Emma, by Jane Austen.
You are but one and twenty, a gentleman’s daughter, but fixed on never marrying so that you may care for your hypochondriac father; this, however, does not dissuade you from the disastrous matchmaking you attempt for others, which goes wildly awry, embroiling yourself even, though you are always sensible to the distinction of rank.
4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈. @bookstodon#bookstodon#reading#books#marriage#class
@kenthompson@bookstodon
While a crowd favorite, from all of her books, this is the one I like the least. I find the idea of Emma toying with a young woman's future out of boredom and entitlement quite unappealing. I know, I know, it all ends well, but still, I can't get over that part.
In Search of Lost Time (book 1: Swann’s Way), by Marcel Proust.
You are thinking a lot about your (late 18th century) childhood, in an astounding amount of detail, where love of various kinds happens all around you, but to your recollection not satisfactorily for you, at least per your memories. @bookstodon#bookstodon#books#reading#france#madelaines
Artist compiles 1,984 copies of Orwell’s 1984 on the small island where he wrote it, commemorating 75 years of publication.
That this story is timeless tells us something about our world.
Via @guardian @bookstodon#bookstodon#books#reading#fascism
James, by Percival Everett.
You are a runaway slave, your escape attempt joined by a white child named Huckleberry, and as the Mississippi River (and various white people) try to kill you, it gets harder to keep your truth from Huck.
4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈.
Y/N, by Esther Yi.
You are a K-pop fan fixated on one band member, but you try hard NOT to meet him (as you are vaguely self-aware enough to know that would ruin everything); meanwhile everyone you meet is vaguely connected to him and vaguely tries to help or hinder your quest to either meet or not meet him.
3 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈.
Librarians in several states can now be jailed for years for making “pornography” available. Let’s be clear about intent here - it is to limit descriptions of the lives of LGBTQ people, where possible down to the level that we even exist. @bookstodon#bookstodon#lgbtq#books#censorship#libraries#librarians
Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro.
You grow up in a home for people that some consider sub-human, but your proscribed life is not that different, filled as it is with love, pettiness and acceptance, and an aching hope that there is a secret meaning to it all, if you could just figure it out.
5 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈
“The most challenged books in the United States in 2023 continued to focus on the experiences of L.G.B.T.Q. people or explore themes of race…”
Time to buy these books, and/or request your public library purchase if they don’t have them. #bookstodon#books#libraries#censorship#race#lgbtq@bookstodon
The Trial, by Franz Kafka.
You are a young man with an important bank job, but one day you are told you are accused of a generic crime, and you must navigate an opaque justice system never knowing what you are accused of, along the way discovering the many who work in or can influence the system to your benefit or detriment, but you are unable to tell if anyone is telling the truth about the system.
Warning: misogyny
3 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈
A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess.
You are a near future Beethoven-loving teen hoodlum doing some horrorshow ultraviolence on the local villagers until upstanding citizens show up with their own sort of un-personing thumbscrews to try out on yourself. Warning: extreme misogyny and violence.
4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈
Shards of Earth, by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
There is a horrible unstoppable unknowable alien force, which 50 years ago you somehow got to stop destroying worlds by doing a mind meld with their moon-sized ship, but not before it destroyed Earth and disappeared, and now factions of humans and other aliens are at each other’s throats when the superbad alien ships return.
3 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 @bookstodon#bookstodon#books#reading#scifi#spaceopera
Candide, by Voltaire.
You are an optimistic 18th century young gentleman that cheerfully endures many tragedies to himself and friends at the hands of various clerics, philosophers and monarchs.
3 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈.
Warning: antisemitism
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams.
Quite improbably, you are rescued from Earth minutes before its destruction, only to find the galaxy poorly mismanaged and under the influence of intradimensional rodents, and everyone looking for meaning where there is none, which rather gets in the way of having a good time.
4 of 5 library cats 🐁 🐁 🐁 🐁.
@RanaldClouston@kenthompson@bookstodon My daughter was given school assignment to write a song or do a poem about a book. She composed a song and digitally recorded multi-track song playing multiple instruments and singing lead & harmonies on Hitchhikers...42
The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
You are a young woman, unfortunately accused of adultery - unfortunate because you’re in a Puritan village in 1642 - and so you raise a daughter alone from the world while contending with the devilish acts of the godly.
5 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈
Long Division, by Kiese Laymon.
You are one, or maybe two, Black teens named City, living with your Grandma in Alabama, when you find a book (or maybe two) with no author, called Long Division, which when you read it is sort of about your life but not the one you thought you were living.
4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈. @bookstodon#bookstodon#reading#books#alabama