#what i've been reading | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

haridraws · 4 months

Text

Favourite graphic novels I read in 2023

I love comics and think you should too, so thought I'd share some I loved reading this year.

Edit: way more readable version now here

#what i've been reading #book recs #realised these pics are NOT readable on mobile sometimes #graphic novels #books of 2023 #comic review

94 notes · View notes

slam-dunkrai · 2 months

Text

I've become a Guy Who Is Reading Moby-Dick at the moment. People don't tell you how funny it is! In chapter 24 Ishmael goes on a long speech out of nowhere (people tell you about that part of it) about the significance of whaling in the 1850s and how it is still vital, necessary, and well-practiced by all given the amount of money going into this industry, and how dare you say it's dying and how dare you say whales are overhyped, and then in chapter 25 he comes back around for a post-script of this tangent, in which he makes up a reader to get mad at because they seem to keep doubting his points. He just keeps exasperatedly repeating things that some bozo he made up is saying and debunking them. I'm not really saying any of this, Ishmael; I'm here for the ride. I'm just glad you're having fun, mister. Keep at it.

#moby-dick #what i've been reading

11 notes · View notes

deadpresidents · 8 days

Note

What books have you been reading since your last update?

I don't remember what I shared with my last update, so apologies if I repeat anything, but these are some of the books I've read over the past couple months:

•An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s by Doris Kearns Goodwin (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) I'm actually still reading this new book by the legendary Doris Kearns Goodwin, so I still have a couple of chapters to go, but I can definitely recommend it. This is undoubtedly the most personal book that DKG has ever written, and it's a fascinating story.

•Charging a Tyrant: The Arraignment of Saddam Hussein by Greg Slavonic (BOOK | KINDLE)

•Life: My Story Through History by Pope Francis with Fabio Marchese Ragona (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•George VI and Elizabeth: The Marriage That Saved the Monarchy by Sally Bedell Smith (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•Byron: A Life in Ten Letters by Andrew Stauffer (BOOK | KINDLE)

•The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat by Ryszard Kapuscinski

•Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism by Jeffrey Toobin (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•The Making of a Leader: The Formative Years of George C. Marshall by Josiah Bunting III (BOOK | KINDLE)

•The Year of the Three Kaisers: Bismarck and the German Succession, 1887-88 by J. Alden Nichols

•God Is Ever New: Meditations on Life, Love, and Freedom by Pope Benedict XVI (BOOK | KINDLE)

•Paul VI: The Divided Pope by Yves Chiron (BOOK | KINDLE)

•Buffalo Bill and the Mormons by Brent M. Rogers (BOOK | KINDLE)

•The Great Abolitionist: Charles Sumner and the Fight for a More Perfect Union by Stephen Puleo (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•Macho Man: The Untamed, Unbelievable Life of Randy Savage by Jon Finkel (BOOK | KINDLE)

•Business Is About to Pick Up!: 50 Years of Wrestling in 50 Unforgettable Calls by Jim Ross with Paul O'Brien (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•Zanzibar Was a Country: Exile and Citizenship Between East Africa and the Gulf by Nathaniel Mathews (BOOK | KINDLE)

11 notes · View notes

haniawritesthings · 1 year

Text

"But now she knows she was foolish to believe that evil existed only out there. It was here, among them, walking on two legs, passing judgement with a human tongue."

The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

#book moodboard #The mercies #Moodboard #What I've been reading

20 notes · View notes

stvlti · 8 months

Text

Jaime's the title character of Blue Beetle, but in many ways, he's not its hero. At least, not its sole hero.

He's chosen by the alien mech-suit, yes, but he's anything but yet another Chosen One hero. He's not some lone figure charged with carrying the weight of responsibility on his own — he's part of a collective that offers him support and strength and moral guidance. He's not a Superman who floats above us, he's an Everyman who's one of us — because he doesn't simply protect those he loves, he entirely depends on them as well. And they, in turn, take extraordinary steps to save him when he's in danger, a neat inversion of the classic hero/sidekick relationship. His family members are not his sidekicks — they're all members of a team or, to put it another way: a community.

Fans have been saying that we need more diverse superhero stories in live action adaptations: diverse not just in representation but from the character archetypes shown on screen to the cultural specificities woven into the very quirks and plot beats of the narrative. We have in Blue Beetle the clearest example of what a movie like that looks like. Here's to hoping DC will continue on this trajectory after the win that is Jaime Reyes' own movie.

Go watch Blue Beetle if you haven't yet!

#blue beetle #op ed #what I've been reading #film talk #this is a gorgeously written piece of journalism #but also on a personal level: YES they captured the way Jaime leans on his family and his community in the comic perfectly in the movie!!#dc meta

5 notes · View notes

fuchsiaamorouscoils · 11 months

Text

"Love and hate bifurcate Eros."

-Anne Carson, from Bittersweet, Eros the Bittersweet

#anne carson #eros the bittersweet #essay #what I've been reading

1 note · View note

blueboyluca · 10 months

Text

“When I first heard it, from a dog trainer who knew her behavioral science, it was a stunning moment. I remember where I was standing, what block of Brooklyn’s streets. It was like holding a piece of polished obsidian in the hand, feeling its weight and irreducibility. And its fathomless blackness. Punishment is reinforcing to the punisher. Of course. It fit the science, and it also fit the hidden memories stored in a deeply buried, rusty lockbox inside me. The people who walked down the street arbitrarily compressing their dogs’ tracheas, to which the poor beasts could only submit in uncomprehending misery; the parents who slapped their crying toddlers for the crime of being tired or hungry: These were not aberrantly malevolent villains. They were not doing what they did because they thought it was right, or even because it worked very well. They were simply caught in the same feedback loop in which all behavior is made. Their spasms of delivering small torments relieved their frustration and gave the impression of momentum toward a solution. Most potently, it immediately stopped the behavior. No matter that the effect probably won’t last: the reinforcer—the silence or the cessation of the annoyance—was exquisitely timed. Now. Boy does that feel good.”

— Melissa Holbrook Pierson, The Secret History of Kindness (2015)

#dog books #this chapter was very sad reading #when you become aware of punishment #and its use and its prevalence #it's hard not to despair #again this is why positive reinforcement feels like absolution #maybe now my eyes are open I can make up for what I did #what I did because it's what everyone does #because it's more acceptable to punish than to do anything else #I've been having so many thoughts about punishment and society and justice #this book was very validating #another great validating moment in my jumbled thoughts #was listening to the You're Wrong About episode on justice #with Amanda Knox #it helped to ease the despair a little

21K notes · View notes

elminster-big-naturals · 7 months

Text

when its 4am and the whole squad is zooted out their gourds trying to read the overhead menu in mcdonalds

#baldur's gate 3 #i've been them all #wyll: the smell of dirty fry oil is making him green out #astarion: 100% of his energy is dedicated to keeping his face perfectly neutral. he hasn't said or heard a word since they left camp #lae'zel: wait. where do my arms go. how do i noramlly hold my arms. what. am i supposed to do with my arms??? ogh god everyone knows im hig #anthrael: has been trying to read the menu for 13 minutes now but the pictures on the screens keep changing too fast

17K notes · View notes

ronanlynchbf · 8 months

Text

tshirt that says NO LIVE ORGANISM CAN CONTINUE FOR LONG TO EXIST SANELY UNDER CONDITIONS OF ABSOLUTE REALITY

#i literally JUST finished hill house a few days ago and i already want to reread. Badly. it's sooo so so soo sooooooooo good <33333!!!!!#also completely enamored by shirley jackson's writing style i NEED to read everything she has written ever like right now..#opening lines of ALL TIME btw 👆❗❗❗#r.txt #the haunting of hill house #ALSO i've seen commentary videos on the tv show they made of hill house but from what i remember of it it's SO different from the book???#i think they were all siblings in the show which is??????? like why would you change that part?? i love sibling relationships as much as the #next guy but i feel like the fact that none of them knew each other was such an essential part of the story like why would u change it....#also eleanor was like. an entirely different character who was also already dead in the show i believe??? and dr. montague doesn't exist??#hill house could've been really good as a show idk why they changed it up like that...like was the original story not interesting enough for #you or something?? WHO decided to make that change i just wanna talk 🤨

16K notes · View notes

piratespencil · 5 months

Text

This is so funny to me. Reducing them down to their simplest attributes. Turning them into symbols.

#this is some bouba kiki shit #also!! i said this in the tags of another post but i've finally gotten to the point in my op reread where i've hit the moment #when i stopped reading op back in like 2014 #that's almost ten years ago holy shit!!!! wild #i know a lot of what happens in later arcs bc i've been keeping up with the op fandom online #but it's weird to be reading chapters that i've never read before... new and fresh op content #(i stopped reading around chapter 750 btw)#(and this is from the sbs at the end of chapter 757)#one piece #zosan #kk talks about stuff #kk talks about op

5K notes · View notes

haridraws · 4 days

Text

who DOESN'T enjoy contemplating insatiable depths-oriented desire, and/or the vast and fathomless ocean and how it will consume and swallow you whole? Don't you love it when they dug too deep, or someone walks into the ocean and comes back wrong? WHAT'S DOWN THERE AND WHY DOES IT CALL TO ME SO?

Anyway new blog: my favourite books (& games) about THE SEA & THE DEPTHS, including some hot new queer indie sea horror that's out next month.

#what i've been reading #book recs

42 notes · View notes

khalliys · 25 days

Text

We're not so different, you and I. Part 1, Part 2

From Critical Role C2 E92: Home Is Where the Heart Is

#working on something 👀#it has only taken me 3.5 years to finally properly draw Caleb #ever since reading Yasha's comic I've been inspired to draw this scene #the next part specifically is what I wanted to draw #it's gonna be great #not for these two tho #critical role #crit role #critical role fanart #caleb widogast #yasha nydoorin #cr caleb #cr yasha #cr #cr2 #cr campaign 2 #the mighty nein #art #khalliys

2K notes · View notes

deadpresidents · 3 months

Note

Latest books you have been reading?

Apparently I haven't shared the books I've been recently reading since the beginning of November. Usually someone reminds me to share my reading list every few weeks, so I think someone should be fired for dereliction of duty.

•Life After Power: Seven Presidents and Their Search for Purpose Beyond the White House (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) by Jared Cohen -- Just released on February 13th, this is the follow-up to Cohen's excellent 2019 book, Accidental Presidents: Eight Men Who Changed America (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO).

•Borgata: Rise of Empire: A History of the American Mafia (BOOK | KINDLE) by Louis Ferrante.

•Soldier of Destiny: Slavery, Secession, and the Redemption of Ulysses S. Grant (BOOK | KINDLE) by John Reeves.

•The Border: A Journey Around Russia Through North Korea, China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Norway, and the Northeast Passage (BOOK | KINDLE) by Erika Fatland -- A couple of months ago, I mentioned how much I enjoyed reading Erika Fatland's Sovietistan, and I was equally pleased with The Border, which has a subtitle nearly as long as the Russian border that she wrote about traveling around.

•Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) by David Mitchell.

•The Fall of Eagles: The Death of the Great European Dynasties by C.L. Sulzberger.

•George V: Never a Dull Moment (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) by Jane Ridley.

•Adams and Calhoun: From Shared Vision to Irreconcilable Conflict (BOOK | KINDLE) by William F. Hartford.

•God Save Benedict Arnold: The True Story of America's Most Hated Man (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) by Jack Kelly.

•Justinian: Emperor, Soldier, Saint (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) by Peter Sarris.

•Magic: The Life of Earvin "Magic" Johnson (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) by Roland Lazenby.

•Oracle of Lost Causes: John Newman Edwards and His Never-Ending Civil War (BOOK | KINDLE) by Matthew Christopher Hulbert.

•Mirrors of Greatness: Churchill and the Leaders Who Shaped Him (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) by David Reynolds.

•Mansfield and Dirksen: Bipartisan Giants of the Senate (BOOK | KINDLE) by Marc C. Johnson.

•The World That Wasn't: Henry Wallace and the Fate of the American Century (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) by Benn Steil.

•Wide Awake: The Forgotten Force That Elected Lincoln and Spurred the Civil War (BOOK | KINDLE) by Jon Grinspan -- Available for pre-order now and will be published on May 14th.

10 notes · View notes

larkaloke · 1 year

Text

Books I've Been Reading

I've been thinking about posting some kind of short "books I read last year" list for a while (since the end of last year, in fact), so I'm just going to go ahead and do it now. This should be from 2020 through to 2022, but a couple from 2019 might have snuck in there as well, mostly in non-fiction. I'm more sure of the fiction.

FICTION

Elatsoe (Darcy Little Badger)

The House of Shattered Wings (Aliette de Bodard)

The House of Binding Thorns (Aliette de Bodard)

The House of Sundering Flames (Aliette de Bodard)

Of Dragons, Feasts, and Murders (Aliette de Bodard)

Of Charms, Ghosts, and Grievances (Aliette de Bodard)

* The Killing Moon (N.K. Jemisin)

* The Shadowed Sun (N.K. Jemisin)

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (N.K. Jemisin)

The Broken Kingdoms (N.K. Jemisin)

The Kingdom of Gods (N.K. Jemisin)

The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps (Kai Ashante Wilson)

Witchmark (C.L. Polk)

Stormsong (C.L. Polk)

Soulstar (C.L. Polk)

Conspirator (C.J. Cherryh)

Deceiver (C.J. Cherryh)

Betrayer (C.J. Cherryh)

Intruder (C.J. Cherryh)

Protector (C.J. Cherryh)

Peacemaker (C.J. Cherryh)

Red Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)

Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)

Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)

Gideon the Ninth (Tamsyn Muir)

Harrow the Ninth (Tamsyn Muir)

Nona the Ninth (Tamsyn Muir)

* Ancillary Justice (Ann Leckie)

* Ancillary Sword (Ann Leckie)

* Ancillary Mercy (Ann Leckie)

Hermetica (Alan Lea)

Binti Trilogy (Nnedi Okorafor)

The Black Tides of Heaven (Neon Yang)

The Red Threads of Fortune (Neon Yang)

The Descent of Monsters (Neon Yang)

The Ascent to Godhood (Neon Yang)

If you got the idea that I tend to read series, yeah, that's true.

NON-FICTION

* Dinosaurs Rediscovered (Michael J. Benson)

The World of Dinosaurs (Mark A. Norell)

The Paleo Art of Julius Csotonyi (Julius Csotonyi and Steve White)

Dinosaur Art (edited by Steve White)

Dinosaur: Facts and Figures: the Therapods (Molina-Perez and Larramendi)

Dinosaur: Facts and Figures: the Sauropods (Molina-Perez and Larramendi)

Astrophysics For People In A Hurry (Neil de Grasse Tyson)

* The End of Everything (Katie Mack)

* The Disordered Cosmos (Chanda Prescod-Weinstein)

How Steam Locomotives Really Work (Semmens and Goldfinch)

Non-binary: Memoirs of Gender and Identity (Rajunov and Duane)

Stage Combat: Swordplay From Shakespeare to the Present (John Lennox)

Combat Theory: The Foundations of the Fight (John Lennox)

Ghosting the News (Margaret Sullivan)

The Bright Ages (Matthew Gabriele and David M. Perry)

In Emergency, Break Glass (Nate Anderson)

* Learn How to Master the Art of Kart Driving (Terence Dove)

I was going to do some sort of ratings or something, but I'll save that for a more in-depth post somewhere else.

I was going to do some sort of ratings, but in lieu of that I just marked with a * books that ended up as new favorites (for fiction) or were particularly interesting or useful (for non-fiction). Not to imply that I disliked the others, of course. Something I actually disliked would probably not have been finished.

#reading #what i've been reading #books and reading

0 notes

andsewingishalfthebattle · 24 days

Text

Novice sewing pattern: Cut out shapes. Line up the little triangles on the edges. Stitch edges together. We've also included step-by-step assembly instructions with illustrations.

Novice knitting pattern: yOU MUSt uNDerstANd thE SECret cOdE CO67 (73, 87, 93) BO44 (63, 76, 90) 28 (32, 34) slip first pw repeat 7x K to end *kl (pl) 42 * until 13" (13, 13, 15) join new at 30 pl for 17 rows ssk 27 k2tog mattress lengthwise BO and sacrifice a goat to the knitting gods. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU WANT "INSTRUCTIONS," I JUST GAVE THEM TO YOU

#knitting #no it's not a real pattern but I can't write one that makes sense because I have no freaking clue what any of that means #How do you make things that aren't basic rectangles #Why has every knitter I've asked for help just said 'patterns are easy; you just have to know how to read them' & then refused to teach me #Where do I even find a goat to sacrifice #How do I join the pattern cult #I am so confused #I've been knitting for almost a decade but I can only make scarves and potholders #I learned one (1) stitch by watching a YouTube video and none of my friends or family knit so I have no IRL resources #And nobody I meet seems to want to take the time to explain the rest to me #I taught myself to sew through trial and error but that doesn't really work with knitting because error is pretty much just... Unraveling?#Anyway sorry for the tag rant I'm just frustrated that I see pretty things I want to make but the instructions are in an alien language #And the gap between 'absolute novice' and 'intermediate' seems to be about 20 years of experience and formal instruction

693 notes · View notes

killjoy-prince · 2 months

Text

House M.D. but it's when Wilson says House's name

#house md #james wilson #prince's talk tag #finally!!! it's done! this and the house version took almost two weeks to do #first off thank you to the clinic-duty team on livejournal for making the transcripts for these episodes #because this video would be near impossible to make without their clear transcripts. I hope y'all are doing well #ive been reading a lot of fics with these two and i see how the authors have the characters refer to each other in their fics #and that got me wondering how much do they say each other's name in the show and how do they refer to each other #since this is the wilson video ill put his stats here #s1 was 11 times s2 was 18 s3 was 45 s4 was 32 s5 was 41 s6 was 60 s7 was 47 and s8 was 48 #in total he says his name 302 times. Mostly refers to him just by House #the only time I've heard him say his first name its when he's being professional or when he's really angry (and that one time he proposed)#and even then it's always the full name not just the first name #the only instance I've seen him use just his first name was on that note he put on House's xmas gift that we see in season 5 #and as much as I wanted to put that moment in here he never actually says the contents of the note out loud so i had to leave it out #but what surprised me was he says House's name more than House says his name #especially when the earlier seasons didn't have him say his name as much

1K notes · View notes