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Emilie

@ermslibrary_

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🧚🏼‍♀️ I read a lot of books and I have a lot to say
📍Budapest | 🇨🇦 | 28 | happy to be here

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💧 FICTIONAL CHARACTERS I GRIEVE FOR 💧

SWIPE 👆🏼

Grief: don’t spoil it for me, for it happens in my own time—it happens and then it ends, it passes as the clouds do but that is an overdone analogy, so it passes like the trees do, slow and steady and yet seemingly rushing to their peak. And then every year at about the same time, they change and cry colorfully, a flutter of philanthropy, of gifts to the earth—but then they return, and sometimes they don’t if its been long enough, and the tree has come to know that it is time to accept that its gift is glory enough, its life may be lifted to the sky for another to rain down.

I find that grief comes and goes, in life and in death, we grieve for our fellow human beings across the world, and the grief is real and heartbreaking because there is nothing that we can do to help them besides speak, and then they tell you not to speak anymore, as if to speak in grief is to vocalize the soul’s searching for something unfound in the world; that is to bring the world down, and we say goodbye and speak it into existence, but some reversal is what we need, for we look for assurance and find it only in the probable or the not-quite of reality, and so we cry out to God, but sometimes it feels like God does not hear us. But: one day, the trees will grow again, for the grief isn’t strong enough to pull us down into the grave.

In life, and upon death, will you grieve? or will you rejoice?

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I am tagging some to give me some characters that you grieve for. I am looking forward to seeing more of these!

#bookstagram #bookstagrammer #booksbooksbooks #booksta #bookstacks #bookstack #reading #fiction #📚 #literature #grief

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What I’ve been up to + a little #whatthisweek 📚 How fun is this little design?! 
Y’all, it’s been a minute! I’ve been deep in novel-writing and summer travel mode lately. Here’s where life’s at right now, thanks for stopping by my online diary 👋🥹

✍️ Writing Working through Chapter 2 of my second draft, and the novel is finally taking shape. I’m genuinely so excited!!! I hit my goal of 500 words/day and now it’s just part of my lifestyle.  
📚 Reading A mix of nostalgic childhood books, writing craft books, and a few personal finance reads. I just shared my top 15 favs on my blog, lmk if you want that roundup here too! 
🎥 Creating I built a Redwall Discord (we’re at 100 members!). I’ve been going live on Fridays and my TikTok has blown up with fellow Redwall fans, I’ve been leaning into the nostalgia hard 🐭 
💼 Freelancing Things are brewing! Since opening my design shop with my husband, I’ve been doing more content creation, and a few branded opportunities are in the works. I’m rolling with it! Also potentially doing a freelance sprint week in Chicago that could fund my whole month 🙏 
✈️ Traveling Just got back from Chicago, heading to Cali (Sonoma Valley/San Diego/SF) for a wedding and visiting family. I’ve been a busy bee!! 
🌱 Intentions Hoping to finish my second draft by December and get it into the hands of beta readers. LET’S. GO.

Tagging some friends to let me know what they’re up to lately…👀

#bookstagram #authorlife #writingcommunity #freelancelife #redwall #writingroutine

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📚BOTM backlog📚

I was inspired by @literacywithchelsea sharing the BOTM books she still hasn’t got to yet. Being curious, I went to my shelf to check out how many I had left as well annnnd it looks like I need to get to work!

Out of this pile, what are you prioritizing? Skipping any?

Also big news..ONE WEEK BABY COUNTDOWN🤍

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Mid July

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Am I at my best when I'm buying books? Maybe.

Or the worst?

Sometimes I feel like both.

Here's yesterday's trip for one of the best hauls of my life.

Apparel sponsored by (not really) @avianaswe & @lmtf.

🩸Bleeding Edge x Thomas Pynchon
🚲Slow Learner x Thomas Pynchon
🏞️Typee x Herman Melville
💨The Runaway Soul x Harold Brodkey
☀️Divine Days x Leon Forrest
🪚Carpenter's Gothic x William Gaddis
🪧The Logos x Mark de Silva
🧩The Shards x Bret Easton Ellis
⚰️The Book Against Death x Elias Canetti (tr. Peter Filkins)
🖼️The Mysterious Disappearance of the Marquise of Loria x Jose Donoso (tr. Megan McDowell)
⏳Tomb of Sand x Geetanjali Shree (tr. Daisy Rockwell)
🏔️Ædnan x Linnea Axelsson (tr. Saskia Vogel)
🇳🇱Summer in Termuren x Louis Paul Boon (tr. Paul Vincent)
📇Nabokov Novels 1955-1962

#QOTD - What have you been reading/buying this weekend?

📚Happy Sunday, I love you all 🫶🏼

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books that bite back. here’s reading recs for when you want the book to win!

🐸 Mrs. Caliban
👁️ I’m a Fan
🦟 Dengue Boy
🕵️‍♀️ Gone Girl
🚪 House of Leaves
🦌 The Only Good Indians
🏜️ Immaculate Conception
🦚 Salt Slow
🌊 Piranesi
🦈 Shark Heart
🔮 Legendborn
🐇 Cursed Bunny
🎣 The Pisces
🫢 Hunchback
🎢 How High We Go in the Dark
🗡️ Chain-Gang All-Stars
🏡 The Quiet Tenant
🧌 Bliss Montage
🪳 The Unworthy
🐏 Lapvona
👻 Mary
🎓 Ace of Spades
🧛‍♂️ The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
🦖 Jurassic Park
🌧️ Private Rites
👯‍♀️ My Best Friend’s Exorcism
🐗 Annihilation
🏘️ We Used to Live Here
📚 The Library at Mount Char
🍕 Pizza Girl
💦 Paradise Rot
👽 Earthlings
🩸 Boy Parts
🧜‍♀️ Chlorine
😷 The Doloriad
🌲 I Who Have Never Known Men
💧 The Spear Cuts Through Water
👣 Patricia Wants to Cuddle
🪑 The Last House on Needless Street

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Is it true that it's not the size that matters but the way it's used? Perhaps.

I'd argue yes. Though don't think I'm putting myself down.

Do they intimidate you? No? Well, I wouldn't underestimate them. Sometimes writers can do just as much damage with 150 pages as they can do with 850.

❓QOTD: What are your favorite short (<200 pages) books?

Here are some that I’ve enjoyed quite a bit over the past few years and some brief thoughts. And some I really want to get to.
•••
Flowers For Algernon x Daniel Keyes

Emotional punch with a character arc I still cannot stop thinking about.
•
A Mountain to the North, A Lake to the South, Paths to the West, A River to the East x László Krasznahorkai

Feels religious, hypnotic, descriptive, meditative. The writing makes plot a non-factor.
•
Island of the Dead x Lya Luft

Not one I see a lot. Haunting and hazy. What is real? and what is death? One I really need to go back to.
•
Tinkers x Paul Harding

Insane debut that feels like memories do. Harding feels a lot like Steinbeck here.
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Lucky Breaks x Yevgenia Belorusets

*Minutely* Interweaving stories. A Ukrainian war book without the war. More like how the war is for the rest of society.
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The Crying of Lot 49 x Thomas Pynchon

Pynchonic paranoia; conspiratorial. Read it if you're afraid of Pynchon. Compelling yet feels much more dense that it appears on the surface. Not terribly difficult but it's Pynchon.
•
Stranger in the Lifeboat x Mitch Albom

Typeset as ~300 pages but is really much shorter (as all of Albom’s works are). Semi-predictable but an incredible novel that touches on faith and belief. Predictability takes nothing away from how hard the message hits and how high the stakes feel.
•
Small Things Like These x Claire Keegan

Dark and brooding and unafraid of shedding light on real-life situations.
•
A Clockwork Orange x Anthony Burgess

Possibly my favorite book on this list. A masterpiece in my opinion. One of the most unsettling novels I've ever had the pleasure of reading. The language use and the minimization of the violence causes a desensitization that one becomes almost afraid of. Definitely not one I would recommend for everyone.

TBR books in comments

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„1 book, 3 quotes" 🪆

🕊️War and Peace x Leo Tolstoy🇷🇺

•••

It's been a while since I've talked about this book but it's still undoubtedly one of the greatest pieces of literature I have had the distinct pleasure of interacting with.

•

These photos show more than just three quotes but I find it hard to hold myself back sometimes. Am I alone in that?

•

Here are my picks:

1. "And she sobbed with the kind of despair that people feel when they weep for troubles they know they have brought upon themselves."

•

Hits hard. When people tell us we messed up we hate it because for some of us, verbalizing it makes it real in some way.

We mourn for the things we bring upon ourselves somehow more than we do for that which is brought to us externally.

•

2. "And it never enters anybody's head that to acknowledge greatness as something existing beyond the rule of right and wrong is to acknowledge one's own nothingness and infinite smallness."

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I think these bits and pieces are what Tolstoy does best here. Commentary thrown in to give his vision of human beings and the world we exist in. Extremely profound and arguably what the book is all about, not the narrative.

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3. "No, we cannot feel our dependence, but if we accept free will we are reduced to absurdity, whereas if we accept dependence on the external world, time and causation, we arrive at laws."

•

The latter sections of this novel get hate because of how different they are from the narrative but I'd argue they're more important. This metaphysical, alternative philosophy or history is another piece of almost confounding perspective from Tolstoy... as if we are simply pawns as the characters are in their wars and their peace, their battles and their balls, dinners and destruction...

•

Have you read this classic? If you did, what is your opinion of the later sections?

Or is it on the never ending TBR list?

Tagging some because I love quotes. Feel free to partake or carry on.

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❓What are you currently reading?

❓And what's on your immediate TBR?

Here's mine:

🖼️Sula x Toni Morrison // 112/174

Morrison’s voice is as clear as day. As this is my first of her works, I found within the first 20 pages what kind of writer she is. Noticeable stream-of-consciousness style at times which I'm a huge fan of. Love the racial dynamic without the politics behind it. Time passes quickly in the novel so the mental pace is the only thing that I've struggled with so far (if that makes sense).

✍🏼The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath // 101/674

Mirror-like. Poignant and thoughtful—it is her journals after all. Plath’s voice is also one of the most clear I've ever read, from reality’s standpoint and the point of view of a young woman in college (so far). Not a novel obviously but each section plays with dialogue and certain entries feel like short stories sometimes. Viciously descriptive so far, with beautiful imagery and metaphors that bring me back to The Bell Jar. Emotionally hits very hard at times but so far my only issue is keeping up with names (and the damn endnotes).

📚Complete Stories x Franz Kafka // 140/457

Going through this after really only ever reading The Metamorphosis before. Without a doubt that story is one of the best things ever published. A cornerstone of literature. Will finish with this collection after The Trial. And will have much more to say.

⚖️The Trial x Franz Kafka // 35/266

This was the pick for my Fable book club and so far it's very intriguing. I will say that knowing Kafka did not want this specific book to be published and his friend Max Brod released it adds to the experience. It is unfinished though my edition does have fragments and a preface from the translator which I have skipped for now. Will for sure go back. Need to prioritize finishing this for my book club though, because the premise is fantastic and obviously metaphorical for mental struggles and how we fit into society. Brilliant man, Kafka was.

(Continued in comments...)

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S/o to @r.elle._ for the idea for this.

I want to know, though, what do YOU love in books?
________________________________________

What do I love in books? that the word “book” feels like a journey in itself, beginning and ending in solidity but hovering through the middle, in a seemingly endless wake of the unknown.

That dimly the brave reach out, fearful of God, but forever begging to be heard. Forgotten stories are told forever about the visions that plague, that torment, and that keep us engulfed in the horrific human condition.

I love the miscreant nature of what literature can be, the chaotic and hard-to-process emotional undertones that give us a connection in a way that real life doesn't provide, the darkness that in the light only becomes darker, like the ocean in all its mystery.

I love the endings that lend themselves to beginnings, that never truly end, for our lives to pore over aware of the end only because we are aware of the journey. They say that's what really matters, and I'll say I agree.

The innovation, the incredible inventive interlocking of that which does and doesn't make sense, at least on the surface. Reading to become, not to drown... Go deeper, look deeper. Who runs this world?

What else do I love?… the edge of reality we can walk, like walking along the crack of a fault in the earth, seeing the hell below but knowing we are still seen, alive and in view of the heavens.

I love the beauty of the language, the music that it creates—no the entire environment it places you in—and the desire to be the words themselves, put down on paper like dust in the wind as it settles into just the right place. And the word choice that feels right, as if the page was indented and the word was always there, it couldn't be any other way.

The depth the dear the frozen the fear, the desire to be healed in between the covers of humanity, and yes the emotive heartbreak that catches us even when we know it's coming, that teaches us something, if not about the world, then about ourselves…

I love the not knowing, the interpreting, the vision of belief and disbelief, the dying and rebirth. No it's never enough, never enough.

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Conversation with someone about parallel universes and I heard a line of a song and it sparked this.

"Don't touch me...can't you see? I am free, I am God..." @disembodiedtyrant

Apologize for the length but I had to share this...and I know it's not my usual time to post, but I felt the urge.

title: ,,Destiny'' 🦤

#bookstagram #books #writing #shortstory #shortstories #writer #writersofinstagram #fyp #✍🏼 #🖊️ #writingcommunity #write #booktok #booksta #bookstagrammer

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The intimidation of reading difficult books is so often offset by the fulfillment that comes from getting through them unscathed and emerging on the other side with a new life, a new perspective, that propels us into the next one.

Are so-called “difficult” books for everyone? Absolutely not, and there is nothing wrong with that. Read what you want, I always say to people, and gatekeeping is for the birds, and kick rocks if you want to police what other people read (or even think you have the right), and so on and so forth…

But this post is for what books I am intimidated by that are sitting on my shelves right now—and I am sure I’m not alone here. Will I attempt these in the future (this year potentially)? YES! After all, I bought them, what else am I going to do?

I’ve read some difficult books so far this year, namely The Tunnel and Infinite Jest, and as I am almost 300 pages into Gravity’s Rainbow (and enjoying it greatly, though it IS difficult), I feel like this is a perfect time for me to think of what my next project to tackle will be. BUT, I can say Gravity’s Rainbow is no longer on my list here. Yay…I guess?

Here they are:

Slide 5 - 🪩MASSIVE x John Trefry

Slides 6-7 - 🎲The Combinations x Louis Armand

Slides 8-10 - ✉️HA! x Gordon Sheppard

Slide 11 - 🧧Cantos x Ezra Pound

Slide 12 - 🏙️Ulysses x James Joyce

Slide 13 - 🦆Ducks, Newburyport x Lucy Ellmann

Slide 14 - 🎭The Anatomy of Melancholy x Robert Burton

…and my number one most intimidating, if I were to pick one here (obviously)

Slides 15-16 - 🤷🏼‍♂️Finnegans Wake x James Joyce

❓Are you with me on any of these intimidating, “difficult” books? What are some books that intimidate you? And will you be giving them a try anytime soon?

I just want to give a friendly reminder: never feel pressured to read something in particular—I encourage you to read what you like, not what you feel you should.

Have an amazing weekend—I love all of you and wish you only the good, the golden gravity of giving that pulls out your best, and gives it to the rest of the world. 💚

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