already well into november but i thought i’d post (with pdfs included of course) some things i read (& loved) in october b/c it was a hard month & these writings held my hand the whole way through
‘by grand central station i sat down and wept,’ elizabeth smart (!)
‘life and death,’ andrea dworkin
‘seam,’ tarfia faizullah (!)
‘play it as it lays,’ joan didion
‘war of the foxes,’ richard siken
‘midwinter day,’ bernadette mayer
‘in the pines,’ alice notley
‘death is not an option,’ suzanne rivecca (!)
‘the dead and the living,’ sharon olds
‘the melancholy of anatomy,’ shelley jackson
‘edinburgh,’ alexander chee
‘the woman destroyed,’ simone de beauvoir (!)
‘monster: poems,’ robin morgan
‘how we became human,’ joy harjo
‘ayiti,’ roxane gay (!)
‘our andromeda,’ brenda shaughnessy
‘second childhood,’ fanny howe
‘the lady in the looking glass,’ virginia woolf
To Night, Percy Bysshe Shelley
"Death will come when thou art dead, Soon, too soon— Sleep will come when thou art fled; Of neither would I ask the boon I ask of thee, belovèd Night— Swift be thine approaching flight, Come soon, soon!“
Websites, social media
Online courses in French
French subreddits
Fanfictions
Buzzfeed
Pronunciation
Speaking
Music
Podcasts
Radio stations
TED talks
Graphic novels/comics
News
Ebooks + quizzes (by me)
Short stories
Vikidia - kids’ Wikipedia
Cartoons
Kids shows
Imago TV - free activist Netflix
The Simpsons the movie
True crime
TV programs - sci-fi shows, travelling, etc.
Youtubers
Antidote 10 + BonPatron - Grammarly equivalents
Conjugation by le Nouvel Obs
Deepl - very good at translating sentences/expressions
Forbo - natives pronouncing things
Lexicity - about Ancien/Moyen Français
Lingolden - Chrome extension that teaches vocabulary
Linguo.tv (french videos + subtitles)
Reverso - very good alternative to Google translation (single words)
Wordreference - very complete translation website (expressions)
1. stand in the middle of a lake staring at the way the moonlight reflects off the blood on your hands
2. start using words with more syllables because it sounds smarter and you need everyone to know how smart you are so they won’t know you bribed your way into the gentleman’s club
3. cover your chin with a black scarf so people can’t see the scar you got from turning the pages of the encyclopaedia too quickly
4. clutter your room with things that you bought from old charity shops, so you can watch them collect dust (and so you won’t have to look at that mysterious red stain on the floor)
5. buy a coffin to sleep in (you can find one secondhand if it’s too expensive - don’t worry, that just adds to the mystique).
6. string balls of cosy yarn across the floor, lest any intruders come. this way, you can catch them easily.
7. spell your name wrong to prevent identity theft
8. cut all your hair off in an attempt to become someone else and then send the locks to your neighbours (don’t provide context)
9. dig yourself a grave four feet to the left of the nearest skyscraper
10. don’t look behind your shoulder or you’ll see her. donna.
Thoreau said, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Don’t be resigned to that. Break out! Break out! Now is the time!
DEAD POETS SOCIETY 1989 | Peter Weir
I await a darling with the most literate of tongues and the most revolutionary of minds who whispers Shakespeare sonnets onto my lips at moonrise and enriches, enlightens me with art and poetry and language that will leave me gasping for air.
omg i’m crying i can’t believe i found some valid information on what has been disturbing me for such a long time. i felt like i didn’t belong to the language i speak and.. jeez here it is, i’m not alone
All I can think abt is that one quote that basically just describes that you can’t be your true self in your native language bc there’s too much emotional attachment, but that second languages allow speakers to be truly free with their words
comprehensive list of books that will make you think a lot
at the request of @uglydumbbitchdotcom and @dreamingmappist (just to let you know, most of this is european and pre-1930 so if you're looking for literature from other continents this is not the list to go to. i wish i knew more about african, asian, and latin american literature, but alas - i do not.)
a portrait of the artist as a young man and dubliners: short stories of a city by james joyce
anything by fyodor dostoevsky (specifically crime and punishment, demons, notes from underground, but really anything will do and i'm not going to list his complete works on here)
the goldfinch and the secret history by donna tartt
frankenstein by mary shelley
fathers and sons by ivan turgenev
station eleven by emily st. john mandel
the death of ivan ilyich by leo tolstoy
in the first circle by aleksandr solzhenitsyn
paradise lost and paradise regained by john milton
till we have faces and that hideous strength by c.s. lewis
ninety-three and the man who laughs by victor hugo
faust, pt. 1 by goethe
the ulster cycle and an táin bó cúailnge
the a wrinkle in time quartet by madeleine l'engle
grace by paul lynch (this might be sort of an odd addition but he's one of the authors who follows in the joyce tradition and this is a beautiful book with a fascinating plot set during the great hunger so it deserves a place here)
a streetcar named desire by tennessee williams
the plough and the stars by sean o'casey
the grapes of wrath by john steinbeck
common sense by thomas paine
macbeth and henry v by william shakespeare
a room of one's own by virginia woolf
beowulf
say nothing by patrick radden keefe
one hundred years of solitude and the general in his labyrinth by gabriel garcia marquez
the underground railroad by william still
the letters of vincent van gogh
my god, there is a lot of russian literature on there. anyway, here are the books that made me think the most and hardest out of anything i've read
#cancer #autumn #professor #englishliterature
reblog this with your star sign, favourite season, and dream career in the tags.
you know what i want? a friend group in which everyone has read plato , aristotle and the secret history by donna tartt or has at least watched dead poets society and loves literature, poetry , philosophy , art and we can just talk about all these and our fear of academic failure . a friend group in which we can read classics together and talk about the deeper meaning of life and rant about how much of a failure this society is . i want to share my passion for life and writing and all the things i mentioned with someone that will be equally as excited as i am .
dark academia | xxi | ♂| INFJ-T | oct.24 — active
192 posts