As one, the internet lets off steam about meandering, detail-obsessed authors

By Allison Shoemaker  |  November 12, 2019 | 11:15pm
Aux Features Books
As one, the internet lets off steam about meandering, detail-obsessed authors
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We have not hidden our love for the only good brand Twitter account, which is, somehow, SparkNotes. Well, our favorite little book nerd scamps behind that feed scored a win yesterday, and it was by combining one perfect Mean Girls still with a dunk on ol’ Victor Hugo.

Reader, one A.V. Club contributor found out that this particular tweet was a winner the hard way, i.e. by winding up in its inevitable Twitter Moment and having her notifications destroyed for several hours despite not actually contributing anything of substance to the conversation (it was me, I’m the contributor). For once that joke hit the internet, the books nerds came together as one to relentlessly rag on beloved authors who just cannot stop talking about sewers/whales/the layouts of towns/ships/food/etc.

Some highlights. Some more Hugo:

(Bonus points if you sing that last one.)

Good old Leo Tolstoy:

Jules “Listen to me. Let us admit that the pressure of the atmosphere is represented by the weight of a column of water thirty-two feet high. In reality the column of water would be shorter, as we are speaking of sea water, the density of which is greater than that of fresh water. Very well, when you dive, Ned, as many times 32 feet of water as there are above you, so many times does your body bear a pressure equal to that of the atmosphere, that is to say, 15 lb. for each square inch of its surface. It follows, then, that at 320 feet this pressure equals that of 10 atmospheres, of 100 atmospheres at 3,200 feet, and of 1,000 atmospheres at 32,000 feet, that is, about 6 miles; which is equivalent to saying that if you could attain this depth in the ocean, each square three-eighths of an inch of the surface of your body would bear a pressure of 5,600 lb. Ah!” Verne:

Charlotte Brontë, who adored a flying buttress:

John Steinbeck:

Homer, a trendsetter:

Sai King:

Herman Melville, always and forever:

The inevitable entry of Tom Bombadil:

What Bombadil hath wrought:

Hurry it up a little, Cthulu:

Tom Clancy, you’ve been made:

But hey, someone got out unscathed:

 
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