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beingjellybeans · 8 months

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Author Andrew Jalbuena Pasaporte to hold book signing event at the Manila International Book Fair 2023

The stage is set for the Manila International Book Fair (MIBF) to return to the SMX Convention Center in Pasay from September 14 to 17, 2023. In the heart of the literary world, MIBF serves as a vibrant gathering point for book enthusiasts, authors, and publishers to revel in the enchantment of literature. Rising Star: Andrew Jalbuena Pasaporte As the countdown to MIBF 2023 begins, the…

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smchr-nina · 11 months

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When the best fandom reunites to celebrate a non-official holiday based on a revolution mentioned in a 200-year-old novel

#barricade day #classic literature #les miserables #les mis #victor hugo #enjoltaire #enjolras #les amis de l'abc #happy barricade day #i love this yearly event with all my heart #btw ik the revolution was real

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thermodynamic-comedian · 1 year

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actually i love it when the characters are all lying. i love it when they all have secrets and none of them trust each other. i love being given clues that solve puzzles i haven't even been presented with yet. i also love it when i get chills watching a scene without even knowing what it means, and when i do know what it means, i get even more chills. i love theorizing and thinking and solving and coming up with possibilities of where a story might be going. i love it and i will do it for free, for fun, for no real reason.

this is a mystery appreciation post!! if you appreciate mysteries and secrets and stories that slowly unravel before you, please interact!!!

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sixty-silver-wishes · 3 months

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not to brag but I think my personal library has enough information in it to take down count olaf under highly specific circumstances

#a series of unfortunate events #asoue #it’s mostly books about music history and classic literature #but hey. you never know

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francisfuckingabernathy · 8 months

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Francis Abernathy logic: Assist in the murder of your friend. Freak out. Smoke cigarettes. Make some tea. Try to make a move on the hot new guy. Proceed to sleep with drunk mess of an incestuous twin.

#in that order #obviously a very rational course of events #francis abernathy #richard papen #donna tartt #dark academia #the secret history #tsh #books #literature #henry winter #bunny corcoran #i love the stupidity of this guy

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whetstonefires · 1 year

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oh hang on so Oliver Twist as a book is largely about child labor, right.

like the commonality between the workhouse, the abusive apprenticeship, and the pickpocket gang is that Oliver is being exploited. for his labor. and Fagin's gang while crossing the line into illegality and therefore in some ways the most dangerous is also the most pleasant of the three.

and ofc which i have underconsidered until now, child labor was fully legal at the time and a major political issue--the 1833 Factory Act had only just recently outlawed employing under-nines on the factory floor, or working 9-13 year olds more than 9 hours a day, and 13-18 year olds more than 12.

it was a struggle to enforce and it was controversial.

so. Fagin's gang replicates that factory owner-child laborer relationship on a tiny, illicit scale, where the kids are taking all the risks and doing all the work and he's getting most of the profit, and it's not fair, but oh he's giving them food and a place to sleep and wouldn't they be worse off without him? (they would is the thing. but does that make it okay?)

with the goal of this being that next time Dickens' milquetoast middle-class readers encountered an argument for the benevolence of a guy employing child labor to maximize his profits they might go, hey! that's not true, he's just like that crook Fagin!

but of course this kind of political messaging works best when it can't be too readily clocked as such--if Fagin was obviously a stand-in for a respectable capitalist, a lot more of the readers would be comfortable excusing him.

which is why he's Jewish, and why the text belabors that point so obsessively--antisemitism is being used as a lever to discourage the public from identifying with Child Labor Exploiting Guy and to characterize his desire to accumulate wealth at the expense of others as greedy, selfish, and illegitimate.

i could never quite figure what the point of using that stock character in that context and so emphatically was. especially after learning that, having had it extensively explained that it was harmful to actual Jewish people to go so hard on this in such a popular novel, Dickens was like 'oh my bad' and walked it back a bit.

because in that case the antisemitism obviously wasn't an end in itself? but if it was incidental flavor, why so much?

but as a screen for his political agenda, it makes sense. using judaism to code an antagonist's profit motive as illegitimate had a long literary history already, but in this case Fagin was already manifestly a criminal so it was like. why.

anyway this isn't about justifying charles dickens' artistic choices that even he somewhat regretted. it's a bit about how easy it can be to fail to put together context even when you have all the pieces, especially at a remove from our own lived experience.

and a bit more about how the tools we use for political ends should be carefully inspected. no matter how ordinary and unremarkable they seem when we pick them up. because we might be missing different historical context due to being embedded in it.

#hoc est meum #antisemitism #writing #charles dickens #oliver twist #child labor #factory act of 1833 a watershed event in labor history #i did not really consider how much in 1837 Normal People #did not necessarily think that child labor was bad #so i failed to recognize propaganda to that end lol #seinfeld is unfunny etc #fagin #the alienated minority #literature

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in-sufficientdata · 8 months

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A bilingual book about the Māori creation story has won the highest accolade in children's literature.

Te Wehenga: The Separation of Ranginui and Papatūānuku by Motueka writer Mat Tait (Ngāti Apa ki te rātō) won the Margaret Mahy Book of the Year Award at New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults held at Wellington's Pipitea Marae.

Te Wehenga simultaneously tells the Māori creation pūrākau, which explains the beginning of the world, in te reo Māori and English.

#language #english #maori #māori #aotearoa #new zealand #news #current events #books #reading #kids #children #children's literature #articles #rnz

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booksbyadesi · 11 months

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I never thought I would be the person that would ever walk away but as Mahmoud Darwish said:

"You will meet a person who will make you regret your kindness"...

#mahmoud darwish #bookblr #books and literature #desiblr #love #writing #poetry #poem #arabic poems #literature #pillow thoughts #arabic #nizar qabbani #walking away #canon event #bookstagram #books #short poetry #feelings

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doki-doki-lesbians-club · 7 months

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Being totally honest, I don't understand how you couldn't be a Monika Apologist. Like, did you actually play the whole thing? The whole ending? Did you really truly understand what happened?

#doki doki lesbians club #ddlc #doki doki literature club #ddlc monika #monika ddlc #this blog is a monika apologist and proud of it #actually i dont think ive ever interacted with a DDLC fan that just genuinely didnt forgive monika for the events of the game #we just want all four of them to be happy

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somegrumpynerd · 11 days

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What kinda style do you think Nightmare would paint in? Like do you think he'd have something more classical? Maybe realism? old timey stuff? Or impressionism maybe, I feel like he'd enjoy painting outside

I wanna hear your thoughts on this!

Hm yes yes, I definitely have thoughts about this (<- failed their art exam and very quickly googled painting styles lol)

If I'm understanding what I've read right, I think he'd be into realism or impressionism, I can see him spending ages on lots of little details in a picture. I could definitely see him painting outside though! It's easier to just set up in a secluded area than get anyone to look normal while the king of negativity stares at them for a few hours lol

It kind of goes hand in hand with the idea that he documents aus as a hobby as well I guess, like maybe he tries to paint little scenes of certain aus that stick out to him or just to keep as reference in case anything happens to them. Maybe Horror has a little painting in his room of his snowdin to help when he gets homesick?

He definitely doesn't have several paintings hidden in a closet somewhere of his own au before the incident, with a big tall apple-filled tree and a little yellow flag around the trunk and two yellow and purple dots nearby that are probably just a mistake didn't mean to add those don't read into that

Also not that I read your tags on that post but imagine him trying to do a family portrait. First problem is none of them will sit still. Okay that's a lie Cross probably would stand completely still for hours he has royal guard training, but the others are definitely not. I give it 10 minutes at most before Killer's annoying Dust into trying to kill him, Horror probably forgets what they're doing after an hour and starts walking off and has to be called back. At the end of it all he miraculously has a painting but immediately gets hit with "hey wait this is just us!! why aren't you in it? D:" as if he was supposed to go stand behind them and paint himself somehow??

About a week after he hangs it up, he finds somebody has drawn a little cartoonish version of him and taped it onto the painting like he was in it too and he pretends it doesn't make him as happy as it does.

#UTDR #UTMV #Ask #Pigeonstab #Sorry if this makes no sense I'm a fake art fan I don't know all the painters #But I think he does landscapes and maybe dramatic scenes #Like maybe he does illustrations of important events from aus for documentation purposes #Also after a truce do you think he would ask Ink about how Cross's au looked so he could try and paint him a picture of it?#Whether he gets it right or not Cross WILL cry #I also hc that he steals nice art and books from aus they're terrorising #Like a dragon but his hoard is all art and literature #It also makes it harder to tell which things he actually painted/ wrote in the castle

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thermodynamic-comedian · 2 years

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genuinely cannot believe there's ppl out there that don't think the snicketverse is amazing and cool,,,

like sorry you don't think teaching kids stuff like "weird people can be awesome and cool", "good people can make mistakes", "adults can be wrong", "people can be romantically in love with people of the same gender, and that's completely normal", "some people are neither male nor female, and gender doesn't matter half as much as you think it does", "bad and good people alike can take a turn for the better or the worse"

and tackling subjects like morality, ends vs. means ('it's a wicked thing to do, for a noble cause'), the importance of seeking out knowledge, the affect trauma can have on a person, not judging a book by its cover, etc.

AND all of that while still being a comedic, educational, interesting and strange in the loveliest of ways fictional universe filled with stories begging to be told????

so yeah im sorry if you just dont find all of that awesome and cool?? lmao??

#sorry. i love this silly little universe #you will tear it away from my cold dead hands ok #asoue #a series of unfortunate events #atwq #all the wrong questions #snicketverse #lemony snicket #daniel handler #literature #books

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cokekkaine · 8 months

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these two have consumed my brain i cannot stand them

pose is by mellon_soup on tiktok !

#ddlc #doki doki literature club #monika #sayori #ddlc monika #ddlc sayori #sayonika #in my dream world the canon events of ddlc never happened #they are happily married #cokekkaine

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sixty-silver-wishes · 7 months

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The Repugnant Retrospective: Reading A Series of Unfortunate Events, over ten years later

(Note: For the sake of clarity, "Daniel Handler" will here be used to refer to the author of the books, while "Lemony Snicket" will be used to refer to the narrator character.)

I must have been in fourth or fifth grade the first time I picked up The Bad Beginning, the first book in A Series of Unfortunate Events, which contains thirteen books in all. In those days, I was a big fan of Guardians of Ga'Hoole and Percy Jackson, and read voraciously- to the delight of some of my teachers, and to the chagrin of others, who would prefer I not be reading a book for my own amusement during a lesson on mathematics. All thirteen books were in the school library, which I still look back on with fondness. It was a cozy little place- as libraries often are- that left me with plenty of memories, from going with my friends to the annual Scholastic book fair, to the unshakeable guilt of having to purchase a book on prehistoric animals because I'd checked it out and lost it, only to find it at home after the fact. I think I began reading A Series of Unfortunate Events after I finished the Ga'Hoole series, and although it was nothing like anything I had read before, I was hooked.

The phrase on paper here refers to an explanation of the basic concept of something, as opposed to experiencing it in practice. To witness an idea on paper does not necessarily mean it must be written on paper, as it could be written on the internet, or tapped out in Morse code, or spray-painted on the back of an unsuspecting associate while he waits in an abandoned bounce house for a secret message via carrier pigeon. However, it is true that reading an idea on paper may produce a very different effect than reading it in practice, whether or not paper is involved at all.

On paper, A Series of Unfortunate Events is about three children experiencing miserable things, over and over again, and ultimately culminates in an ending that is left ambiguous- a word which here means that the fates of the main characters are left unclear. When I first read them, I was used to stories involving magic, and enormous battles, and falling in love, mostly clear lines between good and evil, and an ending where there are no more secrets, because everything gets resolved. None of these things are bad to have in a story, of course, but a story does not need to have all- or any- of them to be good. Such is the case with A Series of Unfortunate Events. On paper, the series may not have appealed to me, due to the things I was used to reading at that age. But in practice, I couldn't put them down. I can remember feeling a sense of pride at figuring out the mysteries and understanding the literary references I could glean at my tender age. I can remember laughing uproariously at some parts (especially the Volunteers Fighting Disease song and the antics of Carmelita Spats), as well as feeling a dreadful pit grow in my stomach at others- which, of course, is a feeling that is typically better avoided than not. A pit in your stomach, after all, may mean you have uncovered a devastating secret, or had your heart broken, or have a nasty parasite gnawing at the lining of your digestive organs, and will need to see a doctor to extract it and seal the pit back up. Or, as was my case, it may mean an honest exploration of a truth about the world that you, at your young age, had some idea about, but had been sheltered from, and were finally seeing it laid out in a way that was simple and profound and shattering and enlightening all at once.

All that being said, I couldn't stop reading them, despite the warnings not to read them on the back of every book. The only one I didn't finish was The End, because I had to return it to the library before I could reach the end of The End, although this was not the end of my experiences with A Series of Unfortunate Events, and just a few days ago, I had reached the beginning of The End once again, and finally read The End from beginning to end. As the years went by, I completely forgot some parts of A Series of Unfortunate Events, and others refused to leave my mind. But while I would not experience another word of an Unfortunate Events book for over ten years, A Series of Unfortunate Events was constantly following me in some way or another, like three mysterious initials, or an unblinking pair of eyes in the night, or a particularly pesky neighbor I have had to move across the sea three times to get away from, but still keeps sending me telegrams in code. I was not done with the series, nor was it done with me.

When I was in middle school, through a completely different set of events altogether that would take another long post to chronicle, I decided I wanted to be a writer. I took to keeping notebooks where I wrote down my own stories, and even managed to finish a few. By the time I reached college, I was equipped with a love of history and classic literature, and majored in Creative Writing. I continued to read, and took a course on Arthurian literature- taught by a brilliant scholar whose work, I would find out a few years later, is cited on the Unfortunate Events Wikipedia page. (I also took a miserable course on English grammar that would have made even Aunt Josephine weep, and is better not elaborated on.) But also while in college, I began intensively researching a certain historical figure whose name you may already know. Like the fictional Snicket, I was researching someone whose life was full of mysteries, many of which have still gone unsolved. This person, like all people, made a number of morally ambiguous decisions, although whether or not some of these decisions were made for good reason is up for debate. One could even say that his life could also be summarized as "a series of unfortunate events," despite how prodigious, erudite, and altruistic he was- words which here mean the Soviet composer and pianist Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich- whose work, I would later learn, Daniel Handler listened to while writing A Series of Unfortunate Events. I became acquainted with, among other authors, the works of Nikolai Gogol, Franz Kafka, Kurt Vonnegut, and J.D. Salinger- whose writing styles echo in both Handler's work and my own. And of course, while I did not pick up on the reference in the books and forgot about it entirely, last year, I had been introduced to a little German flick called The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which of course, had absolutely no impact on me whatsoever. (If you know anything about me, you will immediately be aware that this is a blatant lie, and that nothing I say should ever be trusted.) I began working at a store that sells Puttanesca sauce and a great variety of horseradish condiments. And all the while, I, like everyone else in the world, was experiencing my own series of unfortunate events, both personal and political.

All that is to say, if I enjoyed A Series of Unfortunate Events as a young child, you can imagine what I thought of it as an adult- older, wiser, and more well-versed in things like classic literature and world politics. Most nights, I listened to the books on audio while drawing- because just as Violet needs to tie her hair up in a ribbon and Klaus needs to polish his glasses to focus on their areas of expertise, I must have something long and often thought-provoking to listen to. As I said, there was a lot I didn't remember about the books- and it wasn't just plot details and characters.

For instance, while I can’t say I remembered it the first time, when I read the first book, it really left an impression on me when Count Olaf slapped Klaus across the face, and how much the book dwelt on it. From a narrative perspective, that slap was a threshold being crossed- a sign that the Baudelaires were no longer in a safe and predictable environment, and were living with someone actively hostile towards them. But from an emotional perspective, it really struck a chord to see Klaus continue to think about it throughout the first book, processing his first encounter with abuse. There was a bittersweetness to watching the orphans grow up and learn self-reliance, and the cynicism and misfortune of the books was well-balanced with witty humor, satirical commentary, and a constant sense of hope- something, of course, that I also appreciate about Shostakovich's works.

A Series of Unfortunate Events has a great deal to say about evil, and the nature of oppression. As a kid, I don't think I realized just how awful Count Olaf was. Of course, I knew he was a terrible villain trying to make these kids miserable in any way he could, but as an adult, I could see that Count Olaf was more than that. He harassed Violet in a borderline sexual manner, just to make her and her siblings feel weak. He delighted in burning books and murdering brilliant people, so there would be less knowledge and nobility in the world. And perhaps most impactfully, we see his rise and fall over the course of the series, as for all his treachery and the pain he brings the orphans, he ultimately finds himself powerless due to his own actions, as well as the inevitable dissolution of his own troupe.

Seeing Olaf's theatre troupe gradually leave him one by one, along with the various schisms that shape the series, brought a distinctly political understanding to A Series of Unfortunate Events that I did not have as a child. It brought to mind real-life tools of oppression and ignorance, and how they are doomed to fail because of their tendencies to devour themselves in their desire to harm and ostracize others. There's an interesting situation with the carnival "freaks," who demonstrate how the oppressed can become oppressors themselves through a desire for power over their situations- and how quickly oppression turns on itself, as Olaf's troupe finds themselves being called "freaks" as they seek to exploit the carnival freaks for their own gain. The audience just wants violence, and it doesn't matter who it's against, as long as they have someone to ridicule. We also see how inaction is just as harmful as active oppression- Mr. Poe is just as responsible for putting the Baudelaires in bad situations as Olaf, and even well-meaning adults like Aunt Josephine, Hector, and Jerome Squalor endanger the orphans because they're too scared or too content in their ignorance to protect them. The colony of islanders put themselves and the entire world at risk because they refuse the apples that would have easily cured them of the fungus they were infected with, too content to follow their leader instead of "rocking the boat." With all the ignorance and malice surrounding them, the orphans instead must learn self-reliance, even with the few allies they do have.

A Series of Unfortunate Events is especially mature when it handles the topic of morality. Characters are often shown to be morally gray, even those who are initially introduced as "good" or "evil." I found Fiona to be an especially fascinating character, as she exemplifies this moral struggle, although I feel the way she's described in the narration unfairly contradicts her character. On one hand, it acknowledges that she makes similar decisions to the Baudelaires as a foil to them- both have had to make morally dubious decisions on account of their siblings- but the narration will repeatedly refer to her as "treacherous" or blame her for "breaking Klaus' heart," although we find out she regretted her actions and, if anything, betrayed Count Olaf more than she did the Baudelaires. But regarding gray areas, Count Olaf, by the end, performs an act of nobility out of love, and the Baudelaires are constantly shown coming to terms with their own moral struggles as they fight to survive and find justice- although as the series progresses, "justice" becomes more and more of an absurd concept as corruption is found everywhere- although justice still persists, and as long as there is evil in the world, there will always be people "noble enough" to fight it. It was especially gratifying to see Justice Strauss and Jerome Squalor come back in book 12 to apologize for their inaction, and to help the Baudelaires against Count Olaf, in a moment that, however brief, challenged the previously-established cynicism of the series and demonstrated that people don't have to stay complacent, and that it's never too late to take action against ignorance.

Handler masterfully presents the plethora of philosophical and harrowing concepts that the series deals with to his young audience through his storytelling, which- like Salinger- sometimes distances itself tangentially to allow the audience to process the heavier moments, relating the Baudelaires' experiences to things the readers may have experienced or read in order to help them understand them. It's an incredibly adult way of delivering a children's story, particularly one that's more mature than most. As I first read the books as a child, and then read them as an adult, I can appreciate this maturity more, although being older than the characters allows me to look at the books from a different perspective. Violet and Klaus, from the beginning to the end of the series, are respectively 14-16 and 12-14, and while as a kid, I admired them and thought they were so brilliant and mature, as an adult, there's a sort of horror in realizing just how young they are. Sunny goes from being an infant to a toddler, but her extreme intelligence and emotional maturity for her age still makes her character more fantastical and less grounded than her siblings at times.

I found the series to hold up remarkably well for the most part, except for in a few areas. The most glaring issue, although I won't dwell too much on it, is the transphobia regarding the "henchperson of indeterminate gender." While, to my understanding, this is remedied in the Netflix series (which I have not seen), it was still uncomfortable to see this character frequently dehumanized by both the story and the other characters, even if they played a relatively minor role. At times, it felt contradictory to the story's themes, as the narrative would explicitly discourage discrimination against people who are "different" (book six even defines the word "xenophobia"), but also portrays an androgynous character as inhuman. It's entirely possible that Handler was not aware of trans issues at the time he wrote the books, but this element nonetheless prevents them from aging as well as they could have.

The other issue I had with the series is that sometimes, plot elements almost seem forced within the narrative. While the orphans, of course, face plenty of misfortune, the solutions to many of their problems are often practically handed to them by the narrative. For example, when Klaus and Sunny need to figure out an anagram, they just so happen to be hiding in a closet full of alphabet soup, which they conveniently use to solve it. The wasabi that Sunny finds in the Gorgonian Grotto just so happens to be the cure to the medusoid mycelium, and it works instantly. Klaus, in an especially infuriating moment, cracks a code with an elaborately-worded phrase summarizing the central theme of Anna Karenina, and the specific words that he uses just so happen to be correct, despite the fact that there are countless ways the same idea could potentially be phrased. While the orphans all have their own specific interests- Klaus likes to read, Violet likes to invent, and Sunny likes to bite things, and later cook- they can seem underdeveloped at times because they're so heavily characterized by these interests, which they very frequently rely on. There's a moment in book four where Violet has to research hypnosis in order to save Klaus, and I really liked the idea of them having to take on each other's interests to help each other. However, for the most part, the Baudelaires tend to stick to their specific strengths, which usually allow them to solve any problem, so they don't often need to branch out.

Overall, despite its few faults, I enjoyed A Series of Unfortunate Events, probably even more now than I did when I was a kid. Each book was beautifully written, and I loved the slow reveal of plot elements, as well as the gradual descent into its philosophical themes. Being more well-read and experienced at my age than I was at nine or ten, I was able to appreciate the books far more. The humor, storytelling, and themes still largely hold up, and it was fascinating to return to a piece of media that left such a strong impression on me at a young age, and would continue to leave an impression on me the older I got. I would definitely encourage anyone to read them, especially if, like me, you also read them as a child. Perhaps you may not want to read such a long tale of misery and woe being inflicted time and again on three (mostly) innocent children, and as Ishmael would say, I won't force you to. These books, while written for a young audience, can be very emotionally heavy, and may not be for everyone. But there's a lot of truth to them, and like the most miserable late quartets of Dmitri Shostakovich, I found them a great comfort because of just how real they are thematically. Perhaps later on in life, I'll encounter even more experiences that will make me appreciate the series even more than I do now, just as I did growing up long after I first read them. Maybe then, I'll have to read them again, and as I'll watch the Baudelaires grow for the third time, reflect on how much I've grown as well. But for the time being, I'll conclude this retrospective, which has already dragged on for long enough, as I've finally reached the end- at least for now.

#a series of unfortunate events #asoue #long post #analysis #literature #book analysis #retrospective

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