chasing the sun

Fore Edge Paintings by AliceInWaleslandArt on Etsy

Neil Gaiman on Libraries and Librarians.

Books are the way the dead speak to us. Bless this beautiful post.

All aboard the Library Train: Subway stations offer free e-books

Ride the subway, read a book. New Yorkers do that every day. But now the MTA and the city’s public libraries are making the commute even wordier, so to speak, by offering free access to hundreds of e-books and e-book excerpts.

The six-week program called Subway Library is a partnership with the New York Public Library, the Brooklyn Public Library, and the Queens Public Library. Commuters waiting in underground subway stations can connect to free TransitWirelessWiFi on their mobile device and then click on the SubwayLibrary.com prompt.

NYPL librarian Gwen Glazer helped pick the hundreds of e-books and short stories now available. “We realized that people on the subway often are looking for something to do and looking for something great to read,” Glazer told Fox 5’s Lidia Curanaj. “However long your commute is, however long you’re on the train, we have something for you hopefully.”

To promote the program, the MTA unveiled a Library Train that is wrapped to look like the New York Public Library’s Rose Main Reading Room on 42nd Street. The Library Train will run on the E and F lines.

“The New York Public Library’s mission is to make information and knowledge accessible to all, and this exciting partnership with the MTA is certainly right on track,” NYPL President Tony Marx said in a statement. “By making thousands of free stories easily available to subway straphangers, we are encouraging reading, learning, and curiosity.”

The available books and excerpts fall into several categories: New York Stories, New & Noteworthy, Select Shorts, Children, and Young Adult, the MTA said. These are some of the titles available: Soar by David Banks, At Balthazar by Reggie Nadelson, The Soul Is Not a Smithy by David Foster Wallace, The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis by Karen Russell, Bayou Magic by Jewell Parker Rhodes, and Who Could That Be at This Hour? by Lemony Snicket.

I, uh… I like owls.

🦉🦉🦉🦉🦉

What’s the verdict? Are you worth kidnapping?

Guys. This is what a national chain store trolling Trump looks like. A bunch of dystopian novels with a sign (I presume) meant for the travel section.

Support your local disgruntled bookstore manager with a dark sense of humor.

Chris Riddell illustrates a moment from Neil’s childhood…

10 Cats Who Have No Intention Of Letting You Read Your Book

“Spoiler alert: the main character dies. Now gimme some tuna.”

Via The Dodo

Andrew Smith (http://www.vice.com/read/failure-of-male-societies-869)

Sigh.

I don’t think Andrew Smith was trying to be offensive. I think what he said was fairly banal, but it’s the banality of his comment that’s wearying. It’s not his fault. I’m sure he’s a good guy and deserves the positive press. I’ve never read him, but then, I pretty much read only ladies these days.

Because.

As a woman, I’ve never had the opportunity to be ignorant to all things man and male.

By the time I was eleven I knew all about:

-circumcision

-male masturbation

-erections

-the way that the boys in my gym class hid their erections

-cleveland steamers

-that porno that all the boys were watching that featured a woman and a horse.

-the things that the boys from the high school who passed me wanted to do to me (rape me. That’s what they told me. Every single day when I walked home alone from school, lugging my trumpet case and pulling up my oversized corduroy pants. he wants to rape you. you’re going to get raped, is what they said. Ten, I was ten.)

In school, we read The Red Pony and Where the Red Fern Grows. We read Kaffir Boy and The Odyssey. We did not read A Girl of the Limberlost or The Secret Garden. I read those at home. We did not read Pride and Prejudice. We did not read Judy Blume—that was consigned to secret summer camp reading, pages dog-eared and underlined. 

Oh wait, we did read some Judy Blume. We read Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. 

We did not read Ramona Quimby: Age 8. That one I read on my own.

We did not read Dragonsinger. But we read Dragondrums.

I didn’t have a choice as to whether I knew what it was to be a boy. It was everywhere, boyness. DJ on Roseanne talking about his erections. Girls today get to grow up in the era of Levitra commercials. I remember the way me and my girlfriends talked about masturbation at sleepovers. Talking around the subject.

Do you? I don’t. It’s gross.

Most of us were quiet. That’s how female sexuality is spoken of. In silence.

I read this:

and I think, when will we talk about the things that girls do, when will some of the ‘best euphemisms for masturbation’ be about girly masturbation. When will we let it be said, much less let it be funny? And if we do, will it be consigned to extracurricular reading? 

Of course it will.

Because our experiences aren’t universal. They’re particular. Peculiar. Laughable (”Vampires! Cancer!”) The things we like and the people we are are unfathomable. Oblique. Mysterious. 

Gross.

But boys, boys talking about their erections, boys being polymorphously perverse, that’s worth celebrating.

Sigh.

(via phoebenorthauthor)

Sorry for how late this. I procrastinated really badly *shameful face*

This post is for just-tonie and theaccidentwill who both requested it. They should be more how to annotate posts on their way. 

If you have any requests for posts or questions leave them in my ask! 

This is pretty much what I do with my post-its, except I’ll vary my themes more and keep a color key on the inside cover. Good tips for the beginning of the fall semester!!

Happy International Literacy Day, Tumblr!

Some of these are available on my Redbubble and Society6

The books you should be reading this week.

We create fantasy because, without it, reality would be unbearable.

Illustration by Kristin Kest

Basically.

Submitted by carliescion