The erotic poems of Bilitis
A lush translation of this late-discovered lesbian poet added to the legacy of Sappho, but there was a trickster at work
by Cat Lambert
https://aeon.co/essays/how-a-playful-literary-hoax-illuminates-classical-queerness
Les Chansons de Bilitis at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4708
50% off @ #Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1657116
After experiencing the death of his wife and child, destruction of his home world, an addiction forced on him by the one responsible and a third of the galaxy falling under the heel of that tyrant, Levi Jacobs, a wizard, seeks to unravel the secrets of time and fate.
@bookstodon
#author #indieauthor #writing #fantasy #scifi #sciencefiction #sff #sciencefantasy #scifi #actionadventure #fiction #books #EOYSale25 #ebook #sale #books2read #indiebooks
Leave the Internet Archive alone!
Except for book publishers, the Internet Archive has done no one any harm. But that hasn't stopped hackers from beating up on the site over and over again.
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3593110/leave-the-internet-archive-alone.html
"[...] people always live for ever when there is any annuity to be paid them."
#OTD in 1811.
Jane Austen publishes her first novel: Sense and Sensibility at her own expense in 3 volumes, priced at 15 s., in Thomas Egerton's Military Library.
In November 1868.
Robert Browning's narrative poem The Ring and the Book begins four-part publication by Smith, Elder & Co. in London. It is a major commercial and critical success.
O come, let all 4,850 of us adore him
In 1925 the Associated Glee Clubs of America put on a concert like no other. 15 choral groups, with over 850 singers in all, came together in New York's Metropolitan Opera House to sing a program broadcast on radio across America.
By John Mark Ockerbloom
https://everybodyslibraries.com/2025/12/25/o-come-let-all-4850-of-us-adore-him/
About Adeste Fideles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_Come,_All_Ye_Faithful
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/
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
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
A Review of A Happy Christmas Ceilidh: https://lydiaschoch.com/a-happy-christmas-ceilidh-by-zoe-tasia/
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
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:
#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
📚 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
#books #reading #libraries #humor #form #triviareference #trivia
Becoming Beatrice
Dante adored her so much that he cast her as his guide in the Divine Comedy. But who was Beatrice Portinari?
By: Emily Zarevich
https://daily.jstor.org/becoming-beatrice/
Divine Comedy at PG
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1004
Not just a meme, but a masterpiece – why the Mona Lisa earns its exalted place in art
Ceaselessly flocked by tourists at the Louvre Museum in Paris, Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (1503-17) is perhaps the world’s most recognisable work of art.
by James Payne
Monsa Lisa at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/subject/25659
In the public domain soon, in libraries now
The Penn Libraries, where I work, has first editions of many of the works featured in my #PublicDomainDayCountdown . From today through Public Domain Day, the Libraries social media will feature photos of some distinctive books from 1930.
By John Mark Ockerbloom
https://everybodyslibraries.com/2025/12/26/in-the-public-domain-soon-in-libraries-now/
#OTD in 1850.
Charles Dickens's novel David Copperfield concludes serial publication and on November 14 appears complete in book form from Bradbury and Evans in London.
The 29 Best (Old) Books We Read in 2025
https://lithub.com/the-29-best-old-books-we-read-in-2025/
"Wuthering Heights" at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=Wuthering+Heights
"The Country of the Pointed Firs" at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=The+country+of+the+pointed+firs
This week's #NewBooks at the library (the last one for 2025!): Three second-hand copies of Atlas of the Galilean Satellites from Cambridge University Press; the absolutely massive Fire and Mud: Eruptions and Lahars of Mount Pinatubo, Philippines from the University of Washington Press; and #CharlesDarwin, Geologist from Cornell University Press which I might well review sometime soon in the new year in light of an upcoming Darwin biography...
#Books #Scicomm #Bookstodon #Astronomy #Cosmology #Volcanoes #Volcanology #Geology #EarthSciences #HistoryOfScience #ScienceHistory #HistSci @bookstodon
📚 My Roommate from Hell by: Cale Dietrich
Owen is not going to college to have fun. Nothing is going to stop him from achieving his goals: study hard, get a good job, and set himself up for the rest of his life. The last thing he needs is to have a loud, obnoxious, and infuriatingly hot roommate. Especially since said roommate just so happens to be the prince of...
#OTD in 1895
Thomas Hardy's last completed novel, Jude the Obscure is published by Osgood, McIlvaine, and Co. in London, dated 1896, on completion of an expurgated serialization under the title Hearts Insurgent in Harper's Magazine.
📚 Thinner by: Stephen King, Richard Bachman
Attorney Billy Halleck seriously enjoys living his life of upper-class excess. He’s got it all an expensive home in Connecticut, a loving family…and fifty extra pounds that his doctor repeatedly warns will be the death of him. Then, in a moment of carelessness, Halleck commits vehicular mansl...
https://bookblabla.com/book/thinner
#books #reading #libraries #fiction #horror #generalfiction #thrillers #general
![Attorney Billy Halleck seriously enjoys living his life of upper-class excess. He’s got it all an expensive home in Connecticut, a loving family…and fifty extra pounds that his doctor repeatedly warns will be the death of him. Then, in a moment of carelessness, Halleck commits vehicular manslaughter when he strikes a jaywalking old woman crossing the street. But Halleck has some powerful local connections and gets off with a slap on the wrist much to the fury of the woman’s mysterious and ancient father, who exacts revenge with a single word: "Thinner".
Now a terrified Halleck finds the weight once so difficult to shed dropping effortlessly and rapidly by the week. Soon there will be nothing left of Billy Halleck…unless he can somehow locate the source of his living nightmare and reverse what’s happened to him before he utterly wastes away.
This superbly crafted…extraordinary (Booklist) #1 New York Times bestseller from Stephen King, writing as Richard Bachman, “pulsates with evil…[and] will have you on the edge of your seat” (Publishers Weekly).](/proxy/post_attachment/944633/12888e9e8b.jpg "Attorney Billy Halleck seriously enjoys living his life of upper-class excess. He’s got it all an expensive home in Connecticut, a loving family…and fifty extra pounds that his doctor repeatedly warns will be the death of him. Then, in a moment of carelessness, Halleck commits vehicular manslaughter when he strikes a jaywalking old woman crossing the street. But Halleck has some powerful local connections and gets off with a slap on the wrist much to the fury of the woman’s mysterious and ancient father, who exacts revenge with a single word: \"Thinner\".
Now a terrified Halleck finds the weight once so difficult to shed dropping effortlessly and rapidly by the week. Soon there will be nothing left of Billy Halleck…unless he can somehow locate the source of his living nightmare and reverse what’s happened to him before he utterly wastes away.
This superbly crafted…extraordinary (Booklist) #1 New York Times bestseller from Stephen King, writing as Richard Bachman, “pulsates with evil…[and] will have you on the edge of your seat” (Publishers Weekly).")