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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Please do! I’m surprised it’s taken humanity so long to do sexy Dostoevsky. 😆

Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

This week at the research help desk: Mesopotamian war chariots, whiteboard markers, ADHD and codependency, hours during the break, we're here weekends!, hanging indents, article searches, drag show bans, and we are not the post office (Google Business is wrong). #LibraryLife #LibrarianProblems

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Also going to need to read this: Süner, Ahmet. “The Comic Tragedy of Mere Men and Women: The Ambiguously Distracting Use of Laughter in ‘The Castle of Otranto’ and Its Prefaces.” Atlantis, vol. 38, no. 2, 2016, pp. 11–26. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26330.... Accessed 9 Oct. 2026.

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

There's a whole chapter in this book called Gothic Parody! Woot!

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I've been looking into my question about whether or not Walpole was satirizing or mocking something, and I came across this in Wright's Romantic Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion:

Frederic Weiss and Victor Sage have argued that humour and satire are pervasive in early Gothic works (Weiss 1980; Sage 1994). Following the publication of The Castle of Otranto, parody--no less than haunted castles, prophetic dreams and family curses--became a ficture of Gothic. The early Gothic authors shaped the genre but also incorporated pre-emptive self-parody in anticipation of readers' scepticisim.

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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Whistles work! New York, get some whistles.

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Edmonds Scanner @edmondsscanner.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Remember, there is nothing stopping you from being kind. Also, there's nothing stopping you from learning the secret language of owls, or building an unstable catapult that launches balls of swords.

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Gail Simone @gailsimone.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Terfs suck.

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darth™️ @darthbluesky.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

impeach hegseth should be on the list day one it is not even debatable tbh

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

The closer I look at the forest, the more it looks like a photo backdrop at Sears.

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Wow. The people who promote these things just don't know how to human properly.

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

She wanted a less modest proposal. Where are the balloons? Was her family invited?

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Reminds me of the edition of A Modest Proposal I once saw online that had a man on one knee proposing to a woman on a country lane. 🙄

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Chaucer Doth Tweet @levostregc.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Banning a booke ys extinguishing a beacon. Banning a booke ys silencinge a thousand voyces speakinge yn the heart. Banning a booke ys refusinge to looke at the stars. Banning a booke ys damming a streame of feelinge and invitinge flood. Banning a booke ys making a violent litel shryne to ignorance.

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I am happy to be the enemy of stupidity.

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Dr. Nick Posegay @nposegay.northsky.social · 08/10/2026

Punching my ticket to Kalamazoo

Graphic labelled "Types of Medievalist Paper" based on xkcd.com/2456/. 12 pictures of 'papers' appear with overlaid titles:

You Won't Believe What Nuns Were Up To
HEY, I FOUND A TROVE OF OLD RECORDS! THEY DON'T TURN OUT TO BE PARTICULARLY USEFUL, BUT STILL, COOL!
The Silk Road Is Not Just A Website for Buying LSD
Niche Tax Documents in Provence, 1370-1373
Everything That Happened in Asia, 622-1914
Ships Might Be Very Important
Introducing "Spatula' The New Journal for Medieval Studies
Globalizing the Middle Ages: An Examination of England *and* France
How l Got the University to Pay for My Trip to Venice
Did You Know? Arabs Had Science and Culture Too
We Remembered Spain And It's Right Where We Left It
More Viking Shit Found in Unexpected Place

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

This is one of the saddest things I've ever seen on social media.

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

This book is an absolute trip! I laughed so much!

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I think I can, if I stick to the highlights.

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I have finished The Castle of Otranto. It is one of the whackiest (and funniest) books I have ever read. The next time I talk to anyone in the 18th c. lit class, I plan to have a tight five about Walpole and his demented book.

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

If I were Matilda, I would haunt the shit out of Manfred.

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

"Ah, me, I am slain!" Good grief, this kind of line was hacky even in Shakespeare's day. Also, what did I tell you people about asking questions before you start with the stabbing?!

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Note to everyone in this book: just because you see a person lying still on the ground does not mean that they are dead. Learn to check for a pulse or breathing before you start screaming, for pete's sake!

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Woohoo! A skeletal specter! It's the ghost of the dying hermit!

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

"Lord! what, has not your Greatness heard the story of the Giant in the gallery-chamber?" cried Bianca. "I marvel his Highness has not told you; mayhap you do not know there is a prophecy--" Meanwhile, Manfred is losing his mind because Bianca will never get to the point. 😄

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

"What Giant is this, my Lord?" said the Marquis; "is your castle haunted by giants and goblins?" Well, it's certainly haunted by idiocy and testosterone.

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

"Interrupt us not; we were communing on important matters--My Lord, this wench is subject to fits..." Bianca, you are comic relief on top of unintentional comedy and I love you.

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I want to see if the Giant Leg and Giant foot reappear. It seems a bit like Walpole has forgotten about these and the ghosties he introduced earlier in the book. Although, the dramatic bloody nosed statue might be a sign of more supernatural nuttiness to come.

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

End of chapter four. I'm going to plow through to the end of Otranto tonight--partly because I'm vastly entertained and partly to see what Walpole throws at me next. 🍿

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

They have to start somewhere. I remember having a similar thought when I read The War of the Worlds. Someone had to write the first alien invasion story.

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Also, insta-love and young lovers misunderstanding each other only to raise the emotional tension.

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Walpole has been throwing all the tropes into this ludicrous book: caves that might be haunted or full of smugglers, Barbary slavers, multiple dying informants, ghost sightings, revelation of noble lineage, secret passages, a black tower, and so many people fainting.

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Theodore, you are too stupid to live. Stop trying to get yourself killed by Manfred.

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Oh my god, a giant sword with a rhyming and weirdly apropos prophecy on it! I can't handle this. How did anyone take this seriously?! I hope The Mysteries of Udolpho is better because I am rapidly losing respect for the characters in Northanger Abbey who adored Gothic fiction.

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

And Frederic was lucky enough to encounter a dying hermit who had just the info he needed to find his daughter? Pull the other one, Walpole, it's got bells on.

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Everything seems to be happening in a matter of days, yet there was enough time for Frederic to get from the Holy Land to Italy in time to save his daughter--who just had the lucky break of having her fiance killed by a Giant Helmet™ right before her unwanted marriage. What are the odds?!

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Walpole is even worse with the lucky coincidences that fix everything than Dickens. Oh, some princes just happen to pay Frederic's ransom right after he dreams that his daughter Isabella is in danger so that he can go rescue her from Manfred? Also, the timelines are all buggered in this book.

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Oh good, Princess Hippolita isn't dead! This principality has a serious fake news problem.

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

...and that's the end of chapter three. I'm looking forward to whatever insanity Walpole has in store in chapter four.

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

And everyone needs to start asking some questions before issuing challenges and swinging swords around. Questions first, then stabbing.

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

"Theodore flung himself at her feet, and seizing her lily hand, which with struggles she suffered him to kiss, he vowed on the earliest opportunity to get himself knighted, and fervently entreated her permission to swear himself eternally her knight." Back in the helmet!

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Also, you dudes need to stop referring to yourselves in the third person. You're pompous enough as it is.

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Oh for fuck's sake, Theodore. "Give me thy beauteous hand in token that thou dost not deceive me [that you won't get in trouble for letting him out]," said Theodore; "and let me bathe it with warm tears of gratitude." I'M going to put you back in the helmet, you twit.

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Annie the Book @anniethebook.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Theodore, you moron, stop arguing with Matilda and escape! Enough with the “I’d rather die a thousand deaths” nonsense. I liked you better when you were a mysterious dude trapped in a giant helmet.

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