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#books – @dewitty1 on Tumblr
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🌈Ranibow Sprimkle🌈

@dewitty1 / dewitty1.tumblr.com

I was never attention's sweet center...BOURGEOIS DEGENERATE!Problematic Bisexual...Drarry Fic rec blog (ෆ ͒•∘̬• ͒)◞ Forever shipping Drarry (⁎⁍̴ڡ⁍̴⁎) Blog Est 2010
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reblogged
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macrolit

Giveaw@y: We’re giving away 12 vintage paperback classics! Won’t these look lovely on your shelf? =) Enter to win these classics by: 1) following macrolit on Tumblr (yes, we will check. :P), and 2) reblogging this post. We will choose a random winner on 19 October 2024. Good luck!

Follow our IG account to be eligible for our IG giveaw@ys. For full rules to all of our giveaw@ys, click here.

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nedlittle

it drives me bonkers the way people don’t know how to read classic books in context anymore. i just read a review of the picture of dorian gray that said “it pains me that the homosexual subtext is just that, a subtext, rather than a fully explored part of the narrative.” and now i fully want to put my head through a table. first of all, we are so lucky in the 21st century to have an entire category of books that are able to loudly and lovingly declare their queerness that we’ve become blind to the idea that queerness can exist in a different language than our contemporary mode of communication. second it IS a fully explored part of the narrative! dorian gray IS a textually queer story, even removed from the context of its writing. it’s the story of toxic queer relationships and attraction and dangerous scandals and the intertwining of late 19th century “uranianism” and misogyny. second of all, i’m sorry that oscar wilde didn’t include 15k words of graphic gay sex with ao3-style tags in his 1890 novel that was literally used to convict him of indecent behaviour. get well soon, i guess…

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dancinggrimm

I saw a review of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall that said ‘I can’t believe people think this was a feminist book’.

Like, do you know how swooningly, outrage-causingly shocking it was that the main character slammed her bedroom door in her abusive husband’s face? Do you have any idea how unthinkable it was that she denied him access to her space and her person? She was supposed to submissively look away while he turned their son into an alcoholic for his own amusement and seduced innocent young women! It was revolutionary in 1848; when Bronte (Anne) wrote it, she had to do so under a male psuedonym because publishers wouldn’t accept works by women unless they were harmless pap, which was all that was thought suitable for women to read lest their mild and gentle minds be corrupted.

The reason these groundbreaking books of history seem to tame and understated now is because they worked. They raised the bar, pushed the agenda forwards, cleared the path for the next writer. They did exactly what they were supposed to. Time is linear. History moves forward. We make progress.

When you are old, if things happen as they ought, a future generation of teenagers will read The Hate U Give and Simon and the Homo Sapiens’ Agenda and Speak and think to themselves 'why did anybody ever think this was contraversial? Why did they ban them? These are just things we talk about, these are things we deal with like normal people. What was the past like, and how do we stop from backsliding into a place where these things are considered shocking again?“

I really hope that’s how it goes.

First rule of literary analysis: the analyst cannot judge a past work by modern standards or ethics. Doing so leads to faulty comprehension, straw man fallacies, and lazy logic and analysis. We must always consider the work within the broader frameworks of the history, culture, and events that shaped it.

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jeanjauthor

Context.

Is.

Everything.

…The historical romance novels that I cut my teeth on in the 1980s, the "bodice rippers,” collectively thought that nonconsensual activities between hero & heroine would somehow be “romantic” enough to make the heroine overlook it all in favor of falling for him.

Not every single book, but enough of them that a backlash against those tropes in the late 1990s and early 2000s actually had some historical romance authors authors addressing past NC moments in the lives of the main characters, and depicting the PTSD that often accompanied such things, plus offering ways for the harmed party to regain some trust with a partner worthy of them. (Aka non-abusive and non-self-centered.)

But in the 1980s, that was the “romantic” thing to do…because women were still expected to “hate” actual lovemaking. The mindset was that “If he makes me enjoy it, then I am free to enjoy it! I can’t be guilted over it because it wasn’t of my own free will!”

Yes, it’s messed up, but it was a major constituent of steamy fantasies back then. Only some segments of society allowed women to be “sexually liberated,” only under very specific situations, and the vast majority of women were still being repressed by societal expectations about how “good girls” behave–you can have an orgasm, but only if you didn’t demand it or expect it because only those girls did such things!

Again, it’s messed up, but that was the social context at the time.

And you know what? That mess actually led to discussions of consensual sex scenes being far better, and suddenly it became okay for women to expect to have a good time, and not have to be “forced into it” at the start.

We have this level of freedom now, because of that level of constraint then.

Context.

Is.

Everything.

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Alice Munro, Nobel winner and titan of the short story, dies aged 92

The Canadian short-story writer and Nobel prize winner Alice Munro, who examined everyday life through the lens of short fiction for more than 60 years, has died aged 92 at her care home in Ontario. She had suffered from dementia for more than a decade.

Once called “the Canadian Chekhov” by Cynthia Ozick, Munro’s body of work was founded on forms and subjects traditionally disregarded by the literary mainstream. It was only later in life that Munro’s reputation began to rise, her understated stories of apparently plain folks in undramatic, small-town Canada amassing a raft of international awards that included the 2013 Nobel prize in literature.

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sawasawako

would encourage people to follow @ booksagainstgenocide on instagram. they post about the big five publishers’ complicity in israeli apartheid and occupation of palestine + western literary culture’s broader participation in legitimising israel as a state and zionism as an ideology

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boyslovedher

additionally, here is a well curated google doc list with information on whether your favourite author is a zionist (or not), backed up w sources u can message the op (@/moyurireads) on twitter if you have further contributions

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reblogged

i love you secondhand books i love you paperbacks i love you public libraries i love you school libraries i love you little free libraries i love you audiobooks i love you librivox i love you libby i love you ebooks i love you pdfs i love you internet archive i love you public domain i love you free and cheap and imperfect books i love you widely accessible resources

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reblogged

“What I assume my teachers were trying to teach me”

Huck Finn is about a white Southern boy who was raised to believe that freeing slaves is a sin that would send you directly to hell who forges a familial bond with a runaway slave and chooses to free him and thereby in his mind lose his salvation because he refuses to believe that his best friend and surrogate father is less of a man just because he’s black. Yes it features what we now consider racial slurs but this is a book written only 20 years after people were literally fighting to be allowed to keep other human beings as property, we cannot expect people from the 1880s to exactly conform with the social mores of 2020, and more to the point if we ourselves had been raised during that time period there’s very little doubt that we would also hold most if not all of the prevalent views of the time because actual history isn’t like period novels written now where the heroes are perfect 21st century social justice crusaders and the villains are all as racist and sexist as humanly possible. Change happens slowly and ignoring the radical statement that we’re all human beings that Twain wrote at a time when segregation and racial tensions were still hugely prevalent just because he wrote using the language of his time period is short-sighted and foolhardy to the highest degree.

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mikkeneko

I’m really kind of alarmed at the rise in the past few years of the “and we do condemn! wholeheartedly!” discourse around historical figures. it seems like people have somehow boomeranged between “morals were different in the past, therefore nobody in the past can ever be held accountable for ANY wrongs” to “morals are universal and timeless, and anything done wrong by today’s standards in the past is ABSOLUTELY unforgiveable” so completely, because social media 2.0 is profoundly allergic to nuance

please try this on for size:

there have always been, in past times as today, a range of people in every society, some of whom were even then fighting for a more just and compassionate accord with their fellow man and some of whom let their greeds and hatreds rule them to the worst allowable excesses. the goal of classics and history education is to teach you enough context to discern between the two, not only in the past but in the present

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three--rings

My mind just boggles at the “There’s Racism In That Book” argument.  Yes, there is racism in that book, because that book is ABOUT RACISM.  The message is that it is BAD. 

My high school English teacher, who was a viciously brilliant woman, used to say that when people banned Huck Finn they said it was about the language, but it was really the message they were trying to ban, the subversive deconstruction of (religious) authority and white supremacy.

Huckleberry Finn can actually be seen as a powerful case study in trying to do social justice when you have absolutely no tools for it, right down to vocabulary.  And in that respect, it’s a heroic tale, because Huck—with absolutely no good examples besides Jim, who he has been taught to see as subhuman, with no guidance, with everyone telling him that doing the right thing will literally damn him, with a vocabulary that’s full of hate speech—he turns around and says, “I’m not going to do it.  I’m not going to participate in this system.  If that means I go to Hell, so be it.  Going to Hell now.”

(I used to read a blogger who insisted that “All right, I’ll go to Hell,” from Huckleberry Finn is the most pure and perfect prayer in the canon of American literature.  Meaning, as I understand it, that the decision to do the right thing in the face of eternal damnation is the most holy decision one can make, and if God Himself is not proud of the poor mixed-up kid, then God Himself is not worth much more than a “Get thee behind me,” and the rest of us should be lining up to go to Hell too.  Worth noting that this person identified as an evangelical Christian, not because he was in line with what current American evangelicals believe, but because “they can change their name, I’m not changing mine.”  Interesting guy.  Sorry for the long parenthetical.)

Anyway, the point of Huck Finn, as far as I can tell, is that you can still choose to do good in utter darkness, with no guidance and no help and none of the right words.

And when you put it like that, it’s no wonder that a lot of people on Tumblr—people who prioritize words over every other form of social justice—find it threatening and hard to comprehend.

This is why it’s important to learn how to analyze media, a skill we are apparently losing.

While Huck Finn, for example, absolutely and obviously carries a moral message, not all stories do, because not every story is supposed to teach you something, nor will every story hold your hand and gently walk you to an easy conclusion.

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monjustmon

I am so frustrated by the “if media portrays something, it’s saying it’s ok” and “if you enjoy a piece of medoa which portrays something negative, then you’re bad” mentality. Just pls. Stop. That’s not how stories work.

“I used to read a blogger who insisted that “All right, I’ll go to Hell,” from Huckleberry Finn is the most pure and perfect prayer in the canon of American literature. Meaning, as I understand it, that the decision to do the right thing in the face of eternal damnation is the most holy decision one can make, and if God Himself is not proud of the poor mixed-up kid, then God Himself is not worth much more than a “Get thee behind me,” and the rest of us should be lining up to go to Hell too.”

This right here.

If “you should be willing to sacrifice everything, including your soul, to protect your friends when everyone around wants your help hurting them” stops becoming a moral lesson because someone says the n-word, I think people are… a little TOO impressed with the power of hate speech.

Hate speech is a terrible thing, but it’s not witchcraft. It has the power we grant to it.

If you want to say “I know what the point was, but I couldn’t get past seeing that word typed out,” feel free, but please don’t say “typing that word out nullifies the point,” as that is not how anything works.

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lymmea

Love that the neo-puritans are like “WE NEED FICTION TO FEED US MORAL MESSAGES” and then want to hate on one of THE classic Moral Message books because it…accurately depicted the bad shit that the moral message of the story was addressing? HOW THE FUCK CAN FICTION TEACH YOU MORAL MESSAGES IF IT’S NOT ALLOWED TO HAVE THE BAD THINGS IN IT TO DEMONSTRATE HOW AND WHY THEY’RE BAD AND WHAT YOUR RESPONSE TO THEM SHOULD BE, KAREN

can’t have shit in Detroit

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