12oclocktales
siren songs
- Joined
- Dec 19, 2022
- Posts
- 569
I know it seems like we’re all just headed to hell in a handbasket and that no matter how awful today is, tomorrow will no doubt be worse, but sometimes you just have to stop and appreciate just how things have gotten better. An etiquette book appeared in 1863, written by a Lady Gough, that insisted,
“The perfect hostess will see to it that the works of male and female authors be properly separated on their bookshelves.”
Imagine still living in a world like that? A world where books actually fucked each other unashamedly on library shelves and had better be separated. People thought they looked so innocent all lined up neatly next to one another, but some knew differently. Apparently all that rubbing up against each other made them insane with lust, spines tingling in anticipation of ravishing or being ravished by that gorgeous or handsome, slim or fat volume (preferences varied) making contact with their most secret passages. That’s how short stories were first introduced to the world, you know, two triple-decker novels having unprotected sex (that’s what book jackets were for), War and Peace and Middlemarch going at it on a library shelf somewhere (certainly not in Lady Gough’s properly arranged library), all those pages becoming raggedy and dog-eared in one and starting to stick together in the other, until nine months later out pops O’Henry and “The Gift of the Magi.” Some might think it a shame that books don’t fuck anymore, and blame the efforts of the likes of Lady Gough for this sad fact, but all is not lost. There are over 500 stories on Lit alone that are tagged Library, and although I can’t recall coming across any story there where the books were actually fucking, some of the things that were happening in those stories I don’t think any book could ever imagine doing, no matter how hard-covered it was, and will be happy to leave to the people found there to indulge in. Right there is a big improvement from Lady Gough’s day.
“The perfect hostess will see to it that the works of male and female authors be properly separated on their bookshelves.”
Imagine still living in a world like that? A world where books actually fucked each other unashamedly on library shelves and had better be separated. People thought they looked so innocent all lined up neatly next to one another, but some knew differently. Apparently all that rubbing up against each other made them insane with lust, spines tingling in anticipation of ravishing or being ravished by that gorgeous or handsome, slim or fat volume (preferences varied) making contact with their most secret passages. That’s how short stories were first introduced to the world, you know, two triple-decker novels having unprotected sex (that’s what book jackets were for), War and Peace and Middlemarch going at it on a library shelf somewhere (certainly not in Lady Gough’s properly arranged library), all those pages becoming raggedy and dog-eared in one and starting to stick together in the other, until nine months later out pops O’Henry and “The Gift of the Magi.” Some might think it a shame that books don’t fuck anymore, and blame the efforts of the likes of Lady Gough for this sad fact, but all is not lost. There are over 500 stories on Lit alone that are tagged Library, and although I can’t recall coming across any story there where the books were actually fucking, some of the things that were happening in those stories I don’t think any book could ever imagine doing, no matter how hard-covered it was, and will be happy to leave to the people found there to indulge in. Right there is a big improvement from Lady Gough’s day.
