Reading Project

The Ink and Dreams Bookclub is a space to read, explore and share literature and reviews in different genres, and create community around the wonderful world of books. From entertainment and silliness like Blindly Indicted, our own bookclub member's works like Warmth of Cold Blood or Somniferous Messiah, to some of our favorite masterpieces like The Song of Achilles. More information about our group and our members can be found in the Home page.

▼ Recent Reviews

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▼ Books Currently Being Read

Gideon the Ninth

Tamsyn Muir

Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space!

Book: epub

Brought up by unfriendly, ossifying nuns, ancient retainers, and countless skeletons, Gideon is ready to abandon a life of servitude and an afterlife as a reanimated corpse. She packs up her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and prepares to launch her daring escape.

Reading Progress

5% Complete

All the Young Dudes

mskingbean89

Bit rude of JKR to plagiarise these characters and put them in her books without giving credit to mskingbean89 but considering she's a terf i wouldnt have expected anything else. This fanfic is now the only HP canon, and Just Kidding Rowling HATES it.

Book: epub

Long fic charting the marauders' time at Hogwarts (and beyond) from Remus' PoV - diversion from canon in that Remus's father died and he was raised in a children's home, and is a bit rough around the edges. Otherwise canon-compliant. It is a slowburn Wolfstar ship.

Reading Progress

60% Complete

Warmth of Cold Blood

Andrew Goldwasser

Magic, tragedy, love and political intrigue, what more could you want?

Book: epub

In a Kingdom ruled through fear and force, only the most unexpected of loves can balance the scales.

Reading Progress

80% Complete

House of Hollow

Krystal Sutherland

Stepping nimbly among the liminal spaces and eerie real-world haunts of our heroine’s cipher-sister, this haunting modern fairytale will wrap you up like a glittering fog, before going for your throat.

Book: epub

Iris Hollow and her two older sisters are unquestionably strange. Ever since they disappeared on a suburban street in Scotland as children only to return a month a later with no memory of what happened to them, odd, eerie occurrences seem to follow in their wake. And they're changing.

Reading Progress

80% Complete

▼ Other Reading Projects

Primavera silenciosa, Rachel Carson

Goodreads

Este proyecto de lectura fue empezado por Elvirus.

Primavera silenciosa es un libro de Rachel Carson publicado el 27 de septiembre de 1962 que advertía de los efectos perjudiciales de los pesticidas en el medio ambiente —especialmente en las aves— y culpaba a la industria química de la creciente contaminación. Algunos científicos lo calificaron de fantasioso, pero para muchas personas se trata del primer libro divulgativo sobre impacto ambiental y se ha convertido en un clásico de la concienciación ecológica.

Book Epub

Algunos otros libros leídos por Elvirus

O Guaraní José de Alencar
Killing Stalking Koogi
The invention of nature Andrea Wulf

Project Progress

80% done

View the Booker Prize Winners and those we have reviewed by clicking here.

House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski

Goodreads

This reading project was started by Bulbasur.

House of Leaves is the debut novel by American author Mark Z. Danielewski, published in March 2000 by Pantheon Books. A bestseller, it has been translated into a number of languages, and is followed by a companion piece, The Whalestoe Letters. The novel is written as a work of epistolary fiction and metafiction focusing on a fictional documentary film titled The Navidson Record, presented as a story within a story discussed in a handwritten monograph recovered by the primary narrator, Johnny Truant.

Book Epub

Algunos otros libros leídos por Bulbasur:

Children of Time Adrian Tchaikovsky
The Night Circus Erin Morgenstern
The invention of nature Andrea Wulf

Project Progress

20% done

In the long term, we hope to review all the Booker Prize winners.

Homer and The Epic Cycle

View the Project Page

This project is based around a reading of Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey as well as sources that help us reconstruct the lost poems of The Epic Cycle, books related to the myths of the Trojan War, now lost to us. These books told stories well-known to us but not included in Homer’s surviving poems: the Judgement of Paris; the Trojan Horse; the death of Achilles and other stories.

For each of these lost books we will provide our own summary and commentary using retellings, sources based on the lost poems and scholarship, as well as look at art inspired by the stories. For Homer’s poems we will provide summaries and provide analyse of aspects specific to each book in the epic poems. Each book has a dedicated page which includes art inspired by moments from these epic poems.

Long regarded as one of the pinnacles of Western literature, The Iliad tells the story of the Trojan War in its final days, as Achilles, the supreme Grecian warrior, withdraws from the conflict over a disagreement with Agamemnon.

The Odyssey is the story of Odysseus’ long trek home after the war ends.

The ancient Greeks regarded these poems as a representation of real history, and in the 19^th century the Homer enthusiast and amateur archaeologist, Heinrich Schliemann, excavated what is now believed to be the site of the ancient conflict.

Click here to visit the main page for this special reading project.

(Please Note: This is an ongoing project and most pages are incomplete)

The Iliad Progress

All books of The Iliad have been completed

The Odyssey Progress

Book 5 of 24 Books

The Epic Cycle Progress

Book 0 of 24 Books

The Golden Age of Crime Fiction

View the Project Page

The Golden Age of Crime Project is an ongoing commitment to read and review books from the Golden era of Crime Fiction.

The Golden Age of Detective Fiction was an era of classic murder mystery novels, predominantly from the 1920s and 1930s. Well known writers of the Golden Age include Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers, Margery Allingham, Ronald Knox, Anthony Berkeley and G. K. Chesterton.

But these books have roots in earlier works of detective fiction, and there are still mysteries being written today that would fit in with the ‘feel’ of the Golden Age (Anthony Horowitz is an excellent example of a modern day writer of contemporary ‘Golden Age’ mysteries).

For this special reading project I am reading as widely as possible from this era, but especially books by authors suggested by Martin Edwards' study of the period, The Golden Age of Murder.

Martin Edward's The Golden Age of Murder is an account of the Detection Club, featuring some of the most famous crime writers of the first half of the 20th Century, as well as the background to famous and obscure crime fiction from this era. This book was the initial inspiration for this project. You can read our review of this book here.

Click here to visit the main page for this special reading project.

Project Progress

This project has no fixed completion

▼ Reading Projects Completed

The Count of Monte Cristo

Our second long-term Special Reading Project, now complete!

View the Project Page

I read Alexandre Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo as a long term reading project. The book is long, over 1000 pages of small print and 118 chapters. I decided as I read, since I would not always have time to read it consistently, that I would make a chapter by chapter summary.

The novel begins in the period just before Napoleon's escape from the island of Elba. Edmond Dantes is arrested and imprisoned after he is framed as a Napoleon conspirator. This is the story of his escape, how he finds his fortune and seeks revenge on those who betrayed him.

For those interested in reading the book, or simply curious to find out more, click on the cover of the book or click here. You will have access to the full summary I wrote, character notes on the major characters, a downloadable character map I produced, as well as a quick access to my review of the book and a link to the Gutenberg Project, where you can download the book for free.

The Federalist Papers

Our first long-term Special Reading Project

View the Project Page

The Federalist Papers were written in 1787 to 1788 to defend the new American Constitution against its critics. They explained the Constitution and have provided future generations guidance as to how the Founding Fathers intended the Constitution to be interpreted.

The Federalist Papers, written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and America's fourth president, James Madison, cover issues of America's independence, including the need to ensure against foreign influence, as well as how the new Federal Government would operate. The Federalist Papers also deal with the separation of the powers of each branch of government, as well as government oversight, which includes the power of Congress to impeach. For these reasons, The Federalist Papers are still important documents which have been referred to in debates about the presidency of Donald Trump.

You can now read summaries and commentaries of all 85 Federalist papers here on the Reading Project.

Michael Duffy profiles some great writers of the last few centuries in a series of interviews that never happened based on things the authors actually said!

Bookish Quote of the Day

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The pictures below represent places we have travelled or enjoy. In each picture there is someone who is reading. The photos represent the portability of books and the idea that they might be enjoyed almost anywhere. Click on the Google Earth Symbol to view where each photograph was taken.