@treepyful / treepyful.tumblr.com
baffled by the concept of someone with at least several shelves of books sorting their personal collection by anything other than subject matter. sure if you mostly own whole series of books by the same authors it makes sense to sort them that way but if you’ve got twenty different books on ecology surely you’re not going to scatter them around alphabetically?!
you’ll have one joke post complaining abt old misogynistic scifi blow up and years later you’ll still get people reblogging it with tags like “why i don’t touch scifi.” hey. im at your door with a pile of scifi in my hands. i’ll lovingly read ursula k le guin or octavia butler to you aloud myself. let me in let me in please please please please hello
some ann leckie or martha wells even. samuel delany. nalo hopkinson. vonda n mcintyre. melissa scott. nnedi okorafor. adrian tchaikovsky. becky chambers. kim bo-young. cameron reed. ted chiang. temi oh. ryka aoki. sarah gailey. micaiah johnson. rivers solomon. TAKE MY HAND!!!!!!!!
If you see this you’re legally obligated to reblog and tag with the book you’re currently reading
If you see this you’re legally obligated to reblog and tag with the book you’re currently reading
classic scifi novels by men r always like. page 1 here’s a cool scifi idea i had. page 2 i hate women so much it’s unreal
ALT
ALT
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guys if one more person leaves a tag like this on my post im gonna lose my mind. There Are Science Fiction Authors Who Are Not Misogynistic Men
ok i’ve gotten one too many ‘this is why i don’t read sci-fi’ comments so here’s a rec list for the people convinced all science fiction is bad and misogynistic (with something for everyone, hopefully!):
(also, btw, the book links are to the Storygraph, which includes content warnings for each one!)
this list is long enough, but have some more authors (who are not cis men) also worth checking out: rivers solomon, yoon ha lee, charlie jane anders, aliette de bodard, xiran jay zhao, mary robinette kowal, corinne duyvis
and finally, not all older/classic scifi is written by crusty old white guys who hate women!!! some iconic authors i’d particularly recommend looking into are ursula k. le guin, octavia e. butler, samuel r. delany and vonda n. mcintyre 🥰
[Image: tweet by Titanium Cranium (@FelicityTC) including three screenshots of a Harry potter book in three different formats on Amazon. Text:
“Harry Potter on Amazon -
Print: $6.39 Audio: $44.99 Braille: $100.00
#CripTax”]
So, let me explain this a bit.
The defenders of CripTax prices will say that those prices cover the cost of production. This is, without a doubt, true. I work at a university where we often have to take written materials and convert them into braille – it takes a LOT of people hours, special software, and a braille embosser.
But those defenders of higher prices are reversing the argument to justify fleecing disabled readers.
What do I mean by that?
Braille is not magic. It is done by taking plain text and feeding it through fairly affordable translation software, creating a document that can easily be printed in braille.
All that time and effort and special software? IS NOT FOR THE BRAILLE.
It is to take the document provided by the publisher (usually in PDF format, the same file they send to the printers) and turn it into plain, unadorned text, by hand. Text has to be “stripped” (OCR/text recognition); images have to be described; footnotes have to be embedded; special pullouts and other formatting shifted or removed.
Printing in braille is cheap; reverse engineering a finished text to print it in braille IS NOT.
Same with those audio books. After a book is completed and, often, after it has already been published, the publisher arranges to have the book recorded by a professional voice actor/reader, which usually also involves a recording producer, if not a recording studio, which all stacks up to $$, no two ways about it.
However: that cost? IS RARELY FACTORED INTO THE BUDGET OF PRINTING A BOOK.
Oh, it might be, if the author is JK Rowling and it is well known that readers will want audio versions right away. But most of the time, nope, the audio book is produced only after the hard copy book has become a decent seller, and so it’s an extra cost which is claimed must be covered by making the audio version extra expensive to buy. (Even then it’s somewhat ridiculous, since honestly, creating an audio book is, in the end, cheaper than printing, factoring in the cost of paper.)
If publishers factored audio book production into the assumed costs of publishing a book, they would have very little reason to price it higher.
If publishers factored in creating a “plain text” file – including having editors/authors describe images – that could be used to print braille copies or to be used with refreshable braille readers (electronic pinboards, basically), then there would be zero reason to price those books higher.
tl;dr: Yes, it’s a #criptax, and the excuse that “those formats are more expensive to produce so they have to be priced higher” is only true if you completely throw out the premise that publishers have an obligation to account for disabled readers when they are actually budgeting for and publishing the book.
I’m really glad you brought this up, because this is exactly the sort of argument thatpeople try to use to justify inaccessibility in all kinds of areas. When we tell a company that their website or appliance or piece of technology isn’t accessible, they frequently tell us that they are sorry to hear that but that the accessibility is too expensive and time-consuming to add in now. There is also a provision in the law that allows companies to not bother including accessibility in their products if the cost of building in the accessibility is more than 5% of the total cost to build the whole product in the US.
That seems reasonable on the surface, doesn’t it? Except here’s the thing—the accessibility should have been a part of the original plans to begin with and designed in from the very beginning and should have been considered a necessary element and just another ordinary part of the cost of producing the product, not some extra feature that can be opted out of if it’s too expensive. The problem is that these companies do not understand the fact that if you cannot afford to build the product with the accessibility included, then you cannot afford to build the product and that is that. It’s exactly the same as not being able to afford to make the product with all elements up to safety and health codes and standards. If you can’t afford to meet the legal standards, then you can’t afford to make the product, and it’s that simple. Accessibility is not an exception to this and it should not be considered as such. It should be just as much an ordinary required part of the design process as any other element, not an extra, shiny, fancy feature that you can just choose not to bother with if it costs a little bit of money.
Accessibility should be part of the standard design process just as much as safety codes and health standards and other legal regulations. The ADA has existed for 20 years so companies have had ample time to catch up and learn to plan for accessibility from the beginning as a part of the standard required design process. If you can’t afford to create the product fully up to code, standards, and accessibility laws, then you simply can’t afford to make the product. No excuses, no exceptions.
I have often said that, very often, the high cost of disability accessibility is not actually for the accessibility itself. The actual high cost is often due to the lack of foresight and planning for accessibility from the design stage onwards.
Let me explain what I mean with an example. Take accessibility in a building. Usually making a building accessible means you need things like braille signage, ramps to entrances, wide doorways that leave plenty of room for a wheelchair to pass through, and so forth. If you design a new building from scratch to incorporate all of these design elements from the beginning, literally before the building is a hole in the ground, then the total cost of integrating accessible features into the building is less than one percent of the total cost of constructing that building.
On the other hand, if you don’t bother to account for the need for disability access and just build the building first, and then go, “oops, we didn’t design for accessibility”, then you will need to literally tear down parts of the building and reconstruct it from scratch. If this is your primary approach to accessibility, then of course the cost of accessibility may seem expensive. But it’s not actually the ramp or the wide door ways that are expensive. What is expensive is all the extra cost and effort of completely undoing parts of what you had already created wrongly so that you can recreate it correctly. In other words, the actual expense is the lack of planning ahead for accessibility.
This is the first I learned how books could be more cheaply accessible if this was planned for ahead of time. But it’s the same principle at work. Unfortunately, most people don’t understand all this and blame disabled people for wanting accessibility instead of blaming designers, architects, inventors and book publishers, and so forth, as well as the people responsible for contracting them, for having failed to consider the needs of disabled people when there was still time to integrate accessibility during the design and initial construction phase, when it could have been done cheaply.
What we need is for more designers, architects, inventors, book publishers, policy makers, program managers, and so forth to learn about the principles of universal design.
Emphasizing @actuallyblind ’s words: “The problem is that these companies do not understand the fact that if you cannot afford to build the product with the accessibility included, then you cannot afford to build the product and that is that.” THIS THIS THIS.
new genre concept: soft apocalypse
the world as we know it has ended and mother nature starts taking back what’s hers. there are no zombies or cannibals or murderous bandits. the most valued members of the community are those who know how to garden and farm, sew and weave, treat wounds, work wood or build with bricks, cook from scratch.
people bond together to begin rebuilding instead of killing each other. everyone teaches each other whatever they do know and works together to figure out the stuff none of them know. books become incredibly valued resources because they’re often the only way to learn critical information. if someone is elderly, disabled, or otherwise unable to work at the same level as most of the community, they’re taken care of by the others, not told any sort of “survival of the fittest” bs.
as the generations ware on, communities begin expanding into small cities. some of the settlements even find ways to repurpose solar or wind power on a small scale and have electricity in some of their buildings. storytellers wander the countryside telling tales of the old world in return for some hot stew or a place to rest for the night, and the mythos of the new world start to incorporate elements of the past. the only thing that remains constant is that humans survive, and they do it by working together.
Try Earth Abides by George R. Stewart
Oh man, definitely try Earth Abides. I loved that book so much and, like Anhilation by Jeff Vandermeer, I thought that if the apocalypse had to happen, this would be a somehow very comforting way.
i would also recommend Station Eleven, the author’s name escapes me but it has a similar approach and bonus star trek references. I loved that book.
I also recommend Yokohama Kaidashi Kikō! Also the song No Hurry by Vixy and Tony! Also I sometimes try to hit these notes in my Reverend Alpert the Traveling Exorcist serial, but humanity still has its nasty impulses so I’m not sure it’d quite rank.
my whole soul cries out for american magical realism
jackalope wives and white lines on a green field are really not enough
where are the little midwestern towns with the waving grass in summer and the deep snow in winter, towns full of young women in white and slender-wristed dead hitchikers drinking merle’s coffee
where’s john henry raising black dogs and sasquatch footprints left outside the public library and no-face charlie walking the streets at night, whistling ‘o susanna’
there should be crumbling overgrown cemeteries and diners with faded linoleum floors, and molly pitcher pours cheap beer on bingo nights and crows are good luck when you catch sight of them perched on the cart return outside of walmart and out of the corner of your eye you see coyote, laughing at you
I realize this probably isn’t a post you were looking for a response to, and I’m sorry if some of these are ones you’ve already read/don’t consider magic realism [esp. since magic realism is one of those things thats devilishly hard to define] but —
“The Witches of Athens” by Lara Elena Donnelly [the Athens in question is Athens, Ohio]
“Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse” by Andy Duncan (probably almost anything by Duncan counts, tho I’ve not read v much)
Six-Gun Snow White by Catherynne M. Valente
“Anansi Meets Peter Parker at the Taco Bell on Lexington” by Douglas Kearney
“Librarians in the Branch Library of Babel” by Shaenon K. Garrity
“The Ice Princess” by Jae Brim
“Hope Chest” by Garth Nix
Beloved by Toni Morrison (Also, I think Song of Solomon qualifies too, but I haven’t read that one yet.)
“All the Young Kirks and Their Good Intentions” by Helena Bell (okay, technically, science fiction-y, technically, probably doesn’t count, but also, i would ask you to consider the fact that it also totally counts)
“The Glass Bottle Trick” by Nalo Hopkinson (tho this leans more heavily on the Southern Gothic tradition than the magic realism side of things.)
“Non-Zero Probabilities” by N.K. Jemisin
“In the House of the Seven Librarians” by Ellen Klages
“The Hotel Astarte” by M.K. Hobson
“Lark Till Dawn, Princess” by Barth Anderson
“Fate” by Jenise Aminoff
Honestly, probably the majority of Mojo: Conjure Stories edited by Nalo Hopkinson (which is where I read “Lark Till Dawn, Princess” and “Fate”)
“Jesus Christ in Texas” by W.E.B. Du Bois
And then stuff I’ve heard of/read about but haven’t yet to read, but am pretty sure qualifies & am fairly confident quality-wise:
“Buffalo Gals, Won’t You Come Out Tonight” by Ursula K. Le Guin
“The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change” by Kij Johnson (which was first published in an anthology called The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales so that’s probably a good bet for some more, and looking @ the TOC there’s tons of good authors.)
The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez
“The Hag Queen’s Curse” by M.K. Hobson
“Sinners, Saints, Dragons, and Haints, In the City Under the Still Waters” by N.K. Jemisin
The Native Star by M.K. Hobson
The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
I can palpably feel myself leaving out some good stuff, but that’s as far as I can remember/fetch easily. It’s sort of light on novels, but hopefully it’s a start.
Again, sorry.
Oooh. Reblogging for later reading. I think the only ones on this list that I’ve read are Six Gun Snow White and Beloved.
copperbadge – Original Poster needs a copy of Nameless, stat!
Sounds like they might enjoy Trace, too, though it’s not as serene as what they seem to be looking for.
OP, you can acquire both of them for free as PDFs here, if you’re interested, or purchase them in paper or epub versions here.
Just saw your post about In Broad Daylight and I was wondering if you have any more true crime book recs? It's a genre I've been interested in lately but don't know where to start. (I've read Devil in the White City and all that fun stuff)
Well, the classic of course is Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood” which is widely credited with launching the fledgling genre, but a) there is a lot of debate about the accuracy of his reporting and b) honestly? It’s not that great.
A lot of true crime suffers from the same issue biography does: you want to structure it as a narrative, with rising action and a climax, but most natural lives don’t have a climax. True Crime gets by a little on the idea of arrest = climax but that doesn’t always work super well.
Most of the true crime I read isn’t the traditional “horrible murders and how to stop them”. But I do have a list of books that I think you will enjoy if you also enjoy true crime:
The Burglary by Betty Medsger – this is about the burglary of the FBI offices in the 70s which led to a HUGE revision in the way the American public viewed the FBI. It’s not really true crime as much as it is political thriller but it does a great job telling the story of the breakin itself, and it also pulls back the veil on a lot of institutionalized racism enforced and fostered by the FBI.
The Gardner Heist by Ulrich Boser – not perhaps the definitive text on the Gardner heist, but certainly one of the better ones I’ve read.
The Napoleon Of Crime by Ben MacIntyre – A biography of Adam Worth, upon whom Arthur Conan Doyle based Professor Moriarty.
Titanic Thompson: The Man Who Bet Everything by Kevin Cook – a biography of one of America’s most infamous con men.
Cooked by Jeff Henderson – the autobiography of a crack dealer who became a gourmet chef after being sent to prison, including his struggles to overcome his past once he got out.
Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing by Ted Conover – Conover went undercover to become a prison guard at Sing Sing prison; this is his frequently scathing expose of the way the prison was run.
The Hare With Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal – The history of one Jewish family’s encounter with Nazi looting before and during WWII, and how they recovered their treasured art.
Operation Mincemeat by Ben MacIntyre – Another WWII story, this time the story of one of the most daring confidence games of the war, where a dead man became a double agent.
The Rape of Europa by Lynn H. Nicholas – A very dense but fascinating book about art crime during WWII, covering most of the theatres of war and the formation of the Monuments Men. (If you want to ease into it there’s a brilliant documentary of the same name which last I checked was still on netflix.)
And finally, here is one nega-recommendation: Jack The Ripper: Case Closed by Patricia Cornwell. Don’t read it. It is hands down the shoddiest piece of “nonfiction” I’ve ever encountered. I mean if you want a chance to pick apart a really poorly constructed thesis, go for it, but it’s not worth your time. I still get angry about the poor quality of the scholarship a decade later.
Martin Amis (via writingquotes)
do you ever feel like published authors should go read some fanfiction…
(via snickfic)
Yep I do
(via bookish-but-corruptible)
ive read 50 chapters of sex in one fic, you can do a 500 word scene justice IF YOU TRIED
(via @faun-songs)
guys chances are good they’re talking about writing/reading straight sex scenes written by male authors
which is probably why it’s not very sexy
(via fuck-me-barnes)
no lies detected.
(via sonickitty)
Never feel guilty for reading fan fic at 3am. Everything is fanfic in the end. From fanfic you were made, to fanfic you shall return.
Read that which has been panned by literary snobs. Read novels churned out by the dozen by authors with a dozen pseudonyms.
Read your US and People. Flip through Popular Science just for the gadgets section. Read articles about the perfect chocolate chip cookie.
Read books outside your comfort zone. Don’t finish them if you don’t want. It’s the book’s fault, not yours.
Read in your comfort zone. Read a YA and romance and science if and fantasy.
Skip over the boring bits. Read it because you heard about it from Oprah or because everyone else is reading it.
Giggle yourself silly at something so poorly written and full of author wish fulfillment that you just can’t stop reading it.
Don’t listen to the keepers of taste and culture. Their reward comes every time they pat themselves on the back for their superior taste.
Don’t listen to the academics that bemoan the downfall of society and learning. They have been doing that since Socrates’ time.
Don’t listen to the tv presenters who insist you are not cultured if you haven’t read from this list of books.
Audio books count as reading. Ebooks count as reading. Fanfic of questionable quality counts as reading. Rereading books for the third time counts as reading. Reading to your child counts as reading. Reading from the back of the cereal box (and doing the puzzle) counts as reading.
TL;DR: read what you want. Don’t be ashamed. Never let someone try to make you feel bad for how or what you read and enjoy. Tell them that I, your Friendly Neighborhood Librarian have absolved you from your guilt and have given you special blessings. Go forth and read, my child.
E-reading isn’t REAL reading. = I need my personal preferences about my hobby to be validated as the only right and moral way do to a thing.
Making crafts out of old books is a DESECRATION! = I’ve never seen a library dumpster.
I only read prize-winners/confirmed classics *sniff*. = I don’t know how to think for myself.
Book bloggers are killing literary criticism! = I’m an aging white man in publishing and I don’t know how to think for myself.
Oh, I’ve never heard of that book. Was it reviewed in the NYT/on NPR? = I don’t know how to think for myself.
I would never read the tripe that is Twilight/50 Shades/Oprah’s Book Club selection, and I am going to tweet that statement 50 million times. = I am still as worried about being cool as I was when I was in high school.
The book is always better than the movie, no exceptions. = I’ve never seen The Godfather or The Princess Bride and also I am no fun at parties.
Rap music is not poetry, but Joni Mitchell/Bob Dylan/Belle and Sebastian is. = I am racist.
I refuse to use an e-reader because I just love that old book smell. People who do not love that old book smell are not real readers. = My favorite perfume’s base note is mold.
People who shop at Amazon for books are evil. = I have disposable income and like to make moral judgements about people who do not.
I would NEVER dog ear pages, crease a spine, or eat food while reading. = I have unreasonable expectations about how much the people to whom I bequeath my books when I die will actually want them.
I guess it’s good that they’re reading at all. = I will internally judge you until your reading tastes morph to match my own, which are far superior to yours because I read more books written by white men who live in Brooklyn.
I don’t have a TV because that would cut into my reading time. Did I mention I don’t have a TV? Hey. You there. I don’t have a TV. I don’t get that TV reference. = I am not all that interesting. Also, I watch three hours of Netflix a night on my laptop.
I don’t care if the main character is likable. It’s the PROSE that’s the thing. = My ability to tolerate insufferable jerks makes me better than you because you’re obviously only reading for escapism, which is an inferior motivation for reading.
I’m not a romance/crime/Western reader. I mean, I’ll read LITERARY genre. SOMETIMES. = My kitchen is full of quinoa and kale and soy ice cream. Someone please validate what a grown-up I am.
I don’t understand adults who read YA. You’re a grown-up person, you should read grown-up books. = I don’t like dancing in the rain or ice cream cones or trampolines or whimsy and my neck tie is too tight.
In case you haven’t heard, BookRiot is the fucking ish.
Unsurprisingly, the book snobs showed up en masse to comment on this piece.
Let me talk to you about books.
Specifically, one book. This book.
This book should be a best seller. This book should be required reading for graduating from high school. Before you get that diploma, you read this book.
This book deals with debunking “Neurosexism,” which is a very fancy term for all of that evolutionary psychology bullshit that people spill about those “brain differences” between boys and girls.
This book debunks such myths as:
Furthermore, this book covers topics such as:
AND FINALLY - It is all brilliantly researched, cited, compiled - and it’s easy to read! Cordelia Fine actually manages to be funny while writing this, which I think is important, because it makes all of this information infinitely accessible.
Delusions of Gender has reinforced what Oberlin taught me: The gender binary is ridiculous and arbitrary, and dangerous. And it is a self-perpetuating bias that needs to be addressed to be overcome.
i cant even make it past the table of contents im laughing too hard
WHAT IS THIS BOOK!?!
It’s called “Zeus Grants Stupid Wishes: A No-Bullshit Guide to World Mythology” By Cory O’Brien, and it looks highly entertaining. :D
Gilgamesh: THE ULTIMATE BROMANCE
Give it here, now.
Sweet Fluffy Gods why is there not an audiobook version?
I need to find this book.
The first time Iv’e wanted to read something since Metro 2033.
guy
guys…look what we did :D
