“Who wants to read about sisters? Gay life fascinated you only because it is the life you were condemned to live . . . Canons of taste must be observed, darling . . . And the story of a boy‘s love for a boy will never capture the world‘s heart as the story of a boy‘s love for a girl. (Or a boy‘s love for his DOG)” (Holleran 14-15).
“Like the high unescapable eye / Of the eagle / Under whose beam / The shadow-swift hare can‘t hide / Pressed flat to the floor / Of a leafy wood / The loitering eye looks once / And kills” (Oswald 18). Chilling
“How do the little people fare in a war between big powers? In answer, the Swahili proverb says, ‘When two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.‘” (Vassanji, 149). The quotation captures the struggle of African and Indian people colonized by Europeans during the First World War
“The man who arouses conflict in his own people / is clanless, lawless, and homeless among all men” (Homer, Id, book 9, lines 54-55). Nestor speaks. As problematic as this statement is, it‘s cool to think about so I‘m quoting it for reference.
February reading wrap up! Goals for next month: 10 books! I can do it!
panThe payoff was not worth the 500 + pages it took to get there.
“A sort of transaction went on between them, in which she was on one side, and life was on another, and she was always trying to get the better of it” (Woolf, TTL, 50).
pickThis new introduction of Chaucer is brilliant. David Wallace is surprisingly funny, and engaging and treats Chaucer‘s material with care and relevance. I wasn‘t expecting to enjoy this as much as I did but Wallace‘s writing makes critical study of Chaucer an exciting and entertaining discipline. Wallace covers so much ground in so little space, including Chaucer‘s poetics, gender, race, religion, and modern responses to the Medieval source.
Time for the only seasonal reading I participate in! Spooky time 😃
so-soWhile I enjoyed the suspense and the playful intertextuality of this novel to the original Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I find Mary's character to be incredibly flat and self deprecating at times. What should have been a subversive shift from the original narrative which is told by an upper class male (Mr. Utterson) to a servant class maid, is limited by Mary's lack of agency and arc.
pickAlways a great read for students of psychoanalysis and gothic fiction.
pickAn important work of late 18th century literature that's both totally accessible and insightful. Widely considered one of the first earliest slave Narratives, Equiano's memoir is gruelling in its depiction of the slave trade, the middle passage, and the fight for freedom which didn't end at the official purchase from a master.
Love this podcast! Always loved thug notes and no matter how much formal education I complete I always will #bookpodcast #podcast #podcasts #thugnotes #bannedbooks
Toni Morrison dropping some truth bombs all over Huckleberry Finn. The scene between Tom, Huck, and Jim near the end of the novel was always one that I found to be disturbing and complicated the entire novel for me. I'm glad to see Morrison analyze it with sophistication and clarity. #books #tonimorrison #americanlit #criticism #literarycriticism
"Gradually we became nationless. I came to hate nations . . . The desert could not be claimed or owned - it was a piece of cloth carried by winds, never held down by stones, and given a hundred shifting names before Canterbury existed" (Ondaatje, 138-139).
pickHoly moly this was incredible. Surprisingly moving at times, funny, experimental yet still coherent. Microserfs captures the difficulties of making human connection in the age of computers while simultaneously depicting the tenderness shared between a group of coding nerds and their families. Favourite characters include Bug, Dan, and Susan, who're all at times absurd but loveable, like friends you meet in University.
pickThis series so far has been everything I need for an August read. High stakes genre fiction in the heat of the summer, with detailed art work and strong characters with the exception of Akria himself who's a wordless blob of ink on the page, but oh well.
pickAn okay reading month overall. July 2017 Wrap Up!
Akira, volume 1
Captain Canuck, vol 1
Beautiful Losers, by Leonard Cohen
Lives of Girls and Women, by Alice Munro
The Lonely Hearts Hotel, by Heather O'Neill
Dear Ghost, by Catherine Owen
Public transit reader spotted. Does anyone else feel a connection with people who read in public. It's like a secret. Unspoken intimacy. #readercam
Books that blend fantasy and realism ❤️❤️❤️❤️✔️✔️✔️✔️
pickExcellent collection of poems with vivid imagery and surreal wackiness galore.
pickBeautifully written. A coming of age story without any cliché, a totally fresh look on sexual awakening. Love Munro, her complex characters, and her ability to write the extraordinary into even small town Ontario life.
My all Canadian TBR for the month of July! Celebrating Canada's 150th birthday with literature. #canlit #Canadainliterature #margaretatwood #alicemunro #leonardcohen #douglascoupland #rohintonmistry #mgvassanji #summerbooks #summereads #tbr #julytbr
Canada Day Reads! Keep an eye out for my month of Canada tbr to celebrate the (controversial) 150th birthday of Oh Canada ❤️🇨🇦#Canada #Canadianauthors #july1st #wine #adultliterature #shortstorycollection #alicemunro #nobelprizewinners
so-soFast paced storytelling but confusing and often blurry art style that made the action scenes suffer immensely.
Pride Month Reads! June Wrap Up:
Serving In Silence, by Margarethe Cammermeyer. City of Night, By John Rechy. Faggots, by Larry Kramer. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homo-Social Desire, by Eve Sedgwick
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#queerfiction #modernclassics #queerclassics #pridemonth #pridereads #lgbtqfiction #memoir
Books to read at night. #pridemonth #pridereads #lgbtq #gay #classicnovels #classics #modernclassics
"No religion wants us. We're going to have to invent our own" (Kramer 310). Happy #pride everyone. Stay strong and love your gay, bi, trans, intersex, and queer brothers and sisters. #lgbtq #gaybooks #queerclassicliterature #classicliterature #pridemonth #tbr
so-soThis early sci-fi thriller falls into the trap of being a vehicle for espousing philosophical ideas as opposed to developing characters. The novel at one point drops the main character's perspective, and pick's up his brother's perspective for the purpose of the plot, a convention often used in Gothic novels where the cohesiveness of a novel is sacrificed for the sake of the story. Still thrilling overall but nothing masterful.
Did anyone else know that Spotify has audiobooks?
pickFirst of all, let's talk about this terrible cover . . . But seriously, #MargaretAtwood's fourth novel, Life Before Man, is strangely intriguing. Three Torontonians, Elizabeth, Nate, and Lesje's deal with the death of Elizabeth's lover, Chris. The novel explores the trappings of marriage, motherhood, and gender dynamics in romantic relationships. Overall, great read despite the cast of unlikeable characters.
so-soOverall this was a pretty exciting read. I felt that Lib made some pretty stupid decisions throughout however, the ending was a bit too neat, and the prose wasn't anything wonderful (see what I did there). However the mystery around Anna, a girl who decides to begin fasting after her eleventh birthday, kept me turning the pages.
panKing is hit or miss with me. The problems I had with this volume; cliché battle between good and evil, the rambling length of the book, the moments of reflection that did not seem profound or necessary to me at all. The ending was slightly unbelievable for me. This community had just been through a huge trail, and then they decide to split at the end? Why? Cause there are too many people?Given the context this is senseless given the context.
pick@Liberty #READATHONSTORIES
Heather Birrell's Mad Hope is a beautiful collection of stories that deals with complex issues of coming of age, abortion, life and death, pregnancy and other important topics. The motif of frogs runs throughout the work, suggesting human metamorphosis through trial to be the central theme of the collection. I include #ThomasGlave's #TheTorturer'sWife too because I love it.
pickI read Even This Page Is White not long after reading #Citizen by #ClaudiaRankine. These two books are perfect to pair with each other, as they both participate in the larger conversation of the psychological trauma of racism in Canada and the United States. Shraya's verses, like Rankine's, are accessible yet experimental in form and style. ETPIW also experiments with multi media poetry in exciting ways. Overall, one of the best reads of 2016.
A Queer TBR
When I was in high school, the stories of all of the lovers in the cannon, began to stale. If I could have emotive reactions to these stories of heterosexual loves, where were the stories of Queer love that did the same? Eventually, love became less of an importance, but queer economy, queer existing, queer writing became the narratives I craved. Here's a stack I would recommend for anyone who feels the same.
Audiobooks are helping me get through the end of this semester! Also, reliving my high school Stephen King phase.
pickFar better than the last two volumes. Also, does anyone else read graphic novels when they feel like they're falling behind on their reading goals? Cause that's where I'm at at the moment 🙃😊🙈Also the romance relationship between the two journalists is nice 👬
A flaming day in while a snow storm turns the world white outside.
panTerribly clustered with imagery and digressive plot patterns. I have no idea how I'm going to write an essay on this book.
pickA great reread! And as always, can relate to Klaus on a spiritual level.
