🎄 Happy Hogswatch Everybody🎄

It's Time for the 12 Days of Bookmas!

What is “12 Days of Bookmas”?

From December 25th until January 5th, I talk about a book I’ve read this year! They’ll be short reviews, but they’re also books I’ve enjoyed this year so they’ll be mostly positive. Mostly.

Basically, treat this as twelve straight days of book recs from what I’ve read this year.

 

Day 1 – Terry Pratchett: A Life with Footnotes by Rob Wilkins

Published in late 2022, this official biography of Terry Pratchett was the first book I read this year. As Sir Terry and his Discworld books have had an enormous influence on my life, my outlook, and the stories I write, I enthusiastically devoured this book. It vacillates between heartwarming moments with which I identify – young Terry’s struggles at school, overwork-induced anxiety attacks, and arguing with friends over sci-fi and fantasy books – and the life of Sir Terry the author that I could imagine only as a pipe dream. Learning of his country living, the arguments he had with Rob Wilkins (his assistant and the author of this book) and the times he would fire him only to seemingly forget the next day – it’s a Terry Pratchett I can’t reconcile with my imagined ideal of him, the pedestal I’ve put him on as a paragon of examining contemporary values through the lens of satirical fantasy.

They say you should never meet your heroes, and in many ways I’m glad I never met Sir Terry – late in life, as the Alzheimer’s changed and reduced him, I don’t know how I would’ve felt. And if I’d had the capacity to meet him earlier, I don’t know if I would have been able to accept his own core values and attitudes. A Life with Footnotes has the benefit of showing me what I should already have know: that the author I put on a pedestal was a person, and I would not have agreed with all he had to say. It’s Pratchett, laid bare, his greatness and his terror all at once.

why I'm making YouTube videos again

Hello! When I planned to write this blog post, I thought it might be some profound look into finding myself ten years on from when I first uploaded to my YouTube channel and I’d draw some sort of pretentious conclusion as to how a decade on I’ve decided to go back to where I started. But the short answer (which I probably shouldn’t be saying so close to the top of this post…) is that I like…

View On WordPress

The wonderful wizard got me this beautiful hardcover of Jane Austen's complete works! 2023, I will be turning 27, which is the same age as Austen's oldest heroine, Anne Elliot! So, I thought it would be fun to read Persuasion! #janeausten #persuasion #tbrlist #tbr #bookstagram #readersofinstagram #mustread #bookrecommendations #bookmas #christmaspresent #booksofinstagram https://www.instagram.com/p/CmpUaNcS0H8/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

http://tee.pub/lic/3Pzon8Reqzw

Have you been looking for an online store with a wide selection of accessories, styles, and other goods that perfectly match your own and your loved ones’ preferences? Are you seeking for a welcoming TeePublic store where you can purchase a variety of high-quality T-shirt phone cases, stickers and wall art? You don’t need to look any further because you are there.JustBeCool_jr10, a beautiful online store where you can buy everything that will perfectly suit your tastes. Harry up !!! exclusive offer for the next two days

Between studying for my exams, preparing for a jury performance and getting ready for Christmas, I’ll be trying to get through these holiday books! 🎄🎅🏻❄️🧣☕️ . . . . . #bookstagram #booklifeupdate #booklover #booktok #read #reading #readersgonnaread #readmorebooks #readinggoal #goodreads #romcombooks #merrylittlebookmas #bookmas #holidayreading https://www.instagram.com/p/ClxKOXgr1B5/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Yeeeees hahaha YES

Merry bookmas 🎄 I hope you all have a wonderful day reading or catching up with family and friends or whatever you decide to do today.

I’m spending the day doing the very non-festive activities of watching true crime while journaling and reading some high fantasy 😂

aegaeum (no not the silly math one, l'annales d'archéologie égéenne de l'université de liège et ut-pasp), bestest belovedest of all best beloved annual journals, has finally caught up with the rest of the world and is now doing pdfs along with their physical published books as of vol. 42. the last decade of volumes ranges in price from 75€ (171 pages; a collection in the national arcaheology museum) - 165€ (conference proceedings; 1049 pages).

libgen has the pdfs.

i own three volumes. two of them were over 300CAD$ by the time importation fees were done (the third is actually only 1/3 of the book, which the seller apparently didn't know, so i thought i was getting a really good deal on a three-volume set of books but no it was only one. for 75$).

i am going to save so much money.

(it's all going to be spent on the successive volumes of athanasia kanta's the religious centre of the city of knossos, the publication of the knossos-anetaki dig whenever that 'forthcoming' flips over to actually being published by instap academic press. will they answer my email about it? who knows. but i sent one!)

The amount of fix it fics I have read in a short span of time is wild. Sick. I need help.

HOWDY YOU PEOPLE. WELCOME TO THE TODAY'S POST (which is brought to you by Rebecca's mixtape B3)

dondon step away from the computer BEFORE I RELEASE YOUR AO3 BOOKMA- *cough* um apologies about that

breaking news:

miranda the bottom is locking up our entire supply of chicken. and we want you to protest against that (unless you are fine with the campus burning to the ground? :3)

we have TWO new members. Introductions will be made at a later time.

Elena please let me back into the cafe. i promise i wont eat the lightblubs again. please baby grill...i beg

12 Days of Bookmas - Day 12!

So here it is - the final day. What treat have I left in store for you on this last day? We've had fantasy books (which have made up a solid quarter of this list); biographies (plural); Terry Pratchett (Twice! Technically); but what have I left for last? Here it is:

Day 12 - Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg

For me, there was no better book this past year. It's a narrative of queer community in the eighties, semi-autobiographical in nature, which focuses on Jess Goldberg, a working-class girl who finds her people in the stone butch lesbian community of small-town north America. Facing increasing pressure from police, a bigoted public, and even factions within the lesbian community, Jess finds herself pushed ever outwards as she tries to find herself.

Stone Butch Blues is a difficult read - it doesn't shy away from sexual assault, transphobia, or the difficulties of life as a queer person in a small community - but it's an eye-opening one; I found some questions I'd been asking myself answered among its pages, and further questions to ask in between. At it's heart, it's about a subset of the queer community that truly embodies queer spirit: looking out for one another; fighting every day for your space; and exploring yourself through shifting lenses of gender, sexuality, and identity.

But it's also a book about the working class - Jess's roots, a long life of factory work, temping and print shops and moving from place to place. And that means it's a story about unions - we see Jess's changing attitude towards unions throughout the years, and how that ties into the queer community through organisation, advocacy, and protests. Stone Butch Blues is a story that makes me want to be a better activist.

I recommend all twelve of these books. But I don't think there's been a book I fell in love with as much as Stone Butch Blues.

Merry Bookmas, folks.

Guess who got both the coloring book and Foxes' Tongue and Kirin's Bone for Christmas!!!!

Merry Bookmas!

Bookmas l book_o_creativity