i’ve just started a band called 999 megabytes
we haven’t done a gig yet
WOW THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN FUNNY EXCEPT THERE ARE 1024 MEGABYTES IN A GIG SO YOUR JOKE SHOULD SAY “i’ve just started a band called 1023 megabytes” YOU UNCULTURED SWINE
— John Rogers
(Source: kfmonkey.blogspot.com)
a somewhat tongue-in-cheek contribution to the How-To Issue Tumblr
First of all, don’t listen to anyone who tells you not to. Middlemarch “kills book clubs”? Please! Unlike some highly-regarded classics, these novels were written to be read—by all of us.
But you do need to be properly equipped.
Bring both your head and your heart: these are books that want you thinking and feeling. While you’re at it, stock up on tissues. You may, like Oscar Wilde, consider yourself too sophisticated to cry at the sentimental bits, but you never know. It might be the tenderness of Silas Marner that gets you, or maybe silly Dora in David Copperfield will surprise you into sniffles—or maybe your downfall will be Mr Harding and his old friend the Bishop in Barchester Towers. If you think you’re immune, start with A Christmas Carol: Dickens has a name for people like you.
Don’t forget your social conscience, either—and maybe your checkbook. These are books that have designs on you, though in many cases they will be aiming at reforming you as much as (or more than) they aim at reforming society, so another useful accessory might be a mirror. If, at the end of the book, you can’t face yourself in it, I bet the book was Vanity Fair.
Post-Its are your friends. That passage that made you laugh or cry—the one you want to read to your friend, or copy into your commonplace book (or your Tumblr)—will rapidly be overwhelmed by all the other passages that make you laugh or cry: don’t lose track of any of them. A pen or pencil for jotting page numbers inside the back cover is handy too. You e-book users can take advantage of all the highlighting and bookmarking features your gadget provides.
Now that you’re properly equipped, your next challenge is time! You’re going to want to read, and read, and read—but modern life sometimes makes that difficult. What’s to be done?
Take the book with you everywhere, that’s what. Bank line-ups, buses, bathrooms, those precious 8 minutes while the pasta boils — you know what to do! A few pages here, a few pages there, and next thing you know, you’re 500 pages in, with only another 200 to go.
Then there’s all the time you’ll save by not watching television. Remember: the most highly-praised shows in recent years are always compared to … Victorian novels! Some of them are straight-up based on them! Just read the originals. They are always better.
When you’re actually reading, it will help to put aside modern(ist) assumptions about what novels should and shouldn’t do, such as “show, don’t tell.” Victorian novelists show plenty, but they are absolute masters of telling. They’re also kind of chatty—they like to talk to you. Yes, you, the reader. Don’t be rude. You’ll make a lot of new friends: though some of them may seem a little intrusive, and some tend to belabor the point, while still others make pretty silly jokes, well, I bet that’s true of your real-life friends too, and unlike your real-life friends, these ones will always be there when you need some intelligent, sympathetic company.
Do you assume Victorian novels are “realistic”? I do not think that word means what you think it means. Have you heard them called “traditional” a lot? Hardly! These folks were experimenting all the time. Frame narratives, multiple points of view, time-shifting, unreliable narrators, women with mustaches, people named ‘M’Choakumchild’ or, more slyly, ‘Slope’…there’s nothing they won’t try.
Have you heard that Victorian novels are loose and baggy? Not always (try Wuthering Heights), and besides, so what? That’s only a fault if you think a good novel has to be taut and linear. There are other kinds of unity. Think themes and variations for instance: Bleak House? Housekeeping. Or fog. Middlemarch? Webs. Vanity Fair? Vanity (of course). He Knew He Was Right? Husbands and wives. And so on.
Finally, try not to let Victorian novels spoil you for anything else. Sure, the work of hip contemporary novelists with promotional billboards may seem thin and reedy once you get used to the rich symphony of the great Victorians, and you’ll be forever comparing mystery novels unfavorably to The Moonstone and muttering “but he’s just not Mr. Thornton” at the end of every romance. But as Henry James (who, frankly, would have benefited from this how-to guide) pointed out, “the house of fiction has not one window, but a million.” There are other novels well worth reading.
But if, once you get started, you never want to stop, you probably won’t have to. You think Trollope was prolific, with his 47 door-stoppers? He was a piker compared to Margaret Oliphant, who published 98. And we haven’t even talked about Bulwer-Lytton yet. Well, maybe we shouldn’t, actually. I’m trying to help you to read Victorian novels, after all, not scare you away. And to be honest, Bulwer-Lytton is a Victorian novelist I’ve never read myself. If any of you want to tell me “How to Read and Enjoy a Novel by Bulwer-Lytton,” I’ll be right over to read all about it.
Happy reading!
(Cross-posted at Novel Readings)
me doing math homework
an accurate representation of my life
Boy records interview with his future self in 1992 and has a conversation with himself in 2012
I expected to watch this and shed a nostalgic tear, instead I cried tears of laughter.
don’t blink
#aka most ballsy person EVERMission Specialist Bruce McCandless II, is seen further away from the confines and safety of his ship than any previous astronaut has ever been. This space first was made possible by the Manned Manuevering Unit or MMU, a nitrogen jet propelled backpack. After a series of test maneuvers inside and above Challenger’s payload bay, McCandless went “free-flying” to a distance of 320 feet away from the Orbiter. This stunning orbital panorama view shows McCandless out there amongst the black and blue of Earth and space.
12 February 1984
When Pokémon meets Tumblr
Check out my other Poké gifs here
Fandoms in a nutshell:
that one cat is like: wait, this is new to me, i just joined and what do i d——— FEELS
(Source: perfectcells)
this is so infinitely scary, but also so beautiful. <3
This pretty much sums up why my fear of heights is applicable to deep ocean.
When you put it that way… -shudders-
(Source: airows)
