#julia st. john

[brittasfan]

I have and it isn't the same. The show did once say that Laura was a neccessary component in keeping the centre even slightly stable and it shows in Series 6 and 7.

I always rooted for these two.

[ellie-tarts]

🙌🙆‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🙆‍♀️💁‍♀️🙆‍♀️🫵🥫🎬👩🔥✌️🏃‍♀️‍➡️

[greenapricot]

(x)

[allweknewisdead]

The Unbelievable Truth (1989) - Hal Hartley

Let us consider some of the possible ways a person might die in a nuclear attack.

[nervoussystemmusicreverence]

Julia Fordham - Porcelain

Artist

Julia Fordham

Composer

Julia Fordham

Lyricist

Julia Fordham

Produced

Julia Fordham Kevin Maloney Grant Mitchell Hugh Padgham

Credit

Miles Bould – Percussion Julia Fordham – Arranger, guitar, primary artist, producer, vocal arrangement, background vocals Manu Katché – Drums Dominic Miller – Bass, drum programming, engineer, guitar, keyboards, programming Grant Mitchell – Arranger, guitar, keyboards, piano, string arrangements Pino Palladino – Bass Kate St. John – oboe

Released

October 9 1989

Streaming

[perfettamentechic]

3 febbraio … ricordiamo …

3 febbraio … ricordiamo … #semprevivineiricordi #nomidaricordare #personaggiimportanti #perfettamentechic

2024: Helena Rojo, María Elena Enríquez Ruiz, attrice messicana. Fu attiva in teatro, in televisione e al cinema. Rojo iniziò la sua carriera come modella nel 1960. Studiò teatro e fece il suo esordio cinematografico nel 1968. Nel 1974 debuttò in tv con un ruolo di primo piano in una telenovela. Era sposata con Benjamin Fernández ed ebbe tre figli: Leo, Patricia e Elena. Helena Rojo è morta di…

[anthropoetics]

love is stored in the pen & paper: poems

being boring, wendy cope

intifada incantation: poem #8 for b. b. L., june jordan

thursday, james longenback

history student falls in love with astrophysics student, keaton st. james

the demon, mikhail lermontov

four friends catch up over pasta, amy kay

sonnet 18: shall i compare thee to a summer's day, william shakespeare

litany in which certain things are crossed out, richard siken

the eyes of the poor, charles baudelaire

stop me if you've heard this one before, kaveh akbar

conversation with a rock, wisława szymborska

the joy of writing, wisława szymborska

can in an empty apartment, wisława szymborska

blind fish, yusuf komunyakaa

the crane, javier peñalosa m.

train to agra, vandana khanna

landscape with a blur of conquerors, richard siken

warming her pearls, carol ann duffy 

what resembles the grave but isn't, anne boyer

what the living do, marie howe

gretel, from a sudden clearing, marie howe

death with dignity, kaylee young-eun jeong

keeping quiet, robert bly

i go back to may 1937, sharon olds

the encounter, louise gluck

outhouse, rachel mckibbens

the end of poetry, ada limón

i felt a funeral, in my brain, emily dickinson

how to watch your brother die, michael lassell

boston, aaron smith

laura palmer graduates, amy woolard

upon learning that some korean war refugees used partially detonated napalm canisters as fuel, franny choi

monet refuses the operation, lisel mueller

flare, mary oliver

tomorrow is a place, sanna wani

shoulder, naomi shihab nye

snowdrops, louise glück

hammond b3 organ cistern, gabrielle calvocoressi

the night dances, sylvia plath

makeout sonnet, douglas f. brown

you mean you don't weep at the nail salon, elizabeth acevedo

when i'm asked by lisel mueller

every single day (after raymond carver's hummingbird), john straley

for julia, in the deep water, john morris

the same city, terrance hayes

in blackwater woods, mary oliver

the bridge, c. dale young

mittelbergheim, czesław miłosz

gift, czesław miłosz

late ripeness, czesław miłosz

[crownics]

Quotes from “John & Paul: A Love Story In Songs”

CHAPTER 1: COME GO WITH ME

“They met on a hot day in July 1957 — twelve years after the war, ten years before Sgt. Pepper — amid the homespun pageantry of a suburban English garden party. [...] At around 4 p.m., [Paul] and Ivan arrived at St. Peter’s Church. [...] The noise of Lennon’s group was billowing through humid air from the field next to the church. Paul sweated in his white sports coat and tight black trousers.

He had seen John around, on the bus, in the chip shop, and he was already fascinated by him.”

“John Lennon was not someone you wanted to be seen paying attention to until you were ready for it to be returned. He carried a reputation for verbal and physical combat and was usually surrounded by a schoolboy entourage.

Now, as Paul and Ivan approached the makeshift stage, Paul McCartney was afforded a legitimate chance to gaze at John Lennon. To hear him, too.”

“Later Paul remembered that he was struck by how good Lennon looked, and how good he sounded. He was also intrigued by what Lennon got wrong. Lennon played his guitar oddly, his left hand making simple but unfamiliar shapes on the fretboard, and he messed up the words in a way that Paul found almost inexplicably thrilling.”

“John was not just older; he was already a big figure in the small world of southeast Liverpool teenagers. He had glamour, a gang of mates, and a skiffle group of which he was the undisputed leader. He was, according to those around him at the time, magnetic, unignorable. Girls fancied him, boys feared him. Standing before that stage, looking up, Paul knew that if he wanted to be friends with John, or to join him up there one day, he was the one who would have to make the effort. John Lennon didn’t care.”

“Paul also knew that he had a shot at propelling himself into John’s orbit through their shared love of rock and roll — a love of listening to and playing it. Indeed, this was the reason he wanted to meet John in the first place. [...] For all that he was looking up to the older boy that day, he was also auditioning him.”

“Other than music and a pronounced suspicion of authority, John and Paul shared something else: they were walking wounded. Each, in his short life, had experienced jarring, alienating, soul-rending events that left permanent scars.”

“It is true to say, however, that these two women [Julia and Mimi], who between them were the biggest influences on John’s formative years, offered diametrically opposed models for how to live. One represented hard work and self-discipline: the importance of making something of yourself, of learning how to play the social game and winning at it. The other represented freedom, self-expression, and the need to break out of society’s prison to seek higher, purer truths of art and experience. In 1957 it must have felt to John Lennon that life was about choosing between these two paths — between two ways to be a person.

Then along came Paul.”

“Years later, when Paul recalled how John chewed up and spat out songs on stage that day, the one that came to his mind was not ‘Hound Dog’ or ‘Be-Bop-a-Lula’, but ‘Come Go with Me.’ It wasn’t skiffle or rock and roll, it was doo-wop. [...]

Doo-wop and the music that grew out of it [...] formed an underacknowledged but crucial influence on the Beatles. You can hear it in their painstaking attention to harmonies and love of vocal blending, in their use of backing vocals as sonic coloring, and in a plethora of details, like the way John hangs on a falsetto in ‘In My Life’ (‘in m-ah-ahy life’) or Paul sings the bass part on ‘I Will.’ Lennon uses doo-wop’s innocence as a backdrop for dark humor in ‘Revolution’ (‘shoo-bee-doo-wop’) and in the final section of ‘Happiness Is a Warm Gun’ (‘bang bang shoot shoot’). Paul rips his vocal cords to shreds over a doo-wop chord progression on ‘Oh! Darling.’ Lennon drew on doo-wop, this time affectionately rather than ironically, in ‘(Just Like) Starting Over’, which turned out to be the last single he released. Doo-wop bookends the John-and-Paul relationship, present at its beginning and at the final parting of ways.”

“McCartney later recalled sitting at the piano and smelling beery breath over his shoulder, before realizing it was John. Looking back, it’s tempting to imagine Paul as the center of attention, everyone crowding around him, mouths agape. But one of those present — Pete Shotton, a Quarry Man, and John’s best mate at the time — said he barely remembered Paul being there at all. I suspect that Paul didn’t seek to dominate the occasion and was quite happy for others to drift in and out. He had an audience of one.

He hit his target. Lennon was struck by how well this lad could play, and by how handsome he was (‘He looked like Elvis. I dug him’). He was also impressed and a little unsettled by Paul’s lack of fear.”

“At Woolton fete each of them heard the other say, Come go with me. And when Paul reached across to take John’s guitar [...] the twentieth century tilted on its axis. Two damaged romantics with jagged edges that happened to fit began to fuse into something new and packed with energy.”

[ifishouldvanish]

I know the fandom doesn’t care but if we don’t get a sequel for castlevania it will be two MENA characters introduce with poor development. It strange that it happen twice. Greta is Carthaginian most likely from North Africa and got screw over by the writers. Mizrak is Turkish where he was born remains a mystery . The part where question mark comes in he part of the Order of St. John which is a huge stretch with no explanation it frustrating. I just hate that we have potential to explore characters from different parts of the of the world and the writers has a quota.

I don't think the writers "have a quota" so much as are limited by having only 8 25min episodes per season? That they've reimagined Annette and Olrox as non-white characters and introduced Mizrak at all I think speaks to a conscious effort on the writers' part to tell a more diverse story.

I won't speak to the original series because those were different writers with their own set of problems but I think it's to be expected that we didn't get much of these characters' backgrounds outside of Annette yet—as we had her and Richter pretty firmly established as the central characters for this arc. I am hopeful in a potential season 3-4 we'll get to see more of Olrox, his late lover, and Mizrak's backgrounds, and that they'll play a more central role now that Richter and Annette's story "has been told" so to speak (obviously there's much more that could be done with them, but I think they've gotten the sort of closure that means the lens of the story can shift focus to the other characters a bit more)

I have a lot of questions too about where Mizrak really falls into things as a Turkish man who is so steadfastly Catholic as to be a member of the Order. I've seen it floated that he could have been a captured slave, but from what I've read, the Order didn't really let slaves serve as knights. But we also have the Corso to consider, which allowed plenty of people who weren't really ~qualified to fly the Order's flag in exchange for a fee, and the fact that the Order was basically a shadow of its former self at time of the french revolution, so.... Idk 🤷

But the topic of how 'old world vampirism' would have been perceived by indigenous mesoamericans is a fascinating one that is so ripe with potential to me. (In case you haven't noticed lol, I'm a lil bit obsessed about it 🫠) Like part of the reason Spanish conversion efforts were so 'effective' was that the concept of communion, of eating the flesh of Christ, happened to fit in quite nicely with the way the indigenous population already conceived of their relationship with their own gods. I feel like vampirism could have been received in a similar way.

I'm curious if they'll go the route of vampirism being an entirely new phenomenon, or if they'll explore Tlaxcalan folklore that involves vampire-like creatures (there's some argument to be had about whether or not Tlahuelpuchi were a post-colonial contact invention, but still)

I'm curious what kind of magic might exist in these indigenous communities, where shape-shifting and the like are so prevalent. I'm curious to know why Julia Belmont killed Olrox's lover, and what sort of circumstances led to that. (I remember in some promo interviews forever ago it was implied there was some cult stuff happening in the colonies which Julia got involved with??)

I'm also curious about why Olrox calls the shadow figure Old Man Coyote AND Mephistopheles 🤔🤔🤔

Assdfgl I accidently hit post instead of save draft so sorry if this cuts off abruptly/is disorganized but my point is I'd LOVE to see Olrox and Mizrak's pasts explored more and am crossing my fingers and toes for a renewal announcement soon 🙏🙏🙏

[fionaapplerocks]

A wee list of musicians who are on record with their love for Fiona Apple / influence by her music:

Adia Victoria Aimee Mann Amanda Palmer Anoushka Lucas Annie Clark (St Vincent) Ariana Grande BANKS Billy Howerdel (A Perfect Circle) Caroline Polachek Christine and the Queens Corin Tucker (Sleater-Kinney) Dave Grohl Ben Weinman (Dillinger Escape Plan) Donald Glover (Childish Gambino) Emilee Petersmark (The Crane Wives) Florence Welch (Florence and the Machine) Gabriel Kahane (composer)

Halsey Hayley Kiyoko Hayley Williams (Paramore) Ingrid Laubrock (jazz saxophone) Jack Antonoff Janelle Monae Jason Isbell Jay-Z Jenny Lewis John Legend Julia Michaels Kanye West Katie Crutchfield (Waxahatchee) Katy Perry Kenny Mason Lady Gaga Lars Ulrich (Metallica) Lauren Mayberry (Chvrches) Lil Nas X Lin-Manuel Miranda Lindsey Jordan (Snail Mail) Lorde Madison Cunningham Magdalena Bay MARINA Maya Hawke Melanie Martinez Michelle Zauner (Japanese Breakfast) Natalie Maines (The Chicks) Olivia Rodrigo Mike Hadeas (Perfume Genius) Phoebe Bridgers Rina Sawayama Robin Pecknold (Fleet Foxes) Samia Sara Bareilles ('Little Voice' book) Shirley Manson (Garbage ) Sky Ferreira Solange Knowles Sondre Lerche Sophie Allison (Soccer Mommy) St. Vincent Tegan and Sarah Vanessa Carlton Yuna Zoe Kravitz

[knightofleo]

Adrianne Lenker, Akini Jing, alva noto, Aphex Twin, Ariana Grande, Arooj Aftab, Art School Girlfriend, Astoria, Astrid Sonne, Ativin, AT-XYA, Barrie, Bat for Lashes, BbyMutha, BEA1991, Belén Aguilera, berlioz, Beth Gibbons, Beyoncé, Big Ever, Brimheim, BRONQUIO, The Bug, Burial, Caribou, Cassandra Jenkins, Charly Bliss, Cheekface, Chelsea Wolfe, Coined, Dawn Richard, The Deep, Dexter Colt, DjRUM, Douglas Dare, Drown, Enrico Demuro, Entrañas, Father John Misty, Fennec, FKA twigs, Forest Swords, Fine, Footballhead, Floating Points, Four Tet, Fousheé, Gesaffelstein, Ghostly Kisses, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Greg Mendez, Hakushi Hasegawa, Hana Vu, Hannah Elizabeth Cox, Henrik Lindstrand, The Horrors, Horse Jumper Of Love, Hour, Hovvdy, HUNJIYA, illuminati hotties, Ingrid Witt, James K, Jane Remover, Jeff Rona, Jessica Pratt, Joan As Police Woman, Joanna Sternberg, Joe Goddard, Julia Holter, Julia Kent, Julieta, Kali Uchis, KAVARI, KAYTRANADA, Keeley Forsyth, KETTAMA, Kim Gordon, Laryssa Kim, Lip Critic, Lisa Gerrard, Lonnie Holley, Loren Kramar, Macseal, Magdalena Bay, Maria Chiara Argirò, Martha Skye Murphy, Masayoshi Fujita, Matthew Bourne, meg elsier, Memphis LK, Meth Math, MJ Lenderman, Moor Mother, Mustafa, Naomi Sharon, Nicolas Jaar, Nicole Miglis, Nilüfer Yanya, Oklou, Oliver Coates, Orcas, Or:la, Orlando Weeks, Otha, Poe, Prins Thomas, Priori, Rafael Anton Irisarri, Ravyn Lenae, Raia Was, Real Lies, Remi Wolf, Richie Culver, Robert Owens, Rosa Anschüts, Rose Gray, Saya Gray, Selvagia, Silly Silky, Skeleten, Smerz, Spencer Zahn, St. Vincent, SUN ORGAN, Susanna, They Are Gutting a Body of Water, Tristan Arp, TSHA, Two Shell, Ty Dolla Sign, underscores, Verde Prato, Vitesse X, Waxahatchee, Wishy, Yan Wagner, Yasmin Williams, YHWH Nailgun, Zsela, 1-800 GIRLS

2023, 2022, 2021

[grace-williams-xo]

ALRIGHT. I had time to kill waiting for an appointment so I have dug through countless pages on the Julia Quinn wiki, the Bridgerton wiki and used a ss from Julia’s fb to compile the most comprehensive list of as many characters as possibles birthdays and middle names. No point in keeping it to myself let’s go.

Canon (probably) Bridgerton biographical info:

Middle names

This is the birth name of everyone I could find a middle name for. Scratching at the walls for Julia Quinn to tell us the children’s middle names (though I have headcanons)

Violet Elizabeth Ledger

Simon Arthur Henry Fitzranulph Basset

Katharine Grace Sheffield (Kathani Sharma’s middle name isn’t confirmed anywhere)

Sophia Maria Beckett

Penelope Anne Featherington

Michael Stuart Stirling

Lucy Margaret Catherine Abernathy

Gareth William St. Clair

Birthdates

This is very messy because some idk, some vary between show and book and some are inconsistent everywhere (Colin I’m looking at you)

This is the fb post in question. (Julia Quinn how dare you tell us you have all their birthday’s written down and not tell us 😭)

Edmund: 1764–1803 (was 38 at death, meaning his birthday was later in the year than May ish when he died) [EDIT: his tombstone in the show says he died in May]

Violet: 11th April 1766 (Aries)

Anthony: 17th September, 1784

Benedict: July/August, 1786

Colin: 2nd March, 1791 (books) 1792 or 1793 or 1794 (tv) [okay, so, both wiki sites say show Colin’s born 1792 or 1793 and it has broken my brain because he is canonically one year older than Daphne and in a copy of the pilot script I found online Daphne is listed as 18 (which fits with her debut) and him 19 but for him to be 19 in the social season he would’ve had to have just turned 19 (bc start of March birthday) and that would make him also born in 1994 but it is clearly not possible for Violet to birth two children in six months furthermore in s2 Benedict outright says that Colin is 21 which would have made him 20 in s1 and thus born 1792; so Colin was born in 1793 or 1792 or maybe even 1794 or inside a fucking void idk anymore but show Colin’s birthday probably isn’t March]

Daphne: August/September, 1792 (books) 1794 or 1795 (tv) [I think 1794 because she is listed as being 18 in a copy of the pilot script I found online, and she is debuting, so she would’ve been 18 turning 19 born in 1794]

Eloise: April (before 22nd) 1796

Francesca: April (before 22nd) 1797

Gregory: January/February (I think February), 1801

Hyacinth: May/June, 1803 [EDIT: Edmund’s tombstone in the show says he died in May, making Hyacinth’s birthday likely in June imo but I actually have no basis for that guess other than vibes]

Kate: 1793 (books) 1788 (tv)

Sophie: 1794

Penelope: 8th April 1796 (Aries)

Simon: 1784

Phillip: 1794

John: 1792

Michael: 1791

Lucy: 1807

Gareth: March 1797

If you made it this far, good job! If you have any info to add, please do so in the replies/reblogs.

[tallahasseemp3]

i would love to hear about your favourite books of the year :)

hehe ty + thank you to anon who asked as well! my absolute favorite was PRIVATE RITES!!!!!!!! by julia armfield. dykes at the end of the world deal with their dad's death in the house he built. literary horror set in a dying world that had me wishing it was 2000 pages and that is not a joke or exaggeration. everyone needs to read it.

sea of tranquility by emily st john mandel was also a strong fave (my blog title is a quote from it) that made me cry so bad i had to buy a fancy copy with nice sprayed edges after i got it from the library. the ministry of time by kaliane bradley is EVERYTHING i want from time travel fiction — tragedy. romance. stuff that's redacted for spoilers. made me feel like a victorian woman slumping over a chair.

DEAD ASTRONAUTS by jeff vandermeer became a top 5 book of all time for me about 50 pages in. it's so strange and obtuse and beautiful. yes it is again about time travel. but i like what i like!

just like home by sarah gailey is a must read for hauntology people. it made me go SICKOS YES YES YES so many times. house that is alive and loves you but also is the house your father built....just read it. (shamelessly i will tag the author (@gaileyfrey as they are on here and i do think they should know how much i loved it.)

[polishwomenartists-sztukakobiet]

Halina Korngold aka Korn (1902-1978) Woman & Man, ca 1960, oil on canvas, 122 x 91,5 cm „Kobieta i mężczyzna”, ok. 1960 olej na płycie 122 x 91,5 cm (Wł. MUT)

[meta-squash]

Squash's Reading List Year In Review 2024

(I've also posted this on WordPress here, where it might be more readable: https://jesuisgourde.wordpress.com/.../30/readinglist2024/)

Last year I read 92 books. I didn't plan on trying to surpass that number but I did, quite easily. This year I read 116 books. I didn't start off with any specific reading goal, but early on I decided to make it my goal to read more books by not-cis-men (women, trans/nonbinary people, etc) than by cis men. I hit that goal with 72 books. I did want to reread a number of books; I reread 7 books, but not all were the ones I listed in my last yearly reading review. I read 89 fiction books and 27 nonfiction. Of the nonfiction, the genres were mainly biography/autobiography, essay, science, and history. I read 45 books from small press publishers. I read 39 books by and/or about queer people. I don't have a super nice photo spread this year because I read a lot of books at work; I was going to screenshot my goodreads grid but unfortunately they have (frustratingly) changed the format from grid to list in the past week.

Here's a photo of the books I read that I do own, which isn't a whole lot, since I read most of the books at work this year:

I'll do superlatives at the end, here is the list of what I read this year, in chronological order. (Apologies for the random line breaks in the middle of the list, tumblr doesn't like it when you have 50+ lines without breaks)

-The Sorrows Of Young Werther by Johann von Goethe -The Changeling by Joy Williams -Child of God by Cormac McCarthy -Pierrot Mon Ami by Raymond Queneau -The Ghost Network by Kate Disabato -The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan -Richard III by William Shakespeare (reread) -The Recognitions by William Gaddis -A Kestrel For A Knave by Barry Hines -Grief Is The Thing With Feathers by Max Porter -Bluets by Maggie Nelson -The Wild Party by Joseph Moncure March -The Hospital by Ahmed Bouanani -I Love Dick by Chris Kraus -Minor Detail by Adiana Shibli -Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson -Rent Boy by Gary Indiana -One Or Several Deserts by Carter St Hogan -Samedi the Deafness by Jesse Ball -Norma Jean Baker of Troy by Anne Carson -Die My Love by Ariana Harwicz -Missing Person by Patrick Modiano -Petite Fleur by Iosi Havilio -Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi -The Address Book by Sophie Calle -In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado -Plastic Jesus by Poppy Z Brite -New Animal by Ella Baxter -The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-In-The-Moon Marigolds by Paul Zindel (play) -Green Girl by Kate Zambrino -Death In Spring by Merce Rodoreda -Harold's End by JT LeRoy (reread) -Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto -Stranger To The Moon by Evelio Rosero -H of H Playbook by Anne Carson -When The Sick Rule The World by Dodie Bellamy -Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson -Agua Viva by Clarice Lispector -Not One Day by Anne Garreta -Mauve Desert by Nicole Brossard -Binary Star by Sarah Gerard -Slug and other stories by Megan Milks -Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block (reread) -The Deer by Dashiel Carrera -Mean by Myriam Gurba -Humiliation by Wayne Koestenbaum -The Toaster Project: Or A Heroic Attempt to Build a Simple Electric Appliance from Scratch by Thomas Thwaites -Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts by Claire Donato -Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield

-Notes on Thoughts and Vision & The Wise Sappho by H.D. -Harrow by Joy Williams -A Feast Of Snakes by Harry Crews -Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York by Lucy Sante -Milkshake by Travis Dahlke -Little Fish by Casey Plett -Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor -Sex Goblin by Lauren Cook -Biography of X by Catherine Lacey -Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller -Hir by Taylor Mac (play) -Daddy Boy by Emerson Whitney -Notes On Camp by Susan Sontag -Transformer: A Story of Glitter, Glam Rock, and Loving Lou Reed by Simon Doonan -Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo -Acid Snow by Larry Mitchell (reread) -33 1/3 Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures by Chris Ott -The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides -red doc> by Anne Carson -Darryl by Jackie Ess -A Visit From The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan -The Postman Always Rings Twice by James Cain -Body by Harry Crews -St Sebastian's Abyss by Mark Haber -The Quick & The Dead by Joy Williams (reread) -Don't Think Twice: Adventure and Healing at 100 Miles Per Hour by Barbara Schoichet -Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer -Timbuktu by Paul Auster -Nevada by Imogen Binnie -The End We Start From by Megan Hunte -Organ Meats by K-Ming Chang -Like Flies From Afar by K. Ferraro -Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe -Bestiary by K-Ming Chang -Playboy by Constance Debre -Red Dragon by Thomas Harris -Parting Gifts for Losing Contestants by Jessica Mooney -The Outline of My Lover by Douglas A Martin -Monstrilio by Gerardo Samano Cordova -Essex County by Jeff Lemire (reread) -Tacky: Love Letters to the Worst Culture We Have To Offer by Rax King -The Death of Francis Bacon by Max Porter -Lover Man by Alston Anderson -Cecilia by K-Ming Chang -The Employees by Olga Ravn -It Lasts Forever And Then It's Over by Anne De Marcken -Mercy Killing by Alandra Hileman (play) -Tentacle by Rita Indiana

-Nox by Anne Carson -What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami -McGlue by Ottessa Moshfegh (reread) -Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin -John by Annie Baker (play) -Widow Basquiat by Jennifer Clement -All Down Darkness Wide by Sean Hewitt -The Blue Books by Nicole Brossard -The Book Of Difficult Fruit: Arguments for the Tart, Tender and Unruly by Kate Lebo -Blood Of The Dawn by Claudia Salazar Jimenez -The Balloonists by Eula Biss -Ravage: An Astonishment Of Fire by MacGillivray/Kirsten Norrie -Gods Of Want: Stories by K-Ming Chang -Fem by Magda Carneci -Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary by Miss Major Griffin-Gracy and Toshio Merino -Mr Parker by Michael McKeever (play) -Fucking A by Suzan-Lori Parks (play) -Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha -Otherspace, a Martian Ty/opography by Brad Freeman and Johanna Drucker

I DNF'ed a few books, but all were put down with the intention of finishing them at some point. Mostly they were books I needed to read when I was less busy/in a different headspace. I DNF'ed: Soldiers Don't Go Mad: A true story of friendship, poetry and mental illness during the first world war by Charles Glass, a reread of Her by HD, and The Apple In The Dark by Clarice Lispector. The Lispector and HD are both modernist novels that need 100% attention, and the Glass book is a nonfiction book (very good so far) that I put down in favor of something that at the time was more interesting.

I gave out a lot of 5 stars this year. The books I rated as 5 stars were: The Changeling by Joy Williams, The Recognitions by William Gaddis, Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield, 33 1/3 Unknown Pleasures by Chris Ott, Transformer by Simon Doonan, Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo, Body by Harry Crews, Organ Meats by K-Ming Chang, Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe, and Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin.

~Superlatives~

Like last year, I'm going to do runners-up because I read so many books.

Favorite book: The Recognitions by William Gaddis. I have to pick this one as my favorite for the year, because reading it was a journey, and because it was a book that was exactly everything I love in a book: fascinating, very human characters, weird formatting, great dialogue, metaphors galore, and most importantly, hundreds of cultural, artistic, historical, biblical and literary references. I started this book on January 4 and I finished it February 22. It was so unbelievably dense, probably the densest novel I've ever read, and I absolutely loved it. So much is going on in this novel that it's hard for me to summarize. In the very shortest version of a summary, it is a novel about counterfeits (specifically paintings, but counterfeits in all and any forms) and Catholicism in 1930s/40s New York. The main character is a young man named Wyatt Gwyon, a talented artist who instead of painting for himself, becomes a skilled counterfeiter-- not because he wants to make money, but because he's obsessed with the perfection of making exact interpretations of other people's art. He also struggles with religion and belief due to his strange religious upbringing. Many, many other characters are also focal points throughout the novel. The book is unique in that it doesn't use quotation marks when characters speak and rarely uses "he said"/"she said" or any similar phrase. But Gaddis is incredibly talented at writing dialogue so that each character's voice comes through, and it's obvious (except when he doesn't want it to be) who is speaking. Gaddis is also wonderfully scathing, and much of the novel is incredibly witty and intelligent observations about the Modernist art world and artistic spaces in general. The characters are all fascinating, there is a lot of mirroring and metaphors. I say this book is about counterfeits in every form, because it constantly highlights different ways in which each character is faking something, or lying, or pretending to be/know/do/think something they are not. This book was incredible, I annotated every single page and had so much fun reading it, even though or perhaps because it was so unbelievably dense.

Just for a bit of reference, here are a few of the more annotated pages in my copy of The Recognitions:

Runner up: Body by Harry Crews (more on this one further down)

Least favorite book: Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi. I was so disappointed by this book. The blurb on the back made it sound like it was going to be really beautiful and interesting and unique. It wasn't. It was all tell and no show. It follows Ada, a person who is born with one foot in the spirit world. A traumatic experience at university causes her to develop split personalities as the spirits from the other side step forward to protect her from trauma. Unfortunately, the spirits who now control her body have darker, more dangerous desires. Sadly, there was almost no plot, just description after description of Ada's unhealthy relationships and erratic behavior. But because the narrative is so distanced from said relationships and from Ada, the high stakes of this behavior is not felt, not really. Interesting characters can easily save 'all tell and no show type' books, but none of the characters get delved into with any depth, even Ada. The show rather than tell narrative also seriously undermines the poetic prose that crops up almost at random. This book felt flat. No plot, little stakes felt, no interesting characters, tell rather than showing everything, and it's not compelling at all.

Runner up: Playboy by Constance Debre. The back of this book describes it as a memoir detailing the writer's "decision, at age forty-three, to abandon her marriage, her legal career, and her bourgeois Parisian life to become a lesbian and a writer." Which sounds amazing! But it isn't! It's unbelievably pretentious and quite boring. It's mostly just complaining hidden by a facade of faux-philosophical meandering and directionless autobiographical vignettes. The author is a lawyer and she spends most of the time complaining about poor people and about women. It's so hilariously misogynistic. It's just various vignettes of her relationships with various women (who she dislikes and disparages for being femme or having bad bodies or for having lowbrow/uncultured interests etc etc) and then her going and visiting her ex-husband and teenage son, and then complaining that she has nothing. There's little to no emotion in the book, she is not charming, and her pseudo-philosophical musings are boring.

Most surprising/unexpected book: Body by Harry Crews. This book crept up on me in terms of a favorite. Crews' writing is not for everyone, but it's absolutely for me. The book follows bodybuilder Shereel Dupont and her trainer, Russell, who are at the world bodybuilding competition. Shereel has left home to compete over the past year and is now one of the most likely to win. Unfortunately, her family, who are "corpulent rednecks" with odd habits, show up to cheer her on, causing disruption and chaos throughout the hotel at which the competition is held and turmoil for Shereel herself. This book blew me away completely. Every time I thought it had reached a plateau of weirdness and chaos and insanity, it ratcheted that all up even higher, culminating in the most perfectly fucked up ending.

Runner up: Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin. A mother trapped in the liminal space between life and death is made by an unfamiliar changeling child to retell the events of the recent past, desperately trying to pinpoint the moment she can reverse the environmental poisoning of herself and her daughter. I picked this book up because it sounded interesting, and then it ended up being an amazingly written short horror novel. It had a lot of interesting thoughts on motherhood and the horror of being a parent - not in a negative way, but the horror of wanting to protect and keep your child safe and the inability to do so.

Most fun book: Like Flies From Afar by K Ferrari. I fully judged a book by its cover with this one, and it did not disappoint. Small-time criminal/oligarch Mr Machi thinks he's hot shit, until he pops a tire on the way to an appointment and discovers an unidentifiable corpse in his trunk. As he scrambles to deal with the body, his paranoia grows as he tries to calculate who out of all his enemies and employees might be responsible, and who is trying to frame him, and who the body might be, and his life slowly transforms into a nightmare. Everyone in this book is loathsome, but in a way that is so fun to hate. The whole novel is a romp of panic and paranoia, people who think they're so cool and hard exposing how uncool they are, and a mystery that's so fun because watching the protagonist panic is a kind of schadenfreude.

Runner up: Transformer by Simon Doonan. This is a book for people who love Lou Reed, by a man who loves Lou Reed. It's just a wonderfully written biography that focuses mainly on the album Transformer, but also gives Lou Reed's history and is interspersed with stories about Doonan's own thoughts and experiences with Reed. The whole book is really passionate and vivid, and fun to read even if you don't have the album immediately to hand.

Best queer book: Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield. Leah, a marine biologist, has returned from a deep-sea voyage that went wrong. Her wife Miri begins to realize that something is wrong, and Leah came back changed. The narrative switches between Miri's point of view as she tries to reach Leah and struggles help her despite not knowing what's happening to her wife, and Leah's point of view as she remembers and recounts what happened to her during her submarine voyage. I started this book at work and brought it home. In the middle of reading it, I stopped to finish some task (I think it might have been to make dinner), and ended up having to cut the task short because I needed so badly to keep reading. The most compelling part of the book is the very different ways the two characters' love for each other shines through, even in the darkest moments of the novel.

Runner up: Darryl by Jackie Ess. The titular narrator of this novel discovers that he genuinely enjoys a cuckolding lifestyle, watching men have sex with his wife. But then he realizes that part of the reason he likes it so much, is that maybe he wants to be the wife. His explorations with sex and gender and relationships (and basketball) begin to unravel his marriage and his friendships and his own mind. Then he learns more about one of the men his wife has been sleeping with, and things get dangerous. I loved this book because despite it being written by a trans woman, the story doesn't at all go where you'd expect regarding gender or sexuality. It's satirical, it's witty, it's got some cool things to say about kink and about gender, and it's totally original.

Saddest book: Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo. This is a classic I'd been meaning to read for a long time. The narrator is an American WWI soldier named Joe who was hit by an artillery shell and has woken in the hospital having had his arms and legs amputated, as well as most of his facial features mutilated beyond use/recognition. Trapped in his body, he drifts through memories and musings on life and war and philosophy as he tries to keep track of the days and to figure out some way to communicate with the hospital staff. It's no wonder this book is a classic. The writing is incredible, the imagery vivid and the plot totally gripping, even as it switches between the peaceful past and the horrible present. The end is completely gut-wrenching.

Runner up: Minor Detail by Adania Shibli. This novel explores what in history is a minor detail, and what impact that little moment might have on someone in the future. The first part of the novel opens in Palestine in 1949, in a military camp, where a group of Israeli soldiers (led by a captain suffering from a bite-induced hallucinogenic fever) kidnap, rape, and murder an unnamed Palestinian woman and bury her body in the desert. Fifty-odd years later, a Palestinian writer learns about this "small" moment in history, which occurred 25 years to the day before her birth, and becomes obsessed with learning more. She obtains an illegal pass to the Zone in which the woman died, determined to go there and find more information. I don't want to summarize much more because I don't want to give away any of the hard-hitting plot points. But Minor Detail was published in 2020, and it explores the cycles of violence and the ways in which oppression has not changed for the Palestinian people. It's a book that I wish I had read twice because (as the title suggests) there were a lot of small details that repeated themselves or were less noticeable at first but slowly grew or became important later in the story, and I'm sure I would have noticed more.

Weirdest book: The Changeling by Joy Williams. I love Joy Williams! I love everything she writes! Her themes are always so interesting and her writing style is so unique. The main character, a young woman named Pearl, escapes her terrible marriage by joining a rich older man and in doing so ends up living with him on an island that is populated by children he has taken under his wing. Pearl wants little to do with them and spends most of her days getting drunk by the pool -- the children are eerily smart and her son has joined their games and lessons, and they all want her attention. But her son is less and less her son as time goes on, and the children are not always the children, and the adults in the house are all bizarre and half-mad. I wish I could give a better summary, but Joy Williams books are always difficult to summarize, because so much of the stories are less about the plot and more about the characters just feeling things at the reader, and the plot is often built on or around odd occurrences and philosophical musings. This book blew me away with its imagery and its metaphors. I want to reread it, because it was just so amazing. My absolutely favorite thing about Joy Williams (and this is true for all of her books) is the way she writes these incredibly profound and philosophical phrases like they're nothing at all, like they're so easy, just breezes on by them even though she's just punched you in the chest. It's amazing.

Runner up: Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin.

Most gripping book: Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe. This book is an absolute masterclass in pacing. It tells just a few fragments out of the whole history of the Irish Troubles, but the fragments that are focused on are woven together with brilliant timing, humanizing and vivid portrayals, fantastic analysis and contextualization, and altogether excellent writing. Every time I put this book down I wanted to keep reading, to know what was going to happen next. The book has 3 focal points: Gerry Adams, (alleged) leader of the IRA; Dolors Price, a member of the IRA; and the family of Jean McConville, a woman kidnapped by the IRA. At first, all three storylines are disparate, but Keefe slowly weaves them together, pulling all the threads of context and action and years in prison or government or delinquent schools together slowly but steadily. The book reads like a thriller, and I adored it completely. (Yes, I do know about the miniseries. I haven't finished watching it yet!)

Runner up: Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield.

Book that taught me the most: Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe

Runner up: The Toaster Project: Or A Heroic Attempt to Build a Simple Electric Appliance from Scratch by Thomas Thwaites. This could also go under weirdest book, easily. As a graduate art school project, Thwaites decided to attempt to build the simplest (and cheapest) appliance he could think of - a toaster - fully from scratch. Quite literally, starting with mining the elements to make the right kinds of metal and figuring out how to make the right kind of plastic. Half of the book is Thwaites' attempts to build various elements of a toaster - and how they go wrong, or right, and why it's so hard. The other half discusses all the processes that go in to making all these elements in a more manufactured setting, their impact on the environment and the economy, and the difference between cheap mass-produced products that break down vs more expensive products that last longer. The writing was fun and included photos and diagrams and interviews with various industry professionals Thwaites contacted to learn more.

Most interesting/thought provoking book: The Recognitions by William Gaddis

Runner up: Organ Meats by K-Ming Chang. I've now read everything this author has published and this is by far her best book. Her narrative style is so unique and so poetic, and the themes she always comes back to are so interesting, and they culminate in this amazing novel. This magical realist novel centers around two best friends, Anita and Rainie, who are both first generation Taiwanese-American. The story opens when they are adolescents, and Anita has recently learned that they come from generations of dog-headed women and women-headed dogs. They vow to become dogs together, tying a string around each other's throats as collars and playing at dogs in the empty lot near their apartment complex. But Anita's dreamlike imagination and obsessively loyal personality starts to clash with Rainie's more reserved nature, and when it becomes too much, Rainie's family moves away. Rainie grows up, while unbeknownst to her, Anita has sunk into a dreamworld and her body has begun to rot. She narrates her family's past and her mother's bloodline because she cannot narrate her own present. When she returns to the town she grew up in, Rainie discovers Anita's condition, and knows that she is the only one who can save her. This novel is beautiful, incredibly poetic, and experiments with formatting and narration in really unique ways. Its exploration of friendship and queerness and obsession and tradition and folklore is absolutely fascinating. I often write in my books and underline sentences or paragraphs that I really love. I didn't write in this one, because I would have ended up underlining the entire novel.

Longest/shortest book: My longest book was The Recognitions by William Gaddis at 952 pages, and my shortest was Notes On Camp by Susan Sontag at 57 pages.

General thoughts on all the other books that didn't get superlatives:

-Child of God by Cormac McCarthy. This is the first McCarthy book I've ever read (I know, I know) and I really enjoyed it. You just watch a horrible guy walk around in the rural countryside of a small town, doing increasingly fucked up things and committing various awful crimes. Which is exactly up my alley in terms of literature. The main character, Ballard, is someone who is so weird and pathetic that he becomes turned inside out into evilness. You feel sorry for him but you also hate him and he's also fascinating because he's so fucking weird. It's a great book.

-The Ghost Network by Catie Disabato. This book was so much fun to read while living in Chicago. It's a rock n roll mystery novel that riffs on Situationism and the L tracks and maps. A rock star disappears, and the main character who is a fan of her's is determined to find out what happened to her. What she uncovers is a series of clues based on defunct lines and stations of the Chicago transit system, and the Situationist concept of detournment, which lead her towards finding out what actually happened to the rock star. This book was so much fun, and so much of it was based on real life defunct train lines and the actual Situationists, both of which I found really interesting. The ending was also just so good! Somehow I managed to have read everything I needed to in order to get every single reference in the book, which was really surprising to me, because they all came from different places.

-New Animal by Ella Baxter. This book baffled me. It is about a woman who works as a makeup-artist at her family's morgue. When her mother dies unexpectedly, she skips the funeral and goes to stay at her estranged father's house. While there, trying to figure out how to vent her grief, she decides to try out the local kink scene. Her first experience is with a dom who is a manipulative, horrible asshole. She has a bad time, but wants to try again, so she goes to a place that hosts scenes. She acts like she knows what she's doing when she doesn't, no one gives her any instruction, so she fucks up massively, and everyone has a bad time. It's the worst portrayal of the kink scene I think I've ever encountered. The author said she did a lot of research but it just seems like a lot of terrible assumptions and misinterpretations. I thought it was going to be a book that positively portrayed kink and people who like the kink scene, but it's very much not. It didn't even feel like the author was doing this so the character would learn that she can't run from her grief. It seemed more like the author had one bad experience due to poor communication or shitty individuals, and then decided that's what the whole scene was like.

-Harold's End by JT LeRoy. I read this book in high school (or perhaps just after graduating) and totally fell in love with it, and then never saw another copy until recently. It was so good to reread it, to re-experience the gorgeous watercolor portraits that come with it. The novel follows a young street kid/hustler who lives with other street kids; all his friends have pets but he doesn't. A john takes a liking to him and buys him a snail as a pet, who he names Harold. The book follows him as he lives on the streets and as his relationship with the john develops. The book is classic JT LeRoy, and the end is LeRoy's usual style of characters experiencing a life lesson and growth but not necessarily in a happy way. It definitely holds up!

-Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson. This was such a fun and weird book and I really enjoyed it. Markson's idea for the novel was "what if someone actually lived the way that Wittgenstein's Tractatus suggests?". What we get is a woman who believes she is the last person on earth (it is never confirmed whether this is true or not). She muses on life, culture, art, philosophy, and her past, and discusses her trips across the world despite its emptiness. But her story changes constantly; she's always referencing things she said before and editing herself. It's a weird, fun, fascinating novel with a lovably weird main character.

-A Feast Of Snakes by Harry Crews. Yet another fucked up book that I loved. It follows Joe Lon Mackey, a former high school football star that now lives a dead-end life in his hometown in Georgia. Each year the town hosts the Rattlesnake Roundup, where people come from many states away to try and catch as many rattlesnakes as they can in order to win a competition. Joe Lon is in charge of the event now that his father is too old and ill. He's uncomfortably self-aware of his own personal failings and his inadequacy and his abusive relationship with his wife; he'd rather not think about any of it and is incapable of figuring out how to change things. But his old girlfriend is returning for the event, and his father's attempts to control the goings-on from afar mean he's unable to stop thinking about where his life has ended up and where it's going. All this drives him slowly crazy with desperation until the insane ending. Crews is incredibly talented at writing characters that are likeable despite being so flawed and fairly awful people. This book is no exception.

-Milkshake by Travis Dahlke. What a weird novel! In a near-future dystopian heatwave, an 11 year old girl escapes the environmental catastrophe by traveling back in time to her past life as a fertilizer salesman whose marriage is slowly collapsing. I really enjoyed it, because it was just so odd. Now that I'm thinking about it, I feel as though it would have been really interesting to read just before or just after reading Tentacle; both books focus specifically on time travel and on environmental disaster.

-Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor. At the opening of the box, a Witch has been murdered in a small village in Mexico called La Matosa. The rest of the chapters are narrated by different characters, who all have some small or large hand in the death of the Witch, who was a woman who the whole town visited in secret for medicine, fortune-tellings, and advice. The narrating characters include a schoolgirl, a drug dealer, a prostitute, a hapless husband who wants to make something of himself, and a teenager in love with his young girlfriend. With each narration we learn more about the Witch, and her mother who was a Witch before her. Slowly, we get inklings of the nature of the murder, and the revelation at the end is brutal. Melchor's writing is incredibly vivid, and the characters are all caught in the cycle of poverty, driven by superstition and fear and hardship. None of the characters are likeable, but they're all so human.

-Biography Of X by Catherine Lacey. In a dystopic alternate-universe US, where the Southern Territory split from the North after WWII and established a fascist theocracy, a woman named CM grieves her recently deceased wife X, who was a famous artist. Despite X's wishes, CM decides to delve into her wife's past, researching her history before they met and before she was known as X. She uses her credentials and privileges as a journalist to cross into the Southern Territory and learn about X's family and the communities from which she came, her activism and her hidden lives, and begins to realize that maybe learning all this about the woman she loved won't benefit her in the long run and that maybe their relationship wasn't as rosy as she thought. This novel combined fiction and real life in really fascinating ways, and includes both real and fake sources in its footnotes.

-The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides. A famous and successful painter murders her husband and then refuses to speak. A psychologist who is also a fan of her work is determined to get her to speak again. Obsessed with uncovering the truth, he ends up taking risks that threaten himself and his patient. A fun mystery that went down easy. It didn't attempt to be too realistic from the start, so suspension of disbelief wasn't hard. I do think the book could have done without the entire last part. Leaving it on the realization of what had happened and allowing the reader to sit with that realization (especially with how creatively the twist is presented) would have had more impact I think than the slower and less engaging denouement of the last 3 chapters, which were far weaker than the rest of the book.

-Acid Snow by Larry Mitchell. I reread this book for the first time since about 2009 and really enjoyed it. It's a very sad novel about a man living in NYC during the height of the AIDS epidemic. Most of his friends and lovers have died and he's scared and sad about his own life and cynical about love, but he's attracted to the man who owns the shop below his apartment. It's a dark book, sad and scared and jaded. I think the main character's anxiety and grief that slowly escalates into paranoia is an amazingly surreal way to portray all the emotions that consumed the queer community at that time. I also loved the sort of lack of closure at the end - because many people didn't get that.

-Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer. I don't generally go for science fiction novels, but I read this one because so many people said they had liked it. I really enjoyed it. The unnamed narrator, a biologist, is part of an all-female expedition into a harsh, unknown territory that has appeared adjacent to the US. The suspense and strangeness of the novel had excellent pacing. The descriptions were also so vivid and clear, which made the story's weirdness so compelling. I loved watching the main character struggle to remain objective the whole time while knowing that she's failing. Her growing fascination and terror is so fun to read as each feeling tries to overtake the other. I also think it was great as a standalone and I feel no interest in reading the other books in the same universe.

-Nevada by Imogen Binnie. I'm a bad queer person, I hated this book. In it, the narrator, a trans woman, is frustrated with her life and has just broken up with her girlfriend, so she steals her ex's car and drives away, ending up in a small town where she spends the night with a department store employee. I just really don't like books that are meandering tell and no show without characters or a plot that are interesting. This entire book felt like someone recounting their weekend over breakfast, complete with casual informal language and overuse of the word "like". Which would be fine if any of the characters were compelling, or if the plot was really interesting and went somewhere, but it didn't. A good portion of it is just musings on New York City, but without the creativity or vividness that other portrayals of NYC have to offer. After I read it, I learned this book was kind of the catalyst for a specific style of trans writing. Which also explains why I hated Detransition, Baby when I read it a couple years ago, as it's a sort of literary descendant of this. I'm happy to read books that are tell rather than show....so long as something interesting happens or at least one of the characters is unique and compelling. This book sadly has neither.

-Essex County by Jeff Lemire. I read this for an English class in university, so this was a reread and I really enjoyed reading it a second time! All the stories in this collection are so beautiful and compelling, all the characters are so real. And the art style is fantastic. The stories revolve around characters living in the titular Essex County in Canada, across a number of generations. It weaves together their relationships and their lives, much of which revolves around hockey. There were some storylines I remembered quite well and others I didn't remember at all, so it was really nice to revisit this one.

-Ravage: An Astonishment of Fire by MacGillivray. Man, this book had so much potential. This novel is a fake biography of a fake poet who disappeared from a Scottish island in the 1960s after falling into delusions that he has become a demon. The fascinating thing about this book (at first), is that it's completely convinced that it is an actual nonfiction book. It gives no hints that it's fake, and the first 50 pages are convincingly written with an academic, nonfiction voice as the novel is utterly convinced of its own delusion of factualness. The novel claims to be an analysis of found papers: first, the poetry and written tracts of Tristjan Norge, a Norwegian poet, then the analysis of his works by MacGillivray, and finally, the diary of his companion Luce Montcrieff. Unfortunately, it is fairly repetitive in a way that bogs the reader down quite a bit. Even so, I think I would have enjoyed much, much more if the ending did not abruptly switch genres to a supernatural/fantasy novel in a way that was startling and had no previous indications of earlier in the book. Up to the last 20 pages I thought it was interesting, even when it was dense, but the end felt like the author didn't know how to end the novel and just used the deus ex machina of supernatural occurrences.

My goal for 2025 is to read majority nonfiction. I don't know if I'm going to actually meet that goal, but I'll try. I don't have any goals for how many books I want to read, especially because I tend to read nonfiction quite a bit slower than fiction, so I don't have a good idea of what my reading amount goal should actually be. This year I also forgot entirely about my attempt to read all of Jean Genet's (translated) works, so I will hopefully actually meet that goal in 2025, since I only have one or two books left to read. But my first three books of the year are going to be Soldiers Don't Go Mad by Charles Glass, which I started this year but didn't finish, The Declared Enemy: Texts and Interviews by Jean Genet, and Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks by Patrick Radden Keefe.

[natgoodmans]

books read in 2024!

books read so far: 107/100

— gr: http://goodreads.com/cossettereads — sg: https://app.thestorygraph.com/profile/cossettereads

as always, askbox + dms are open if have any questions or would like to chat about books! 🤍

⊹ indicates any (new) favorites of the month! previous months are under the cut!

december ⋆ ˚｡⋆౨ৎ

1) the raven boys by maggie stiefvater (reread, annotated) 2) these violent delights by micah nemerever (audiobook) 3) wicked: the the life and times of the wicked witch of the west by gregory maguire (audiobook) 4) alice's adventures in wonderland & other stories by lewis carroll (annotated) 5) the outsiders by s.e. hinton

january ⋆ ˚｡⋆౨ৎ˚

1) beach read by emily henry (reread) 2) on palestine by noam chomsky & ilan pappé 3) valley verified by kyla zhao (gifted) 4) the wind at my back: resilience, grace, and other gifts from my mentor, raven wilkinson by misty copeland & susan fales-hill (gifted) 5) check please: year one by ngozi ukazu (reread) 6) check please: year two by ngozi ukazu (reread) 7) check please: year three by ngozi ukazu (reread) 8) check please: year four by ngozi ukazu (reread) 9) raiders of the lost heart by jo segura (gifted) 10) the frame-up by gwenda bond (arc) 11) everything i never told you by celeste ng ⊹ 12) forgive me not by jennifer baker (gifted) 13) ever after always by chloe liese (gifted) 14) the summer of bitter and sweet by jen ferguson (gifted) 15) the lily of ludgate hill by mimi matthews (gifted) 16) last call at the local by sarah grunder ruiz (gifted) ⊹ 17) the sun and the void by gabriela romero-lacruz (gifted) 18) a line in the dark by malinda lo (gifted) 19) biting the hand: growing up asian in black and white america by julia lee (gifted) 20) play it as it lays by joan didion

february ⋆ ˚｡⋆౨ৎ˚

1) mister hockey by lia riley * 2) collide by bal khabra (arc) * 3) a curious beginning by deanna raybourn (gifted) 4) breaking the ice by k.r. collins * 5) if only you by chloe liese (gifted) * 6) anxious people by frederik backman ⊹ 7) the catch by amy lea (gifted) 8) weekends with you by alexandra paige (arc) 9) happily never after by lynn painter (arc) 10) klara and the sun by kazuo ishiguro 11) good material by dolly alderton 12) in the event this doesn't fall apart by shannon lee barry 13) the night ends with fire (arc) by k.x. song 14) the good, the bad, and the aunties (arc) by jesse q. sutanto 15) where sleeping girls lie (arc) by faridah àbíké-íyímídé 16) sophomore surge by k.r. collins * 17) lighting the lamp by k.r. collins * 18) glove save and a beauty by k.r. collins * 19) home ice advantage by k.r. collins * 20) power play by k.r. collins * 21) grounded by k.r. collins * 22) line chemistry by k.r. collins *

march ⋆ ˚｡⋆౨ৎ˚

1) happy medium by sarah adler (arc) 2) a darker shade of magic by v.e. schwab (audiobook) 3) expiration dates by rebecca serle (arc) 4) divine rivals by rebecca ross (book club) 5) the siren by katherine st. john (gifted) 6) light in gaza edited by jehad abusalim 7) how to end a love story by yulin kuang (arc) // reviewed here 8) rising from the deep: the seattle kraken, a tenacious push for expansion, and the emerald city's sports revival by geoff baker 9) les misérables by victor hugo (reread)

april ⋆ ˚｡⋆౨ৎ˚

1) the goodbye cat by hiro arikawa (reread) 2) the traveling cat chronicles by hiro arikawa (reread) 3) this is me trying by racquel marie (arc) 4) kill her twice by stacey lee (arc) 5) the pairing by casey mcquiston (arc) 6) swiped by l.m. chilton (arc) 7) lies and weddings by kevin kwan (arc) 8) the odyssey by homer (audiobook)

may ⋆ ˚｡⋆౨ৎ˚

1) this summer will be different by carley fortune (arc) 2) the viscount who loved me by julia quinn (reread) 3) romancing mister bridgerton by julia quinn (reread) 4) the iliad by homer (narrated by audra mcdonald) (audiobook) 5) a novel love story by ashley poston (arc) 6) when he was wicked by julia quinn (reread) 7) a banh mi for two by trinity nguyen (arc) 8) the secret garden by frances hodgson burnett (audiobook)

june ⋆ ˚｡⋆౨ৎ

1) lessons in chemistry by bonnie garmus 2) the phantom of the opera by gaston leroux (audiobook) 3) you, with a view by jessica joyce 4) s. by j.j. abrams & doug dorst 5) the hunchback of the notre dame (audiobook) A

july ⋆ ˚｡⋆౨ৎ

1) firekeeper's daughter by angeline boulley (audiobook) ⊹ 2) born to run by bruce springsteen (audiobook) 3) it had to be you by eliza jane brazier 4) the great gatsby by f. scott fitzgerald (reread; annotated) 5) death on the nile by agatha christie (audiobook) 6) blue sisters by coco mellors (arc) ⊹ 7) juniper and thorn by ava reid (audiobook) 8) the villain edit by laurie devore ⊹

august ⋆ ˚｡⋆౨ৎ

1) a study in drowning by ava reid (audiobook) 2) just for the summer by abby jimenez 3) the match by sarah adams (audiobook)

september ⋆ ˚｡⋆౨ৎ

1) the glitch by leeanne slade (audiobook) 2) howl’s moving castle by diana wynne jones (traveling book club; annotated) 3) how to kill your family by bella mackie (audiobook) 4) everyone i kissed since you got famous by mae marvel (audiobook) 5) blue sisters by coco mellors (reread, annotation) 6) mott street: a chinese american family's story of exclusion and homecoming by ava chin ⊹ 7) confronting the racist legacy of the american child welfare system: the case for abolition by alan j. dettlaff 8) jane eyre by charlotte brontë

october ⋆ ˚｡⋆౨ৎ

1) anne of green gables by l.m. montgomery 2) intermezzo by sally rooney 3) razzle dazzle: the battle for broadway by michael riedel 4) designing broadway: how derek mclane and other acclaimed set designers create the visual world of theatre by derek mclane and eila mell 5) summer in the city by alex aster (arc) 6) rebecca by daphne du maurier (audiobook) ⊹

november ⋆ ˚｡⋆౨ৎ

1) shoot your shot by lexi lafleur brown (arc) 2) ready or not by cara bastone 3) the secret life of the american musical: how broadway shows are built by jack viertel 4) the starless sea by erin morgenstern (reread, annotated)