“Mysterious mini door found in Golden Gate Park”
Is it a Boo Radley tribute? A fairy door? The work of elves? What do you think?
Thanks to The Rumpus for the link.
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What was the last book you loved? Tell us!
Starting February 1st, we’ll be posting our absolute favorite submissions by Tumblr users about the last book (any book!) they loved—an extension of The Rumpus’s ongoing series. Part book review, part love letter, your piece should communicate everything that’s wonderful about your chosen title. Every Friday, one submission will go up on Tumblr Storyboard, The Rumpus, and of course, your humble Rumblr.
If there is one group of people I know who excel in talking up much-loved books (preferably Satanism), its you, my much-loved tumblarians. <3 <3 <3
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What Was the Last Book You Loved? We Want Your Essays!
We’re excited to announce a Tumblr Storyboard + The Rumpus partnership to highlight Tumblr writers and the books they love — an extension of The Rumpus’s ongoing “Last Book I Loved” series. Here’s how it works: Got a book you can’t stop thinking about? Send us a writeup – a little bit book review and a lot about why you loved it – along with a short bio. Beginning next month, we’ll publish our favorites every Friday, both on Storyboard and TheRumpus.net. Visit our SUBMIT PAGE for more information — and get reading!
(Card catalogue scan from the Palatina Library at the Biblioteca Nazionale in Florence.)
Hello and welcome. We, The Rumpus (+ Rumblr) and Tumblr, have teamed up to make something great. Do this. You won’t regret it.
I just gotta say, talking about books you love is something librarians are really good at. Help The Rumpus and Tumblr help you become bookternet famous.
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Strayed, Cheryl. Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from “Dear Sugar.” Vintage: Random. ISBN 9780307949332. pap. $14.95; ebk. ISBN 9780307949325. SELF-HELP
Strayed has made a career out of touching her readers’ lives with stories of her own. This collection of her “Dear Sugar” columns, which originally appeared on The Rumpus, may at first glance look like a nontraditional Best Book pick. Instead, Strayed’s columns transcend the genre that made Ann Landers famous. This is a book for readers who want to cry their eyes out but emerge feeling, somehow, stronger. (LJ 5/15/12)—Molly McArdle
See all of Library Journal’s Best Books 2012: Top Ten
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Maybe if I keep moving and don’t complain, if I read more books and love better, and patch the leaky roof, then one day I’ll reach home, and my head will be clear. There will be a bed for me, with soft pillows, and I will sleep soundly.
— Sam Lynn in Readers Report Back From… Going Home - The Rumpus.net (via therumpus)
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BOYFRIENDS: FOSTER BY SHELAGH POWER-CHOPRA AND KARA JANSSON
FOSTER WAS A professor of Library Science at BU who favored dusty card catalogs and microfilm. I found him in the rare book room masturbating over a folio from Fuerst’s translation of Beowulf. He had the sad eyes of a circus clown and often whispered, so accustomed to the silence of reading rooms. On Saturdays we’d lie naked on his old camp mattress and he’d show me his collection of library cards, when I’d lose interest he’d cook up some scrapple and eat it off my chest. We’d make love all morning but he was a sloppy lover, often fondling his books with more care than me and his tongue tasted musty, like old parchment paper as if he’d spent all night licking illuminated manuscripts.
Breaking Point: The discovery that he had tested positive for a rare book fungus found under his foreskin.
Well look at this! The Rumpus is on Tumblr! (Also, ew, fungus.)
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I have always loved best books with magic in them, more than books about space or the future or any other rule-bending, world-shaping force. And why? There are a lot of things that often come bound up in books with magic, whether it is a quasi-medieval setting (abrim with monarchies, chivalry), or the literal escape some characters make from their own lives (the Pevensie children to Narnia, Harry Potter to Hogwarts), or the material comforts magic often furnishes (the Abhorsen’s house in Sabriel), or a demonstrably real—if not totally understood—universal order. But Harry Potter is without kings and Westeros affords few people escape; Juniper’s Euny lives in poverty and Pern is a world without religion.
— Your LJ tumblrer wrote an essay about asthma, magic, and the computer game Baldur’s Gate over at the Rumpus.
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Pen & Ink, a project by illustrator Wendy MacNaughton, whose beautiful series on the San Francisco Public Library should be read by all librarians and library patrons everywhere, and Isaac Fitzgerald, writer & managing editor of the Rumpus, features illustrations of tattoos and the bearer’s explanation of them. Today, one of my favorite writers, Roxane Gay (who you should all read), talks about the lovely, intricate designs on her forearms.
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A lot of what might be called my political values are, to me, core ethical values. I think it’s immoral to condemn people because they are homosexual, for example. I think we are all deserving of compassion, assistance, forgiveness, and esteem. I think women have the right to make decisions about their private parts. I think we are all sacred, regardless of whether we believe in God. Those beliefs are everywhere in my column. I can’t separate them from who I am or the advice I give.
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Cheryl Strayed, on her personal political beliefs in Library Journal. (via kellybergin)
God bless secular humanism.
(via rachelfershleiser)
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Very early on, I realized that what had been the most helpful to me in times of sorrow or uncertainty were stories—fiction or nonfiction—sometimes in the form of poems, other times in novels or memoirs or short stories. So I decided to trust that and use storytelling in the column as a way of enlarging and deepening the questions the letter writers were asking me. The advice column is at heart an intimate exchange between two people who are addressing each other in a public forum. There’s a wonderful intensity inherent in that exchange that’s slightly different from the other genres I’ve written in, but I see all the work as parts of a whole.
— Cheryl Strayed, on writing for “Dear Sugar,” from LJ’s recent Q&A.
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The worst advice I ever received was from my grandmother—my mother’s mother. She said I should never get entirely undressed in front of my husband, even during sex. Can you imagine?
— Cheryl Strayed, on the worst piece of advice she’s ever been given, from LJ’s recent Q&A.
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When I was maybe six I saw a photograph in a magazine of a young woman holding a bouquet of flowers up to a police officer who was pointing a gun at her—it was the 1970s, an image from an antiwar protest. I was terribly intrigued by the contradiction depicted in that photo, so I asked my mother about it. She explained that the woman was trying to win over the officer with kindness. She said it was a good idea to do that, to be kind even to those who were being unkind to you. Her exact words were “Zap them back with super love.” I think it’s great advice. I’ve thought of that phrase many times over the years in trying moments. I’ve never regretted zapping anyone back with super love.
— Cheryl Strayed, on the best piece of advice she’s ever been given, from LJ’s recent Q&A.
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I am so so excited to announce that my Q&A with Cheryl Strayed is appearing in the May 15 issue of LJ, along with a review of her forthcoming collection of Dear Sugar columns, Tiny Beautiful Things. It should be online in the next couple of weeks!
