Sleepy Cat Books in Berkeley, California
The DC Harley Quinn cartoon’s got lit jokes
If you don’t know, now you know.
(Also, no shade to Infinite Jest. It didn’t do anything wrong.)
We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.
—Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
“Why did they make me read this in high school?”
If you’ve ever wondered why some books get put on higher pedestals than others for seemingly no reason other than the fact that your teachers and professors told you they were important, crack an egg of knowledge on yourself with this video from PBS’s “It’s Lit!” series.
TL;DW: “So, who decided what’s important in the Western literary canon? Well, historically it’s been … old white men.
… But our day-to-day lives and our understanding of people outside of our own limited worldview has changed, and with that, so too have the types of voices that now get published and elevated.”
This is one of many great videos from the PBS “It’s Lit!” series on YouTube. They’re hosted by of one my favorite YouTubers, Lindsay Ellis, who also has a ton of killer content on her personal channel about film, television, books, and musicals.
Bookmark style: Which one are you?
I’m mostly chaotic good. Sometimes true neutral. Can’t say I’ve ever met a lawful evil (and idk if I want to?)
The Beauty and the Beast library
Probably my favorite of the Disney Princess classics, 1991’s Beauty and the Beast features a gorgeous castle library and a bookworm heroine. What’s not to love?
I know I wasn’t the only kid whose mind was blown every time they saw the animated library revealed in sweeping angles when the Beast gifts it to Belle. I couldn’t imagine ever having enough time to read all those books, and definitely thought, “But how do you even reach the ones on the high shelves?” If the Beast had been cooped up there all those years, at least he had no shortage of stories to read.
While a lot of libraries were probably used as inspiration, some point out the similarities between the library in the Disney film and that of Admont Abbey’s in Austria. It’s the world’s largest monastery library and is home to 70,000 books. (Also, you might recognize the ceiling artwork as being similar to the ballroom’s in the film’s “Tale As Old As Time” scene.)
Belle spoke for us all when she said, “I’ve never seen so many books in all my life!”
The B&tB library is clearly well-loved: In my google-searching, I came across this insane LEGO set custom-created out of 25,000 pieces by flickr user Sarah von Innerebner:
Okay, I’m off to go dream about having a reading room even one-tenth the size of this one in my home someday. In the meantime, we can make like pre-castle Belle and hit up our (eventually reopening) local libes.
I think it’s very pretty.
Can it be pretty if no one thinks it’s pretty?
I think it’s pretty.
If you’re the only one?
That’s pretty pretty.
And what about the boys? Don’t you want them to think you’re pretty?
I wouldn’t want a boy to think I was pretty unless he was the kind of boy who thought I was pretty.
—Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated
Obvi this tweet made me lol, but it also made me think: Why did the Hogwarts founders think it was best to separate the students by personality type?
Didn’t they ever hear of “opposites attract,” or considered, as evidenced by their very founding of a school together, that people need to learn to get along with all types of people in life?
To be fair, the kids do get to interact with students in houses other than their own—in classes when competing over house points or when trying to whack bludgers at each other on the Quidditch pitch.
No wonder Dumbledore’s Army was a success: the Hufflepuffs, Gryffs, and Ravenclaws just wanted to hang.
That Book Broad 