a Vietnamese storyline because of the tumblr @biplusco . Their Indochine cc collection made me want to play something set in Southeast Asia.

Magic Lessons; The Book of Magic; The Rules of Magic; Practical Magic (trilogy and a prequel following the Owens family of witches since the 1600s. You may know the movie Practical Magic. Of these books I've read Practical Magic and half of Magic Lessons but haven't read The Book of Magic or The Rules of Magic yet. The main issue here is 4 books is a lot to take notes about and make timelines for before playing through. Plus, starting from the late 1600s all the way to more current times at the speed I play will mean I never finish! But maybe I could JUST play the prequel.)

Refugee High (nonfiction about the high school in the U.S. with the highest percentage of refugees. The author chose some students, each from a different country, to delve into the lives of. Could be interesting depicting each one's past in sims before they end up together in Copperdale High School. But I've only just started reading this one.)

Salvage the Bones; Sing, Unburied, Sing (fictions both by Jesmyn Ward and they take place in the same town. The characters even cross paths at one point. I love her writing so much but a key part of one book is a hurricane and the other book mostly takes place in a car so I don't know if I can do this well in Sims 4 as the game is rn)

She's Not There (memoir, gender transition. I might want to read her other book called Good Boy about every dog she's had in her life first so I can play both together and have each of the pets join the family at the right times)

The Glass Castle; Half Broke Horses (both by Jeannette Walls. The Glass Castle is a really popular memoir about the author's nomadic upbringing with parents who eventually choose to be homeless. Half Broke Horses is her biography of her maternal grandmother. That one mostly takes place on ranches. What happens in The Glass Castle basically picks up right after what happens in Half Broke Horses.)

To Kill A Kingdom (fiction, fantasy, mermaids and princes. This one I'm worried about my lack of cc for. I want to play out a fantasy book at some point but I haven't done any collecting of fantasy cc whatsoever yet so it might take a while to accumulate it )

War and Speech (a humorous YA book about a high school girl, new to a school, who joins the super snobby speech team just to try to bring them down from the inside.)

#books #booklr #bookblr #simblr #sims 4 #ts4 #bookish save #viv albertine #clothes clothes clothes music music music boys boys boys #dust child #magic lessons #practical magic #alice hoffman #refugee high #jesmyn ward #salvage the bones #sing unburied sing #she's not there #jennifer finney boylan #the glass castle #jeannette walls #to kill a kingdom #war and speech #fiction #nonfiction #memoir #fantasy #young adult #historical fiction

[bookcoversonly]

Title: Salvage the Bones | Author: Jesmyn Ward | Publisher: Bloomsbury (2011)

#books #Salvage the Bones #Jesmyn Ward

[codenamebooks]

i’m also currently reading salvage the bones by jesmyn ward for class (later american lit) and man… when i tell you this book is so beautiful. i’m not returning it to the bookstore because I Want It (it inspires me to want to write like that, it’s amazing!)

#current read #salvage the bones #jesmyn ward

[judgingbooksbycovers]

Salvage the Bones: A Novel

By Jesmyn Ward.

#Salvage the Bones #Jesmyn Ward #animals #books #book covers #dogs

[teachandwrite-blog]

“Everything deserve to live…Everything need a chance, Esch.”

Yep.

For sure.

Skeetah spoke these words in Jesmyn Ward’s novel Salvage the Bones, a story about a family, the seldom seen/seldom heard parts of the Mississippi coastland, and Hurricane Katrina.

These words are foundational to me.

I believe them with all my heart.

They are words on which my life is built, on which my work is built, on which I am built.

Wow.

Thank you Jesmyn Ward, daughter of the Mississippi dirt, writer of a beautifully heart shattering, wonderfully heart building, courageous story.

#justwow

#jesmyn ward #salvage the bones #mississippi #writers

[quotessentially]

From Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones

#quote #quotes #Jesmyn Ward #Salvage the Bones #words #books #literature

[youngbloodoldsoul]

The covers for the Italian Editions of Jesmyn Ward's Bois Sauvage series are some of the most beautiful covers I have ever seen

#jesmyn ward #salvage the bones #sing unburied sing #where the line bleeds #black author #black lit #black literature #italian editionss #beautiful covers #black history month #happy black history month #bois sauvage #salvare le ossa #canta spirito canta #la linea del sangue

[firstfullmoon]

Zeina Hashem Beck, “Savage Sonnet”

#I blue-song when I say grief. I mean rage. / deep into our bones we salvage ourselves. we. savage. ourselves. #w #poetry #zeina hashem beck #from the river to the sea

[bitchfitch]

I did some lino outfits bc I like dressing him up. Please ignore the fact that he should have 2 flesh legs in two of these.

#idk. something something about one of his castings as an angel worships the parts of him that made him Lino and did nothing to hide them #and the other going out of its way to make him 'normal' while still using the same justifications to call him an angel #anyways his leg wasnt crushed that high up but it needed to be re amputated and shortened a few times #to correct the fuck ups that happened during the last attempt to treat it #Vincents attempt caused him to get a gnarly infection on the bone that made it weak. #Margo was able to salvage that mess but had to take a few inches to clean out the worst of the infection and have enough excess to #close the wound properly. #The first prosthetic he got at The Sun was meant to look like a real leg while not actually being a good prosthetic. #it was bolted directly into his Still Healing bone. Very fancy. That surgery also took a few inches off. #The last one he had to deal with was when he went back to vincent and had a Fun Time talking Vincent through how to do an amputation right #But vincent did actually do a decent job that time and kt wasnt a pleasant but it still like #worked out. #hes like 4 ft tall so he didn't have a lot of inches to begin with. you lnow how it is

[muffinlance]

i just bought fox's tongue and kirin's bone, blacked out, and before i knew it i'd read the whole thing and all the skin stealer's son chapters that you've released. i adore it so so so so so much! i was curious, how many books do you anticipate will be in this series? have you planned it out, or is that question still open-ended for you? <3

The Book Fugue State is one of the highest compliments an author can receive <3

Re series length: I'm aiming for six books, but I think we all know what happens when authors say "the series will definitely be THIS long" (...then seven books later...)

#I've got the main series events plotted out #but there's flexibility in what minor plot arcs play out around them #like how Salvage could have been 20k if I'd only done the Hakoda and Zuko arc #but when you toss in the Dog Names arc and Zuko Making Friends arc and Favorite Apprentice arc #we are suddenly five times that #and it's a much richer story for them #but readers wouldn't have missed them if they were gone because they wouldn't have known it was an option #there are many arcs I COULD do in Fox's Tongue #like I would LOVE to do a Shadhavar arc it would be so pretty #but it's about as necessary to the story as the sex workers arc was to Salvage #fox's tongue and kirin's bone #original fiction

[bonefall]

Why doesn't Blossom just. leave? Idk if that sounds weird since you have talked about how the clans essentially function like a cult (although this was in reference to starclan), but if Blossom feels so completely isolated and shut off, why not just. Run away.

Blossom literally gets told 'no one cares about you, why not just disappear?", and the clan does NOTHING to say otherwise, and their silence is basically agreement. Suicide tw, to someone who is already at their lowest, or just climbing out of it at least, that line could have horrible implications- you dont matter, just fade away, no one would notice, etc. Idk if that was intended (ashfur seems like the kind of asshole who would intend it but i dont think you intended it), but. yeah its horrible.

Since im believing it wasn't intended, maybe change it? Emptycry could work (instead of 'no one cares, you're a waste of space' its 'your words are empty, be quiet'), or maybe naming her Rottedpetal- the flowers have been shredded, and now they have begun to rot instead of growing anew. Or, if you want to keep the name, Blossom snaps and decides that he's speaking the truth- so she leaves. Maybe she becomes a loner (does the lake territories even HAVE any loners that function similar to Barley, Ravenpaw, Smudge, etc???), or joins another clan (i highly doubt this since the other clan would eventually learn of 'clearface' and start calling her that again, or worse kick her out for breaking the code), OR she becomes a kittypet, completely willing to trade freedom just to be loved.

...forgive me but I feel like a lot of people are missing the point of Dishonor Titles and why and how Ashfur uses them.

Ashfur is picking the cruelest possible names he can think of exactly because he wants the people who oppose him to be broken. He is finding a character's deepest insecurity and putting it on full display, forcing the other cats in the Clan to join in on his mental abuse to set them against each other.

This serves the purpose of showing that Ashfur is even worse than Bramblestar, and that he is very perceptive of people's insecurities.

The cruelty is the point. These titles from the Impostor aren't meant to be petty, they are meant to be gutwrenching.

Why does Blossomfall not leave? Because her entire family is here. Father, siblings, three children, any friendships she's finally started working on. She had to beg to come back in on their grace and she will not get another chance. Random humans aren't an option. It hurts but she eats it, knowing her only options are to take it for the next two weeks or be exiled forever.

If she was going to leave because of the name, then that is something Bramblefake can use as well. "Codebreakers are weak cats. She couldn't handle having her disrespect thrown back at her and cared more about her pride than her Clan. A traitor twice, now a traitor thrice."

But things were just finally starting to get better for her, and she's not willing to leave her entire life behind for the exciting opportunity to... live alone in the woods. Not yet.

She becomes a rebel later, but not yet.

#better bones au #Also she is not suicidal and I never even implied this #I am not fond of how quickly people jump to 'why do they not simply leave everyone and everything behind' #And live in the woods alone?? #Blasting a missile from my blaster: 'THE CODE ALLOWS ABUSIVE LEADERS TO LEVERAGE POWER AGAINST THEIR VICTIMS' #'OPPOSITION TO THE GOVERNMENT IS A MORAL NECESSITY IN TYRANNICAL TIMES' #'AUTHORITARIANS ARE BAD' #Staring at me instead: 'wow! you probably didnt intend for this to be so mean' #I'm going to start a swear jar for 'why don't they just leave' #Jessy COULD leave. She had somewhere to go #Tallstar could have too #The vast majority of the Clan cats don't #They live in a theocracy #And in the cases of Jessie and Tall there is a huge point I'm making about how hard it actually is to leave your life behind #There is something good and worth salvaging in Clan society but its structure leads to tyrants by its very design #And TBC is an arc about addressing that #Bristlefrost gets merc'd early and I did that on purpose to set the tone #That's why I kicked the thing off with something so brutal

[tricornonthecob]

y'all I am SO pumped for the bone marrow and lamb pie I'm making

#please ask me about the meat pie #grocery salvage stores are a godsend #if dopamine had a flavor it would be bone marrow #no cooker but the slow cooker #food #meat pie #I can't be the only American who goes feral for meat pie #one of our cultural touchstones is hamburgers #meat and wheat is in our bones

[sparrowmoth]

Wesper Internet friends to lovers au

@waterloou ask and six months later you shall receive lmao

i feel like i've known you (but we've never met) • [AO3]

A/N: For the sake of the reading experience, I've formatted the dialogue into clean prose, but let me just say that I do imagine Wylan switching between voice memos and STT (speech to text), with Jesper peppering in an occasional voice memo of his own to make Wylan feel less self-conscious about it. In this modern AU, Wylan is open about his dyslexia online, so Jesper has known about it from the beginning while being completely unaware of the trauma around it imposed by Wylan's father.

Anyway, this might become a small drabble series, but we'll see! Just this for now.

ONLINE — 2

nearlyfashion (he/they) Listening to Spotify ♫

softgaypiano (he/him) I love a good place to hide in plain sight

>> Message softgaypiano (he/him)

nearlyfashion (he/they)

You know, Wylie, I’ve decided… it’s not enough to hear your voice. Not that I don’t like it. I like it very much, I think you know, but it’s been years—well, months, at least, but it feels like years, like I’ve known you forever—and I’ve been thinking… I don’t know what you look like except that you’re beautiful, and I can’t even prove it! Kaz still thinks you’re 85. Nina says you’re probably married, and—

softgaypiano (he/him)

I’m definitely not married, and probably not 85, but… Jes, you can’t just say I’m “beautiful” from hearing my voice. If I didn’t know you better, I’d think you hacked my webcam or Googled me, at least…

nearlyfashion (he/they)

And what you’re saying is, if I did, you’re not denying what I’d find.

softgaypiano (he/him)

Pictures of me behind my father? Half a face, a clump of hair…

nearlyfashion (he/they)

What colour hair?

softgaypiano (he/him)

Jes...

nearlyfashion (he/they)

Only teasing! It’s alright, love, really. You’re not ready, it’s okay.

softgaypiano (he/him) is typing…

It’s not— I want to. I want to tell you everything. I want to tell you who I am, I want to see your face in front of mine, I want to ask if you’ll be mine and hold your hand and taste your lips, but I just…

softgaypiano (he/him)

Thank you—for understanding. I have to go. Talk more tonight?

nearlyfashion (he/they)

Sure, of course, you know where to find me.

#waterloou #<3 #wesper #shadow and bone #six of crows #sab fanfiction #soc fanfiction #modern au #my fanfiction #my writing #wylan van eck #jesper fahey #my beloveds #there's another piece for this au I started on #but I just kind of got away from the point of it so #I'll circle back later and see if I can salvage it #anything to fight the writer's block.....

[codenamebooks]

Top 5 Books of 2022

Granted, I only read 18 books, and after combining some of the series I read, this is half of the list. It definitely wasn't the amount of books that I wanted to read, but it was an overall good reading year. From #5 to #1, here are my favorite reads of 2022:

Beneath the Sugar Sky (Wayward Children #3) by Seanan McGuire | Goodreads | 4 stars

I've enjoyed how different each book in this series has been. This one being the most different of all because we take our cast of characters in the school on an adventure, rather than staying there or following a single character in their sector of the worlds behind doors. It was so interesting to see how all of these different rules melded together when the children go places that aren't made for them versus are perfect for them. The imagery is somehow so clear despite being so bizarre and extravagant. McGuire writes in a way that I can perfectly understand a huge gown made of cake and not be disgusted.

People We Meet On Vacation by Emily Henry | Goodreads | 4.5 stars

I almost thought I wasn't going to like this as much as I did because the beginning of the book was pretty cliché and slower paced. Once Poppy and Alex were together and going through the awkward phases of getting to relearn each other, I was hooked. This is largely caused by the fact that I loved Alex so much, a new book boyfriend for the first time in a while. I also adored the character development from Poppy because it feels very tangible in this book being in her POV. She's not my favorite character, quite a bit annoying, but I don't despise her since she learned and grew.

Summer trilogy by Jenny Han | Goodreads | 4.5 stars average

3. We'll Always Have Summer

2. The Summer I Turned Pretty

It's Not Summer Without You

This was such a fun trilogy starting with a reread, which I'm glad I did. The last book, although my least favorite of the three, I literally read in one sitting while getting my hair done. Han does such a beautiful job at allowing her teenage girl main characters be so naive and annoying, as they should be. That doesn't mean that I agreed with Belly more than maybe 30% of the time, but she was well made. I'm also going to state my piece: I love Conrad.

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward | Goodreads | 5 stars

I read this for my later American literature class and it was beyond amazing. Even though I fell behind in the reading schedule, I still dedicated myself to finishing the book because I was so enthralled by the plot. I literally cried because I was so connected to the characters. Ward also does an insanely beautiful job with metaphors that create imagery and character analysis that I envy to copy one day in my writing. I even went and bought the book on my own since I my original copy was rented so I can have it forever.

Throne of Glass series Books 2 - 4 by Sarah J. Maas

3. Heir of Fire

2. The Assassin's Blade

Crown of Midnight

This series has yet to disappoint me. The characters have driven me to love the plot 10x more and they mean so much to me that everything that happens to them hits me in the gut. I am still in love with Dorian since the first book graced my Top 10 list last year. The world is still expanding and Maas still has such control over every little aspect. I'm half way through and I know I have some time to go, but I'm not ready for it to end yet.

#top 5 books of 2022 #beneath the sugar sky #seanan mcguire #wayward children #people we meet on vacation #emily henry #summer trilogy #the summer i turned pretty #it's not summer without you #we'll always have summer #jenny han #salvage the bones #jesmyn ward #throne of glass series #heir of fire #the assassin's blade #crown of midnight #sarah j maas

[pippuns]

hey do any of you play fe engage. i need to talk to someone about everything i would change or i'll go insane

#i have not actually played engage myself yet bc im waiting for my brother to finish but ive been playing with him in the meantime #and i have opinions #im only like halfway through my brother's playthrough but i have opinions #pip speaks #listen the BONES ARE THERE!! IT CAN BE GOOD I PROMISE!! #well maybe not everything. i dont think i can salvage the weird possession plot. plots. wtf is that. didn't we already do this in fates