BOOK RECS ASK GAME

“Authors should not be ALLOWED to write about–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative

“This book should be taken off of shelves for featuring–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative

“Schools shouldn’t teach this book in class because–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative

“Nobody actually likes or wants to read classics because they’re–” you are an anti-intellectual and an idiot

“I only read YA fantasy books because every classic novel or work of literary fiction is problematic and features–” you are an anti-intellectual and you are robbing yourself of the full richness of the human experience.

"you are functionally a conservative" is such a good and clarifying insult

Literally right after I saw this post, I saw another post in a discord chat for BOOK EDITORS in which an outspokenly liberal editor talked about how Nabokov should have never been published because he wrote about p*dophiles and described women's bodies in ways that made her uncomfortable. She described his writing as "objectively terrible" and said she wanted to burn his books. And other editors were bringing up classics they didn't like and talking about how they wanted to throw them in the trash. This wasn't like a light "unpopular opinion!" conversation. This was actual book editors talking about how books should be destroyed and censored.

There is something so scary and toxic in global culture right now. The revival of fascism is influencing everyone's mindset and approach to art, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum.

I see far more books being censored today than when I was a kid. Librarians handed me The Catcher in the Rye, The Sexual Politics of Meat, and Animal Farm when I was literally 8-11. My mom would never have taken a book away from me. I read everything from the Tao Te Ching to the Qur'an to atheist texts under my desk at school. Teachers thought nothing of it or encouraged it. Books seemed universally acknowledged as sacrosanct to me.

Now I can't find any adults who don't hesitate or want to make exceptions when it comes to censorship. Even the most liberal social activist librarians I know go, "well except for book X..."

Functionally conservative. It's so important to have the language to express that.

Thank you for this addition!

just saw someone reviewing the erin hunter books like, ‘they should publish the whole series at once, i don’t want to wait a whole year to read it’. like babe i hate to break it to you but,,,, go touch some grass and think about your relationship with consumerism okay, because it’s gotten really weird on you

I’ve heard these kinds of sentiments in regards to novels, as well as readers outright refusing to read fantasy series debuts because “they fear committing to something unfinished” (like refusing to read an incomplete fanfic on AO3…) in case the author dies, or isn’t able/doesn’t complete the work. The GRRM effect, if you will.

Regardless of how people feel towards the authors personally, I will continue to bleat, til the day I die, artists do not owe an audience anything. They are not in debt to you. They don’t owe their works to their readers, no exceptions, there is no “earned/lost trust” or “unspoken contracts.” Capitalism has got people treating artists and entertainers as though they should hop on their bicycles like a chained bear, the moment the audience cracks its whip.

There’s also this fun aspect of capitalism where your favorite (usually marginalized) author doesn’t get another book contract or have the rest of the series picked up or have the money to keep investing their time in that project because you refused to buy the thing until it was finished.

Not only do creators not owe their audience anything, but those who really truly want to give these things to their audience are directly prevented from doing so by this exact mentality!

Sure, authors don’t owe readers anything. The author, to paraphrase Neil Gaiman shortly after Robert Jordan died (leaving his epic series unfinished until Brandon Sanderson finished it) is “not your bitch”.

But I’ve seen enough book series go unfinished to be leery about picking up book 1 in a trilogy that may or may not see book 3. GRRM isn’t going to publish the last two books of ASOIAF. Or the last two stories in the Dunk and Egg series. Patrick Rothfuss’s editor said three years ago that she doesn’t think he’s even writing anything. Shit like this burns readers and burns them hard. And, just as authors don’t owe readers, readers don’t owe authors attention. Sure, it sucks when a book doesn’t sell, but yelling at people for not buying a thing doesn’t make them more inclined to buy.

Honestly, the only way I would read a book that’s part of a series is if each book in said series was more or less standalone. Some authors do do that I like picking up the new book when it comes out. In cases like that, there aren’t cliffhangers and usually, if the series stopped at any time, it would still be an at least mostly satisfying ending. I think stuff like that shows up more in urban fantasy/paranormal romance stuff, where it’s easier to do more episodic stuff.

And also, what’s so bad about standalone books anymore? Picking up a book and knowing that there’s a complete story there, told from beginning to end, is how I get into new authors. I’m guessing part of why they don’t get talked about as much is publishers not wanting anything that prints them tons of money, but it still sucks.

I'M FINE, just watching the 1980 version of Little Lord Fauntleroy and bawling my eyes out every 15 mins because this sweet child is so good and kind to everyone around him and brightens up their lives, THAT'S ALL.

— Wayne Koestenbaum, The Queen’s Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire.

Let me know if anyone wants a list of Jewish fantasy novels

Hit me

What's up Amazon haters! Bookshop.org is doing free shipping to combat Prime Day. Purchases on Bookshop help support the indie bookstores in your location!

Rules for Loving Haunted Girls: A Sapphic Urban Fantasy Collection

By Jacquelynn Lyon

Werewolves sharing early morning conversations with waitresses. Phantoms reappearing and disappearing in wild lavender fields. A coming-of-age story of a paper delivery girl discovering the secrets of a house-bound stranger. Sapphic love stories of the odd, strange, and utterly lovely. Three urban fantasy novellas infused with humor, tenderness, and wonder: The Waitress and the Werewolf, The Phantom in the Lavender Fields, and Paper Girl. A werewolf and a waitress connect after the wolf comes in starving from her transformation and the waitress tries to figure out what the muddy, shoeless stranger is doing there each month. A phantom reappears and disappears in the wild lavender fields and a woman at rock bottom accidently incites her haunting. Finally, a paper delivery girl uncovers the mystery surrounding a strange house and the girl inside who never seems to leave in a friends-to-sweethearts story.

Rules for Loving Haunted Girls is a series of otherworldly love stories about breaking our own rules to find each other. The night is dark and full of teeth, but surely, we must leave our house to find a home.

—–

It’s here! It’s happening! It’s an awesome book!

I am thrilled my second story collection is fully released. Sharing my work with readers is one of my great joys and I am very proud of how this particular work came out. If you’ve already read the work and want to support it be sure to leave a review online as well.

Order using the buttons below! If you want to stay up to date with any future releases or be entered to win a free paperback copy of the book then please sign up for my newsletter on my website: Jacquelynnlyon.com. Thanks!

eBook 💗 Paperback 💗 Goodreads

I also want to thank @bhramarii for the truly stunning cover art. Thank you again!

Happy pride month!!

If you go on the internet and google how to dry out a drenched book, you'll find a forum where someone else asked the same question and was told to go fuck themselves and just google it.

If you go on the internet and confidently announce that the best way to dry out a drenched book is to dip it in alcohol and light it on fire, and nobody else has ever figured out a better way to dry out a book without damaging it. Argue about it with absolute confidence for long enough, and somebody will write you out a peer-reviewed 30 page tutorial with an essay section with 15 cited sources that offers you three different, separate, far superior methods on how to dry out a drenched book.

While the human desire to help one-another may wane or falter, you can always count on the righteous anger of someone witnessing a stranger being Wrong On The Internet.

but um then what is the method to dry out a drenched book?

I don’t have time for the full 30 page tutorial with citations, but, having done library disaster recovery in both theory and practice, it depends on:

But really the two primary methods of salvaging wet books are air drying and vacuum freeze drying. Since few people have quick access to a vacuum freezer, here’s a guide to saving your books and other precious things after they’ve been soaked from the State Library of Queensland. And because I’m nice, here’s a solid video showing air-drying techniques from Preservation Australia:

And here’s another showing how to safely remove books from dirty water and clean them.

Important things to note:

Les Trois Mousquetaires

Local Bookstores Have A New Weapon In The Fight With Amazon

In the book industry, Amazon is Goliath, the giant who overshadows everyone else. But there’s a new David on the scene, Bookshop.org.

It doesn’t expect to topple the giant, but it has launched a weapon that could make Amazon’s shadow a little smaller, and help local bookstores fight back.

Bookshop.org, a website that went live at the end of January and is still in beta mode, is designed to be an alternative to Amazon, and to generate income for independent bookstores. And, perhaps more importantly, it seeks to give book reviewers, bloggers and publications who rely on affiliate income from “Buy now” links to Amazon a different option.

Profit from books sold through Bookshop will be split three ways, with 10% of the sale price going into a pool that will be divided among participating bookstores, 10% going to the publication that triggered the sale by linking to Bookshop.org, and 10% going to Bookshop.org to support its operations.

READ MORE

y’all, Bookshop is amazing. i got an email about them from my local indie store, and they’re so excited about it. please oh please use this place instead of Amazon!!

with every purchase, they tell you how much you’re putting toward independent booksellers, which is fun and cute:

it’s also amazing for authors! i’ve been asked a couple times about the best way to support my books. this site is now the answer. it reports sales figures to the NYT and Bookscan, a type of tracking that helps authors hit bestseller lists. and even better, authors can set up affiliate pages, and if you buy through those pages, we get an additional 10 percent of each sale on top of royalties. this is a massive deal!!!

for reference, many royalty rates are in the 6-8 percent range. so if you buy through Bookshop author affiliate pages, authors get more than twice as much from sales of their books, with no additional cost to you.

the site is still in beta, but it also has a fun interface where you can make book lists for favorites or recommendations, sort of like goodreads (except better, because goodreads is owned by amazon).

this is my Bookshop page. if you ever buy one of my books, i pray u will do it from this site! (or from your local indie :D)

@thebibliosphere @vampireapologist @glumshoe

I’ve done some Twitter threads on this topic, so thought it might be nice to do a Tumblr post too. One of my pet peeves is when people act like adult fantasy (or sci-fi for that matter) is just a straight white dude thing and that diversity only exists in young adult fantasy. That’s such a disservice to all the authors of marginalized identities currently writing adult fantasy!

Authors and books below the cut, including links to Goodreads. I’m not providing trigger warnings (if I make the post too long Tumblr starts freaking out about it), but you can use the search function on Goodreads reviews to find more specifics. 

EDIT: TERFS CAN FUCK OFF!!! I would think you absolute vile pieces of human garbage would be able to recognize when a post is trans inclusive but apparently I have to publicly tell you to get off my fucking post. I hope all of you die in a ditch. 

Edit 6/26/20: I no longer recommend The Stone in the Skull by Elizabeth Bear.

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[ID: the "One Does Not Simply Walk Into Mordor" meme, showing Boromir (Sean Bean) from the "The Lord of the Rings" franchise. It's edited and now he says "One does not simply have too many books. One simply has too few bookshelves." (in all caps) /end ID].

“Where they burn books, they will too in the end burn people.” - Heinrich Heine (born: 13 December 1797)

Book burning in America: The theme of the GOP cultural war [publish date: 1 Dec 2021]