i've been logging the books i read since august of 2021. here are my early faves.
| title | author | format | genre | pub date | original language | notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| curious toys | elizabeth hand | book | fiction/mystery | 2019 | english | fucked-up historical murder mystery set in my second favorite city (chicago), starring real-life outsider artist henry darger and a lil baby butch lesbian. yippee wahoo!! |
| solutions and other problems | allie brosh | graphic novel | nonfiction | 2020 | english | i've never tried to overcome my personal anguish by deliberately stranding myself in the woods on hallucinogens like allie brosh writes about, but i can't say i never did anything equally as stupid around the time i read this book. devastating and healing. |
| house of leaves | mark z. danielewski | book | fiction | 2000 | english | what is there to say about house of leaves that has not already been said. it's good!! |
| poetry is useless | anders nilsen | graphic novel | nonfiction | 2015 | english | absurd and thoughtful and lovely. |
| the secret history | donna tartt | book | fiction | 1992 | english | simply couldn't be me. i was hanging out with judy pooveys in college. |
| my year of meats | ruth ozeki | book | fiction | 1999 | english | a story about capitalist propaganda, agriculture, and cross-cultural gender roles. ruth ozeki is so fucking cool. |
| house of mirth | edith wharton | book | fiction | 1905 | english | i would have drank so much strong tea with lily bart and kept her alive forever. |
| we promised you a great main event: an unauthorized wwe history | bill hanstock | book | nonfiction | 2020 | english | professional wrestling is fucking crazy. they shouldn't be allowed to do all that. |
| devil house | john darnielle | book | fiction | 2022 | english | augh. a story that takes itself apart piece by piece. i still think about this book all the time. |
| lincoln in the bardo | george saunders | book | fiction | 2017 | english | the audiobook is as good as everyone says it is. great book about our first and only goth president. |
| a canticle for leibowitz | walter m. miller jr. | book | fiction/sci-fi | 1959 | english | also really good as an audiobook! possibly my favorite postapocalypse novel...ever? more than anything it reminds me of pentiment, surprisingly. |
| moby-dick | herman melville | book | fiction | 1851 | english | idk guys i think it might be pretty good |
| the flivver king | upton sinclair | book | fiction/historical | 1937 | english | me and my friends would have killed henry ford with hammers, i can tell you that much. |
| an immense world: how animal senses reveal the hidden realms around us | ed yong | book | nonfiction | 2022 | english | i've spent so much time since i first read this book trying to get other people to read it. corny to say but it truly made me see the world differently!! |
| we had to remove this post | hanna bervoets | novella | fiction | 2022 | dutch | this book has terrible reviews on my local library's website because it's weird, confusing, and depressing. i loved it. a great read for anyone fed up with life working in the content mines who also wants to feel bad while reading. |
| mr. splitfoot | samantha hunt | book | fiction | 2016 | english | cults, crime, ghosts, desperation, family. life on the margins. |
| autobiography of red | anne carson | book | fiction | 1998 | english | i loooove anne carson's translations, but nobody can modernize and reinterpret greek myths the way she can. |
| gideon the ninth | tamsyn muir | book | fiction/fantasy | 2019 | english | augh i love this series. in some ways i think harrow and nona are stronger books than this one, but i have such fondness for the spooky, straightforward mystery here. |
| harrow the ninth | tamsyn muir | book | fiction/fantasy | 2020 | english | i've been using the public library website to check the details for this list since that's where i get most of my books, and i just noticed some books have an entry for "featured characters." and on this one the first bullet point under "nonagesimus, harrowhark" is "lesbian." straight to the point! |
| nona the ninth | tamsyn muir | book | fiction/fantasy | 2022 | english | if one of the challenges of this series is how many damn characters there are, one of its strengths is how willing it is to fuck those characters up real good. this is the book where that starts to pay off in a big way, and it also majorly expands the universe by putting the main characters on the front line of an imperial occupation instead of in some kind of space castle. it's great! |