being an Oscar Van Rhijn fan is so logical to me. He schemes! He slouches! He has quiet zingers!

go through some newspaper archives, they said. it'll be FUN, they said

hi! 😃 i couldn't help but notice that scrolling is sapping your will to live! may i offer u a video essay in these trying times? youtu.be/Bdj14_jdumI

Me, a person who has publicly called Thomas Cromwell "babygirl": Ali Hazelwood is in trouble for WHAT

I did feel actively insane last year watching a lot of book creators say that a queer author is a sex pest over a PR box, so this breakdown of the situation... very cathartic to me www.tiktok.com/@_happy_dagg...

looking up something on the french revolution which is how i found out some history blog used AI to yasssify Desmoulins

i watched no less than THREE fake trailers for Pillion before realizing that there is not actually a real trailer for Pillion yet.

i saw residual discourse about an author who is a man "pretending" to be a lesbian and man, y'all need to leave it alone. Gender and sexuality are fluid, if someone is posting that identity chances are they're interested in exploring. Not your job to be a cop about it

yes obviously you are allowed to critique popular books and social media creators but using"booktok girlies" as a pejorative is something you should rethink imoooooo

it's not REALLY a big deal but i get sad when i see reviewers say things like, "here are the best books I read in Q1" please exorcise corporate jargon from your hobbies! free yourself!!!

New episode! The Phoenix Bride is an achingly romantic book set in London, 1666 and unlike anything we've ever read. Siegel managed to make an under explored setting feel very lived and pulls off the kind of happily-ever-after we wish we saw more of in the genre.

MAKE GOOD MOVIES OR DIE! Cecil B. Demented, John Waters (2000)

Sanjana recently shared this old piece in her latest (excellent!) Substack and I'm excited folks are discovering it. It's about Christine Monson's infamous book STORMFIRE, a bodice ripper that a lot of people view as a gratuitous, immoral work theloosecravat.substack.com/p/a-history-...

new episode! this week we’re talking about sex work, mistresses, theater, jewelry, estates and more with @scarr.bsky.social! His Lordship’s Mistress is a charming Signet Regency that explores many topics that newer readers might assume a stuffy Regency would shy a way from.

I recently watched scent of a woman and it's going to haunt me for the rest if my life that *that* is what got Pacino an Oscar

want to see my YouTube/Substack impression "The ___ ification of ____" "The Problem with ____" "[Person Name] and [Widespread Aberrant Behavior I'm Pretending Originated with Them]"

did you know that in 1983 there was an Amtrak "Love Train" that took a large group of romance authors/fans to the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention? NYT was not a fan of the documentary about them, saying the women featured had "barren lives" theloosecravat.substack.com/p/the-love-t...

ahhh @bayleyreads.bsky.social is my favorite WWI dad

*puts out cigarette* back in my day "fairy porn" is what we called True Blood Season 3

Good Housekeeping website (?) has done an article on "fairy porn" (??) which recommends one of my books (???) with specific detail indicating that the writer has read the book BUT NEVERTHELESS repeatedly misgendering the MC to make it into MF (?!?!) www.goodhousekeeping.com/uk/lifestyle...

rather humiliating trying to buy from artists on instagram i'm in their dm's like "hello it's Philip Seymour Hoffman from Twister my page is All Romance Novels. i use them to unwind after a big storm"

The Rakes are back for Season 3 with THE COUNTESS CONSPIRACY by Courtney Milan. Featuring friend of the pod @haleystew.bsky.social, we discuss labor, hot girl hobbies and kissing in this long time favorite book.

rude to call it a "common loon" when its cry is so ethereal

The Rakes are here. Season 3 starts Tuesday!!

unfortunately my hubris has resulted in butchered bangs once again

*airhorn noise* Sanjana has entered the chat! baskinsuns.substack.com/p/sex-romanc...

lurking on threads and I do have to wonder if the readers/authors who are saying "smut is defined by the intention to titillate" know that that is, bar for bar, something that I've read on Evangelical websites about porn

Imagine a world where you never learned or tried anything new, you just kept pushing the button for another pellet like a rat.

Struggling to “find the joy” today, then I saw this.

desperately trying to free up space on my phone so i can take more videos of my cat snoring

I wrote about Diana Spencer's childhood romance reading habit, which Tina Brown once called "a diabetes of the soul" theloosecravat.substack.com/p/bride-to-t...

I wrote about Diana Spencer's childhood romance reading habit, which Tina Brown once called "a diabetes of the soul" theloosecravat.substack.com/p/bride-to-t...

I'm afraid The Brutalist can kiss my arse screenrant.com/brutalist-mo...

i am not going to see a movie that uses gen AI! i don't care how many awards it will eventually be nominated for!

so basically americans can get back on tiktok but only after reading a "hail trump" pop-up message cool cool cool

This is a beautiful tribute.

You're gonna see that Woody Woodpecker story shared hundreds of times in the next few days. Luckily it's great every time.

Sanjana has a new piece up on substack, please read it!

David Lynch gave us the language we needed to better articulate the indescribable strangeness of our shared reality. “Lynchian” is so overused because it’s a viscerally understandable word without any known synonyms. I can’t imagine a more beautiful artistic legacy than that.

"fix your hearts or die" is one of the greatest quotes ever said by anyone, in any context and it applies now, more than ever, to far too many people to count

No Angel

Free Palestine 🇵🇸

[willem dafoe unprompted] now, this cookie monster. [toothy smile] what a creature, what a lust. it consumes him. [crosses legs] he’s really a tragic figure.

look i made it the 1979 ibm warning

i don't think i'd ever care about a low GR score because "The Edge of Impropriety" by Pam Rosenthal is sitting at a 3.3 and most people can only dream of writing a book that good

one thing that really stresses me out is in the 90s everyone interviewing Fabio would be like "omg what beautiful hair you have!" and his hair looked like this

i do love that one of the reasons a certain book tracking app says they are using AI is because book summaries have "spoilers," and it's actually more useful to find your next read based on two garbled, regurgitated sentences that are 80% adjectives