I’m a former artist, librarian, and queer activist; I still do some of those things when I’m not working my day job. Current project: reading my way through history’s 'best' novels, and examining what 'best' means and who decides it.
Things from the Flood. By Simon Stalenhag. Translated by Martin Dunelind.
You are a young Swedish teen, growing up in the aftermath of a failed industrial project that may have opened a portal to another world, but the poisoned and destroyed landscape is your playground, and the agonies of adolescence find a comfortable home there.
4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈.
@bookstodon #bookstodon #books #reading #sweden #scifi #adolescence #graphicnovel #tech #art
Bleak House. By Charles Dickens.
You are a young woman of little standing, not knowing your past and dependent on others, but managing to be a decent human being while on the sidelines to a grinding legal proceeding that chews up and spits out those around you, whether high or low; and while you are not spared agony, you do show that being compassionate is not a fool’s errand.
5 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈!
@bookstodon #bookstodon #books #reading #england #law #courts
My favorite book prize longlist came out a few days ago, the books nominated for the Dublin Literary Award are made by libraries around the world and the longlist always has some eye-catching choices that don't often show up elsewhere.
#books #reading #DublinLiteraryAward @bookstodon
The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas. By Machado de Assis.
You are a dead 19th century Brazilian rich dude, weighing the romantic, political and philosophic events of your life, and although you have much social critique to offer, you retain a blind spot when it comes to your own actions.
5 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈!
CW: slavery
@bookst #bookstodon #books #reading #literature #brazil #novels
The Picture of Dorian Gray. By Oscar Wilde.
You are a beautiful young man, and an unusual portrait affords you the chance to never visibly age, and as your life choices do not accumulate on your face, this seems to impact the choices you make in life, which still add up in unexpected ways.
4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈.
CW: antisemitism, racism
Less is Lost. By Andrew Sean Greer.
You are a white, gay male author of modest success entering your 50s trying to hold it together but not doing a great job, when the death of your first love sets off a series of mistakes and financial crises that propel you across the US where you meet various figurative versions of yourself, all of whom are doing better than you at life.
4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈.
(Sequel)
@bookstodon #bookstodon #books #reading #lgbtq #gay #aging #roadtrip
Tess of the D’Ubervilles. By Thomas Hardy.
You are an educated, pretty peasant girl with foolish parents and higher class suitors, unfortunately even the less evil of these seem to only consider their own relationship to the social order…yours, not so much.
3 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈.
CW: sexual assault
@bookstodon #bookstodon #books #reading #marriage #farming #england #women
Children's literature and writers are all too often not taken seriously, but now the International Booker Prize has announced that the first Children's Booker will be awarded in 2027 for books published in the UK or Ireland during 2026. Fittingly, Frank Cottrell-Boyce, who has been a passionate advocate for children's books for many years, will head the first judging panel, which will include two other adults and three children selected through the schools, a wonderful idea.
#BookerPrize #kidlit #books #reading @bookstodon
The Awakening. By Kate Chopin.
It’s the turn of the prior century, and you are a happily married , well off young woman from New Orleans who starts to wonder not just if you made the right choices, but how you might undo some of them, as socially impossible as that appears.
3 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈.
CW: racism
@bookstodon #bookstodon #books #reading #women #sexism #literature
I have a short piece of writing up in an online exhibit of 1400 artists, a giant, art-based version of the “telephone game,” where one person whispers something in one person’s ear, then that is repeated, and the message changes over time…but this is done with completed artworks in different genres (a drawing becomes a dance becomes a poem…). Link is to my entry, but check out the whole thing.
#art #telephonegame #writing
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. By Muriel Spark.
It’s Edinburgh in the 1930s, and you are 1 of 6 girls in their early teens selected by an iconoclastic very modern teacher to be treated in adult ways, and taught about adult topics; you are drawn into her personal life and problems at the school and you excel under her tutelage, but she is surprised when you have your own analysis.
5 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈.
@bookstodon #bookstodon #books #reading #women #teaching #fascism
The standard of practice in US public libraries is to not save circulation records. With the advent of online catalogs, it became possible for users to opt in to record saving. Keep in mind that almost all library software is run by 3rd party for profit companies. Library records are protected by state law as private, and should only be obtainable by court order. I’m not a lawyer, but I’m guessing the feds could more easily pressure a corp for your info than a library…
https://www.ala.org/advocacy/privacy/statelaws
Women In Love. By DH Lawrence.
You are sisters of marriageable age at the start of the 20th century, and you start to date a pair of friends, but in your thoughts, speech and actions express both hatred and love for them, both disgust and adoration (the men feel similarly FTR) which, while laudable from a truth-telling perspective, does not make for the smoothest of romances.
4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈.
#JaneAustenOnLSD @bookstodon #reading #LGBTQ #books #love #bookstodon #marriage
Goebbels Ends the Careers of Five Comedians Who Made Witticisms About the Nazi Regime.
NYTimes article. February 4 1939.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1939/02/04/102395933.html?pageNumber=1
The South. By Tash Aw.
It’s the 90’s in Malaysia, and you are 16, gay and closeted, when your family decamps one summer for a rural farm they own but you have never visited where some distant cousins live; it’s an ending of sorts, but also a beginning for you.
4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈.
@bookstodon #bookstodon #books #reading #gay #lgbtq #malaysia
A Cat at the End of the World. By Robert Perisic. Translated by Vesna Maric.
You are a barometric anomaly (sort of a gust of wind), alive for millennia observing Earth, but when you come to the surface, you find yourself learning language, and following a young boy, several centuries BCE, around the Mediterranean with one of the first domesticated cats in Europe.
5 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈!
#cats #croatia #antiquity #slavery #reading #books #bookstodon #translation @bookstodon
My Antonia. By Willa Cather.
You are a middle aged man reminiscing about your childhood growing up in 1800s Nebraska, primarily about a childhood friend, a Czech immigrant girl whom you respected and loved, but whose life path did not go how most people thought it would …though she regretted nothing.
3 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈.
@bookstodon #bookstodon #reading #books #nebraska #farm #immigrants
For Whom The Bell Tolls. By Ernest Hemingway.
It’s the Spanish Civil War, and you, an American professor of Spanish, are fighting alongside the anti-fascists, where it’s your job to work with a small guerrilla faction in the mountains to blow up a bridge; over three days you learn a lot about what motivates people’s convictions to a cause and to each other.
4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈.
CW: hate speech
@bookstodon #bookstodon #books #reading #spain #war #civilwar
The Road. By Cormac McCarthy.
It’s a few years after some event has killed every animal and every plant on the earth except for a few remaining humans, and you and your young son are walking southwards to escape the continuous winter, slowly starving and avoiding the dangerous dregs of humanity.
5 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈!
#bleak #postapocalyptic @bookst #bookstodon #reading #books #death
