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Robin Bates

@beowulfbates.bsky.social

230 followers 260 following 300 posts

Professor of literature, teacher, husband, father, liberal, Episcopalian, blogs daily at betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com. Author of Better Living through Literature: How Books Change Lives and (Sometimes) History

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Robin Bates @beowulfbates.bsky.social · Dec 9

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Robin Bates @beowulfbates.bsky.social · 21h

The subtext becomes text

Overdue Podcast @overduepod.bsky.social · 1d

He doesn't mind!!

The final page of Frankenstein with a hand-written addendum saying that Frankenstein's monster doesn't mind being called Frankenstein.

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Robin Bates @beowulfbates.bsky.social · 2d

You're teaching all these works in your Time Travel course?

Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 2d

HG Wells: having cracked the mysteries of time, the time traveler sets out to—

Heinlein: have sex with himself to give birth to herself

Wells: what the-

William Morris: let him talk. What do themselves think about wallpaper??

Robin Bates @beowulfbates.bsky.social · 3d

Wonderful quote! So true

Matthew Dowd @matthewjdowd.bsky.social · 3d

happy bday English writer Blake Morrison, b.1950.

“You can possess a book without really owning it, though. Beyond ownership in a commercial or legal sense, there’s ownership of an emotional or metaphysical kind - when a book speaks so powerfully to us that we feel it’s ours exclusively:...

Reposted by Robin Bates

Septimus Brown @septimusbrown.com · 3d

"It is an old prerogative of kings to govern everything but their passions."

—The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

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Robin Bates @beowulfbates.bsky.social · 4d

Ooh, an Orwell allusion!

Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 4d

But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved his mandatory Compliance Training online tutorial.

Reposted by Robin Bates

Joe Stieb @joestieb.bsky.social · 4d

"Let us, however, never forget that this country belongs to us even more than to those who lynch, disenfranchise, and segregate."

W.E.B. DuBois.

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Reposted by Robin Bates

Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 5d

The Babe Ruth of calling her shot on coming back from the dead

Becky @beckygracelea.bsky.social · 6d

She hath risen.

“Mary Shelley has released a new title!”

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Robin Bates @beowulfbates.bsky.social · 5d

Why I think MAGA keeps censoring Stephen King (he depicts America's predilection for violence, which they would prefer to keep hidden) betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/stephen-king...

Stephen King Understands MAGA | Better Living through Beowulf

Stephen King is the most banned author in America at the moment. It may be because he depicts America's dark side so vividly.

betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com

Robin Bates @beowulfbates.bsky.social · 5d

Funny how a Commonwealth Government claiming to espouse republican values would have problems with an author who championed free will

Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 5d

Fun historical fact is that John Milton essentially served as the content moderator for the Commonwealth Government, but let so much freaky stuff get translated into English that they quietly retired him from the position.

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Robin Bates @beowulfbates.bsky.social · 5d

This make's the article's point: following the insult, he gets a 6 hour monologue

Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 5d

unhand me, grey-beard loon!

CNBC @cnbc.com · 5d

To shut down rude behavior instantly, try a simple yet powerful five-word response.

Reposted by Robin Bates

Septimus Brown @septimusbrown.com · 5d

"Books—the generous friends who met me without suspicion—the merciful masters who never used me ill!"

—from Armadale by Wilkie Collins

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Robin Bates @beowulfbates.bsky.social · 6d

Whenever I think of those longer gravitational pulls, our nation's history of slavery--and every new immigrant group encountering (and some buying into) this caste system-- comes to mind

Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 6d

Something I find useful is considering our present moment as happening within a set of densely nested or even intersecting timelines, some going back centuries and some cycling every 24 hours. When the patterns of a short cycle don’t make any sense, it’s often the gravitational pull of a longer one.

Reposted by Robin Bates

Ann Powers @annkpowers.bsky.social · 7d

This is the truest thing I’ve read on the Internet in a while

Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 7d

My take, which I’ve banged on about before, concerning the state of young people reading these days is that reading is a rhythm. It’s like a mix of slow breathing and being pleasurably bored. We need to bring back spaces and times where our young people can breath and think and get lost in a world.

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Reposted by Robin Bates

Rae Radford @raeradford.bsky.social · 8d

#BookSky

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Reposted by Robin Bates

Rae Radford @raeradford.bsky.social · 8d

#BookSky

🤗

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Robin Bates @beowulfbates.bsky.social · 9d

It's always worth remembering this quote

Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 10d

“If you can only be tall because somebody is on their knees, then you have a serious problem.”

—Toni Morrison

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Robin Bates @beowulfbates.bsky.social · 10d

To borrow from Wilde, they "only do that when they have called each other a lot of other things first."

Robin Bates @beowulfbates.bsky.social · 10d

And then you sucked until your lips were sore

Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 10d

Oh, these? Ya, organic and GMO free, I bought them from goblin men and they’re delicious.

Reposted by Robin Bates

Joseph Fasano @josephfasano.bsky.social · 10d

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Writing for Wellbeing @writeforwellbeing.bsky.social · 10d

He who does not read, at 70 years will have lived only one life, his own! He who reads, will have lived 5000 years: He was there when Cain killed Abel, when Renzo married Lucia, when Leopardi admired infinity... Because “Reading is backward immortality”.
-Umberto Eco
writingforwellbeing.co.uk
#books

Umberto Eco with many shelves of his collection of books

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Reposted by Robin Bates

Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 12d

“If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way.”
Emile Zola, who died on this day in 1902

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Robin Bates @beowulfbates.bsky.social · 12d

Who wouldn't want to awake a sadder and a wise man the follow morn?

Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 12d

Trying to make direct glittering eye contact with ancient mariners just to feel alive

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Robin Bates @beowulfbates.bsky.social · 14d

How about an object in motion tends to remain in motion unless acted upon by an external force?

Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 14d

I don’t entirely trust Physics because nowhere in its description of entropy does it reference 6 year-olds, and yet the aggregate effect of just such a force on my home is readily apparent.

Robin Bates @beowulfbates.bsky.social · 14d

Brilliant!

The Onion @theonion.com · 14d

Talk Of Fascism Dangerous, Warns Ministry Of Compliance

Reposted by Robin Bates

Septimus Brown @septimusbrown.com · 15d

"Imagination is a licensed trespasser: it has no fear of dogs, but may climb over walls and peep in at windows with impunity."

—from Adam Bede by George Eliot

a soccer goal is in the middle of a lush green field surrounded by trees

ALT: a soccer goal is in the middle of a lush green field surrounded by trees

media.tenor.com

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