very filled with dreams

procrastinating by working on short erotic fiction is happy if i say it is!

Once a week, she wakes up in his bed, and she collects the details of these private minutes like precious stones, tucking them away to carry with her through the next five days. “Only in New York,” he said once, “can you have a long-distance relationship with someone who lives in the same city,” and she laughed, but it’s true: it’s two hours from Wakefield to Brighton Beach, and that’s if the trains are running normally. During the week, if he doesn’t have papers to grade and she isn’t visiting clients, they meet in the Village for dinner; sometimes they splurge and go to a restaurant, but more often they buy gyros or hot dogs from a street vendor and eat them while walking, sharing anything they didn’t want to say over the phone, then finding a park to make out in like teenagers until they need to leave or risk not functioning at work the next day.

She’s taken many trains uptown with legs tightly crossed, her clit painfully swollen as she replays the paths of his hands on her waist, the cool of the breeze after his lips brushed her throat, the way her thighs clenched against his erection, before walking to her apartment, undressing, and fingering herself until she comes - usually, by this point, almost immediately, the waves of her orgasm reaching to the ends of her limbs, leaving her too exhausted even to change positions before passing out. She always sleeps deeply these nights; it almost, but not quite, makes up for the missed hours of rest.

On weekends, in his apartment, sleep isn’t a concern.

Here are the rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. They don't have to be the greatest books you've ever read, just the ones that stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.

novazembla:

isabelthespy:

1. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - Michael Chabon

2. Possession: A Romance - A. S. Byatt

3. Tender Is The Night - F. Scott Fitzgerald

4. The Golden Compass & its sequels - Philip Pullman

5. Harriet the Spy - Louise Fitzhugh (duh)

6. The Animorphs series - K. A. Applegate and various less talented ghostwriters

7. Sandman - Neil Gaiman

8. The Feast of Love - Charles Baxter

9. Meadowlands - Louise Gluck

10. Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist - too lazy to look up the authors

11. The Hanged Man - Francesca Lia Block

12. The Postman Always Rings Twice - some dude whose name I don’t remember

13. The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner

14. To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee

15. Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro

hmm. this list is pretty representative of what you might call my average reading taste, though i like to try new things a lot - romantic books that are about more than the romance, lots of brutally depressing books, & lots of YA; mix of contemporary and not-so-contemporary but, it’s true, nothing earlier than the twentieth century. also i just realized i assumed this list meant fiction, and it probably would have looked way different if i had been thinking nonfiction too, so here are some honorable mentions - the first 5 nonfiction books that come to my head as nonfiction books that will always stay with me - i would probably actually recommend each of these more strongly than i would recommend any of the ones above, partly because in my experience enjoying nonfiction tends to be less dependent on very specific personal taste, and partly because honestly, all the books that have broadened my horizons and made me think about new things and felt lifechanging even if they didn’t exactly change my life have been nonfiction:

1. The Heartless Stone: A Journey Through The World of Diamonds, Deceit, and Desire

2. Drinking: A Love Story - Carolyn Knapp

3. The Harbor Boys - Hugo Hamilton

4. Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families - Anthony Lukas

5. No Contest: The Case Against Competition - Alfie Kohn

Ooh, yes. His Dark Materials and another book by Carolyn Knapp, Appetites: Why Women Want, would definitely have been in my next ten. To my delight, I haven’t read most of your selections; I have some good reading ahead of me.

Are you (or any other awesome person reading this) familiar with Philip Pullman’s Sally Lockhart series? I saw it at St. Georges (named after the patron saint of used books for expatriates) and was intrigued. I love His Dark Materials and I love Mary Russell, and it seems like it might be a peanut-butter-in-my-chocolate, chocolate-in-my-peanut-butter kind of situation.

yes appetites is also awesome. basically carolyn knapp was amazing, RIP. i have not read the sally lockhart series, though i’ve been half-heartedly meaning to for years (as with so, so many other things).

Here are the rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. They don't have to be the greatest books you've ever read, just the ones that stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.

novazembla:

thedisgruntledgradstudent:

slagath0r:

libraryland:

twowaymonologue:

booklover:

1-1984 by George Orwell

2-The Magus by John Fowles

3-Stories by Edgar Allen Poe

4-Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

5-Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevski

6-Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin

7-One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

8-Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

9-Fellowship of The Ring by J.R.R.Tolkien

10-Amber Night by Sylvie Germain

11-Black Book by Orhan Pamuk

12-The Saint of Insipient Sanities by Elif Şafak

13-Little Prince by Antoine De Saint Exupery

14-Therese Raquin by Emile Zola

15-Baron In The Trees by Italo Calvino

sweetnonsense:

1. Tuck Everlasting (Natalie Babbitt)

2. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)

3. The Dogs of Babel (Carolyn Parkhurst)

4. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)

5. Stargirl (Jerry Spinelli)

6. Inkheart/Inkspell (Cornelia Funke)

7. Dracula (Bram Stoker)

8. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)

9. The Historian (Elizabeth Kostova)

10. The Time Traveler’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)

11. Tess of the D’Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy)

12. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)

13. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)

14. His Dark Materials (Philip Pullman)

15. The Confessions of Max Tivoli (Andrew Sean Greer)

1. A Confederacy of Dunces

2. Guns, Germs, and Steel

3. Future Shock

4. The Princess Bride

5. The Phantom Tollbooth

6. World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability

7. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe

8. A Short History of a Small Place

9. Breakfast of Champions

10. The Golden Compass

11. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

12. The Secret History

13. Horton Hears a Who

14. The Mouse That Roared

15. Where the Sidewalk Ends

1.  Haunted — Chuck Palahniuk

2.  Dawn — Elie Wiesel

3.  Animal Farm — Orwell

4.  The Screwtape Letters — C.S. Lewis

5.  The Chronicles of Narnia — C.S. Lewis

6.  Brave New World — Aldous Huxley

7.  War and Peace — Leo Tolstoy

8.  A Farewell to Arms — Hemingway

9.  The Stranger — Albert Camus

10.  Choke — Chuck Palahniuk

11.  I Am Legend — Richard Matheson

12.  A Clockwork Orange — Anthony Burgess

13.  Fahrenheit 451 — Ray Bradbury

14.  The Social Contract — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

15.  Common Sense — Thomas Paine

1.  1984

2.  The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe

3.  Farhenheit 451

4.  Catch-22

5.  Crime and Punishment

6.  Se una notte d’inverno un viaggitore

7.  Jack Frusciante e’ uscito dal gruppo

8.  The Secret Garden

9.  La ciociara

10. The Divine Comedy

11. Candide

12. Donna in Guerra

13. Sostiene Pereira

14. Hamlet

15. Brave New World

1. Lolita — Vladimir Nabokov

2. Invisible Man — Ralph Ellison

3. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell — Susanna Clarke

4. Fingersmith — Sarah Waters

5. The Basic Eight — Daniel Handler

6. Feminist Theory From Margin to Center — bell hooks

7. The Velveteen Rabbit

8. Much Ado About Nothing — William Shakespeare

9. The Phantom Tollbooth — Norton Juster

10. Einstein’s Dreams — Alan Lightman

11. Arcadia — Tom Stoppard

12. The Soul of Man Under Socialism — Oscar Wilde

13. The Real Thing — Tom Stoppard

14. Reborn — Susan Sontag (early journals)

15. M. Butterfly — David Henry Hwang

1. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - Michael Chabon

2. Possession: A Romance - A. S. Byatt

3. Tender Is The Night - F. Scott Fitzgerald

4. The Golden Compass & its sequels - Philip Pullman

5. Harriet the Spy - Louise Fitzhugh (duh)

6. The Animorphs series - K. A. Applegate and various less talented ghostwriters

7. Sandman - Neil Gaiman

8. The Feast of Love - Charles Baxter

9. Meadowlands - Louise Gluck

10. Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist - too lazy to look up the authors

11. The Hanged Man - Francesca Lia Block

12. The Postman Always Rings Twice - some dude whose name I don’t remember

13. The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner

14. To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee

15. Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro

hmm. this list is pretty representative of what you might call my average reading taste, though i like to try new things a lot - romantic books that are about more than the romance, lots of brutally depressing books, & lots of YA; mix of contemporary and not-so-contemporary but, it’s true, nothing earlier than the twentieth century. also i just realized i assumed this list meant fiction, and it probably would have looked way different if i had been thinking nonfiction too, so here are some honorable mentions - the first 5 nonfiction books that come to my head as nonfiction books that will always stay with me - i would probably actually recommend each of these more strongly than i would recommend any of the ones above, partly because in my experience enjoying nonfiction tends to be less dependent on very specific personal taste, and partly because honestly, all the books that have broadened my horizons and made me think about new things and felt lifechanging even if they didn’t exactly change my life have been nonfiction:

1. The Heartless Stone: A Journey Through The World of Diamonds, Deceit, and Desire

2. Drinking: A Love Story - Carolyn Knapp

3. The Harbor Boys - Hugo Hamilton

4. Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families - Anthony Lukas

5. No Contest: The Case Against Competition - Alfie Kohn

okay seriously about that broadsheet article though

ekswitaj:

[lots of stuff about children being loud]

See, I understand that parents can’t and probably shouldn’t always stop their children from being loud, but what happens when it’s an issue of conflicting needs? I have sensory sensitivity issues. I CAN’T turn up my music when kids are being loud on a plane because it would hurt my ears. And read a book when there’s a horrible loud unpleasant noise? Not going to happen. So if I’m stuck in a space where that’s going on for any extended period of time, I end up in physical pain (headache+) not to mention at the end of my ability to cope which just is not OK if I have further travel arrangements to make at the end. (I also know people for whom this an even greater problem.)

I realize this isn’t what the original article was talking about and that this is slightly off-topic, but I think it is something important to consider in discussions like this. Some of us really can’t just deal with it.

ah ok taking a break from my all-cheerful-all-day because: this is a very good and important point! that i… don’t have any kind of answer for! um! awkward! i really legitimately don’t know what to say about a case like this! i do feel like it’s ok, maybe, to say something polite to the parents in question mentioning your issue (some kids also, especially older ones, might feel more compelled to be quiet in this situation. but not all, and not the little baby ones). (or maybe it is always ok as long as you are nice about it?) except, i know from people in my life who has sensory sensitivity issues, wow can some people ever be HUGE ASSHOLES about pretending those don’t exist and people who have them should just get over it! but ideally that won’t happen! but what a totally inadequate response!

inadequate, there’s the word. this is something we should 100% consider and i flat-otu have no idea what to say! you can’t really have a “quiet section” on a plane like you can on a train. so, really i have nothing to contribute to this aspect of the discussion, but i wanted to to just chime in with my agreement of this being an important thing to consider in the general issue of children being noisy in public, though it is somewhat off topic to my original topic of people being assholishly judgmental because this is the exact opposite of that, which is awesome.