Eggplant.place

298d

Making Sense of Middle Earth: Exploring the World of J.R.R. Tolkien

Michael D.C. Drout Remembers the Impact of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit on His Childhood

https://lithub.com/making-sense-of-middle-earth-exploring-the-world-of-j-r-r-tolkien/

#books #literature

Photograph of J. R. R. Tolkien in the 1920s on leaving Leeds University.

Tolkien is photographed from the chest up in a three-quarter view, with his body angled slightly to the left while his face turns toward the camera.

He appears clean-shaven with a strong jawline and refined features. His hair is dark and neatly combed, parted on the side.

Tolkien wears formal professional clothing befitting an academic of the era: a dark tweed or wool jacket with a visible texture, a crisp white dress shirt with a high starched collar, and what appears to be a dark tie or cravat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien#/media/File:J._R._R._Tolkien,_ca._1925.jpg

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300d

Hey Fedi I recommend books at the end of all my blog posts but I would love to recommend some more Fedi authors. Put your DRM Free link below if you don’t have an audiobook link. I listen to audiobooks exclusively and only get DRM free Ebooks. If you have audiobooks, put them in the replies. #Author #Writer #Books @bookstodon

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316d

Tonight I’m wishing that Becky Chambers would add more books to the Monk and Robot Series. I’d love to learn more about that calm, hopeful world.

#Books #BeckyChambers #ScienceFiction #MonkAndRobot #HopePunk #SolarPunk

@bookstodon

Edited 316d ago

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299d

I’m enjoying listening to The Gentleman and his Vowsmith by Rebecca Ide, one of the new crop of murder-mystery/fantasy mixed-genre books, with a good amateur investigatory team and a slow(ish)-burn gay romance.

But I did get very immature about this line: “…with a moan that emanated straight from his groin”.

…ah, chatty little fellow, is he? 😂

#books #fantasy @bookstodon

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298d

Yeats and the Occult Imagination

Beneath his poems lay a lifelong devotion to magic, divination, and a visionary system that shaped his most prophetic work.

By: Gus Mitchell

https://daily.jstor.org/yeats-and-the-occult-imagination/

Yeats at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/1719

#books #literature #poetry

William B Yeats.

The photograph shows Yeats as a young man, likely in his twenties or early thirties, photographed from the chest up in a formal studio portrait style. He faces the camera directly with a serious, contemplative expression.

Yeats has distinctive features including dark, wavy hair swept back from his forehead. He wears small, round wire-rimmed spectacles (pince-nez style, which appear to be clipped to his nose with a cord or chain visible). His face is clean-shaven, revealing refined, angular features with a strong jawline and thoughtful expression.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/WB_Yeats_nd.jpg

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304d

Hello, I’m new to Mastodon. Here is a little bit of information about me.

#Photography #Canon R5 Mk2
 #fiction/#nonfiction #books
# fountainpens
# tea+#chocolate
# history 
#Writing #poetry/short fiction

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296d

📚 This River Awakens by: Steven Erikson

A coming-of-age tale set in a small Canadian town in which a twelve-year-old boy discovers the hard truths about life, death and love over a summer break.

In the spring of 1971, Owen Brand and his family move to the riverside town of Middlecross in a renewed attempt to escape poverty. For twelve-year-old Owen, ...

https://bookblabla.com/book/this-river-awakens

@bookstodon

#books #reading #libraries #fiction #familylife #general

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298d

50% off @ #Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1559436

Spies, aliens, trolls, wizards and a disowned prince use a time machine, but Levi Jacobs stands in their way, despite having just lost his parents in war. Will he stop them or will they kill his father at a pivotal moment, on which the fate of the galaxy hangs?

@bookstodon
#author #indieauthor #writing #fantasy #scifi #sciencefiction #sff #sciencefantasy #scifi #actionadventure #fiction #books #EOYSale25 #ebook #sale #books2read #indiebooks

(Left) The cover of The Third Wish, by Owen Tyme, illustrated by Ryan Johnson.

A wizard in a black robe that glitters with hints of gold stands on a mountain and looks down at a city of sky scrapers covered in greenery. In his shadow lurks a creature with glowing red eyes.

In the background, the sun is setting and stars are becoming visible.

(Right Background) Four images separated by black lines, with the silhouette of a woman wielding two swords laid over them. She's outlined in black and her interior is yellow clock-based imagery that spirals outward from the center.

The upper left quarter is a queen in a red, furred robe, wearing a gold and diamond crown. She has dark eyebrows and blond hair.

Upper right is a planet seen from orbit.

Lower left is a symbolic wire frame representation of the view inside a wormhole, in green and yellow.

Lower right is dandelions among grass.

The angle of the planet, one of the woman's swords, the yellow highlights of the wormhole and some of the dandelions form a line that draws the eye along a sweeping curve.

(Right Foreground) The following quote:

He admired the flawless beauty of the insane swordswoman’s fluid movements as Ida took desperate step after step, backwards!

He felt waves of mental energy pour off the panic-stricken troll, but the energy bounced right off of Nicole’s mind, as though she’d shut herself inside a solid, red-hot, steel box of rage!

(Bottom) https://books2read.com/TheThirdWish

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227d

Favorite quotes from favorite books,

"In a war the most dangerous thing is to understand the enemy. To understand is to forgive."
― Sergei Lukyanenko, Night Watch

#Fantasy #Books #quotes 📚💙 @bookstodon @bookstodon@fedigroups.social #FantasyBooks

The cover for THE NIGHT WATCH by Sergei Lukyanenko.

Black background, golden trim, splashes of blood, the tittle in white letters, a mand, whose face we can't see, holding a gun.

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185d

Islands of the Imagination

By Livia Gershon

A short history of islands as sites of political escape and reinvention, from the myth of Atlantis to modern seasteading.

https://daily.jstor.org/islands-of-the-imagination/?utm_source=mcae&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=jstordaily_04162026

Original article (from the archives):
https://www.jstor.org/stable/43876781?mag=islands-of-the-imagination

Atlantis at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/subject/1523

#books #literature #history

Terror Antiquus by L.Bakst, 1908.

The painting depicts a catastrophic flood or divine destruction of an ancient civilisation — widely interpreted as the fall of Atlantis or a mythological Mediterranean world. A goddess figure stands serenely at the centre, smiling enigmatically amid total apocalyptic chaos.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Terror_Antiquus_by_L.Bakst_(1908).jpg

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1y

How Did Guy Fawkes Influence Shakespeare?

As a royally appointed playwright, Shakespeare was deeply affected by the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, as is clear in the writing of the great tragedy Macbeth less than a year later.

https://www.thecollector.com/how-did-guy-fawkes-influence-shakespeare/

#books

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1y

In December 1891.

Thomas Hardy writes "The Son's Veto" (collected in Life's Little Ironies), which he regards as his best short story.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life%27s_Little_Ironies

Life's Little Ironies at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3047

#books #literature

First edition (publ. Osgood, McIlvaine and Co.)

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1y

#OTD in 1675.

Leibniz makes the first use of the long s (∫) as a symbol of the integral in calculus. He adapted the integral symbol, ∫, from the letter ſ (long s), standing for summa (written as ſumma; Latin for "sum" or "total").

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/7168

#books #mathematics

Christoph Bernhard Francke - Portrait of the philosopher Leibniz (ca. 1695) Christoph Bernhard Francke - Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum.

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103d

Want a quick scifi read with light romance, a lot of chosen family vibes, and a bunch of characters you'll want to read more about? Of course you do!
(Or maybe someone you know wants it.)

This 2--in-1 tale starts with a summer fling in future San Francisco that ends in a HFN, then picks up later for the HEA after more drama.

Discounted & DRM-free ebook here: https://kmherkes.com/the-bookshop1/p/weaving-in-the-ends-ebook1

Print, audio & ebooks at bookshops online & off:
https://books2read.com/WeavingInTheEnds

#books #Romance #SciFi

The book cover of Weaving In The Ends by K. M. Herkes on a paperback and phone screen, set against a sandy beach background and surrounded by scattered trope tags:
chosen family vibes
hopepunk-ish
romance!
disability rep
practical heroine
damaged hero
bonus family melodrama
mental health support
farcical fight scene finale

The book cover image shows two hands knitting a length of blue yard against a dark bluegreen background.

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297d

Victorian Illustrated Shakespeare Archive

The Victorian Illustrated Shakespeare Archive contains over 3000 illustrations from significant editions of Shakespeare's plays in the Victorian period.

by Michael John Goodman (thanks @Ross)

https://shakespeareillustration.org/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxpUqnmfcCA&t=14s

#books #literature #book_illustration

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297d

Archimedes Manuscript Yields Secrets under X-ray Gaze

For five days in May, the ancient collided with the ultra-modern at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), bringing brilliant, long-hidden ideas to light with brilliant X-ray light.

By Heather Rock Woods (from the archives)

https://www6.slac.stanford.edu/news/2005-06-16-archimedes-manuscript-yields-secrets-under-x-ray-gaze

Archimedes at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=archimedes

#books #science #xray_imaging

One page of Archimedes Palimpsest, On Floating Bodies.

It despicts an opened ancient manuscript with two facing pages. The parchment is heavily aged, displaying a mottled yellowish-brown, golden-tan coloration with significant staining, discoloration, and deterioration throughout. The edges are darkened and worn, indicating centuries of age and handling.

This is a palimpsest, meaning the parchment was recycled—the original text was partially scraped off and written over with new content. You can see layers of text at different angles and in different states of visibility, which is characteristic of such manuscripts. The underlying Archimedes text runs in one direction, while later overwritten religious texts (Byzantine prayer book) run perpendicular to it.

The pages contain dense columns of Greek text written in dark brown or black ink. On the left page, there are visible geometric diagrams—line drawings showing mathematical figures and proofs typical of Archimedes' work on geometry and physics. These diagrams include straight lines, angles, and geometric constructions that would have accompanied his mathematical reasoning about floating bodies and buoyancy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes_Palimpsest#/media/File:Archimedes_Palimpsest.jpg

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297d

Book Review: Making History by K. J. Parker
Another novella set in Parker's mainline secondary universe, about a group of academics tasked with a seemingly impossible task by a tyrant.
@princejvstin.com has our Boxing Day review
http://www.nerds-feather.com/2025/12/book-review-making-history-by-k-j-parker.html

#books #review #fantasy #bookstodon @bookstodon

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297d

A Review of A Happy Christmas Ceilidh: https://lydiaschoch.com/a-happy-christmas-ceilidh-by-zoe-tasia/

#Books #BookReview #Christmas

@bookstodon

Book cover for A Happy Christmas Ceilidh by Zoe Tasia. Image on cover is a drawing of a snowperson that’s doing a handstand outside in the snow beside some fir trees. Its stick arms are leaning down to touch the snow and its scarf is falling down onto the snow.

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283d

How a playful literary hoax illuminates Classical queerness

how-a-playful-literary-hoax-illuminates-classical-queerness

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297d

50% off @ #Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1604529

On a world long thought to have no moon, its sudden appearance inspires wonder and terror. Hasty research links it to catastrophe and the so-called ‘Harbingers of Doom’, creatures that harvest souls. Can everyone survive or will they become part of the dark harvest?

@bookstodon
#author #indieauthor #writing #fantasy #scifi #sciencefiction #sff #sciencefantasy #scifi #actionadventure #fiction #books #EOYSale25 #ebook #sale #books2read #indiebooks

(Left) The cover of dark moon, by Owen Tyme, illustrated by Ryan Johnson.

In the foreground, a redheaded witch and a dark haired wizard fight back to back, holding some rather large pistols. The witch is in a black dress and the wizard is in a black robe with golden decorations. Both looked a bit purple, due to the lighting. The witch's hair blows on the wind and she wears a necklace of bone beads.

Behind them, there's dust, mist and fog lit by twilight as a moon rises, framing their heads. Objects that look like shooting stars fall from the moon and there's a few visible impacts.

(Right) A white moon, on a background of the stars of space, with the following quote over the top of it:

“Idiot! You’ve likely killed us both, leaving us stuck out in the open like this.”

“We’ve got incoming. I know you’re angry and I suppose you’ve got every right to be, but we need to defend ourselves.”

“ ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’, for now, and then we decide what to do about the conflict between us.”

(Bottom) https://books2read.com/TymeDarkMoon

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283d

Kafka Inc.

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297d

How Colette Was Inspired By Her Many Cats

Susannah Fullerton on the French Writer’s Feline Muses

https://lithub.com/how-colette-was-inspired-by-her-many-cats/

Books by Colette at PG:

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/2065

#books #literature #animals

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1y

#OTD in 1938.

Orson Welles broadcasts a radio adaptation of H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, causing a massive panic in some of the audience in the United States.

The War of the Worlds at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/36

#books #literature

Photo of Orson Welles meeting with reporters in an effort to explain that no one connected with the War of the Worlds radio broadcast had any idea the show would cause panic.

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Cover page of The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells. Martians discharging Heat-Rays in the Thames Valley. Illustration by Henrique Alvim Corrêa.

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297d

📚 Learn A Lot While You Sit On The Pot by: Jack. Haynes

On average, humans will spend 92 days sitting on the toilet over their lifetime. To put this in perspective, that's about one-third of a year in the bathroom relieving yourself. That's where LEARN A LOT WHILE YOU SIT ON THE POT comes in. Since the average time spent on t...

https://bookblabla.com/book/learn-a-lot-while-you-sit-on-the-pot

@bookstodon

#books #reading #libraries #humor #form #triviareference #trivia