#Molly Fischer
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Molly Fischer, Joan Didion’s Greatest Two-Word Sentence: The power of an ice-cold, unflinching gaze.
#Molly Fischer#Joan Didion’s Greatest Two-Word Sentence: The power of an ice-cold unflinching gaze.#Joan Didion
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If you simultaneously can’t afford any frills and can’t afford any failure, you end up with millennial design: crowd-pleasing, risk-averse, calling just enough attention to itself to make it clear that you tried. For a cohort reared to achieve and then released into an economy where achievement held no guarantees, the millennial aesthetic provides something that looks a little like bourgeois stability, at least. This is a style that makes basic success cheap and easy; it requires little in the way of special access, skills, or goods. It is style that can be borrowed, inhabited temporarily or virtually.
Molly Fischer, Will the millennial aesthetic ever end?
#‘a cohort reared to achieve and then released into an economy where achievement held no guarantees’ h e l p.#Molly Fischer#Will the millennial aesthetic ever end?
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This is a formula that I have come to think of as the rogue “we”: it subsumes readers into an author’s personal experiences and neuroses, drafting them into a posture of helplessness to which they might reasonably object—“Wait, we do?”
The Rules According to Pamela Paul
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Final Destination All Stars
Made By Me
Cast:
Alex Browning
Kimberly Corman
Wendy Christensen
Nick O'Bannon
Sam Lawton
Clear Rivers
Thomas Burke
Kevin Fischer
Lori Milligan
Molly Harper
Carter Horton
Eugene Dix
Ian McKinley
Hunt Wynorski
Peter Friedkin
Terry Chaney
Rory Peters
Erin Ulmer
Janet Cunningham
Candice Hooper
Billy Hitchcock
Kat Jennings
Julie Christensen
George Lanter
Nathan Sears
#final destination#alex browning#kimberly corman#wendy christensen#nick o'bannon#sam lawton#clear rivers#thomas burke#kevin fischer#lori milligan#molly harper#carter horton#eugene dix#ian mckinley#hunt wynorski#peter friedkin#terry chaney#rory peters#erin ulmer#janet cunningham#candice hooper#billy hitchcock#kat jennings#julie christensen#george lanter#nathan sears
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To the visionaries and their sidekicks, what’s the scariest thing that’s happened to you (pre Death or otherwise)?
Alex: One time when I was about to go to bed, I saw someone staring at me outside of my window. I still have no clue who that was.
Clear: My mom and her boyfriend got into an argument once and my mom threw a fan at his face. I'd never seen that much blood before.
Kimberly: My mom's death.
Burke: A lot of things have happened to me but the scariest was probably when my partner was killed. This is only if we're not including the whole "death" fiasco.
Wendy: Back in high school these two dudes were on the roof putting up Christmas lights and one of them fell off. To this day I still hear his scream.
Kevin: When I was 7 or something I got chased by a dog. Not as crazy as some of the other ones but I almost shit my pants when it happened.
Nick: When my teacher was bending over to pick something up, one of her shoddy stitches ripped and she screamed so loud everyone in the school heard her. That was all the way back in middle school and I still cringe when I think about it.
Lori: My tooth was loose and when I tried to let my dad rip it out, he accidentally ripped the wrong one. Thankfully that one was slightly loose and it grew back but the pain was excruciating. Overall mortifying experience.
Sam: I saw a girl burn herself really badly once. Her skin was bubbly and red and it was just ew.
Molly: That time I burnt myself really badly and my skin was all bubbly and red.
#final destination#final destination 2#final destination 3#the final destination#final destination 5#alex browning#clear rivers#kimberly corman#thomas burke#wendy christensen#kevin fischer#nick o'bannon#lori milligan#sam lawton#molly harper
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It’s officially spooky season bitches!!! Which means that it’s time to bust out the spooky headcanons!!!
The visionaries/sidekick’s favorite horror and Halloween movies:
Alex: Idle Hands
Clear: Night Of The Living Dead
Kimberly: The Exorcist
Burke: The Hills Have Eyes
Wendy: Halloween
Kevin: Carrie
Nick: The Shinning
Lori: Jeepers Creepers
Sam: An American Werewolf in London
Molly: Scream
#reblog with what you think their favorite horror movies would be!!#final destination#final destination 2#final destination 3#the final destination#final destination 5#alex browning#clear rivers#kimberly corman#thomas burke#wendy christensen#kevin fischer#nick o’bannon#lori milligan#sam lawton#molly harper
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full list of biden letter 2:
Aaron Bay-Schuck
Aaron Sorkin
Adam & Jackie Sandler
Adam Goodman
Adam Levine
Alan Grubman
Alex Aja
Alex Edelman
Alexandra Shiva
Ali Wentworth
Alison Statter
Allan Loeb
Alona Tal
Amy Chozick
Amy Pascal
Amy Schumer
Amy Sherman Palladino
Andrew Singer
Andy Cohen
Angela Robinson
Anthony Russo
Antonio Campos
Ari Dayan
Ari Greenburg
Arik Kneller
Aron Coleite
Ashley Levinson
Asif Satchu
Aubrey Plaza
Barbara Hershey
Barry Diller
Barry Levinson
Barry Rosenstein
Beau Flynn
Behati Prinsloo
Bella Thorne
Ben Stiller
Ben Turner
Ben Winston
Ben Younger
Billy Crystal
Blair Kohan
Bob Odenkirk
Bobbi Brown
Bobby Kotick
Brad Falchuk
Brad Slater
Bradley Cooper
Bradley Fischer
Brett Gelman
Brian Grazer
Bridget Everett
Brooke Shields
Bruna Papandrea
Cameron Curtis
Casey Neistat
Cazzie David
Charles Roven
Chelsea Handler
Chloe Fineman
Chris Fischer
Chris Jericho
Chris Rock
Christian Carino
Cindi Berger
Claire Coffee
Colleen Camp
Constance Wu
Courteney Cox
Craig Silverstein
Dame Maureen Lipman
Dan Aloni
Dan Rosenweig
Dana Goldberg
Dana Klein
Daniel Palladino
Danielle Bernstein
Danny Cohen
Danny Strong
Daphne Kastner
David Alan Grier
David Baddiel
David Bernad
David Chang
David Ellison
David Geffen
David Gilmour &
David Goodman
David Joseph
David Kohan
David Lowery
David Oyelowo
David Schwimmer
Dawn Porter
Dean Cain
Deborah Lee Furness
Deborah Snyder
Debra Messing
Diane Von Furstenberg
Donny Deutsch
Doug Liman
Douglas Chabbott
Eddy Kitsis
Edgar Ramirez
Eli Roth
Elisabeth Shue
Elizabeth Himelstein
Embeth Davidtz
Emma Seligman
Emmanuelle Chriqui
Eric Andre
Erik Feig
Erin Foster
Eugene Levy
Evan Jonigkeit
Evan Winiker
Ewan McGregor
Francis Benhamou
Francis Lawrence
Fred Raskin
Gabe Turner
Gail Berman
Gal Gadot
Gary Barber
Gene Stupinski
Genevieve Angelson
Gideon Raff
Gina Gershon
Grant Singer
Greg Berlanti
Guy Nattiv
Guy Oseary
Gwyneth Paltrow
Hannah Fidell
Hannah Graf
Harlan Coben
Harold Brown
Harvey Keitel
Henrietta Conrad
Henry Winkler
Holland Taylor
Howard Gordon
Iain Morris
Imran Ahmed
Inbar Lavi
Isla Fisher
Jack Black
Jackie Sandler
Jake Graf
Jake Kasdan
James Brolin
James Corden
Jamie Ray Newman
Jaron Varsano
Jason Biggs & Jenny Mollen Biggs
Jason Blum
Jason Fuchs
Jason Reitman
Jason Segel
Jason Sudeikis
JD Lifshitz
Jeff Goldblum
Jeff Rake
Jen Joel
Jeremy Piven
Jerry Seinfeld
Jesse Itzler
Jesse Plemons
Jesse Sisgold
Jessica Biel
Jessica Elbaum
Jessica Seinfeld
Jill Littman
Jimmy Carr
Jody Gerson
Joe Hipps
Joe Quinn
Joe Russo
Joe Tippett
Joel Fields
Joey King
John Landgraf
John Slattery
Jon Bernthal
Jon Glickman
Jon Hamm
Jon Liebman
Jonathan Baruch
Jonathan Groff
Jonathan Marc Sherman
Jonathan Ross
Jonathan Steinberg
Jonathan Tisch
Jonathan Tropper
Jordan Peele
Josh Brolin
Josh Charles
Josh Goldstine
Josh Greenstein
Josh Grode
Judd Apatow
Judge Judy Sheindlin
Julia Garner
Julia Lester
Julianna Margulies
Julie Greenwald
Julie Rudd
Juliette Lewis
Justin Theroux
Justin Timberlake
Karen Pollock
Karlie Kloss
Katy Perry
Kelley Lynch
Kevin Kane
Kevin Zegers
Kirsten Dunst
Kitao Sakurai
KJ Steinberg
Kristen Schaal
Kristin Chenoweth
Lana Del Rey
Laura Dern
Laura Pradelska
Lauren Schuker Blum
Laurence Mark
Laurie David
Lea Michele
Lee Eisenberg
Leo Pearlman
Leslie Siebert
Liev Schreiber
Limor Gott
Lina Esco
Liz Garbus
Lizanne Rosenstein
Lizzie Tisch
Lorraine Schwartz
Lynn Harris
Lyor Cohen
Madonna
Mandana Dayani
Mara Buxbaum
Marc Webb
Marco Perego
Maria Dizzia
Mark Feuerstein
Mark Foster
Mark Scheinberg
Mark Shedletsky
Martin Short
Mary Elizabeth Winstead
Mathew Rosengart
Matt Lucas
Matt Miller
Matthew Bronfman
Matthew Hiltzik
Matthew Weiner
Matti Leshem
Max Mutchnik
Maya Lasry
Meaghan Oppenheimer
Melissa Zukerman
Michael Aloni
Michael Ellenberg
Michael Green
Michael Rapino
Michael Rappaport
Michael Weber
Michelle Williams
Mike Medavoy
Mila Kunis
Mimi Leder
Modi Wiczyk
Molly Shannon
Nancy Josephson
Natasha Leggero
Neil Blair
Neil Druckmann
Nicola Peltz
Nicole Avant
Nina Jacobson
Noa Kirel
Noa Tishby
Noah Oppenheim
Noah Schnapp
Noreena Hertz
Odeya Rush
Olivia Wilde
Oran Zegman
Orlando Bloom
Pasha Kovalev
Pattie LuPone
Paul & Julie Rudd
Paul Haas
Paul Pflug
Peter Traugott
Polly Sampson
Rachel Riley
Rafi Marmor
Ram Bergman
Raphael Margulies
Rebecca Angelo
Rebecca Mall
Regina Spektor
Reinaldo Marcus Green
Rich Statter
Richard Jenkins
Richard Kind
Rick Hoffman
Rick Rosen
Rita Ora
Rob Rinder
Robert Newman
Roger Birnbaum
Roger Green
Rosie O’Donnell
Ross Duffer
Ryan Feldman
Sacha Baron Cohen
Sam Levinson
Sam Trammell
Sara Foster
Sarah Baker
Sarah Bremner
Sarah Cooper
Sarah Paulson
Sarah Treem
Scott Braun
Scott Braun
Scott Neustadter
Scott Tenley
Sean Combs
Seth Meyers
Seth Oster
Shannon Watts
Shari Redstone
Sharon Jackson
Sharon Stone
Shauna Perlman
Shawn Levy
Sheila Nevins
Shira Haas
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Simon Tikhman
Skylar Astin
Stacey Snider
Stephen Fry
Steve Agee
Steve Rifkind
Sting & Trudie Styler
Susanna Felleman
Susie Arons
Taika Waititi
Thomas Kail
Tiffany Haddish
Todd Lieberman
Todd Moscowitz
Todd Waldman
Tom Freston
Tom Werner
Tomer Capone
Tracy Ann Oberman
Trudie Styler
Tyler James Williams
Tyler Perry
Vanessa Bayer
Veronica Grazer
Veronica Smiley
Whitney Wolfe Herd
Will Ferrell
Will Graham
Yamanieka Saunders
Yariv Milchan
Ynon Kreiz
Zack Snyder
Zoe Saldana
Zoey Deutch
Zosia Mamet
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2023 Books Read
Our Wives Under the Sea - Julia Armfield (Dec 31-Jan 2)
See You Yesterday - Rachel Lynn Solomon (Jan 2-Jan 3)
All Dressed Up - Jilly Gagnon (Jan 4)
She Gets the Girl - Rachael Lippincott & Alyson Derrick (Jan 5-Jan 6)
Ready Player One - Ernest Cline (Jan 6-Jan 10)
Jamaica Inn - Daphne Du Maurier (Jan 10-Jan 13)
Greywaren - Maggie Stiefvater (Jan 14-Jan 16)
The Ballad of Never After - Stephanie Garber (Jan 17-Jan 22)
By the Book - Jasmine Guillory (Jan 22-Jan 24)
Portrait of a Thief - Grace D Li (Jan 25-Feb 4)
Pride and Prejudice (reread, audiobook) - Jane Austen (Jan 31-Feb 6)
Macbeth (reread) - William Shakespeare (Feb 6-Feb 10)
Normal People - Sally Rooney (Feb 18-Feb 22)
All the Dangerous Things - Stacy Willingham (Feb 23-Feb 25)
The Diary of Mary Berg - Mary Berg (Feb 17-Feb 27)
The Witch Haven - Sasha Peyton Smith (Mar 4-Mar 11)
Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Feb 26-Mar 12)
The Witch Hunt - Sasha Peyton Smith (Mar 19-Mar 22)
Jonny Appleseed - Joshua Whitehead (Mar 19-Mar 28)
The Mysterious Affair at Styles - Agatha Christie (Mar 25-Mar 29)
Last Violent Call - Chloe Gong (Mar 30-Apr 1)
Beartown - Fredrik Backman (Apr 1-Apr 4)
People We Meet on Vacation (reread) - Emily Henry (Apr 5-Apr 7)
Notes on an Execution - Danya Kukafka (Apr 8)
Kiss Her Once For Me - Alison Cochran (Apr 8-Apr 10)
If You Could See the Sun - Ann Liang (Apr 11-Apr 15)
Murder at the Vicarage - Agatha Christie (Apr 15-Apr 19)
The Appeal - Janice Hallett (Apr 19-Apr 20)
The Black Spider - Jeremias Gotthelf (Apr 20)
Molly of the Mall - Heidi L.M. Jacobs (Apr 21-Apr 22)
The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein - Kiersten White (April 23-Apr 25)
Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (April 26-Apr 28)
Happy Place - Emily Henry (Apr 29)
Us Against You - Fredrik Backman (Apr 30-May 3)
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald (May 3-May 5)
Juniper and Thorn - Ava Reid (May 6-May 10)
Meet Me at the Lake - Carley Fortune (May 11-May 12)
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell (May 12-May 19)
Anne of Green Gables (reread) - L.M. Montgomery (May 19-May 22)
Anne of Avonlea (reread) - L.M. Montgomery (May 24-May 26)
Anne of the Island (reread) - L.M. Montgomery (May 26-May 30)
The Winners - Fredrik Backman (June 2-June 6)
Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier (June 7-June 8)
Peril at End House - Agatha Christie (June 9)
The Many Lives and Secret Sorrows of Josephine B (reread) - Sandra Gulland (June 11-June 12)
Tales of Passion Tales of Woe - Sandra Gulland (June 13-June 14)
The Last Great Dance on Earth - Sandra Gulland (June 14-June 15)
Frankenstein in Baghdad - Ahmed Saadawi (June 15-June 18)
Crooked House - Agatha Christie (June 22-June 24)
Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen (June 20-June 30)
I Must Betray You - Ruta Sepetys (June 30-July 1)
Pageboy - Elliot Page (July 2-July 4)
This Time It’s Real - Ann Liang (July 6)
The Last Word - Taylor Adams (July 6-July 7)
The Fiancée Farce - Alexandria Bellefleur (July 7-July 8)
The Guilt Trip - Sandie Jones (July 8)
Camp Zero - Michelle Min Sterling (July 8)
The Berry Pickers - Amanda Peters (July 8-July 9)
Family of Liars - E. Lockhart (July 9-July 11)
The Last House Guest - Megan Miranda (July 11-July 12)
The Last Tale of the Flower Bride - Roshani Chokshi (July 14-July 21)
Rolling in the Deep (audiobook) - Mira Grant (July 20-July 21)
Wunderland - Jennifer Cody Epstein (July 21-July 23)
The Stationary Shop of Tehran (July 24-27)
Yellowface - R.F. Kuang (July 27-July 29)
These Violent Delights - Micah Nemerever (July 29-Aug 3)
Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë (Aug 3-Aug 5)
Begin Again - Emma Lord (Aug 6-Aug 8)
Medicine Walk - Richard Wagamese (Aug 8-Aug 12)
419 - Will Ferguson (Aug 16-Aug 19)
Harlem Shuffle - Colson Whitehead (Aug 21-Aug 24)
Ballet Shoes (reread) - Noel Streatfeild (Aug 25-Aug 26)
Songs for the Missing - Stewart O’Nan (Aug 28-Aug 31)
You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight - Kalynn Bayron (Sept 1-Sept 2)
I’ve Got Your Number - Sophie Kinsella (Sept 2)
The Adult - Bronwyn Fischer (Sept 3)
Nine Liars - Maureen Johnson (Sept 4-Sept 6)
Small Things Like These - Claire Keegan (Sept 6)
The Honeys - Ryan La Sala (Sept 15-Sept 19)
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - Jules Verne (Sept 12-Sept 20)
Beowulf - Unknown (Sept 8-Sept 21)
The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side - Agatha Christie (Sept 21-Sept 25)
Better Than the Movies - Lynn Painter (Sept 26-Sept 30)
Annihilation - Jeff VanderMeer (Oct 4-Oct 7)
And Don’t Look Back - Rebecca Barrow (Oct 7)
Hallowe’en Party - Agatha Christie (Oct 8-Oct 9)
Cannibal Island - Nichlolas Werth (Oct 9-Oct 22)
The Final Gambit - Jennifer Lynn Barnes (Oct 17-Oct 22)
Stalin’s Nomads: Power and Famine in Kazakhstan - Robert Kindler (Oct 16-Oct 24)
Six of Crows (reread) - Leigh Bardugo (Oct 25-Oct 30)
Crooked Kingdom (reread) - Leigh Bardugo (Nov 3-Nov 7)
Sadie (reread) - Courtney Summers (Nov 9-Nov 10)
The Invisible Man - H.G. Wells (Nov 6-Nov 13)
Hamlet - William Shakespeare (Nov 6-Nov 13)
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (reread) - Holly Jackson (Nov 11-Nov 15)
Good Girl, Bad Blood (reread) - Holly Jackson (Nov 15-Nov 18)
As Good as Dead (reread) - Holly Jackson (Nov 20-Nov 23)
Red White and Royal Blue (reread) - Casey McQuiston (Nov 25-Dec 5)
The Secret History - Donna Tartt (Dec 18-Dec 22)
The Day of the Jackal - Frederick Forsyth (Dec 24-Dec 25)
Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries - Heather Fawcett (Dec 25-Dec 27)
Murder in the Family - Cara Hunter (Dec 28)
Three Holidays and a Wedding - Uzma Jalaluddin, Marissa Stapley (Dec 29)
The Book of Cold Cases - Simone St James (Dec 30-Dec 31)
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tumblr’s top 10 favorite age 8 solos 2023
Gigi Shea- La Vie En Rose (Larkin Dance Studio, Chelsea Jennings)
Navy Forrest- Monarch (Club Dance Studio, Jennifer Peterson)
Savannah Jackson- Papa (Larkin Dance Studio, Michele Larkin)
Jessica Sutton- Sing Sing Sing (K2 Studios, Chris Critelli)
Mila Simunic- My Heart Will Go On (Legacy Dance Studio, Chelsie Walker)
Audrina Mossembekker- My Kind Of Guy (Project 21, Molly Long)
Navy Forrest- Snowing (Club Dance Studio, Jennifer Peterson)
Jessica Sutton- The Face (K2 Studios, Kenzie Fischer)
Lexie Charnstrom- Little Girl Blue (Larkin Dance Studio, Chelsea Jennings)
Savannah Jackson- Elegant (Larkin Dance Studio, Kenzie Larkin)
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Winter 2019 mixtape:
Boy Harsher “Face The Fire”
KVB, The “Afterglow”
Silent Servant Shadows Of Death And Desire
Void Vision “The Source”
Lebanon Hanover “Babes Of The ‘80’s” (Tobias Bernstrup RMX)
Ron Morelli Disappearer
Daylyt Let There B Light
Kanga self-titled
Nas “Simple Things”
Masta Killa & Inspectah Deck & GZA “Silverbacks”
Schwefelgelb Dahinter Das Gesich
Cash McCall “Omega Man”
Wild Man Fischer “I’m Working For The Federal Bureau Of Narcotics”
Dick Walter “The Fat Man”
Firefall “Strange Way”
Ice Cube “Arrest The President”
Figure Study “Wait”
Fontaines D.C. “Too Real”
Adrian Belew “Big Electric Cat”
Azar Swan Savage Exile
Primitive Weapons “Keep The Lights On”
Chandra Transportation
End Of A Year / Self Defense Family “Alleta”
Mirrors For Psychic Warfare “Tomb Puncher”
Body Of Light “Holding You”
Vatican Shadow “Tonight Saddam Walks Amidst Ruins”
Adult. “Lick Out The Content”
Molly Nilsson “A Slice Of Lemon”
Broken English Club “Channel 83”
Urochromes “Night Bully” (Boy Harsher RMX)
Strahinja Arbutina “You Don’t Need This In Your Life”
White Ring “Leprosy”
Cabaret Nocturne “Blind Trust”
Natural Assembly “She Walks In Beauty”
Drvg Cvltvre “I Look For Your Face In The Neon Lights”
Soft Moon “Like A Father”
Primitive Weapons “Negative Mass”
Drvg Cvltvre “Blood Eagle Brigade”
Soma Sema “Artificial Heart”
Grun Wasser “Limits For Limits”
Undertheskin “Cold”
Emptyset “Dissolve”
Pink Turns Blue “I Coldly Stare Out”
Soko “Ocean Of Tears”
Billy Cobham “Tenth Pinn” (live)
#music#omega#playlists#mixtapes#personal#industrial#darkness#synthwave#jazz#synthpop#noise rock#witch house#techno#punk#pop#hip-hop#rap#gangsta
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Squash's Book Roundup 2023
Last year I read 67 books. This year my goal was 70, but I very quickly passed that, so in total I read 92 books this year. Honestly I have no idea how I did it, it just sort of happened. My other goal was to read an equal amount of fiction and nonfiction this year (usually fiction dominates), and I was successful in that as well. Another goal which I didn’t have at the outset but which kind of organically happened after the first month or so of reading was that I wanted to read mostly strange/experimental/transgressive/unusual fiction. My nonfiction choices were just whatever looked interesting or cool, but I also organically developed a goal of reading a wider spread of subjects/genres of nonfiction. A lot of the books I read this year were books I’d never heard of, but stumbled across at work. Also, finally more than 1/3 of what I read was published in the 21st century.
I’ll do superlatives and commentary at the end, so here is what I read in 2023:
-The Commitments by Roddy Doyle
-A Simple Story: The Last Malambo by Leila Guerriero
-The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
-Uzumaki by Junji Ito
-Chroma by Derek Jarman
-The Emerald Mile: The epic story of the fastest ride in history through the Grand Canyon by Kevin Fedarko
-Venus by Suzan-Lori Parks
-The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington
-Sacred Sex: Erotic writings from the religions of the world by Robert Bates
-The Virginia State Colony For Epileptics And The Feebleminded by Molly McCully Brown
-A Spy In The House Of Love by Anais Nin
-The Sober Truth: Debunking the bad science behind 12-step programs and the rehab industry by Lance Dodes
-The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishima
-The Aliens by Annie Baker
-The Criminal Child And Other Essays by Jean Genet
-Aimee and Jaguar: A Love Story, Berlin 1943 by Erica Fischer
-The Master And Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
-The Mustache by Emmanuel Carriere
-Maldoror by Comte de Lautreamont
-Narrow Rooms by James Purdy
-At Your Own Risk by Derek Jarman
-Escape From Freedom by Erich Fromm
-Countdown: A Subterranean Magazine #3 by Underground Press Syndicate Collective
-Fabulosa! The story of Britain's secret gay language by Paul Baker
-The Golden Spruce: A true story of myth, madness and greed by John Vaillant
-Querelle de Roberval by Kevin Lambert
-Fire The Bastards! by Jack Green
-Closer by Dennis Cooper
-The Woman In The Dunes by Kobo Abe
-Opium: A Diary Of His Cure by Jean Cocteau
-Worker-Student Action Committees France May '68 by Fredy Perlman and R. Gregoire
-Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher
-The Sound Of Waves by Yukio Mishima
-One Day In My Life by Bobby Sands
-Corydon by Andre Gide
-Noopiming by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
-Man Alive: A true story of violence, forgiveness and becoming a man by Thomas Page McBee
-The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art by Mark Rothko
-Damage by Josephine Hart
-Schoolgirl by Osamu Dazai
-The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector
-The Sex Revolts: Gender, Rebellion and Rock n Roll by Simon Reynolds and Joy Press
-The Traffic Power Structure by planka.nu
-Bird Man: The many faces of Robert Straud by Jolene Babyak
-Seven Dada Manifestos by Tristan Tzara
-The Journalist by Harry Mathews
-Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber
-Moscow To The End Of The Line by Venedikt Erofeev
-Morvern Callar by Alan Warner
-The Poetics Of Space by Gaston Bachelard
-A Boy's Own Story by Edmund White
-The Coming Insurrection by The Invisible Committee
-Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson
-Notes From The Sick Room by Steve Finbow
-Artaud The Momo by Antonin Artaud
-Doctor Rat by William Kotzwinkle
-Recollections Of A Part-Time Lady by Minette
-trans girl suicide museum by Hannah Baer
-The 99% Invisible City by Roman Mars
-Sweet Days Of Discipline by Fleur Jaeggy
-Breath: The new science of a lost art by James Nestor
-What We See When We Read by Peter Mendelsund
-The Cardiff Tapes (1972) by Garth Evans
-The Ark Sakura by Kobo Abe
-Mad Like Artaud by Sylvere Lotringer
-The Story Of The Eye by Georges Bataille
-Little Blue Encyclopedia (For Vivian) by Hazel Jane Plante
-Blood And Guts In High School by Kathy Acker
-Summer Fun by Jeanne Thornton
-Splendid's by Jean Genet
-VAS: An Opera In Flatland by Steve Tomasula
-Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want To Come: One introvert's year of saying yes by Jessica Pan
-Whores For Gloria by William T. Vollmann
-The Notebooks by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Larry Walsh (editor)
-L'Astragale by Albertine Sarrazin
-The Decay Of Lying and other essays by Oscar Wilde
-The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
-Open Throat by Henry Hoke
-Prisoner Of Love by Jean Genet
-The Fifth Wound by Aurora Mattia
-The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
-My Friend Anna: The true story of a fake heiress by Rachel DeLoache Williams
-Mammother by Zachary Schomburg
-Building The Commune: Radical democracy in Venezuela by George Cicarello-Maher
-Blackouts by Justin Torres
-Cheapjack by Philip Allingham
-Near To The Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector
-The Trayvon Generation by Elizabeth Alexander
-Skye Papers by Jamika Ajalon
-Exercises In Style by Raymon Queneau
-Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein
-The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk Wallace Johnson
~Some number factoids~
I read 46 fiction and 46 nonfiction. One book, The Fifth Wound by Aurora Mattia, is fictionalized/embellished autobiography, so it could go half in each category if we wanted to do that, but I put it in the fiction category.
I tried to read as large a variety of nonfiction subjects/genres as I could. A lot of the nonfiction I read has overlapping subjects, so I’ve chosen to sort by the one that seems the most overarching. By subject, I read: 5 art history/criticism, 5 biographies, 1 black studies, 1 drug memoir, 2 essay collections, 2 history, 2 Latin American studies, 4 literary criticism, 1 music history, 2 mythology/religion, 1 nature, 4 political science, 2 psychology, 5 queer studies, 2 science, 1 sociology, 1 travel, 2 true crime, 3 urban planning.
I also read more queer books in general (fiction and nonfiction) than I have in years, coming in at 20 books.
The rest of my commentary and thoughts under a cut because it's fairly long
Here’s a photo of all the books I read that I own a physical copy of (minus Closer by Dennis Cooper which a friend is borrowing):
~Superlatives and Thoughts~
I read so many books this year I’m going to do a runner-up for each superlative category.
Favorite book: This is such a hard question this year. I think I gave out more five-star ratings on Goodreads this year than I ever have before. The books that got 5 stars from me this year were A Simple Story: The Last Malambo by Leila Guerriero, Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher, The Emerald Mile by Kevin Fedarko, The Mustache by Emmanuel Carriere, The Passion According to GH by Clarice Lispector, trans girl suicide museum by Hannah Baer, The Fifth Wound by Aurora Mattia, Mammother by Zachary Schomburg, and Blackouts by Justin Torres.
But I think my favorite book of the year was The Fifth Wound by Aurora Mattia. It is an embellished, fictionalized biography of the author’s life, chronicling a breakup that occurred just before she began her transition, and then a variety of emotional events afterward and her renewal of a connection with that person after a number of years had passed. The writing style is beautiful, extremely decadent, and sits in a sort of venn diagram of poetry, theory, fantasy and biography. My coworker who recommended this book to me said no one she’d recommended it to had finished it because they found it so weird. I read the first 14 pages very slowly because I didn’t exactly know what the book was doing, but I quickly fell completely in love with the imagery and the formatting style and the literary and religious references that have been worked into the book both as touchstones for biography and as vehicles for fantasy. There is a video I remember first seeing years ago, in which a beautiful pinkish corn snake slithers along a hoop that is part of a hanging mobile made of driftwood and macrame and white beads and prism crystals. This was the image that was in the back of my head the entire time I was reading The Fifth Wound, because it matched the decadence and the strangeness and the crystalline beauty of the language and visuals in the book. It is a pretty intense book, absolutely packed with images and emotion and ideas and preserved vignettes where reality and fantasy and theory overlap. It’s one of those books that’s hard to describe because it’s so full. It’s dense not in that the words or ideas are hard to understand, but in that it’s overflowing with imagery and feelings, and it feels like an overflowing treasure chest.
Runner-up:The Mustache by Emmanuel Carriere. However, this book wins for a different superlative, so I’ve written more about it there.
Least favorite book: Querelle de Roberval by Kevin Lambert. I wrote a whole long review of it. In summary, Lambert’s book takes its name from Querelle de Brest, a novel by Jean Genet, and is apparently meant to be an homage to Genet’s work. Unfortunately, Lambert seems to misunderstand or ignore all the important aspects of Genet’s work that make it so compelling, and instead twists certain motifs Genet uses as symbols of love or transcendence into meaningless or negative connotations. He also attempts to use Genet’s mechanic of inserting the author into the narrative and allowing the author to have questionable or conflicting morals in order to emphasize certain aspects of the characters or narrative, except he does so too late in the game and ends up just completely undermining everything he writes. This book made me feel insulted on behalf of Jean Genet and all the philosophical thought he put into his work.
Runner-up: What We See When We Read by Peter Mendelsund. This graphic designer claims that when people read they don’t actually imagine what characters look like and can’t conjure up an image in their head when asked something like “What does Jane Eyre look like to you?” Unfortunately, there’s nothing scientific in the book to back this up and it’s mostly “I” statements, so it’s more like “What Peter Mendelsund Sees (Or Doesn’t See) When He Reads”. It’s written in what seems to be an attempt to mimic Marshall McLuhan’s style in The Medium Is The Massage, but it isn’t done very well. I spent most of my time reading this book thinking This does not reflect my experience when I read novels so I think really it’s just a bad book written by someone who maybe has some level of aphantasia or maybe is a visual but not literary person, and who assumes everyone else experiences the same thing when they read.
(Another runner-up would be The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell, but I think that’s a given because it’s an awful piece of revisionist, racist trash, so I won’t write a whole thing about it. I can if someone wants me to.)
Most surprising/unexpected book: The Mustache by Emmanuel Carriere. This book absolutely wins for most surprising. However, I don’t want to say too much about it because the biggest surprise is the end. It was the most shocking, most unexpected and bizarre endings to a novel I’ve read in a long time, and I absolutely loved it. It was weird from the start and it just kept getting weirder. The unnamed narrator decides, as a joke, to shave off the moustache he’s had for his entire adult life. When his wife doesn’t react, he assumes that she’s escalating their already-established tradition of little pranks between each other. But then their mutual friends say nothing about the change, and neither do his coworkers, and he starts spiral into confusion and paranoia. I don’t want to spoil anything else because this book absolutely blew me away with its weirdness and its existential dread and anyone who likes weird books should read it.
Runner-up: Morvern Callar by Alan Warner. I don’t even know what compelled me to open this book at work, but I’m glad I did. The book opens on Christmas, where the main character, Morvern, discovers her boyfriend dead by suicide on the kitchen floor of their flat. Instead of calling the police or her family, she takes a shower, gets her things and leaves for work. Her narrative style is strange, simultaneously very detached and extremely emotional, but emotional in an abstract way, in which descriptions and words come out stilted or strangely constructed. The book becomes a narrative of Morvern’s attempts to find solitude and happiness, from the wilderness of Scotland to late night raves and beaches in an unnamed Mediterranean city. The entire book is scaffolded by a built-in playlist. Morvern’s narrative is punctuated throughout by accounts of exactly what she’s listening to on her Walkman. The narrative style and the playlist and the bizarre behavior of the main character were not at all what I was expecting when I opened the book, but I read the entire book in about 3 hours and I was captivated the whole time. If you like the Trainspotting series of books, I would recommend this one for sure.
Most fun book: The Emerald Mile by Kevin Fedarko. This book was amazing. It was like reading an adventure novel and a thriller and a book on conservationism all wrapped into one and it was clearly very passionately written and it was a blast. I picked it up because I was pricing it at work and I read the captions on one of the photo inserts, which intrigued me, so I read the first page, and then I couldn’t stop. The two main narratives in the book are the history of the Grand Canyon (more specifically the damming of the Colorado River) and the story of a Grand Canyon river guide called Kenton Grua, who decided with two of his river guide friends to break the world record for fastest boat ride down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. The book is thoroughly researched, and reaches back to the first written record of the canyon, then charts the history of the canyon and the river up to 1983 when Grua made his attempt to race down the river, and then the aftermath and what has happened to everyone in the years since. All of the historical figures as well as the “current” figures of 1983 come to life, and are passionately portrayed. It’s a genuine adventure of a book, and I highly recommend it.
Runner-up: Summer Fun by Jeanne Thornton. It asks “What if Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys was actually a trans woman?” Actually, that’s not quite it. It asks “What if a trans woman living in poverty in southwest America believed to an almost spiritual level that Brian Wilson was a trans woman?” The main character and narrator, Gala, is convinced that the lead singer of her favorite band, the Get Happies, (a fictional but fairly obvious parallel to the Beach Boys) is a trans woman. Half the book is her writing out her version of the singer’s life history, and the other half is her life working at a hostel in Truth Or Consequences, New Mexico, where she meets a woman who forces her out of her comfort zone and encourages her to face certain aspects of her self and identity and her connection with others. It’s a weird novel, and definitely not for everyone, but it’s fun. I was reading it on the train home and I was so into it that I missed my stop and had to get off at the next station and wait 20 minutes for the train going back the other way.
Book that taught me the most: Breath: The new science of a lost art by James Nestor. In it, Nestor explores why humans as a general population are so bad at breathing properly. He interviews scientists and alternative/traditional health experts, archaeologists, historians and religious scholars. He uses himself as a guinea pig to experiment with different breathing techniques from ancient meditation styles to essentially overdosing on oxygen in a lab-controlled environment to literally plugging his nose shut to only mouth-breathe for two weeks (and then vice-versa with nose breathing). It was interesting to see a bunch of different theories a laid out together regarding what kind of breathing is best, as well as various theories on the history of human physiology and why breathing is hard. Some of it is scientific, some pseudoscience, some just ancient meditation techniques, but he takes a crack at them all. What was kind of cool is that he tries every theory and experiment with equal enthusiasm and doesn’t really seem to favor any one method. Since he’s experimenting on himself, a lot of it is about the effects the experiments had on him specifically and his experiences with different types of breathing. His major emphasis/takeaway is that focusing on breathing and learning to change the ways in which we breathe will be beneficial in the long run (and that we should all breath through our noses more). While I don’t think changing how you breathe is a cure-all (some of the pseudoscience he looks at in this book claims so) I certainly agree that learning how to breath better is a positive goal.
Runner-up: The Sober Truth by Lance Dodes. I say runner-up because a lot of the content of the book is things that I had sort of vague assumptions about based on my knowledge of addiction and AA and mental illness in general. But Dodes put into words and illustrated with numbers and anecdotes and case studies what I just kind of had a vague feeling about. It was cool to see AA so thoroughly debunked by an actual psychiatrist and in such a methodical way, since my skepticism about it has mostly been based on the experiences of people I know in real life, anecdotes I’ve read online, or musicians/writers/etc I’m a fan of that went through it and were negatively affected.
Most interesting/thought provoking book: Mammother by Zachary Schomburg. The biggest reason this book was so interesting is because the little world in which it exists is so strange and yet so utterly complete. In a town called Pie Time (where birds don’t exist and the main form of work is at the beer-and-cigarettes factory) a young boy called Mano who has been living his childhood as a girl decides that he is now a man and that it’s time for him to grow up. As this happens, the town is struck by an affliction called God’s Finger. People die seemingly out of nowhere, from a hole in their chest, and some object comes out of the hole. Mano collects the things that come out of these holes, and literally holds them in order to love them, but the more he collects, the bigger he becomes as he adds objects to his body. A capitalist business called XO shows up, trying to convince the people of Pie Time that they can protect themselves from God’s Finger with a number of enterprises, and starts to slowly take over the town. But Mano doesn’t believe death is something that should be run from. This book is so pretty, and the symbolism/metaphors, even when obvious, feel as though they belong organically in the world. A quote on the back of the book says it is “as nearly complete a world as can be”, and I think that’s a very accurate description. The story is interesting, the characters are compelling, and the magical realist world in which the story exists is fascinating.
Runner up: trans girl suicide museum by Hannah Baer. This is a series of essays taken (for the most part) from Baer’s blog posts. They span a chunk of time in which she writes her thoughts and musings on her experience transition and transgender existence in general. It is mostly a series of pieces reflecting on “early” stages of transition. But I thought it was really cool to see an intellectual and somewhat philosophical take on transition, written by someone who has only been publicly out for a few years, and therefore is looking at certain experiences with a fresh gaze. As the title suggests, a lot of the book is a bit sad, but it’s not all doom and gloom. A lot of the emphasis is on the important of community when it comes to the experience of starting to transition and the first few years, and the importance of community on the trans experience in general. I really liked reading Hannah Baer’s thoughts as a queer intellectual who was writing about this stuff as she experienced it (or not too long after) rather than writing about the experience of early transition years and years down the line. It meant the writing was very sharp and the emotion was clear and not clouded by nostalgia.
Other thoughts/commentary on books I don’t have superlatives for:
I’m glad my first (full) book read in 2023 was A Simple Story: The Last Malambo by Leila Guierrero. It’s a small, compact gem of a book that follows the winner of an Argentinian dance competition. The Malambo is a traditional dance, and the competition is very fierce, and once someone wins, they can never compete again. The author follows the runner-up of the previous year, who has come to compete again. It paints a vivid picture of the history of the dance, the culture of the competition, and the character of the dancer the author has chosen to follow. It’s very narrowly focused, which makes it really compelling.
The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington could have easily won for most fun or most interesting book. Carrington was a surrealist writer and painter (and was in a relationship with Max Ernst until she was institutionalized and he was deported by the Nazis). In The Hearing Trumpet, an elderly woman called Marian is forced by her family to go live in an old ladies’ home. The first strange thing about the place is that all of the little cabins each woman lives in is shaped like some odd object, like an iron, or ice cream, or a rabbit. The other old women at the institution are a mixed bag, and the warden of the place is hostile. Marian starts to suspect that there are secrets, and even witchcraft involved, and she and a few of the other ladies start to try and unravel the occult mysteries hidden in the grounds of the home. The whole book is fun and strange, and the ending is an extremely entertaining display of feminist occult surrealism.
Sacred Sex: Erotica writings from the religions of the world by Robert Bates was a book I had to read for research for my debunking of Withdrawn Traces. It was really very interesting, but it was also hilarious to read because maybe 5% of any of the texts included were actually erotic. It should have been called “romantic writings from the religions of the world” because so little of the writing had anything to do with sex, even in a more metaphorical sense.
Every time I read Yukio Mishima I’m reminded how much I love his style. The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea almost usurped The Temple of the Golden Pavilion as my favorite Mishima novel. I’m fascinated with the way that Mishima uses his characters to explore the circumstance of having very intense feelings or reactions towards something and simultaneously wanting to experience that, while also wanting to have complete control and not feel them at all. There’s a scene in this novel where Noboru and his friends brutally kill and dissect a cat; it’s an intense and vividly rendered scene, made all the more intense by Noboru desperately conflicted between feeling affected by the killing and wanting to force himself to feel nothing. The amazing subtle theme running through the book is the difference between Noboru’s intense emotions and his desire/struggle to control them and subdue them versus Ryuji’s more subtle emotion that grows through the book despite his natural reserve. I love endings like the one in this book, where it “cuts to black” and you don’t actually see the final act, it’s simply implied.
In 2016 or 2017, I ran lights for a showcase for the drama department at UPS (I can’t remember now what it was) that included a bunch of scenes from various plays. I remember a segment from Hir by Taylor Mac, and a scene from The Aliens by Annie Baker. In the scene that I saw, one of the characters describes how when he was a boy, he couldn’t stop saying the word ladder, and the monologue culminates in a full paragraph that is just the word “ladder.” I can’t remember who was acting in the one that I saw at UPS, but that monologue blew me away, the way that one word repeated 127 conveyed so much. This year a collection of Annie Baker’s plays came in at work so I sat down and read the whole play and it was just incredible. I’d love to see the full play live, it’s absolutely captivating.
Narrow Rooms by James Purdy was a total diamond in the rough. It takes place in Appalachia, in perhaps the 1950s although it’s somewhat hard to tell. It follows the strange gay entanglement between four adult men in their 20s, who have known each other all their lives. It traces threads of bizarre codependency, and the lines crossed between love and hate. The main character, Sidney, has just returned home after serving a sentence for manslaughter. On his return, he finds that an old lover has been rendered disabled in an accident, and that an old school rival/object of obsession has been waiting for him. This rival, nicknamed “The Renderer” because of an old family occupation, has been watching Sidney all their lives. Both of them hate the other, but know that they’re destined to meet in some way. Caught in the middle of their strange relationship are Gareth, Sidney’s now-disabled former lover, and Brian, a young man who thinks he’s in love with The Renderer. The writing style took me some time to get used to, as it is written as though by someone who has taught themselves, or has only had basic classes on fiction writing. But the plot itself is so strange and the characters are so stilted in their own internality that it actually fits really well. Like The Mustache, this book had one of the strangest, most intensely visceral and shocking endings I’ve read in a while. It was also “one that got away.” I read it at work, then put it on my staff picks shelf, and only realized after someone else bought it that I should have kept it for myself.
The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector blew my mind. I really don’t want to spoil any of it, but I highly encourage anyone who hasn’t read it to do. The build in tension is perfect and last 30 pages are just incredible. Lispector’s style is so unique and so beautiful and tosses out huge existential questions like it’s nothing, and I love her work so much.
Moscow To The End Of The Line by Venedikt Erofeev was another really unexpected book. It’s extremely Russian (obviously) and really fun until suddenly it isn’t. The main character, a drunkard, gets on a train from Moscow to Petushki, the town at the end of the line (hence the title), in order to see his lover. On the way, he befriends the other people in his train car and they all steadily get drunker and drunker, until he falls asleep and misses his stop. Very Russian, somewhat strange, and I was surprised that it was written in the late 60s and not the 30s.
Dr. Rat by William Kotzwinkle was what I expected. Weird in a goofy way, a bit silly even when it’s serious, and rather heavy-handed satire. The titular Dr Rat is a rat who has spent his whole life in a laboratory and has gone insane. The other animals who are being tested on want to escape, but he’s convinced that all the testing is for the good of science and wants to thwart their rebellion. Unfortunately, all the other animals who are victims of human cruelty/callousness/invasion/deforestation/etc around the world are also planning to rebel, connection with each other through a sort of psychic television network. It’s a very heavy-handed environmentalist/anti-animal cruelty metaphor and general societal satire, but it’s silly and fun too.
Confessions Of A Part-Time Lady by Minette is a self-published, nearly impossible to find book that came into my work. It’s self-printed and bound, and was published in the 70s. It is the autobiographical narrative of a trans woman who did drag and burlesque and theatre work all across the midwest, as well as New York and San Francisco, from the 1930s up to the late 60s. It was originally a series of interviews by the two editors, who published it in narrative form, and it includes photos from Minette’s personal collection. It’s an amazing story, and a glimpse into a really unique time period of gender performance and queer life. She even mentions Sylvia Rivera, specifically when talking about gay activism. She talks about how the original group of the Gay Liberation Front was an eclectic mix of all sorts of people of all sexualities and genders and expressions. Then when the Gay Activists Alliance “took over”, they started pushing out people who were queer in a more transgressive or unusual way and there was more encouragement on being more heteronormative. She mentions Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson, saying “I remember Sylvia Rivera who founded STAR – Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. She was always trying to say things – the same kinds of things Marsha P Johnson says in a sweeter way – and they treated her like garbage. If that’s what ‘order’ is, haven’t we had enough?”
Whores For Gloria by William T Vollmann was exactly as amazing as I thought it would be. I love Vollmann’s style, because you can tell that even though the characters he’s writing about are characters, they’re absolutely based on people that he met or saw or spoke to in real life. The main character, Jimmy, is searching for his former lover, Gloria, who has either died or left him (it is unclear for most of the novel). He begins to use tokens bought from sex workers (hair, clothes, etc) to attempt to conjure her into reality, and when that doesn’t work, he pays them to tell him stories from their lives, and through their lives he tries to conjure Gloria. This novel’s ending had extremely similar vibes to the ending of Moscow To The End Of The Line.
Prisoner Of Love by Jean Genet was a lot to take in. It was weird reading it at this moment in time, and completely unplanned. It’s just that I have only a few more books to read before I’ve made my way through all Genet’s works that have been translated into English, and it was next on the list. Most of the book focuses on Genet’s time spent in Palestine in the 70s and his short return in the 80s. He also discusses the time he spent with the Black Panthers in the US, although it’s not the main subject of the book. Viewing Palestine from the point of view of Genet’s weird philosophical and moral worldview was really interesting, because what he chooses to spend time looking at or talking about is probably not what most would focus on, and because even his most political discussions are tinged with the uniquely Genet-style spirituality (if you can call it that? I don’t know what to call it) that is so much the exact opposite of objective. It’s definitely not a book about Palestine I would recommend reading without also having a grasp of Genet’s style of looking at the world and his various obsessions and preoccupations, because they really do inform a lot of his commentary. It was also written 15 years after his first trip to Palestine, partly from memory and partly from journal entries/notes, which gives it a sort of weirdly dreamlike quality much like his novels.
Blackouts by Justin Torres was so amazing! It blends real life and fiction together so well that I didn’t even realize that most of the people he references in the novel are real historical figures until he mentioned Ben Reitman, who I recognized as the Chicago King Of The Hobos and Emma Goldman’s lover. The book follows an unnamed narrator who has come to a hotel or apartment in the southwest in order to care for a dying elderly man called Juan Gay. Juan has a book called Sex Variants, a study of homosexuality from the 1940s which has been censored and blacked out. Back and forth, the narrator and Juan trade stories. The narrator tells his life story up until the present, including his first meeting with Juan in a mental hospital as a teenager. In turn, Juan tells the story of the Sex Variants book and its creator, Jan Gay (Ben Reitman’s real life daughter). The book explores the reliability of narrative, the power of collecting and documenting life stories, and of removing or changing things in order to create new or different narratives.
Again, Clarice Lispector rocking my world! Generally I can read a 200-ish page novel in somewhere between 2 and 4 hours depending on the content/writing style. Near To The Wild Heart took me 9 hours to read because I kept wanting to stop and reread entire paragraphs because they were so interesting or pretty or philosophical. The story focuses on Joana, whose strange way of looking at the world and going through life makes everyone sort of wary of her. This book is so layered I don’t really know how to describe it. So much of it is philosophical or existential musings through the vehicle of Joana. Unsurprisingly, it’s a beautiful book and I highly recommend it.
I’m just going to copy/paste my Goodreads review for Skye Papers by Jamika Ajalon: This book had so much potential that just…fell short. I could tell that it was written for an American audience but the way the reader/Skye is “taught” certain British terms and/or slang felt a bit patronizing. The characters were fleshed out and interesting and I liked them a lot but the plot crumbled quickly in the last half of the book Things sped up to a degree that felt strange and unnatural, the book’s pacing was inconsistent throughout. Perhaps that was deliberate considering the reveal at the climax, but if it was, it should have been utilized better. If the inconsistent pacing wasn’t deliberate, then it just made the book feel strange to read. There were moments were I felt like there should have been more fleshing out of certain character relationships. Even with the reveal at the end and the explanation of Pieces’ erratic/avoidant behavior, I wish there had been more fleshing out of the relationship or friendship between her and Skye at the beginning, when Skye first arrives in London. Characters who seemed cool/interesting got glossed over and instead there was a lot more dwelling on Skye walking around or busking or just hanging out. I could have gone without the last 30 or so pages after the big reveal, where Skye went back through everything that happened with the knowledge she (and the reader) had gained. It dragged on and on and at that point I felt like the whole story was so contrived that I just wasn’t interested anymore. A friend who read this book before I did said she thought it was an experimental novel that just hadn’t gone far enough, and I completely agree with her. I think if the style with the film script interludes went further, into printed visuals or more weirdness with the interludes, more experimental style with the main story, or something, it would have been really good. It just didn’t push hard enough.
The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson was a fun little true crime novel about a young flautist who broke into a small English natural history museum in 2009 and stole hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of preserved rare bird skins dating back to the 19th century. He was a salmon fly-tying enthusiast and prodigy, and old Victorian fly designs used feathers of rare birds. The book first goes through the heist and the judicial proceedings, then examines the niche culture of Victorian fly-tying enthusiasts and obsessives, and then chronicles the author’s attempts to track down some of the missing birds. It was a quick, easy read, but fun and an unusual subject and I quite enjoyed it.
In 2024 I don’t plan on trying to surpass or even reach this year’s number. I’m going to start off the year reading The Recognitions by William Gaddis, then I’m going to re-read a number of books that I come across at work or in conversation and think Huh, I should reread that one of these days. So far, the books I am currently planning to reread: Sometimes A Great Notion by Ken Kesey, As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, The People Of Paper by Salvador Plascencia, Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, The Mustache by Emmanuel Carriere, McGlue by Otessa Moshfegh, Long Day’s Journey Into Night by Eugene O’Neil, Acid Snow by Larry Mitchell, and Nightwood by Djuna Barnes.
#reading list#book list#book roundup#reading list year in review#books#squash rambles#reading year in review#book list roundup
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Leafpool
Name meaning: Usually gold, brown, ginger or red, provider, delicate, cautious, experienced, wise
Small, lithe, pale brown tabby molly with amber eyes. She has a white chest and paws.
Voice claim: Jenna Fischer
Cause of death: Crushed in a rockslide at 8.67 years
Family and Education
Mother: Sandstorm
Father: Firestar
Sister: Squirrelstar
Ex Mate: Crowfeather
Daughter: Hollyleaf
Sons: Jayflight, Lionblaze
Mentor: Cinderpelt
Apprentices: Hollyleaf, Jayflight, Puddleshine
Unofficial Apprentice: Alderheart
StarClan Apprentice: Willowshine
Nature
INFP
Lawful Good
Social
Platonic Love: Alderheart, Cinderheart, Firestar, Hollyleaf, Jayflight, Lionblaze, Sandstorm, Squirrelstar
Romantic Love: Crowfeather
Best Friend(s): Mothwing
Friend(s): Brightheart, Sorreltail, Whitewing
Enemies: Ashfur, Sol, Spiderleg
#warrior cats#warriors#deceased#starclan#thunderclan#loner#shadowclan#skyclan#riverclan#leafpool#leaf-#-pool#infp#medicine cat#cleric#tnp#po3#oots#avos#lawful good#crushed
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Supporters of #NoHostageLeftBehind Open Letter to Joe Biden - Part 1/2
The letter consists of lies, no mention of Palestinian genocides, and a call for ceasefire.
Read the full letter:
Dear President Biden,
We are heartened by Friday's release of the two American hostages, Judith Ranaan and her daughter Natalie Ranaan [Raanan] and by today's release of two Israelis, Nurit Cooper and Yocheved Lifshitz, whose husbands remain in captivity.
But our relief is tempered by our overwhelming concern that 220 innocent people, including 30 children, remain captive by terrorists, threatened with torture and death. They were taken by Hamas in the savage massacre of October 7, where over 1,400 Israelis were slaughtered—women raped, families burned alive, and infants beheaded.
Thank you for your unshakable moral conviction, leadership, and support for the Jewish people, who have been terrorized by Hamas since the group's founding over 35 years ago, and for the Palestinians, who have also been terrorized, oppressed, and victimized by Hamas for the last 17 years that the group has been governing Gaza.
We all want the same thing: Freedom for Israelis and Palestinians to live side by side in peace. Freedom from the brutal violence spread by Hamas. And most urgently, in this moment, freedom for the hostages.
We urge everyone to not rest until all hostages are released. No hostage can be left behind. Whether American, Argentinian, Australian, Azerbaijani, Brazilian, British, Canadian, Chilean, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, Eritrean, Filipino, French, German, Indian, Israeli, Italian, Kazakh, Mexican, Panamanian, Paraguayan, Peruvian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, South African, Spanish, Sri Lankan, Thai, Ukrainian, Uzbekistani or otherwise, we need to bring them home.
Supporters:
Adam & Jackie Sandler
Amy Schumer
Aaron Sorkin
Barry Diller
Behati Prinsloo
Bella Thorne
Ben Stiller
Bob Odenkirk
Bobbi Brown
Bradley Cooper
Brett Gelman
Chris Rock
Constance Wu
Courteney Cox
David Alan Grier
David Chang
David Geffen
David Oyelowo
Diane Von Furstenberg
Eli Roth
Emma Seligman
Eric Andre
Ewan McGregor
Gal Gadot
Gwyneth Paltrow
Harvey Keitel
Isla Fisher
Jack Black
James Brolin
Jason Blum
Jason Sudeikis
Jeff Goldblum
Jerry Seinfeld
Jesse Plemons
Jessica Biel
Jessica Seinfeld
Joey King
John Slattery
Jon Hamm
Jordan Peele
Josh Brolin
Judd Apatow
Judge Judy Sheindlin
Julia Garner
Julianna Margulies
Julie Rudd
Justin Theroux
Justin Timberlake
Karlie Kloss
Katy Perry
Kirsten Dunst
Lana Del Rey
Laura Dern
Liev Schreiber
Madonna
Martin Short
Michelle Williams
Mila Kunis
Nicola Peltz
Noa Tishby
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Hey everyone so I decide to make more Ms.Mendelevie’s class headcanons but this time what type of pet they would have! Also this include The Austins this time and their headcanons are from @aganyan . The ocs are from @artzychic27
Lacey: Brindle greyhound named Scout
Cosette: Algerian Black hedgehog named Sonic Cottonballs
Austin.A: One Pinkwhite chinchilla named Beth and one Sapphic chinchilla named Timity
Austin.B: Lykoi cat named Elisabeth III
Austin.T: Python Brongersmai named HuggyCake
Ismael: Curly hair tarantula named Jean-Eugéne that lives with his dad because his mom didn’t want it in the house :(
Marc: Two Fischer's Lovebirds one named Carrie and the other named Beetlejuice
Mireille: Two Dalmatian Guinea Pigs, one named Alice and the other named Bambi
Denise: One Cinnamon Bunny named Cassiopeia or Cassie for short and one Blanc de Hotot named Lyra
Reshma: Two Bombay Cats one named Luna and the other named Scar, and one Dwarf Roborovski named Merryweather
Jean: Red Betta Fish named Heather. C, Green Neon tetra named Heather. D, Yellow Molly Fish named Heather .M
Aurore, Simon, Zoé, and Austin. Q don’t have pets
#miraculous ladybug#marc anciel#mireille caquet#aurore beaureal#jean duparc#zoé lee#miraculous ocs#ocs headcanons#ocs#ms.mendelevie’s class#also you could always change or add on to my headcanons if you want
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To the visionary sidekicks: Do you hang out?
Clear: I don't really hang out with any of them besides maybe Burke.
Burke: If Kimberly really wants me too, then sure.
Kevin: Sometimes. Usually it feels like we're all just third-wheeling the visionaries though.
Lori: Even though Nick doesn't really like to hang out with the others, I push him out of his comfort zone and hopefully get him to make some friends!
Janet: No
Molly: If you consider sitting in silence while Kevin tries to create small talk hanging out, then occasionally, yeah.
#final destination#final destination 2#final destination 3#the final destination#final destination 5#clear rivers#thomas burke#kevin fischer#molly harper
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