Books
Want to read: The Brain that Loves to Play by Jacqueline Harding 📚
Want to read: The Brain that Loves to Play by Jacqueline Harding 📚
Tonight I’m very obsessed with the idea of reading The Secret Garden as a child as a gateway to a love of Gothic literature. 📚
Finished reading: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson 📚
Keeping this Gothic train rolling. This one is excellent, of course.
📚💬 “When I am afraid, I can see perfectly the sensible, beautiful not-afraid side of the world, I can see chairs and tables and windows staying the same, not affected in the least, and I can see things like the careful woven texture of the carpet, not even moving. But when I am afraid, I no longer exist in any relation to these things.” Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House
Substitute depressed or anxious for afraid here and it’s exactly how I feel.
Finished reading: The Turn of the Screw by Henry James 📚
Another Gothic. Governesses, am I right?
💬📚 Dropping this quote here so that next time I try to hung it down I’ll find it on my own site and not have to go to GoodReads:
“She strode the earth clad in the invisible armor of their virtual companionship.” Lev Grossman, The Magician King
Finished reading: “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe 📚
Making my pivot to Gothic now that it’s October. (I skipped my usual campus novels in September and stuck with romance.)
This one’s a classic, of course. But I like “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Masque of the Red Death” better.
📚💬 Roderick Usher has sensory integration issues:
“He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odors of all flowers were oppressive…” - Edgar Allan Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher”
📚 Books about Freelance Writing
Originally posted on LinkedIn:
One of the tools in my toolbox for carrying me through times between big projects is freelance writing. As I expect to ramp this piece of my work up when my current contract (which is full-time work) ends, I’ve been revisiting my resources to help me with this.
Here are 3 books I use for this:
📕 The Freelance Academic by Katie Rose Guest Pryal
📗 How to Get Started in Freelance Science Writing by Sheeva Azma
📘 Win at Freelance Writing by Gertrude Nonterah, Ph.D.
What are your favorite resources?
Finished reading: We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian 📚
I loved it so much, finished it in under 48 hours. “Newsies for shippers” is an apt description. I love people being sweet on each other and making happiness when they feared it just wasn’t out there for them.
Today’s Literary Activism newsletter from Book Riot shares information about several student groups fighting book bans. 📚
📚 I’m reading Sandra Hughes-Hassell’s book, Collection Management for Youth: Equity, Inclusion, and Learning and planning to share my reading notes. I’m trying to decide whether it makes more sense to create a new post for each chapter or just do one for the whole book. Thoughts?
📚💬 “She didn’t know much about buildings, but it was clear that this one needed an unbelievable amount of work.
But at the end of it? Something she built up, rather than cut down.” Travis Baldree, Legends & Lattes
Finished reading: An Island Princess Starts a Scandal by Adriana Herrera 📚
So good! Manuela is going to marry a wealthy man, for the good of her family. But first, she’s going to spend six weeks in Paris, having Sapphic adventures.
As with all the best romances, this book is about two people who make each other grow as much as it’s about falling in love.
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 Hotter than steamy, very explicit.
Highly recommend.
There are few feelings as good as canceling a bunch of library holds because your family already owns all the books. 📚
📚 There are still spots available for online attendance at Public Librarianship in Contentious Times, a conference hosted by the University of Michigan School of Information and the Michigan Library Association. School librarians should find this relevant to their work as well and are welcome.
📚🍳 Started reading the introduction to Jules Sherred’s Crip Up the Kitchen: Tools, Tips and Recipes for the Disabled Cook and I might cry.
“The kitchen is the worst room in the house if you are disabled. I’m about to change that and make life easier for everyone.”
🔖📚 Read Shadow and Bone author Leigh Bardugo: ‘People sneer at the things women and girls love’ by Sian Cain (The Guardian).
She really is my hero.
🔖📚 Read Falling in Love With the Avengers, America’s Most Toxic Work Force by Leigh Bardugo (New York Times, gift link)
I love Leigh Bardugo so much.
💬📚 “I hunker down with books when I need time to process what’s happening in my own life.
Books give me the space to breathe.”
- Kelly J. Baker, Final Girl: And Other Essays on Grief, Trauma, and Mental Illness
Currently reading: Final Girl: And Other Essays on Grief, Trauma, and Mental Illness by Kelly Baker 📚
Austin Kleon says to climb your creative family tree. Kelly is like an intellectual big sister, so I’m starting with her. (Katie Rose Guest Pryal is another.) 📝
Finished reading: From Bad to Cursed by Lana Harper 📚
Loved it even more than Payback’s A Witch. Full review coming later this week.
📚💬 “Disaster and hero, monster and martyr, beauty and beast . . . Choose your own dichotomy. Because it doesn’t matter. We were always built to be both.” Lana Harper, For Better or Cursed
📚🔖 Read The Parentified Protagonist: From Shifting Roles to Shapeshifter, a guest post by Stephanie Willing (Teen Librarian Toolbox).