#bluets 45

[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.

[chic-a-gigot]

Le Petit écho de la mode, no. 45, vol. 36, 8 novembre 1914, Paris. Tabouret de pieds "les Bluets." Ville de Paris / Bibliothèque Forney

Tabouret de pieds "les Bluets." Canevas seul, non dessiné, 60X60: 1 fr. 45. Laine pour le dessin: 1 fr. 45; laine pour le fond: 2 fr. 25. La guirlande brodée sur le canevas: 2 fr. 25.

Légende des nuances: Fleurs pétales vert lys foncé. — moins foncé. — moyen. — clair. — plus clair. Fleurs pétales bleu Sèvres. — moins foncé. — moyen. — clair. Fleurs cœur épi foncé. — moyen. — clair. Fleurs cœur althéa foncé. — moyen. Feuilles mortes foncé. — moyen. — clair. Fond laine bleu marine foncé. Vert pré foncé. — moyen. — clair. Bois foncé. — clair.

Perlé Brillanté. C-B “A LA CROIX” Cartier-Bresson

[whateveryouweremissing]

2024 in Books

1) 1/3 - James Baldwin: A Biography     

2) 1/4- Going to Meet the Man 

3) 1/7- Fields of Fire 

4) 1/8- A Goat's Song 

5) 1/8- A Gate at the Stairs 

6) 1/10- Norm MacDonald: Based on a True Story   

7) 1/14- Cash 

8) 1/16- Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich 1945-1955 

9) 1/19- Pond 

10) 1/25- Midnight in Chernobyl  

11) 1/26- And The Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks

12) 1/29- The Unwomanly Face of War 

13) 1/31- I'm Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen 

14) 2/1- A Frozen Woman 

15) 2/3- Fighting With Demons  

16) 2/4- Dirtbag, Massachusetts  

17) 2/9- The Face of War 

18) 2/10- Exile's Return  

19) 2/12- Simone Weil: An Anthology   

20) 2/16- Exile and The Kingdom 

21) 2/16- Autobiography of Red 

22) 2/17- Averno     

23) 2/25- Journal of a Solitude 

24) 2/26- Fatherland 

25) 3/3- Some Desperate Glory 

26) 3/4- The Pilgrim Hawk  

27) 3/5- On Freedom 

28) 3/12- Agua Viva  

29) 3/21- Plainwater: Essays and Poetry 

30) 3/22- The End of Me  

31) 3/28- The Hour of the Star 

32) 4/1- The Coldest Winter 

33) 4/2- A Girl's Story 

34) 4/4- The Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke 1892-1910 

35) 4/8- Speedboat 

36) 4/8- Men in the Off Hours 

37) 4/11- Monkey Grip 

38) 4/14- Bluets 

39) 4/14- Cat’s Cradle 

40) 4/15- Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan  

41) 4/21- Yellow Notebook 

42) 4/22- Black Ops: The Life of a CIA Shadow Warrior 

43) 4/23- Giovanni's Room 

44) 5/2 - I Must Say   

45) 5/5- Another Country 

46) 5/6- Eros the Bittersweet 

47) 5/7- The Flame 

48) 5/7- The Red Parts  

49) 5/11- Decreation 

50) 5/14- Winter Hours 

51) 5/14- The Happiest Man Alive 

52) 5/15- Close Quarters 

53) 5/16- Faces in the Crowd   

54) 5/23- Say Nothing 

55) 5/28- Pond 

56) 6/2- Double Cross 

57) 6/4- Journal of Katherine Mansfield  

58) 6/6- Where Are Your Boys Tonight? 

59) 6/10- Preoccupations: Selected Prose, 1968-1978    

60) 6/16- Love in the Void   

61) 6/18- Bright Dead Things

62) 6/20- Washington: A Life 

63) 6/22- The Beauty of the Husband 

64) 6/23- Flyboys 

65) 7/2- Dangling in the Tournefortia

66) 7/3- The British Are Coming: The War for America 

67) 7/6- Sleepless Nights 

68) 7/11- Lessons from Stoicism 

69) 7/14- Transit  

70) 7/17- Flags of Our Fathers 

71) 7/17- Ernest Hemingway: A Biograophy  

72) 7/18- Seduction and Betrayal 

73) 7/19- Howl  

74) 7/21- The First Wave 

75) 7/21- Let Me Tell You What I Mean  

76) 7/26- Where Men Win Glory 

77) 7/30- Red Doc> 

78) 8/4- Glass, Irony and God 

79) 8/4 - Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know 

80) 8/5- The Book of Disquiet 

81) 8/6- Crush 

82) 8/8- Against All Odds  

83) 8/12- Fierce Ambition 

84) 8/13- The First Four Books of Poems 

85) 8/13- One Day I'll Remember This  

86) 8/16- Valiant Women 

87) 8/18- The Greatest Generation Speaks

88) 8/18- Something Bright, Then Holes 

89) 8/18- A Disaffection 

90) 8/19- Travels With Myself and Another   

91) 8/25- Sellout  

92) 8/27- Wandering 

93) 8/28- Well-Kept Ruins 

94) 9/1- The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway 

95) 9/2- Lust and Other Stories 

96) 9/5- Death Of A Naturalist 

97)9/6- The Monuments Men  

98) 9/12- Pitch Dark 

99) 9/12- An Army At Dawn 

100) 9/16- The Things Our Fathers Saw 

101) 9/17- War Is A Racket 

102) 9/17- Memorable Days 

103) 9/29- The Day of Battle 

104) 10/4- Meet Me in the Bathroom 

105) 10/4- Lost Children Archive 

106) 10/5- Vita Nova 

107) 10/5- An Unquiet Mind 

108) 10/8- Burning The Days  

109) 10/11- Robert Lowell: Setting the River on Fire

110) 10/15- Nothing Ever Just Disappears  

111) 10/20- Meditations 

112) 10/15- Nobody Knows My Name 

113) 10/27- Illness as Metaphor 

114) 10/28- When Books Went to War

115) 10/31- Attempting Normal  

116) 11/5- Stigmata 

117) 11/9- Washington's Immortals 

118) 11/10- Wherever You Go, There You Are 

119) 11/18- Humanly Possible 

120) 11/20- Felicity 

121) 11/22- Savage Continent 

122) 11/23- Tell Me How It Ends  

123) 12/3- John Adams 

124) 12/7- The Freaks Came Out to Write 

125) 12/8- Wild Houses 

126) 12/9- A Ghost in the Throat 

127) 12/12- Hitler’s Furies 

128) 12/20- Dream Work 

129) 12/20- Poems 1962-2020 

130) 12/22- Reborn: Journals and Notebooks 

131) 12/24- Churchill: Walking With Destiny. : Walking with Destiny 

132) 12/28- The Lost Weekend

133) 12/28- The Deserters   

134) 12/30- Code Name: Lise 

135) 12/31- Lifeform 

[in-the-blue-notebook]

"In his unfinished novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen,

Novalis tells the story of a medieval troubadour who sees

a little blue flower-perhaps a bluet-in a dream. Afterward

he longs to see the blue flower in "real life." "I can't

get rid of the idea," he says. "It haunts me." (Mallarme,

too: '"Je suis hante. IJAzur! l'Azur! l'Azur! l'Azur!")" (pg. 45, pt. 115)

I loved this little passage, which goes on to say that Heinrich then devotes his life to seeking this flower and describes "the romance of seeking." To seek so singularly requires one to see the world through the lens of this thing which is sought, so when I found a deep blue bottle I figured it might be used as a device to see what was in front of me through this colored lens.

-Sierra H

[sageandscorpiongrass]

Love, On Its Way Out.

Two Week Notice, Leanna Firestone | Tonight I Can Write The Saddest Lines, Pablo Neruda | Conversations Over Sanguinaccio Dolce, I.B. Vyache | Seaside Improvisation, Richard Siken | Stick Season, Noah Kahan | I never went to that movie at 12:45, Dolly Lemk | In a Dream You Saw a Way To Survive, Clementine von Radics | Quote by Kate McGahan | Pillow Thoughts, Courtney Peppernell | Bluets, Maggie Nelson

(This isn't prompted by my real life so much as it is my love for that first song and also. blorbos.)

[meggie-stardust]

I posted 1,335 times in 2022

181 posts created (14%)

1,154 posts reblogged (86%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@myletternevercame

@fantasmalresplendent

@teenwerewoofs

@feuer-bluete

@punchedbymarkesmith

I tagged 1,315 of my posts in 2022

Only 1% of my posts had no tags

#meg writes fic - 121 posts

#meg answers things - 80 posts

#meg watches teen wolf - 65 posts

#dracula daily - 31 posts

#steter - 31 posts

#count memeula - 28 posts

#says the girl with the elvish tattoo - 27 posts

#steter mini bang 2022 - 27 posts

#also doubles as an intro post - 26 posts

#fandom - 24 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#but familiar. you leave a valuable impression on those you meet. your humor is witty and smart and probably gets people to laugh so hard th

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

@steterweek Day 6: Epistolary elements. It took me like 5 mins to craft the "story" and then like an hour to make these dumb images, and I still got the date/time stamps messed up. OH WELL. Also, I of course, had to use these images that dropped this week. OBVIOUSLY.

Stiles goes on vacation without Peter

See the full post

45 notes - Posted July 29, 2022

#4

Friends, I'd like to present my @steter-bang 2022 fic and the stunning art by my partner @bettertasting. This is her first contribution to the TW/Steter fandom, and I am so damn lucky that she was my partner for this. Y'all have to tell her how amazing the art is so she keeps giving us Steter content. 💜

This fic wouldn't have gotten anywhere without the cheerleading from my co-mods @teenwerewoofs and @midmorning-bomb, and the words of wisdom and encouragement from @punchedbymarkesmith.

--

At This Truth We Have Arrived

After years of exacting revenge on the Argents for the murder of Laura, Peter returns to Beacon Hills only to be confronted by the truth that the pack has moved on without him. But the fact that everything he once knew has changed isn't necessarily a bad thing; not when there is someone like Stiles who is so full of possibilities.

OR as my WIP notes for this fic say: "Peter is curious. They do something. Murder murder. Sex sex."

“Okay, so the thing is, and I’m not criticizing you here,” Stiles says as they turn off the main road and onto a ranger access road, “but the thing is that when you got rid of all the Argents, some folks may have taken that as an invitation to, you know, take their place.” Peter slams on the breaks and turns to Stiles as the car skids to a halt on the dirt road. “Have you been dealing with other hunting families?” “Ugh, no,” Stiles says, rubbing at the spot where the seat belt tightened over his chest. “Not families. More like the odd vigilante.” “That’s still not great, but––” “Until now,” Stiles interrupts. “This one, Monroe, I think she might be a bigger problem if we don’t…” “Take care of her?” “Take care of. Murder. Po-tay-to. Po-tah-to,” Stiles says easily. “The point is she’s recruiting.”

Read At This Truth We Have Arrived and see the amazing art on AO3.

52 notes - Posted September 1, 2022

#3

"How dare you touch him, any of you? How dare you cast eyes on him when I had forbidden it? Back, I tell you all! This man belongs to me! Beware how you meddle with him, or you'll have to deal with me."

200 notes - Posted May 16, 2022

#2

Lucy writing to Mina like

2,889 notes - Posted May 11, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

I know a ton of people have said this before but for the love everything PLEASE stop treating AO3 like instagram. It is NOT cringe to comment on an old story. It’s an archive old stories are still meant to be found and read. Please think about interacting with the fic you read: at least kudos if you read it, a comment would be ideal. The authors will be over the moon. I guarantee you not a single author is going to ask why someone is commenting on an older fic.

23,026 notes - Posted October 23, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[the2headedcalf-moved]

my 2021 to read list❣ thank you @seaoflove for tagging me and for your wonderful idea! i chose 52 books as well, let's see if i can stick to this goal! a lot of them are rereads i hope that's okay 😳

i tag @rothko @sheherazade @firstfullmoon @duefoglie @sealeaves @skogenflicka and anynody else who wants to obviously!

1. The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang

2. Crush by Richard Siken

3. The Dragon Republic by R. F. Kuang

4. War of the Foxes by Richard Siken

5. The Burning God by R. F. Kuang

6. Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

7. Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams

8. The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin

9. Ways of Seeing by John Berger

10. The Obelisk Gate by N. K. Jemisin

11. Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente

12. The Stone Sky by N. K. Jemisin

13. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

14. The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

15. The Crying Book by Helen Christle

16. The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater

17. Howl's Moving Castle by Dianna Wynne Jones

18. Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater

19. Bluets by Maggie Nelson

20. The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater

21. The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison

22. Call Down the Hawk by Maggie Stiefvater

23. Sabriel by Garth Nix

24. Lirael by Garth Nix

25. Abhorsen by Garth Nix

26. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

27. The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner

28. The Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner

29. The Book of Delights by Ross Gay

30. The King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner

31. A Conspiracy of Kings by Megan Whalen Turner

32. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

33. Thick as Thieves by Megan Whalen Turner

34. Return of the Thief by Megan Whalen Turner

35. Circe by Madeline Miller

36. The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

37. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms N.K. Jemisin

38. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal by Jeanette Winterson

39. The Broken Kingdoms N.K. Jemisin

40. The Keep by Jennifer Egan

41. The Kingdom of Gods N.K. Jemisin

42. Blue Horses by Mary Oliver

43. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

44. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

45. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

46. The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman

47. The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman

48. If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin

49. Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

50. The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

51. The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden

52. The Winter of the Witch by Katherine Arden

[brighterthansunshine]

Day 45/100

Tuesday | October 5, 2021 | 23:44 IST

It was a sleepy, sleey day. It rained throughout the day and it was all cold and cozy. I worked on some functional bugs today. These were known bugs that we took up after delivering the modules. They don't break the website but they shouldn't be happening either. These kinds of bugs stress me out. Especially in my current team because I'm the only person working on the UI development since the beginning of the project. The new dev we took on this month is still getting used to the application so it wouldn't be fair to dump this on him.

I skipped my yoga class today. I twisted my foot while walking to the grocery story on Sunday and I wasn't willing to test if exercise was gonna make it hurt more. But I also wasn't in the mood to workout so I probably wouldn't have joined the class even if my foot was fine. I've been in a funk since Sunday. I went out with my friends for lunch and ate out again for dinner with my cousin and his family. I think all that restaurant food has upset my system. 18 months of eating fresh home cooked food has spoiled me and I can't eat junk anymore.

Anyway, I'm still reading Bluets because I'm a slowpoke. I'm gonna start using my TBR jar after this book.

[florizels]

45. This pains me enormously. She presses me to say why; I can't answer. Instead I say something about how clinical psychology forces everything we call love into the pathological or the delusional or the biologically explicable, that if I what I was feeling wasn't love then I am forced to admit that I don't know what love is, or, more simply, that I loved a bad man. How all of these formulations drain the blue right out of love and leave an ugly, pigmentless fish flapping on a cutting board on a kitchen counter.

Maggie Nelson, from Bluets

[susanvale]

My April 2020 In Pictures - Kind of Blue. (Click on a picture for a close-up & see descriptions 1-10 below.)

1. Wednesday 1st April 2020 at 10:50.  Viola tricolor, heart’s ease, at home, Hythe, Hampshire .

2. Monday 6th April 2020 at 16:26.  Bluebells (Hyacinthoides), St John’s Churchyard, Hythe, Hampshire.

3. Saturday 11th April 2020 at 09:47.  Flowering mallow (Abutilon vitifolium), Pylewell Road, Hythe, Hampshire.

4. Tuesday 14th April 2020 at 08:59.  Common Lilac (Syringa vulgaris), South Street, Hythe, Hampshire.

5. Thursday 16th April 2020 at 09:14.  Germander speedwell (Veronica chamaedrys), bird’s eye speedwell, Shore Road, Hythe, Hampshire.

6. Sunday 19th April 2020 at 09:04.  Honesty (Lunaria annua), annual honesty, moneywort, Frost Lane, Hythe, Hampshire.

7. Friday 24th April 2020 at 09:25.  Bearded iris, South Street, Hythe, Hampshire.

8. Sunday 26th April 2020 at 09:17.  Lacy phacelia (Phacelia tanacetifolia), fiddleneck, purple tansy, lacy fiddleneck, fern leaf fiddleneck, scorpion weed, St John’s Churchyard, Hythe, Hampshire.

9. Sunday 26th April 2020 at 09:45.  Perennial cornflower (Centaurea montana), mountain cornflower, montane knapweed, mountain centaury, great blue-bottle, mountain bluet, School Road, Hythe, Hampshire.

10. Sunday 26th April 2020 at 09:46.  Wisteria, Pylewell Road, Hythe, Hampshire.

To read about My April 2020 In Pictures - Kind of Blue, click on the link:-http://susanvale.blogspot.com/2020/05/my-april-2020-in-pictures-kind-of-blue.html

To read about Viola tricolor, heart’s ease, click on the link below:-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viola_tricolor

To read about Bluebells (Hyacinthoides), click on the link below:-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyacinthoides

To read about Common Lilac (Syringa vulgaris), click on the link:-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syringa_vulgaris

To read about Germander speedwell (Veronica chamaedrys), bird’s eye speedwell, click on the link:- https://www.plantlife.org.uk/uk/discover-wild-plants-nature/plant-fungi-species/germander-speedwell

To read about Honesty (Lunaria annua), click on the link below:- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunaria_annua

To read about Lacy phacelia (Phacelia tanacetifolia), click on the link:-https://www.rhs.org.uk/plants/23945/phacelia-tanacetifolia/details

To read about Perennial cornflower (Centaurea montana), click on the link:-https://www.rhs.org.uk/Plants/3364/Centaurea-montana/Details

To read about Wisteria, click on the link below:-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisteria

To read about Hythe, Hampshire, click on the link below:-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hythe,_Hampshire

[printedwords]

45. This pains me enormously. She presses me to say why; I can’t answer. Instead I say something about how clinical psychology forces everything we call love into the pathological or the delusional or the biologically explicable, that if what I was feeling wasn’t love then I am forced to admit that I don’t know what love is, or, more simply, that I loved a bad man. How all of these formulations drain the blue right out of love and leave an ugly, pigmentless fish flapping on a cutting board on a kitchen counter.

— Maggie Nelson, Bluets (2009)

[bookcub]

50 Bookish Questions: multiples of 5, please!

5. What book or book series would you like to see turned into a film/ TV series?

MAKE BEAUTY QUEENS A MOVIE, YOU COWARDS!!!!!

10. What is a book that you own more than one copy of?

A list of books I have 2 copies of

15. What book made you cry?

The first book that I remember crying at was The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo. The part with Sarah Ruth still gets me today. But other notable ones are Beautiful Chaos and Beautiful Redemption, which emotionally ruined me. The Storyteller by Antonia Michaelis made me bawl for like 20 minutes. Tash Hearts Tolstoy made me happy cry. And KKC makes me cry at some points as well. 

20. Have you ever been glad to not finish a series? Which?

Shatter Me. I know what happens, but I reject it. And it’s a shame too!! I loved how she played with writing style. 

25. How many books do you own?

I’m gonna have to check 

*15 min later* 

278, not counting ebooks. 

478 counting ebooks. 

30. What book are you planning on buying next?

*shrugs* I don’t really plan on buying any book in the near future. 

35. What three books are you most looking forward to reading this year?

Muse of Nightmares by Laini Taylor, The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy by Mackenzi Lee, and Archenemies by Marissa Meyer

40. What is the weirdest book you have read?

Um, The Dust of 100 Dogs by A. S. King. It wasn’t bad, it was kind of good, but mostly weird. Just . . .weird . . . It’s worth checking out. I own it and haven’t gotten rid of it yet. 

45. Do you own a poetry anthology? What is your favourite poem from it?

I do, I own two queer anthologies. I liked them well enough, but not enough to remember a favorite poem. But Bluets by Maggie Nelson is wonderful. 

50. What book got you into reading?

Already answered!!  (the only question that got asked twice, even though i had five on these in my ask box after work) (impressive!!!)

50 Bookish Questions

[milkgirlblog]

Maggie Nelson - Bluets

45. This pains me enormously. She presses me to say why; I can’t answer. Instead I say something about how clinical psychology forces everything we call love into the pathological or the delusional or the biologically explicable, that if what I was feeling wasn’t love then I am forced to admit that I don’t know what love is, or, more simply, that I loved a bad man. How all of these formulations drain the blue right out of love and leave an ugly, pigmentless fish flapping on a cutting board on a kitchen counter.

[thatbrontide]

1. selfie: Look up a picture of an obvious meth addict. Stare at it with deep love. 2. what would you name your future kids? Euclid, Anya 3. do you miss anyone? I truly miss myself 4. what are you looking forward to? Learning to cook 5. is there anyone who can always make you smile? Tig Notaro I guess. 6. is it hard for you to get over anyone? I have been painfully missing my ex (the nice one) lately. Knife-to-gut type shit. It's ridiculous. 7. what was your life like last year? Worst yr of my life by far. An abusive relationship and a psych med prescription I was coerced into left me suicidal, blank, and eventually cussing at doctors in a psych ward. I lost the best job I've ever had as well as my writing skills and confidence. I lost my social due to the abusive relationship. Currently trying to recover. 8. have you ever cried because you were so annoyed? probably as a kid. I've cried from frustration before. 9. who did you last see in person? Andrew and Miles. A cousin and a dude I want to be better friends with. 10. are you good at hiding your feelings? People have asked me why I’m so depressed when I felt fantastic. I had to train myself to smile when I feel happy because I realized you were supposed to do that. So. Yes. 11. are you listening to music right now? No but I just left a house show. 12. what is something you want right now? Sleep 13. how do you feel right now? Hungry, empty, nervous, serious 14. when was the last time someone of the opposite sex hugged you? there are at least seven sexes. And tonight. 15. personality description. This type of self-awareness seems impossible. Ppl have told me I’m odd and hard to pin down. 16. have you ever wanted to tell someone something but you didn’t? A lot, yeah 17. opinion on insecurities. most have them, don’t judge people because insecurities are there for complex reasons and people are trying their best. Support people, compliment them. I can't believe how many ppl just assume a person isn't shit just because the person is struggling with confidence. Be compassionate, asshole. 18. do you miss how things were a year ago? A year ago was literal hell. I was having full-on panic attacks several times a day, dealing with a partner who called me a piece of shit and constantly gaslighted me and crossed my physical boundaries, and suddenly feeling like a completely/permanently different and much less intelligent/capable person. So. No. 19. have you ever been to New York? about 40 times. My maternal side of the family is there. Grew up on LI beaches and going to Broadway shows and museums in NYC. As a kid I thought that was where I was meant to have grown up, like something fucked up happened and it messed up my life's beggining. 20. what is your favourite song at the moment? something by Russ 21. age and birthday? aquarius leo leo 22. description of crush. Thomas Middleditch is such a dreamboat to me but I know it's an unhealthy projection thing. The only real person I have any tiny crush on is this gymnast in my philosophy class. He's very cute. 23. fear(s). Not getting my self back, not being in a loving, paramount relationship again. 24. height. Not tall enough 25. role model. UCB celebrities 26. idol(s). Laura Kightlinger 27. things i hate. doctors, the education system, when ppl are not inclusive, long nails, when ppl blast headphones and watch videos in public w/o headphones. Fuuuuck you 28. i’ll love you if… you're bizarrely funny, have a certain demeanor, seem to understand struggle 29. favourite film(s). natural born killers, the original hairspray. Junebug was nice, Get Out was brilliant 30. favourite tv show(s). Broad City, Silicon Valley, Insecure, Key and Peele 31. 5 random facts about you. I was raised Jewish, babies are generally not cute, growing up ppl asked if I was anorexic when I wasn't, I once spent an afternoon in a Tel Aviv emergency room, hitchhiking was the most liberating experience. 32. are your friends mainly girls or guys? both/other 33. something you want to learn. How to fight physically, how to stop coming across as someone who deserves to be fucked with 34. most embarrassing moment. One time I went to an independently owned hardware store to speak to the manager about a job and buy a wooden rod. The guy was such a fucking asshole and misogynist that when our conversation concluded, I walked out of the store accidentally ‘stealing’ the rod. The fucker ran after me. It was embarrassing mostly because he made me so goddamn uncomfortable about simply asking for a job. I hate that fucking guy. 35. favourite subject. Philosophy, language 36. 3 dreams you want to fulfill? Be interviewed on a talk show, write a memoir, travel everywhere 37. favourite actor/actress. No clue 38. favourite comedian(s) Morgan Murphy, Louis CK, Jon Mulaney, and Maria Bamford. Sommore kills me sometimes. 39. favourite sport(s) um. Slolom. Idk. 40. favourite memory. Laughing rly hard as a kid all the time 41. relationship status. As single as possible 42. favourite book(s). Bluets by Maggie Nelson 43. favourite song ever. Maybe something by the blood brothers 44. age you get mistaken for 25? Idk 45. how you found out about your idol. Watching a library DVD of 90s comedians. Mary Jo Peele was so good. 46. what my last text message says. I'd be happy to meet w u tho 47. turn ons. Genuine kindness, good humor, good shoes 48. turn offs. Arrogance, bad breath, hipsterness 49. where i want to be right now. Asleep on a cloud 50. favourite picture of your idol. I've barely ever seen her 51. starsign 52. something i’m talented at. I have a good eye for style. I could have been great at art. 53. 5 things that make me happy. Color, dogs, remembering, a good melody, a good dance 54. something that’s worrying me at the moment. Just life. I'm worried about myself for real 55. tumblr friends. i don’t rly have online relationships 56. favourite food(s) guacamole 57. favourite animal(s) dogs, opossums. 58. description of my best friend. We had an overdue falling out. She is mean. 59. why i joined tumblr. to document inspiration

[tripile]

Biking the Blueberry Trail by Lac Saint Jean

August is a great time to be in Quebec, especially if you love blueberries. If you also like biking, take a spin around the Blueberry Trail located in the Parc National de la Pointe-Taillon. Known locally as the Veloroute des Bluets, the whole blueberry trail is a 256-kilometer patchwork of trails and roads through multiple provinces. The best part for a one-day excursion though is a 45-kilometer loop on a peninsula jutting out into Lac St. Jean in Quebec. With this route you can rent a bike locally at the visitors center for C$28 for four hours. Then you can

The post Biking the Blueberry Trail by Lac Saint Jean appeared first on Perceptive Travel Blog.

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  Biking the Blueberry Trail by Lac Saint Jean published first on https://oceandreamblog.tumblr.com/

[sentrava]

Biking the Blueberry Trail by Lac Saint Jean

August is a great time to be in Quebec, especially if you love blueberries. If you also like biking, take a spin around the Blueberry Trail located in the Parc National de la Pointe-Taillon. Known locally as the Veloroute des Bluets, the whole blueberry trail is a 256-kilometer patchwork of trails and roads through multiple provinces. The best part for a one-day excursion though is a 45-kilometer loop on a peninsula jutting out into Lac St. Jean in Quebec. With this route you can rent a bike locally at the visitors center for C$28 for four hours. Then you can

The post Biking the Blueberry Trail by Lac Saint Jean appeared first on Perceptive Travel Blog.

       Related Stories

Finding Acadia

5 Amazing Places to Visit in the Eastern Czech Republic

In Uvalde, Find a Texas Hill Country Jukebox Dance, Good Food, and Fine Art

  Biking the Blueberry Trail by Lac Saint Jean published first on https://medium.com/@OCEANDREAMCHARTERS