Books
Dracula Daily
*rambling coming soon* *where else do I put this lol*
Homage to Catalonia
when you go to Spain just to Kill Fascists but end up in the middle of a political mess and an anarchist revolution, by George Orwell.
It's him telling the reader what he saw and did in Catalonia, about his military service in the POUM and life in the trenches, how cool anarchist Barcellona and the militias were, and how he had to flee to save his life because the Soviet Union joined the fight.
this is the fucking George Orwell book everyone should be talking about, the part where he visits Barcellona for the first time makes me shed a tear.
(beware, as he writes multiple times: this book is only what he saw and understood, it's not objective truth. It's a small and flawed (and very interesting imho) portion of the bigger picture!)I, Robot
*rambling coming soon*
One, No One and One Hundred Thousand
Vitangelo Moscarda has an identity crisis because his wife makes him notice his crooked nose, something he never saw in the 28 years of his life. "If I wasn't for others what I thought I was for myself until now, who was I?". He realizes "Vitangelo" isn't only one person but also, well, no one and one hundred thousand ones, and he'll use this in his favor. Sounds crazy? That's because he is. He also makes perfect sense. This book is very sad-serious and hilarious! (my favourite combo)
explain it in an even worse way: everyone thinks Vitangelo Moscarda has gone fishing because he doesn't want to capitalize on poor people anymore ("I'm not like my father!!!")Slaughterhouse-Five
*rambling coming soon*
The Baron in the Trees
Young Cosimo Piovasco di Rondò has a quarrel with his father, climbs up a tree and declares he'll never get down. And so he does. He lives a long and fulfilling life travelling from branch to branch, and earns the respect of the everyone around him
The story is set in the 18th century and is narrated by his younger brother who tries to write down all of his and other people's memories of Cosimo to tell his amazing tale.
very uhh, lighthearted? ~whimsical~ ?. It's cool how he managed to live up there, how he found his own way to connect with people.
A lovely person gave me a copy so I might be very biasedThe Metamorphosis...
READ THIS ONE READITREADITREADIT
*coughs* that aside, it's one of my favourite things ever written, and definitely my favourite short story. I wish I could put into words why it is. It just resonates with medespite everything and with everything I mean Gregor wanting to kiss Grete's neck what the fuck dude that's your sisteeeeer
read this to get bitten by the Kafka bug. I'm serious, I've read about so many people who read this one and were so enamoured they had to keep going. you either get it or don't...and other stories
...1984 (I need to get this out of my system)
I had the incredible luck of reading it without knowing anything about it (living under a rock has its perks). I really liked it (I was about 16 ok)! The Ministry of Love part especially kept me glued to the pages. I see why some people might find it dull however, it's a novel by someone who was good at writing essays, if it makes any sense. I don't like to admit it, but this is the book that made start reading again :p
Please for the love of God let's stop citing this book. I think it's good but it's MASSIVELY overrated. Let's memory hole it like it's literally 1984. Take it away especially from the right.Whenever I see people using it to rant about how socialism bad I want to scream at them "this is a leftist book did you even read it". Yeah death of the author and all that, but the point was Stalin bad, not socialism bad, so don't act like Orwell agrees! It pisses me off so much because they think their ideas are automatically more important if they quote an Important Book.
It seems to me that whenever people mention this book, everyone forgets that Winston and Julia aren't ordinary citizens. It's the proles who are the laymans! The Outer Party members are a minority made of broken misanthropes who are surveilled and fed propaganda 24/7, and who also make said propaganda. The proles DON'T HAVE TELESCREENS they're considered too dumb to rebel anyways, they can enjoy some entretainment, and are the ones who stayed human, who still love and care about each other unlike the misanthropes mentioned before.
What I'm trying to say is that us, the readers, would very likely be proles in this world,alt-right fucker with a superiority complex who calls himself Winston, and that whenever telescreens or newspeak or thoughtcrime are brought up to make comparisons with the real world, a piece of the book is ignored (tbf the life of an average citizen isn't explored too deeply).
I don't know how remembering would change the conversation, and again, let's forget this book, we've talked about it too much.
let's hope the emptiness of these pages encourages me to read more......
* :p *
Comics
Johnny the Homicidal Maniac
old comic from Jhonen Vasquez, the creator of Invader Zim. Made of the best kind of edgy dark humor.
an interesting Tumblr post where Jhonen talks about the comic why did you delete your account man :( :"Johnny was never intended to be a depiction of a person suffering from any mental condition steeped in reality besides being a pompous turd. What he deals with is less fact-based mental disorder and more Lovecraftian.
Johnny was always meant to be based on a version of me that would have been one of those people you know, the ones that, sure they maybe got made fun of for being “weird” but were twisted into some disgusting, pathetic parody of the enlightened but thicker-skinned person they maybe should have become.
At the time of making those old books, I was having fun MAKING fun of a person I saw I could easily become without a decent amount of self confidence and a functional sense of humor, the dude that rants and rants about how much they hate a thing while becoming consumed by that thing, to where your identity is impressing others with how angry you are, how much smarter you are than the people you look down on and how everything would be better if you decided who lived and who died, what was right and what was wrong.
Nny, in my head, was a mix of relatable ideas thrown in with unknowable, cosmic horror. Person who gets made fun of for being different? Relatable. Person who lives out the nasty-fun wish-fulfillment of hurting everyone who hurts them? Ugly, but super relatable. interdimensional nightmare thing that uses weak-willed types for its own interdimensional nightmare thing plans? Maybe not as relatable, but cool. Filter all that through my dorky, 19 year old brain and you end up with the goofy mess JTHM turned into!
Now and then I get an angry email from someone commenting on my insensitive, wildly inaccurate portrayal of mental illness. Rather then respond to those people, I just stay quiet because those people are fucking crazy, am I right??"if you're intrested, the Director's Cut TPB has all the Johnny comics and some extra things, "Squee's Wonderful Big Giant Book of Unspeakable Horrors" (which is also nice) has the Squee spinoff and the extra comics from the original 7 issues. I still have to read the spinoff "I Feel Sick"...
I read this comic when I was way too young for it (about 12?), but I was being made fun of for being weird a lot in that period, and I think it helped me no to become like Johnny (the whole "consumed by what they hate" thing) ? Thank you Mr. Vasquez, I guess??Mafalda
*description coming soon*
Maus
*description coming soon*
Mob Psycho 100
*better description coming soon* It's a manga, but mangas are japanese comics so
Persepolis
*description coming soon*The Diary of a Teenage Girl: An Account in Words and Pictures
*better description coming soon* not only a comic, but I didn't know where to put it
For Zerocalcare's comics go here. Recommend me comics pls :(
Webcomics
Deep Dark Fears X
4 panel comics that illustrate a fear submitted by an user. I love this guy's art style!
Here were to submitFangs X
Extremely cute comics about a vampire and werewolf couple. From Sarah's Scribbles, but the artstyle is more realistic.
Homestuck X
Yes I still think it's worth reading. Just... just ignore all the drama, pretend that nothing after Act 7 and the Snapchat Epilogues ever happened. The Unofficial Homestuck Collection is the best way to do it. The Paradox Space comics are also nice.
"Homestuck is fucking trash" -every Homestuck fan ever and they're right
My three girlfriends. And yes, they smoke weed X
The infamous weed smoking girlfriends Tumblr post in comic form. Amazing shitpost
Sarah's Scribbles X
I've been reading these for a very long time, I think they're cute :)
Pathetic Geek Stories x
Essays n such
A Mathematician's Lament X
I don't remember how I stumbled upon this, but he's so right. The way we teach math in schools sucks, I retain almost nothing of it. Dull memorization is truly the worst teaching method
this is silly (and probably obvious), but this made me wonder why do multiplications like 5x3 and 3x5 give the same resoults and look, they're the same rectangle! I had never connected it to the formula for finding a rectangle's area before5x3 x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x 3x5 x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x