if i read a repeat i count it twice yknow. also i dont use goodreads much other than to track books i want to read >w>

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29.07.22

• amateur city: a kate delafield mystery by katherine v. forrest (e)
  • weeeee I'm so excited to read this because it's a lesbian fiction book from the 80s

14.07.22

• started: the elements of eloquence by mark forsyth (e)

13.07.22

• started: anxietal register (b) by john sladek (pdf)
• finished: anxietal register (b) by john sladek (pdf)
• finished: time differences by yoko tawada, t. jeffrey angles (p)
  • ughhh this was actually really entertaining. i definitely felt their... is it spoilers to talk about too much? it's only a chapbook... their emotions come the end. :weary: mamoru's distractedness when it came to his students because he was thinking about his ex & boyfriend was funny. another thing i very much liked was the lesbian woman who had adopted a baby talking with manfred about her girlfriend. that was quite wholesome. :3 but yeah overall i really liked the book. the theme was consistent and well executed. on top of that, angles' translation was very fun to read.

10.07.22

• dropped: young mungo by douglas stuart, read by chris reilly (bb)
  • decided as much as i love reading yet another homosexual romeo and juliet story (i don't), once you've read one you've read them all ¯\_(u ⊱ u)_/¯ i probably won't pick this back up. not to write it off but if you change the daily life culture, daily activities, and how a kid discovers his or her friends/family/peers are homophobic: you've got your formula. next is the doa love interest that's implied to be the once-in-a-lifetime-relationship, then the 15 minutes of happiness, then the homophobic backlash, then the calm after the storm. it's, like... low key... one of those stories for people not involved within the lived experience. like those books about abused kids for people who like to be upset about it. i liked the prose and relatability of the daily life though.
• started: the jasmine throne by tasha suri, read by shiromi arserio (bb)
  • prologue
  • chapter 1: priya
    • okay I've just realised this book has actual maps....... I'm gonna switch between the ebook too.

07.07.22

• reading: time differences by yoko tawada, t. jeffrey angles (p) (cont.) (tbc: p27)
  • losing my mind at this because it's actually entertaining LMFAO. three men. a japanese man living in berlin, a german man living in new york, and an american living in tokyo. they're all connected through meeting at least once. the entertaining part is that it's like reading a scene from one of the men's perspectives and then three pages later you find out the unreliable narration of the scene and how it actually happened from the other man who was present. it makes you scoff and go "HELLO?"
• reading: young mungo by douglas stuart, read by chris reilly (bb)
  • the january before: chapter two (cont.)
    • that was rather wild. so much happened. bricks. protestants. police. it's like the "live laugh love" of young mungo.

05.07.22

• reading: young mungo by douglas stuart, read by chris reilly (bb)
  • the january before: chapter two (tbc 1:12:54)
    • "It had been Mo-Maw’s turn to mop out the close, which meant it became Jodie’s responsibility. For the past two weeks Mungo had watched his sister skitter inside the close mouth and sneak up the stairs before any of the neighbours could open their door and shame her for the stour. It was unfair, Mungo thought: Jodie was run ragged, and all because she had a fanny." co-signed....
    • "Mr Gillespie had said it was bad enough that the Conservatives had killed the city, but that it had been spearheaded by an English woman was an unspeakable insult. What had made her want to neuter the Glaswegian man? A thousand words due a week on Monday. // "When Mungo asked Jodie what neuter meant, she had said Mr Gillespie drank too much." LMFAO this whole scene.

04.07.22

• started: young mungo by douglas stuart, read by chris reilly (bb)
  • the may after: chapter one
    • i like the way the "prologue" is in the future after it's all over (i'm assuming :eyes:)
• started: time differences by yoko tawada, t. jeffrey angles (p) (tbc: p13)
  • no way lol this translator is the same guy who wrote writing the love of boys: the origins of bishonen culture in modernist jp lit, i've heard of that title before but icr where. i low key want to read that next lmfaooo. i almost mixed him up w/ mark mclelland for a minute lmfao (who has written/edited books on ~queer japan~ etc etc.) why did academia have to adopt that word tho lmfaooo. sedgwick and de lauretis shoulda never said that shit now ive got 26 pdfs in my ereader :skull: ANYWAY on with the book itself. okay it's gay. this is funny to me. maybe i will read my lesbian books next?

03.07.22

• started: spring sleepers by kyoko yoshida (p)
• finished: spring sleepers by kyoko yoshida (p)
  • this chapbook is something you read once several years ago and then again 4 years later to make sure it really IS as confusing as you first thought. and it is. i'll be seeing it again in 4 years.

01.07.22

• started: mikumari by mitsumi kubo, t. polly barton (p)
• finished: mikumari by mitsumi kubo, t. polly barton (p)
  • the tension in this never wavers. like this is a may-december forbidden love bittersweet romance in a chapbook with a consistent theme and all threads wrapped up by the end. no wonder kubo won a competition with thissss. i've read somewhere before that a translation is like reading a second novel because the translator needs to have knowledge of prose in order to express the emotion from the original text accurately in the second language, and barton just does that so well.