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What I read in 2023

2023 Either/Or- Elif Batuman Arcadia- Lauren Groff The Buddha in the Attic- Julie Otsuka Monsters- Claire Dederer Also a Poet: My father, Frank O’Hara and me- Ada Calhoun Bodywork- Melissa Febos Vanishing Fleece- Clara Parkes The Idiot- Elif Batuman Syllabus- Lynda Barry The Women’s House of Detention- Hugh Ryan Saving Time- Jenny Odell Sag Harbor- Colson Whitehead (re-read, very happily) All Night Pharmacy- Ruth Madievsky Moby Dick- Herman Melville Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow- Gabrielle Zevin Mare’s Nest- Holly Mitchell Lima :: Limón- Natalie Scenters-Zapico Heliopause- Heather Christle The Changeling- Victor LaValle The Secret History- Donna Tartt Punks: New and Selected Poems- John Keene Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers- Jake Skeets Togetherness- Wo Chan Soundmachine- Rachel Zucker Superdoom- Melissa Broder Philomath- Devon Walker-Figueroa Exiles of Eden- Ladan Osman NSFW- Isabel Kaplan Junk- Tommy Pico Draw Me After- Peter Cole O- Zeina Hashem Beck The Interestings- Meg Wolitzer Civil Service- Claire Schwartz My Education- Susan Choi Without Protection- Gala Mukomolova Mothman Apologia- Robert Wood Lynn A Nail the Evening Hangs On- Monica Sok The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On- Franny Choi Space Struck- Paige Lewis The Underground Railroad- Colson Whitehead Bliss Montage- Ling Ma Our Spoons Came from Woolworths- Barbara Comyns Garments Against Women- Anne Boyer Don’t Let Me Be Lonely- Claudia Rankine (reread) Present Tense Machine- Gunnhild Øyehaung, tr. Sophie Hughes Celestia- Manuele Fior, tr. Jamie Richards Night Bus- Zuo Ma, tr. Orion Martin Nightbitch- Rachel Yoder Boundless- Jillian Tamaki Your black friend and other strangers- Ben Passmore Library of Small Catastrophes- Alison C. Rollins Nerd: Adventures in fandom from this universe to the multiverse- Maya Phillips Desperate Characters- Paula Fox The Bird King- G. Willow Wilson Alienation- Inés Estrada The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop- Felicia Rose Chavez The Year of Blue Water- Yanyi Pale Colors in a Dark Field- Carl Phillips I Remember- Joe Brainard Manywhere- Morgan Thomas Obit- Victoria Chang Memorial- Brian Washington Girlhood- Melissa Febos Hot and Bothered: what no one tells you about menopause- Jancee Dunn

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what I read in 2022

2022 We Ride Upon Sticks- Quan Barry How to Not Be Afraid of Everything- Jane Wong Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket: Stories- Hilma Wolitzer The Rabbit Hutch- Tess Gunty The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams- Jonathan Ned Katz AND Lesbian Love- Eve Adams (in same volume) Thistlefoot- GennaRose Nethercott Bluest Nude- Ama Codjoe The Master Letters- Lucy Brock-Broido (reread) Family Lexicon- Natalia Ginzburg (tr. Jenny McPhee) The Whole Story- Ali Smith The Rupture Tense- Jenny Xie Bad Rabbi: And other strange but true stories from the Yiddish press- Eddie Portnoy A Tale for the Time Being- Ruth Ozeki Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands- Kate Beaton Wandering Stars- Sholem Aleichem (tr. Aliza Shevrin)   Moldy Strawberries- Caio Fernando Abreu (tr. Bruna Dantas Lobato) Sarahland- Sam Cohen Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced An Emergency- Chen Chen Elephant- Soren Stockman Craft in the Real World- Matthew Salesses Life of the Garment- Deborah Gorlin Olio- Tyehimba Jess In This Quiet Church of Night, I Say Amen- Devin Kelly The Wild Fox of Yemen- Threa Almontaser Song- Brigit Pegeen Kelly Qorbanot- Alisha Kaplan w/ art by Tobi Kahn Gold that Frames the Mirror- Brandon Melendez Foreign Bodies- Kimiko Hahn A Little Devil in America- Hanif Abdurraqib Muscle Memory- Kyle Carrero Lopez not without small joys- Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah Too Bright To See & Alma- Linda Gregg Borne- Jeff VanderMeer Harvard Square- André Aciman What We Talk About When We Talk About Fat- Aubrey Gordon The City We Became- N.K. Jemison Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints- Joan Acocella Vladimir-Julia May Jonas Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch- Rivka Galchen Lessons in Being Tender-Headed- Janae Johnson Against Heaven- Kemi Alabi How The Word Is Passed- Clint Smith Earth Room- Rachel Mannheimer True Biz- Sara Nović Motherhood- Sheila Heti The Fire Next Time- James Baldwin Diary of a lonely girl or the battle against free love- Miriam Karpilove tr. Jessica Kirzane Mezzanine- Matthew Olzmann Customs- Solmaz Sharif Edge of House- Dzvinia Orlowsky Only as the Day is Long: New and Selected Poems- Dorianne Laux DMZ Colony- Don Mee Choi Stay Safe- Emma Hine Spring Tides- Jacques Poulin, trn. Shira Fleishman (reread) No One Is Talking About This- Patricia Lockwood Unaccompanied- Javier Zamora Where I Was From- Joan Didion Air Raid- Polina Barskova tr. Valtzina Mort Dispatch- Cam Awkward-Rich Bury It- sam sax A Cruelty Special to Our Species- Emily Jungmin Yoon Homie- Danez Smith Dreaming of You- Melissa Lozada-Oliva

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what I read in 2021

Milk Fed- Melissa Broder The Renunciations- Donika Kelly Detransition, Baby- Torrey Peters Pilgrim Bell- Kaveh Akbar Good Talk- Mira Jacob Ghost Of- Diana Khoi Nguyen Frank: Sonnets- Diane Seuss The King of Crows (Diviners book 4)- Libba Bray Soft Science- Franny Choi Odes- Sharon Olds The Past- Wendy Xu Al Capone Does My Shirts- Gennifer Choldenko Lean Against This Late Hour- Garous Abdolmalekian Frindle- Andrew Clements How to Kill Yourself and Others in America- Kiese Laymon Before the Devil Breaks you (Diviners book 3)- Libba Bray Swing Time- Zadie Smith Six of Crows- Leigh Bardugo Lair of Dreams (Diviners book 2)- Libba Bray Hex- Rebecca Dinerstein Knight Maggie Brown & Others- Peter Orner The Diviners (book 1)- Libba Bray The Lumberjack’s Dove- GennaRose Nethercott Him, Me, Muhammad Ali- Randa Jarrar Wound from the Mouth of a Wound- torrin a. greathouse Luster- Raven Leilani How Should a Person Be- Sheila Heti (reread) The River At Wolf- Jean Valentine (reread) Swallow- Sam Rush Flash Count Diary: Menopause and the Vindication of Natural Life- Darcey Steinke The Party Upstairs- Lee Conell A Bintel Brief: Sixty Years of Letters from the LES to the Jewish Daily Forward- ed. Isaac Metzker Cleanness- Garth Greenwell Regarding the Pain of Others- Susan Sontag (reread) Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning- Cathy Park Hong Stay, Illusion- Lucie Brock-Broido Measure of Holy- Nadra Mabrouk Weather- Jenny Offil What Nothing- Anna Meister Girl in a Band- Kim Gordon Nobody’s Looking at you: Essays- Janet Malcolm Trust Exercise- Susan Choi

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yeah sure say fuck you to jk rowling but dont forget to like. actually support trans women.

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UNMUTE THIS 💀💀

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i love abortion and i love divorce

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maybe my current favorite movie? first time in a while that I’ve watched something and immediately wanted to run it again.

A Room with a View (1985) dir. James Ivory

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obsessed w Helena Bonham Carter’s hair in this movie-- this outfit is also particularly good and gives major Kate Bush vibes

A ROOM WITH A VIEW (1985) — dir. James Ivory

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what I read in 2020

(but also caveat that I post these to help myself keep track & it’s very ok if you didn’t read anything this year)

On Earth, we’re briefly gorgeous- Ocean Vuong Mostly Dead Things- Kristen Arnett The Yellow House- Sarah M. Broom The Book of Delights- Ross Gay I Shimmer Sometimes, Too- Porsha Olayiwola Guillotine- Eduardo C. Corral White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia- Kiki Petrosino Field Music- Alexandria Hall Negroland: A Memoir- Margo Jefferson Some Are Always Hungry- Jihyun Yun Hard Child- Natalie Shapero In the Dream House- Carmen Maria Machado The Dutch House- Ann Patchett Parable of the Sower- Octavia Butler Musicophilia- Oliver Sacks The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian- Sherman Alexie Blood of the Air- Ama Codjoe Reconstructions- Bradley Trumpfheller Birthright- George Abraham Ugly/Sad- Cassandra de Abla The Visible Planets- Aly Pierce Paper Girls vol 1- Brian K. Vaughn/Cliff Chiang Here- Richard McGuire Red Cavalry- Isaac Babel (tran. Boris Dralyuk) Silences- Tillie Olsen (just the title essay) Exhalation- Ted Chiang Little Fires Everywhere- Celeste Ng Ninth Street Women- Mary Gabriel Odessa Stories- Isaac Babel (tran. Boris Dralyuk) Museum of Accidents- Rachel Zucker Landscape with Sex and Violence- Lynn Melnick Ugly/Sad- Cassandra de Alba Fierce Attachments- Vivian Gornick The Ministry of Utmost Happiness- Arundhati Roy The Pedestrians- Rachel Zucker Trick Mirror- Jia Tolentino Hard Damage- Aria Aber feeld- Jos Charles The Turner House- Angela Flournoy Mr. Burns: A Post Electric Play- Anne Washburn To The Lighthouse- Virginia Woolf

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so apparently, monocles became a popular fashion accessory amongst lesbians in the early 20th century. there was even a lesbian bar in Paris in the 1920s named Le Monocle.

#bringbacklesbianmonocles2k16

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Tonight’s feature for the Boston Poetry Slam: Extremely Online Edition is offline co-curator Cassandra de Alba! This poem is from her chapbook Ugly/Sad.

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What now? when a war is unspoken? when a home holds no promise of more?           What to make? of the mornings and evenings a lifetime of mornings and evenings the same as before

Maya Phillips, “XVIII,” from Erou (via bostonpoetryslam)

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Link / Link

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Snails Paint the Town in Miniature Scenes Crafted by Aleia Murawski and Sam Copeland

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The average person is made up of so many black holes. The pupils, the esophagus, the closed fist.

Aly Pierce, “My History with Stars,” from The Visible Planets (via bostonpoetryslam)