reading round-up: april - may 2023

[meikuree]

(a simple list for now due to time constraints, although I do want to review some of these sometime and add thoughts. feel free to reply if you've heard of any of these or want to chat about them!)

short stories

• Help Me Follow My Sister into the Land of the Dead by Carmen Maria Machado
• Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers by Alyssa Wong

and a bunch of stories I discovered from chocochipbiscuit's rec list -- thank you for the good fiction!

• Rabbit Test by Samantha Mills
• Unname Me at the Altar by Ashaye Brown
• Skin by Isha Karki
• The Storyteller by Rhea Roy

books/novels

• The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
• In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
• Flowers in the Attic by VC Andrews
• The Old Capital by Kawabata Yasunari
• Moshi Moshi by Banana Yoshimoto

journal articles and essays

• The Class Origins of Zionist Ideology by Stephen Halbrook (1972), published in Journal of Palestine Studies
• This Concerns Everyone by James Butler (on the UK care crisis)
• The Luddites of Hollywood by Gavin Mueller (on the WGA strikes)
• brief Brandon Taylor and C Pam Zhang interview in The Guardian
• the virtues of the boring draft from brandon taylor's substack, a craft essay where he discusses balancing disclosure and mystery and the principle of trying to bore your readers
• This article on earthquake adaptation in Tokyo, which I found interesting largely for how normal(ised) life with earthquakes is there and all the ways people adapt to the possibility of disaster
• Humbert Humbert and the Kids These Days: On Teaching Lolita in a High School Classroom by Benjamin Seigle (2017): read this months ago, actually, courtesy of firstroad; adding it anyway because it was a thought-provoking gem

immediate want to read list:

• Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu
• Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah
• Severance by Ling Ma
• Affinity by Sarah Waters

Comments

[firstroad]

Ohhh, the Machado short story + Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers + Skin *___* all so good!!! Shamelessly stealing your artcles + essays list to read later.

(But also mostly, my face at seeing Su Yunying at the music part :DDDDD)

[meikuree]

:D I was listening to Su Yunying because of your rec! and I'm digging her music so far. *_* thank you for introducing me to her!

Would love to know your thoughts on the articles/stories too, heh, if you read them :D

[tinkaton]

Oh if/when you read Severance I'd be interested to know your thoughts! I've seen it rec'd before and it's on my list but I just never got around to it.

[meikuree]

Ooh, that's lovely! :D Still in the process of reading (I'm the world's slowest reader, ack) but so far the satire of corporate work life is a highlight (and possibly very relevant, depending on who you are). What's striking so far is the narrator's voice, it's sharp -- or rather, disaffected and ironic, as a whole. I don't always gel with books written in that sort of ~disaffected Gen Z~ tone, but the post-apocalyptic premise is intriguing enough to keep me reading.

Though I've to say this book feels very uncanny to read after/in the age of Covid... that might be a YMMV aspect to keep in mind!

[tinkaton]

hmm interesting, I'll def have to keep it on my TBR list since it does sound intriguing to me too.

[sushiflop]

i LOVED help me follow my sister into the land of the dead

[meikuree]

me too! so many emotional gut punches towards the end, in classic (?) Carmen Maria Machado fashion :,)