Wolves and Stardust

I was excited to find Women Who Run with the Wolves in my college's library last week, and every page of it holds poetry and power. Metaphors, myths, and stories are such incredible learning tools, and exploring the psyche alongside characters like Vasalisa the Wise and Baba Yaga is equal parts exciting and inspiring.

When I was little, I loved all kinds of stories and legends, and I thought that there was a very thin veil between our world and the "spirit world." I completely understand that not everyone will resonate with this sort of spirituality, so feel free to think of it metaphorically if that makes more sense to you. But based on my studies of literature, history, art, and physical health, I like to think that we are deeply connected to the earth and to each other.

In Women Who Run with the Wolves, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes refers to the famous opening line "Once there was, and once there was not" as a "paradoxical phrase ... meant to alert the soul of the listener that this story takes place in the world between worlds" (71), and for some reason, this line made something click inside me. Suddenly, so many of the life-draining, soul-sucking, self-bashing elements of the very physical, very aggressive culture we're constantly bombarded with seemed to be significantly less important and less powerful. The "world between worlds" reached out and said, "Yes, there's this physical stuff, and yes, that's relevant, but remember what/who you actually are, okay?"

Found on Pinterest

<3 <3 <3

Dedications, Jane Austen, and Writer's Block

Yesterday, my great-grandmother--someone that I wholeheartedly love and admire--passed on to be with my grandmother.  Along with my mother, they are my biggest influences in life, and they inspired inspire so much of what I write about. I don't feel at the liberty to call myself "a writer" because, quite frankly, I haven't completed anything that wasn't a school assignment (or a blog post, lol) in a while, but I'm working on being more prolific and efficient and trying to get less distracted. I think one of the things that makes writing so difficult for me is my inclination to write about very heavy topics.  Historical fiction is the genre I spend most of my time working with, and the historical times I focus on are typically depressing and tragic, and I tend to feel incapable of writing anything meaningful enough to capture all the pain and suffering of the past.  But I'm working on that.

Of all the literary worlds to disappear into in times of heartache, Jane Austen's remains one of my favorites.  Sense & Sensibility got me through turbulent airplane rides and homesickness, and quoting Lizzy Bennet lets me pretend to be much more independent and self-assured than I actually am. And Austen's stories are markedly less depressing and dark than some of my other most-loved reading selections (i.e. the works of the Bronte Sisters, wartime tragedies, etc.).  Because of this, I'm incredibly excited to be reading Pride & Prejudice as my last novel of my last semester of high school. I started it once when I was in fifth grade but never finished it, and I'm determined to finish it all the way through now.  With that in mind, here is a little springtime style inspiration straight from Miss Austen's universe:

janeaustensworld.wordpress.com

ceciliaroselee.blogspot.com 

rjenkins.co.uk

dianegaston.com

formidablecourage.com 

<3 Frances

Jill's Library: Jane Eyre

It's finally Friday, loves!  And it's oddly warm today . . . not February weather at all.  It's difficult because, as much as I love birdsong and breezes and sunshine (cliched, I know, but true), I struggle with the reality that global warming is having such a big impact on climate conditions.  (I'm not just saying this because it's warm, either--global warming doesn't necessarily mean it gets warmer everywhere!)
But the fate of the planet momentarily aside, let's talk a little bit about books. Today's spotlight is on Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.  It's one of the most famous novels out there, and I actually first picked it up about four or so years ago, when it became a way to escape the stresses of travelling one particularly muggy summer.  I of course intended to finish Jane Eyre right away, but somehow I left the last fifty or so pages unread, and when I discovered this a few weeks ago, I realized I needed to do something about it.  So now, after four whole years, I've finally finished it . . . and I'm sad because I miss it!

Picture from Bustle

For anyone who is unfamiliar with Jane Eyre, it's the story of a young orphaned governess trying to find her way in the dark moors and cold manors of 19th-century England.  Oh, and it's a bit of definitely a love story, too, famous for quotes like "I had not intended to love him."  (But you did, Jane!)  That said, it's also a bit scary.  Not horror scary, but spooky scary, much like Wuthering Heights.  Ghosts, crazy shut-ins, murder attempts . . . these aren't the first things that come to mind when you think "Jane Eyre," but the Bronte sisters don't shy away from eeriness.
Of course, when Jane Eyre is brought up in conversation (however often that may be), there are usually mixed reactions to it, with some disliking it as another sad Victorian romance and others having found solace in Miss Eyre as a friend.  I fall into the latter category.  Jane, reserved and plain as she may be, is a literary "bestie."   She is thoughtful, honest, and incredibly humble, and her ability to stick to her values and beliefs despite not being a "fighter" by nature is inspiring.  Because Jane Eyre is so character-driven, and because it's told from Jane's perspective, I think that her personality and beliefs (justice, equality, etc.) play a major role in my argument for why you should read Jane Eyre if you ever find yourself in the Victorian literature section of the library.  Adding to that, the very way in which Jane Eyre is written is in and of itself compelling, particularly when you think about how much of Charlotte Bronte's own experiences may have inspired it.  The tuberculosis outbreak at Jane's boarding school, for instance, hearkens to the illnesses plaguing the Bronte girls .... all of who died tragically young.



<3 Frances

Why You Should Make a Library Pilgrimage

The summers when I was in elementary school and my mother was working and my grandmother was still alive, she used to take me and my brother to the library so we could participate in the summer reading challenges.  Read x number of books by y date, and you get a little prize.  Somehow in the joy of small plastic frogs and miniature Slinkies, I didn't realize that the real prize of the summer reading challenge was the books-with-my-grandmother part, and our times at the library became some of the memories I now revisit whenever something is scary or sad or difficult.  But I hadn't really re-lived anything like those memories recently, save for all my literary talks with my mum.  Today, I changed that.  I walked up and down the aisles of the school library and rediscovered the rush of finding a book, picking it, and actually checking it out to read.  Checking a book out is like making a commitment to yourself to spend time with a friend, even if it's just for a short while, and I can hardly describe how exciting it was to take the book out of the library with me and know I'd get to go home and share it with my mum later. I felt like a six year-old again, and the best part is that, as I was leaving, I saw all these other books--everything from an anthology of French literature to a novel of the Irish potato famine to a tale of heartbreak--and cataloged them in my mind to check out later.

The book I found at the library today.  It's not a novel by any means, but it's full of beautiful art and poetry.
Win!

Where am I going with this?  Well, if you've been stressed or anxious or worried lately, I strongly recommend that you make a library pilgrimage if you get the chance to!  Literature has such amazing healing abilities, and there's nothing quite like the rush of picking a world to educate yourself in and disappear into.  It's like travelling but without the stress of airports or passports or money.


<3 Frances

Jill's Library: "Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature"

Growing up, Beatrix Potter was such an integral part of my everyday life that I nearly made my senior yearbook quote the first line of Peter Rabbit.  When I'm teaching, Beatrix is an author I'm always drawn to, and I used to watch the lovely animated adaptations of her "little books" as a source of comfort whenever I traveled away from home.  Because of my fascination with and love for her, learning about her life beyond the world of Benjamin Bunny and Tom Kitten was an entirely necessary pursuit, and I'm excited (and admittedly a bit sad) to have just finished Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature by Linda Lear. When I began making my way through the account of Beatrix's life, I was a bit intimidated by the heavy language and technical information (so many dates!), but Lear managed to intersperse them with such sincerity and depth that the romantic elements of Beatrix's imagination, her tragic first love, and her country home weren't lost amongst the complicated details of financial issues and fell farming.

Following Beatrix as she transitions from a young woman confined to the expectations of Victorian society into a strong and capable farmer really altered my idea of her as an individual.  I've always been inspired by her, but her strength in the face of hardships--like the death of her beloved fiance Norman, her strained relationship with her mother, and her frequent bouts of illness--add a level of depth to her character that I hadn't entirely seen before. Beatrix also had a level of pragmatism that people may not be aware of given the fantastical elements of her little children's stories.  She was truly a naturalist at heart more than anything else.  She loved nature and being in nature, and her art was as scientific as it was fantastical.  All her characters and settings were drawn from observation and captured the realities of proportions and visuals, and she translated country life into her stories with her rich illustrations and prose. Her perspective on life is also refreshing.  She truly embraced the wisdom and experience that come with age, and Lear included a quote of hers in A Life in Nature that I find particularly inspiring:

"Do you not feel it is rather pleasing to be so much wiser than quantities of young idiots?"

I also found the end of A Life in Nature to be incredibly meaningful in the way it ties Beatrix's naturalist ideas to her stories and her continued impact on the world.  Lear eloquently connects Beatrix's incorporation of the natural world into her stories to the progress of the environmentalist movement and shows how books like Peter Rabbit can inspire people to see the beauty in a world that has largely disappeared due to industry and modernization.  I highly recommend that anyone who was ever influenced by Jemima Puddleduck or Mrs. Tittlemouse to give Lear's biography of Beatrix Potter a looking at.  It's a very thick book, yes, but the story it shares is a compelling one, and the 100-odd pages of references in the back are fun for us literary-types, too.

<3 Frances

The Bronte Sisters' Mum

I am completely and entirely obsessed with pretty much anything that has to do with the Bronte Sisters.  Their short lives were full of heartbreak and poetic tragedy, much like the stories that they wrote, and the love they felt for one another is so sweet it could make me cry.  Imagine my excitement, then, when I found some of their mum's writing published online. (I'd like to picture myself discovering it in some dusty English library somewhere, perhaps with tea and my glasses and lots of old books, but for now the only resource I really have at my disposal is Google, LOL.)

Maria Branwell Bronte

Anyway, if you aren't yet familiar with Mrs. Bronte, let me give you a little bit of a crash course.  Born Maria Branwell in April 1783, she grew up in Cornwall in a respected Methodist family. Like her daughters, her youth was marked by death, too.  Of her siblings, only five survived past childhood, and her parents were both dead by the time she was 19.  The light at the end of the tunnel, however, seemed to come when Maria met Patrick Bronte through her extended family.  The two connected immediately.  Unfortunately, their relationship wasn't entirely approved of because Patrick wasn't as well-off as the Branwells had been, but Maria didn't care.  She thought humble livelihoods and poorness were positives in the eyes of God, and she genuinely loved Patrick:

Surely after this you can have no doubt

 that you posess all my heart.

Two month ago

 I could not possibly have believed
that you would ever engross so much

of my thoughts and effections

and far less could I have thought

that I should be so forward

as to tell you so

I feel that my hearth

is more ready to attach itself

to earth than heaven.

 

(The above is from a letter to Patrick that I found on the "The Bronte Sisters" blog, which is amazing and can be accessed here.)  Patrick and Maria married and had six children: Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Emily, Branwell, and Anne. But after Anne's birth, the now-Mrs. Bronte fell very ill.  She spent months in agony before dying of ovarian cancer in 1821. Her last words? "Oh, God, my poor children!"  Her story is heartbreaking, just like the tuberculosis-ridden lives of her children.  Only such poignant tragedy could've led to the production of works like Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. 

 

<3 Frances

Poetry Break: "Her Kind" by Anne Sexton

Anne Sexton

Remember that scene in the cartoon adaptation of Alice in Wonderland when Alice gets swept away through the keyhole? That's sort of how I'm feeling right now, so any non-academic writing time has sort of disappeared for the time being. But my mum shared this poem with me and its lines are just so powerful . . . I mean, the combination of "suppers for the worms and the elves" and "rearranging the disaligned" is poignant and perfect, and Anne Sexton's story is a tragic one.

Speaking of tragic--has anyone been following the news about Hurricane Matthew?  It breaks my heart when I see the weather tracker images of it over the Caribbean, and I wish there were more I could do for the people there :(. 

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind. I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind. I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.

<3 Frances

Fall Reading Challenge

Hi, dears!  It may still be incredibly hot and humid here, but there is only just over a week left of summer, so pumpkins are starting to show up everywhere.  Most of them are small and hiding between squashes, waiting for their takeover at the beginning of October. Seeing them stirs up memories of grey skies and red and orange trees, which is exciting even if I'm a bit allergic to the mold from decaying leaves.

Changes in weather aside, we learned in psychology class the other day that reading is one of the absolute best things you can do for your mind.  It's like a workout for your brain.  But when we were asked which ones of us read for pleasure, only a very small group of us responded positively. I was so sad because I love reading so much it's painful sometimes, and I know that in other parts of the world (and even in my own community) lots of people don't have access to books, which is tragic.  I'm working on a little project about global literacy right now, but learning about reading in my psych class got me thinking about how now would be a perfect time for everyone get into reading.  So I've put together a bit of a reading challenge for the fall.  I know we have homework and work, so no pressure if you don't get to all/any of the books on your list, but it'd be fun to try, right?  I guarantee you that if you open yourself up to it, you, too, could develop a very serious relationship with books (even if it's long-distance, like mine sometimes is, LOL). Anyway, the reading challenge has several categories, and the basic idea is that you pick a book for each category and try to read it. It'll get you exposed to new styles of writing, and maybe you'll even discover a book you never would've found before.  It could be true love! There are so many books to geek out about that I'm smiling a bit too much thinking about them.

Categories:

• A biography or an autobiography (I know some people like biographical pieces more than others do, but I'm reading Beatrix Potter by Linda Lear right now and really loving all I've learned.  You can pick pretty much any person and get to know them really well.)
• A historical fiction piece (Travel to any time period you want to. It's amazing!)
• A poem/book of poems (Emily Dickinson, T.S. Eliot, Maya Angelou....there are so many.)
• A classic (I'm really glad I've started Les Mis, and other meaningful choices include the works of Jane Austen, the Bronte Sisters, and Charles Dickens.)
• A scary story (Okay, this is more in the spirit of Halloween, but it can be a short story if you're not feeling like a horror or anything like that.  I'd love to read Frankenstein or Dracula, though.)
• A story that's a movie (There are lots of these, but it can be fun to watch the movie and have read the story, and the variety means you could choose anything from The Fault in Our Stars to Fight Club.)
• A book with beautiful illustrations (These are just good for your soul.)

 Obviously, those are just a few categories of the many, many categories of books that exist, so please add/change categories as you see fit!  And remember, I'm swamped with homework, too, so don't feel any pressure to finish all categories you set out to because I doubt any of us will before the fall season ends.  It's just fun to have a reading plan because then you'll be more motivated to read, and, like I mentioned earlier, reading is so good for you!  It can relax your mind and exercise it at the same time, and the relationships you develop with characters can be incredibly powerful.

<3 Frances

Where Literature Meets Nature

With the heat wave that's going on right now, the approach of the new school year (aka next week), and hospitalized loved ones, these past few weeks have been c r a z y . But they're a good reminder of how important it is to appreciate little simple things for all they offer, and I'm going to go along with the random horoscope I read and say that the "power word" for the next few months is "change."  Embrace it, accept it, live with it.  It's challenging, but it can be meaningful. Change doesn't always mean bad...change can very often mean good. And it can encourage us to do things we otherwise might not have...like being a literature/history person and deciding to also pursue environmental science despite the fact that I'm not at all a scientist.  I have found, though, that there are many places where literature and nature overlap. My brother, ever the nature-lover, is reading The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery--a writer the Boston Globe described as "[p]art Emily Dickinson, part Indiana Jones."  Is that not one of the best combinations ever?  I think my favorite part of it is that Emily Dickinson is included because she loved the environment so much. I have an anthology of her poems, and it's divided up into different categories, one of the most well-known being "Nature." She cared so deeply for the natural world...she even had her own herbarium!  Seeing it is on my imaginary and unrecorded bucket list ;).  Another author who loved the natural world was, of course, the one and only Beatrix Potter.  Her enchantment with Earth isn't all that surprising given the fact that her illustrations and writings were all about plants and animals.

 



 



 

Nature is what we see

by Emily Dickinson

“Nature” is what we see—
The Hill—the Afternoon—
Squirrel—Eclipse—the Bumble bee—
Nay—Nature is Heaven—
Nature is what we hear—
The Bobolink—the Sea—
Thunder—the Cricket—
Nay—Nature is Harmony—
Nature is what we know—
Yet have no art to say—
So impotent Our Wisdom is
To her Simplicity.

 

 

<3 Franceshttp://www.aquarellepublishing.co.uk/img/artists/Beatrix-Potter1.png

Last Weeks of Summer

Bookstores and I are a bit of a dangerous combination.  I could get so lost in the history section of Barnes & Noble, for instance, that it'd be months before I even realized that time was passing, and that nearly happened yesterday. I'm just grateful my brother or mum are usually there to pull me out of my history-induced daze (though my mum does often get sucked into it with me, LOL).

Some of the books responsible for distracting me indefinitely while I wish I had copies of them:

        

Speaking of a daze, summer holiday (though we've spent most of it working) is almost over now.  It's already August, and, though I think it's good to welcome August lovingly and optimistically, I'm admittedly a bit scared by how quickly the summer's gone by and how short a time there is left before regular work obligations start popping up again and our lives are once again based around our academic calendar. I'm reading about what seasons mean now in How to Read Literature Like a Professor...summer is often connected to youth and freedom and sunshine, whereas winter is usually implicative of loneliness and coldness, and fall (which we're approaching) is sort of like a "bridge" connecting them.  That said, though, common literary conventions aren't necessarily true for real life.  (The fact that I'm wearing a blue blouse, for instance, isn't necessarily a reflection of my innermost character/true feelings but rather a reflection of what was in my closet this morning.) We've been having a bit of an oppressive heat wave, so I'm excited for cooler temperatures, and winter can be just as happy a time as summer as long as you're in a loving place.  So that's what I'm hoping for for everybody--that, no matter how difficult things seem, you have a loving place to go to, regardless of whether it's wintertime or summertime or holiday time or school time.

<3 Frances

Poetry Break

 

          

 

The innate powers of literature and poetry have been haunting me.  I blame it on my AP Literature homework and the book that I'm currently reading about literary analysis and interpretation. It's Thomas Foster's How to Read Literature Like a Professor, and I think I'm enjoying it far too much.  (I mean, intertextuality?  Yes, always and forever!)  When I was little, I used to dress up in blouses that were way too big for me to play either hospital or school (or occasionally "newspaper" and "store") with my brother and misfit dolls, and I'd always get very emotionally involved in whatever role I was playing, but, regardless of whether or not we were in outer space or in a 1820s schoolhouse, books and reading were always involved.  They've been constant friends, loved to the point of torn pages and stains and memorization.  What's unfortunate, though, is that, no matter how much I love stories and books, there are still so many people in the world who don't have them. I've mentioned this before, yes, but the whole back-to-school (almost) thing has been reminding me of it because, while we're all seeing our summers wind down and wishing they'd last longer, there are whole villages of people that are starving and will never get to go to a schoolhouse or learn to read.  It's a true tragedy.  I hope maybe one day I'll be able to do more than just write about it, but writing is a start.

<3 Frances

 

Jill's Library: World War I Poets

I once got so excited talking to historical archaeologists and special collections librarians during a field trip to a career expo that I didn't even realize that my school had moved to a different exhibit until I looked around and didn't recognize anyone.  Needless to say, it was a bit scary, but hearing about historical gardens and Edgar Allan Poe's transcript made the momentary fear entirely worth it. If you're a bibliophile, too, I'm sure you understand where I'm coming from :).

I'm sharing this anecdote because this post is a more literature/history-focused one.  I recently rediscovered my mum's collection of World War I poems and poets, and I fell totally in love with it (again).  There is something so moving about reading a poem by someone and then reading their story, and it's particularly tragic to learn that they died shortly after said poem was written.  Reading the beautiful words of Wilfred Owen, for instance, it was difficult to imagine he was killed only a week before the armistice was signed in 1918.  Writing keeps people alive by preserving voices and thoughts and moments, and the fact that so many of the early 20th century's greatest writers had their lives cut short by the very subject they wrote about--war--is so incredibly horrible. Reading about the war also really helps to put into perspective all of the things going on in the present.  While it is crucial to think about the good in the world, it's also necessary to recognize the bad, and there is a lot of struggle and suffering right now.  I often wonder what poetry--be it written or merely felt (because, yes, you can just "feel" a poem)--will arise from all that is happening today.

(Siegfried Sassoon)

 

 

<3 Frances

 

 

 

 

Book Remedies

For a very long time, I have believed very strongly in the power of alternative and complementary therapies.  Some of the most important characters in my life (aka people I've known closely) have had their lives altered (and, in some cases, taken) by illnesses and disabilities, and I've found things like herbs, movement, art, and books to be incredibly powerful in helping people to deal with terribly complicated conditions.  Lupus, depression, loss . . . these things may not be curable in every case, but alt/complementary therapies can make living with them much less painful.

With that in mind, today's post is about bibliotherapy, which I am terribly passionate about because it combines a few of the best things in the world: writing, books, and helping people.  Yes, all those things together!  Yay!  

While researching bibliotherapy, I came across The Novel Cure: An A-Z of Literary Remedies. The title immediately drew me in and got me very excited, and the book is a collection of literary pieces that have been selected as (you guessed it) remedies.  Researching The Novel Cure, I found its website and discovered that it was put together by writer-teachers Ella Berthoud and Susan Elderkin, who run The School of Life in London and prescribe books to people to help them "deal with the daily emotional challenges of existence" (Dovey).  The Novel Cure is a bit lighter than some other bibliotherapy resources (it doesn't deal so much with ailments like cancer, etc., as it does with things like writer's block and insomnia), but it's still very helpful because the emotional swing of life can be very tiring at times.  A good book is always a good idea. 

<3 Frances

The Bronte Obsession Continues

Although my excitement about this post may not be shared by anyone not totally obsessed with literature, I have to share it anyway.  For Christmas this year, my big gifts from my mum were copies of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre from 1943.  I know that those books were written in the 1800s, but having copies from 1943 is incredibly amazing to me because of a slight obsession with the 1940s (#modcloth).  That aside, though, the thing about these books is that the illustrations are so cool!  They're very dark and Tim Burton/Edward Gorey-esque, but they're from a pre-Tim Burton/Edward Gorey time, and they make the depressing moors and broken love stories of Charlotte and Emily Bronte's beautifully-crafted worlds really come to life.  It's like the books are haunted in the best way possible.

<3 Frances 

Beatrix Potter Has a New Book!

This is serious breaking news in the bibliophile world.  Since childhood, I've loved Beatrix Potter's world of posh mice and rustic rabbits, and when I saw the news today that an unknown work of hers was recently discovered and is set to be published, I couldn't help but to write about immediately. The Tale of Kitty-in-Boots, which Potter was working on in 1914, is about a fancy cat with a "double life," and, though manuscripts were written, it wasn't published because of Potter's marriage and, of course, World War I.  But it's being published soon, and it even features Peter Rabbit!  Though he's much older now.  Oh, Peter. We always wondered what became of you....

Kitty-in-Boots himself

<3 Frances 

Quotespiration

Here's a little quote inspo to get your day off on a literary note.

<3 Frances

Movie Style: Testament of Youth

I'm reading Vera Brittain's memoir Testament of Youth at the moment.  It's a beautiful, poignant account of life and love during World War I, and Brittain, a feminist and peace activist, offers an honest perspective on how the war changed the youth of her generation.  No longer were they focused on academics or leisure but on survival.  

“There seemed to be nothing left in the world, for I felt that Roland had taken with him all my future and Edward all my past.”

Last year, a film adaptation of Testament of Youth came out, and my mum and I, always drawn to the tragic beauty of war poets like Wilfred Owen, watched it together.  The scenes of the trenches recreated the horrific reality of the war, and the film captured well the novel and the transition that the youth went through from being completely disconnected from war to being fully involved in it.  But while so much of the movie brought out the pain and horrors of the WWI era, the costumes designed by Consolata Boyle reflected (like the poetry) the beauty that so many clung onto during the darkness.










<3 Frances

Bibliophilia

Between textbook readings and study guides and essay prompts, I haven't had a lot of time to write any posts, but today I'm very excited to share a new discovery!  Being a bibliophile, I'm capable of completely losing myself in books, and libraries have a special place in my life.  Last year, I herd about this project called "Book Traces" that finds old books that have been written in, drawn on, etc., over the years and collects them as historical artifacts.  But you can still check a lot of them out! I'm seriously too excited about this.  You can visit the tumblr page here: http://booktraces.tumblr.com/  

 

 

 

<3 Frances

Bibliophiles Anonymous

It's amazing how, to some people, stories stay in the pages of the books in which they are written while, to others, they became a tangible and powerful part of reality.  Last night, Iris and I were engaged in a dialogue about book quotes because of an article we found on Buzzfeed.  We were both totally overwhelmed with excitement every time we came across another beautiful quote, even if it came from a book we hadn't read before (many of them did...), and then I mentioned the quotes to some other people, and they thought that they were very well-written but didn't succumb to butterflies and euphoria the way that I did. 

 

<3 Frances

Alice in Wonderland

As anyone who knows me can tell you, I very much enjoy anything Alice in Wonderland-related. Black-and-white striped socks, talking rabbits, pocket watches, mirrors....everything is just so storybook eerie!  Iris was showing me some of the Alice-inspired art/fashion/etc. she found online the other day, and we wanted to post about it, too :).  Everyone could use a little Wonderland, right?

weheartit.com

www.authorama.com

www.strangeling.com

aliceindeadland.devianart.com

www.pinterest.com

manaloempire.com

lovewiththeproperstranger.blogspot.com

pixshark.com

<3 Frances