#7days7books #7Tage7Buecher Day 1.

Books that made an impression or changed me.

#quarantinereadschallenge

1) A Study in Brimstone (Warlock Holmes #1)
2) I don't know! My answer has long been Lolita, but I haven't read it in ages.
3) I miss Book Castle/Movie World in Burbank, CA. It was a perfect rat's nest of a used bookstore. They don't make 'em like that anymore. #losangeles
4) Strong Poison
5) tagged
6) Stuff about healing trauma 😒 Recs welcome!
7) utopia in Woman on the Edge of Time
8) Moby Dick; Out (Kirino)

... 👇

I'm following along with the podcast As My Whimsy Takes Me (https://asmywimseytakesme.com). They're still talking about the divine Strong Poison, which I finished rereading, so I got a jump on the next book in the series.

I've read this one in full before, but it's not my favorite — so much focus on the mechanics of the murder rather than on characters and relationships — so I went with the 3-hour BBC radio adaptation to refresh my memory. #libby

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this. The last paragraph is a knockout.

Loaned this to a friend and I think he liked it

She really did write three books retelling the King Arthur myth in a contemporary setting, with kink and a polyamorous triad. What an undertaking! What a time to be alive!!

In a previous book's afterword, Simone described this as a “nutso 2019 series I have planned—it's going to be like if The Secret History had a baby with a Florence + the Machine album, and then that baby grew up to love spanking people. I'm dying to write it, of course.“
It's strange and ambitious, the friend group's dynamics are intense and claustrophobic (The Secret History comparison holds true), and you'll learn about library science. 5 stars.

Aw nuts. I'm 80 pages in and enjoying this overall, but one of the bodies our narrator inhabits belongs to a fat man, and suddenly we're treated to descriptions of how humiliating and repulsive the narrator finds it. This is a real buzzkill.

Also take it from me, a real, live fat lady — being fat is not a torment, and fat bodies are as beautiful and grotesque as any other bodies. RELAX ABOUT IT.

A more legible view of my #readingwomen2018 results, tagged with one of my favorite books I read this year and with arrows pointing to others. #readingwomen

The tagged book — strange and gorgeous — counted for both 4 (a short story collection) and 21 (a book inspired by a fairytale). All others counted for only one, in order.

I enjoyed doing this challenge, and I'm planning to try #readingwomen2019 too. #readingwomen2018 #readingwomen

Just not for me, despite some lovely passages (see above).

Aside from offhanded sexism in the narration, there's a 'noble savage' aspect that hasn't aged well, to put it generously ("He was too simple to wonder when he had attained humility"; "'Also I have no understanding of [sin]'"). Some parts are laughably heavy-handed (see spoilery comment).

Still, his relationships with nature and with the young boy Manolin are well drawn. #readharder2018

🙄🙄🙄

#readharder2018
24: An assigned book you hated (or never finished).

Yeah, so far I'm digging this book about as little as I did in 10th grade, though admittedly for different reasons. Worth a shot, anyway. #readharder

(https://twitter.com/danielortberg/status/1072257848136978435)

Sure, it seems obvious when you put it THAT way 😂

Daniel Ortberg transitioned this year (good interview: https://www.thecut.com/2018/03/daniel-mallory-ortberg-interview-heather-havriles..., and I loved this exchange.

I had a similar weird feeling about reading a book printed with his deadname, so I'm glad he clarified, and also this just cracked me up. #queerbooks #transbooks

I'm going to finish these four books for the #readharder2018 and #readingwomen2018 challenges. I only decided in October to take on these challenges, so I'm pleased at my progress!

Woman on the Edge of Time fulfills 3 tasks:
#readharder
3: A classic of genre fiction.
17: A sci fi novel with a female protagonist by a female author.

#readingwomenchallenge
23: The book that has been on my TBR the longest. (Shelved as 'Want to Read' on GR in 2008!)

In a comment about The Lady from the Black Lagoon, @SW-T mentioned this new book about how women were shut out of TV and radio during the Red Scare of the '50s, and it looks AMAZING. Wow wow wow.

Also: Dorothy Parker and Lena Horne 💕💕💕

For the first time ever, I have a dedicated ROOM for reading. I'm so excited! The apartment's layout definitely intends it to be a little dining area (check the tile), but this is better. Also those chairs are facing the galley kitchen, so when one of us is cooking, the other two can keep them company. And the dog fits perfectly on the ottoman. #whereiread

Bustle has an excerpt from this book up. The conversational tone and personal passion that @malloryomeara brings to her subject made this an even better read than a typical biography.

You can read the except here: https://www.bustle.com/p/the-lady-from-the-black-lagoon-tells-the-forgotten-stor...

Milicent Patrick designed the Creature from the Black Lagoon, but her jealous male boss ensured her contribution to film history would be attributed to him instead. Thus, many female horror fans (like O'Meara) grow up believing that horror isn't by or for women. Writer/filmmaker @malloryomeara stakes out a place for marginalized people in film by combining this forgotten history with passion and reflections on how the industry has(n't) changed.

“Sport builds character. The ancient Greeks believed athletic prowess an indicator of moral authority.”

“They also believed their gods lived on a mountain and that trouble was caused by little men with horse dicks and pan flutes. Don‘t make it clever just ‘cause it‘s old.”

For anyone else whose ebook edition doesn‘t show the titular dancing men.

Source: 1905 edition on Wikisource, https://goo.gl/images/L77ZH6. #sherlocked #readalong

Yes, this is also how I like to enter a room. 😂

#sherlocked #readalong

re: Moriarty.

#sherlocked #readalong

1. Kindred (my interest was piqued when our students were assigned to read it in English classes), then Fledgling.
2. Ebook!
3. I so enjoyed Kindred and Fledgling, and I can‘t pass up reading this with a crowd.

#earthseedbuddyread

I‘m struck by how emotionally competent Holmes is in the canon. Flawed and eccentric, sure, but not guilty of the callousness and contempt that BBC‘s Sherlock gets a pass for. Moffat and Gatiss really go all-in on the idea that it‘s more important to fawn over the most clever, special, and male among us than to affirm anyone else‘s basic human dignity. (See also: press coverage of tech billionaires.) #sherlocked

1. I‘ve read some. I remember getting bogged down in the Mormon section of... The Sign of the Four? ACD‘s writing can feel stilted to me, but the Holmes/Watson dynamic is eternal.
2. Serial Reader! I think I‘ll have an easier time of ACD‘s prose between that and the #sherlocked readalong.
3. Liked BBC Sherlock at first but tired of the fixation on SH as the smartest, most special boy. Love the Jeremy Brett and Brittany Cavallaro adaptations.

This is one of the audiobooksync.com free audiobooks I‘ve been most looking forward to. It‘s a complete delight so far. Download it and open it in OverDrive this week to keep it forever!

Ooh, I‘m looking forward to this read-along. Reposted from @tjwill via @LitsyHappenings — head over there for details! #sherlocked

This is the book she linked to. Clearly I need to read this! https://twitter.com/spindlypete/status/992434556094504961

A delight. I played through a few different times, then I just flipped through reading the endings and whatever else caught my eye. I loved the unlockable playable character and other Easter eggs that I‘ll spoil in a comment below, for anyone who‘s curious.

Children always find ways to subvert while they're busy complying.

HP8 was a good read, but as far as I'm concerned, #mdhp is the actual canon. @girlziplocked/modern-day-harry-potter-49c584a216d8" rel="nofollow" target="_top">https://medium.com/@girlziplocked/modern-day-harry-potter-49c584a216d8

I did the thing. (https://www.buzzfeed.com/eleanorbate/accurate-af-sorting-quiz)

"Harriet had long ago discovered that one could not like people any the better, merely because they were ill, or dead—still less because one had once liked them very much. Some happy souls could go through life without making this discovery, and they were the men and women who were called 'sincere.'"

you know, things like EVERYTHING!

Jonesy's grandma rules.

"What goes into your diary are things that you noticed when you became present -- that is to say when the hamster wheel of thoughts and plans and worries stopped long enough for you to notice where you were and what was going on around you"

"Money is to Everything as an Airplane is to Australia. The airplane isn't Australia, but it remains the only practical way we know of reaching it. So perhaps, metonymically, the airplane is Australia after all."

So much useful information and food for thought in this interview with Zaretta Hammond: http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/classroom_qa_with_larry_ferlazzo/2015/07/cultur... (image from the source)

"The ocnophil, on the other hand, clings to familiarity and to secure places and people, shuns unpredictable or thrill-seeking experiences, and cherishes objects, both human and physical. 'Accordingly the ocnophilic world consists of objects, separated by horrid empty spaces ... The ocnophilic individual lives from object to object, cutting his sojourns in the empty spaces as short as possible.'"

Does the U.S. in 2016 feel like a hamfisted alternate-history novel to anyone else?

😂😂😂
(Cara photo from rubylane.com)

For a while during my childhood, I wouldn't touch a book that Roald Dahl hadn't written. My tastes have broadened now, but I still love his viciousness and his heart, especially this story of stomaching injustice, fighting bullies, and finding love and support.

Wow. "Handwritten notes on inside cover of one of Octavia E. Butler‘s commonplace books, 1988. Octavia E. Butler papers." - https://clockshop.org/project/radio-imagination/ (Feb. 2016-Jan. 2017 in #losangeles) via @Skiles

http://www.huntington.org/octaviabutler/
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8hm5br8/

"The challenge then is ... to rise above the primal nature of commuting, and conquer this Last Frontier of Hostility and Indifference. ... in the chaos, we reduce drivers to their cars and cyclists to their bicycles. However, this only serves to exacerbate our mutual hostility, since divorcing a person from his or her humanity in a primal situation can be disastrous. It just places us at greater remove from our own compassion."

"The Moe Howard bike helmet: Trying to make a cool-looking helmet is a losing battle. Any helmet looks like a rocket ship at worst, and a bowl at best, so I‘d start there, with the Moe Howard bowl." A fun, quick read that makes (in my case) a good primer for a noob and (I would imagine) a thought-provoking or affirming jaunt for the experienced cyclist.

"protection, so you can do the thing that would be dumb to do without it."

I really, really want to try commuting by bike. I'm assured that it is possible, even in #losangeles, but my cycling experience is limited to an extremely bike-friendly campus several years ago, so I need some bookish courage.