Robin Bates
@beowulfbates.bsky.social
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
Pinned
I can testify that Merriam Webster got this absolutely right
Solid work here
January 1, 2026 at 10:43 PM
I can testify that Merriam Webster got this absolutely right
I am so envious that you got to read Jane Eyre for the first time. I’ve read it dozens of times and it never fails to astound me. Bronte is one angry woman (with cause)
Aaaand my favorite book I read this year was Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë!
I feel a bit behind reading through a lot of classics for the first time at 35, but this one really surprised me. I thought it would feel outdated and slow but that wasn’t the case for me at all. Wish I had read it sooner!
I feel a bit behind reading through a lot of classics for the first time at 35, but this one really surprised me. I thought it would feel outdated and slow but that wasn’t the case for me at all. Wish I had read it sooner!
December 31, 2025 at 5:18 PM
I am so envious that you got to read Jane Eyre for the first time. I’ve read it dozens of times and it never fails to astound me. Bronte is one angry woman (with cause)
Warning: Avoid being unbooked
Also why it’s essential to always be reading multiple books at the same time. Being completely unbooked is a dangerously vulnerable situation.
Finishing any book over 400 pages requires a day after to grieve, several days of it was the last book in the series 😅
December 30, 2025 at 2:19 AM
Warning: Avoid being unbooked
And then there’s this rough beast slouching
2025 Year in Review!
-falcon hearing worse than ever
-center losing 50 to 100% of holding capacity
-blood-dimmed tide containment failure
-the Worst with record high passionate intensity
-falcon hearing worse than ever
-center losing 50 to 100% of holding capacity
-blood-dimmed tide containment failure
-the Worst with record high passionate intensity
December 29, 2025 at 4:18 PM
And then there’s this rough beast slouching
Reposted by Robin Bates
The canonical response of someone reading ‘Do Androids Dream’ AFTER watching Bladerunner:
1. What the fuck?
2. This is much worse than the movie.
3. Wait. Hold on.
4. Holy shit.
1. What the fuck?
2. This is much worse than the movie.
3. Wait. Hold on.
4. Holy shit.
December 26, 2025 at 10:46 PM
The canonical response of someone reading ‘Do Androids Dream’ AFTER watching Bladerunner:
1. What the fuck?
2. This is much worse than the movie.
3. Wait. Hold on.
4. Holy shit.
1. What the fuck?
2. This is much worse than the movie.
3. Wait. Hold on.
4. Holy shit.
Too true
You can tell that LotR was written by an academic because Gandalf disappears for like 20 years doing research to answer a single question.
December 26, 2025 at 2:09 AM
Too true
Reposted by Robin Bates
Reposted by Robin Bates
Crazy new puzzle app involving word associations, secret messages, and being horny for death. Calling it a “poem”.
December 24, 2025 at 2:07 PM
Crazy new puzzle app involving word associations, secret messages, and being horny for death. Calling it a “poem”.
I did this as well
Not sure if it's helpful for anyone else, and I'm sure some people need to look at them right away, but I started delaying looking at my course evals by one semester, and it has made them much more useful.
December 22, 2025 at 2:57 AM
I did this as well
I’m prejudiced but it’s a really smart interview. Gets into Christmas Carol as a ghost story, time travel story, genius marketing ploy
It would perhaps surprise no one that I was raised with public radio as the background noise to my daily existence, so it was a singular delight getting to go on NPR to talk about Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol omny.fm/shows/in-the...
Christmas Special: Tobias Wilson-Bates on Charles Dickens - In These Times with Bill Nigut
omny.fm
December 21, 2025 at 3:50 AM
I’m prejudiced but it’s a really smart interview. Gets into Christmas Carol as a ghost story, time travel story, genius marketing ploy
Reposted by Robin Bates
What people don’t understand about George Eliot is that she doesn’t write novels. She just describes 500 page-long parables.
December 19, 2025 at 12:20 AM
What people don’t understand about George Eliot is that she doesn’t write novels. She just describes 500 page-long parables.
Reposted by Robin Bates
This is a photo from the Vanity Fair article. Notice how they have to arrange it so Stephen Miller is on the end, so it isn’t obvious that there is no reflection of him on the mirrored table.🧛
December 16, 2025 at 9:08 PM
This is a photo from the Vanity Fair article. Notice how they have to arrange it so Stephen Miller is on the end, so it isn’t obvious that there is no reflection of him on the mirrored table.🧛
Like DJT, for instance: "Practically I thought I had impunity to do whatever I chose, everything—save to give away my secret. So I thought. Whatever I did, whatever the consequences might be, was nothing to me. I had merely to fling aside my garments and vanish. No person could hold me."
The Invisible Man is the story most different from its cultural afterlife. HG Wells was basically like, "what if the most annoying jerk you know was also invisible???"
December 9, 2025 at 1:27 PM
Like DJT, for instance: "Practically I thought I had impunity to do whatever I chose, everything—save to give away my secret. So I thought. Whatever I did, whatever the consequences might be, was nothing to me. I had merely to fling aside my garments and vanish. No person could hold me."
Maybe Dostoevsky should have entitled The Brothers Karamazov “Mad Men"
Wait a second. Was Mad Men just paraphrasing Dostoevsky???
December 7, 2025 at 10:10 PM
Maybe Dostoevsky should have entitled The Brothers Karamazov “Mad Men"
Yes!!
Library people watching is better than airport people watching bc everyone in a library appears to be living their best life
December 7, 2025 at 12:04 AM
Yes!!
Reposted by Robin Bates
We remember Christmas Carol bc it is one of the most adaptable and frequently adapted stories from the 19th century, but the prose of the original is really quite extraordinary.
‘I wear the chain I forged in life,’ replied the Ghost. ‘I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?’
~Jacob Marley
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
#PhantomsFriday
~Jacob Marley
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
#PhantomsFriday
December 5, 2025 at 2:53 PM
We remember Christmas Carol bc it is one of the most adaptable and frequently adapted stories from the 19th century, but the prose of the original is really quite extraordinary.
Reposted by Robin Bates
Wordsworth and Coleridge would’ve tried to launch their own app, but it would be an incredibly embarrassing failure as Wordsworth would never learn how to code and Coleridge would become convinced that a Chatbot was the voice of God.
Byron would’ve been on every social media and dating app, but William Blake would only have been on Bluesky
December 2, 2025 at 10:38 PM
Wordsworth and Coleridge would’ve tried to launch their own app, but it would be an incredibly embarrassing failure as Wordsworth would never learn how to code and Coleridge would become convinced that a Chatbot was the voice of God.
In my experience, the best research essays have a story arc. Story gives meaning to the facts. And the Communist Manifesto has a boffo ending
Whingeing about some grading, and one of my daughters volunteers “you shouldn’t have suspense in you research paper.”
Exactly. I am reminded of a colleague’s quip “A research paper isn’t a mystery novel. You don’t have to read to the last page of Marx to find out the capitalists did it.”
Exactly. I am reminded of a colleague’s quip “A research paper isn’t a mystery novel. You don’t have to read to the last page of Marx to find out the capitalists did it.”
December 2, 2025 at 6:14 PM
In my experience, the best research essays have a story arc. Story gives meaning to the facts. And the Communist Manifesto has a boffo ending
Reposted by Robin Bates
December 2, 2025 at 8:48 AM
Reposted by Robin Bates
"In the solitude of a book, we find ourselves a little more willing to be vulnerable to having our mindset challenged." - Nick Raines
The main difference between people who want to ban books and me:
They would feel threatened by that quote.
I feel *energized* by it.
The main difference between people who want to ban books and me:
They would feel threatened by that quote.
I feel *energized* by it.
November 27, 2025 at 8:33 AM
"In the solitude of a book, we find ourselves a little more willing to be vulnerable to having our mindset challenged." - Nick Raines
The main difference between people who want to ban books and me:
They would feel threatened by that quote.
I feel *energized* by it.
The main difference between people who want to ban books and me:
They would feel threatened by that quote.
I feel *energized* by it.
Reposted by Robin Bates
Reposted by Robin Bates
“Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”
—André Gide, winner of the 1947 Nobel Prize in Literature
—André Gide, winner of the 1947 Nobel Prize in Literature
November 25, 2025 at 11:52 AM
“Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”
—André Gide, winner of the 1947 Nobel Prize in Literature
—André Gide, winner of the 1947 Nobel Prize in Literature
Reposted by Robin Bates
Frankenstein is the story of a lonely sea captain who hears such a great story that he decides not to kill his entire crew in the arctic.
November 25, 2025 at 4:59 AM
Frankenstein is the story of a lonely sea captain who hears such a great story that he decides not to kill his entire crew in the arctic.
A key difference between a man like Shepard and today’s dismal exemplars of hypermasculinity is that his currency was guilt, whereas now the watchword is resentment. The former internalizes blame, forging stoics, while the latter assigns it elsewhere, yielding brats. - Atlantic article on S Shepard
November 24, 2025 at 8:25 PM
A key difference between a man like Shepard and today’s dismal exemplars of hypermasculinity is that his currency was guilt, whereas now the watchword is resentment. The former internalizes blame, forging stoics, while the latter assigns it elsewhere, yielding brats. - Atlantic article on S Shepard
"As soon as I replace my direct perception of reality by the words of a book, I deliver myself, bound hand and foot, to the omnipotence of fiction. I say farewell to what is, in order to feign belief in what is not….I become the prey of language." (G. Poulet)
Impossible how good reading is. You mean I just point my face at the paper for a bit and it does a whole update on my brain?
November 23, 2025 at 6:20 PM
"As soon as I replace my direct perception of reality by the words of a book, I deliver myself, bound hand and foot, to the omnipotence of fiction. I say farewell to what is, in order to feign belief in what is not….I become the prey of language." (G. Poulet)