houk > Recent Status Updates

"we seek in certain narratives a prismatic image of our own."

hm. you don't say..

i keep typing out and deleting stuff to put here. i don't think anything could possibly capture the mess of Feeling it's pulling from me. i'm a little dread-sick, i think

rip igby slocumb you would've loved foster dade

"adolescence is an exercise in coveting what exists just beyond our grasp; it is this inaccessibility that sustains its magic. at sixteen, i saw in the mosaic of these arbitrary artifacts the spectral contours of a life that shimmered precisely in its evasiveness, gesturing to something i could ascertain only in voyeurism."

keep smiling while reading bc this prose is intoxicating. so excited to keep reading :']

trying SO hard not to compare the current read to tsh. it's so hard!!!! i can't help the fact that The Only Story I Will Ever Be Able To Tell has woven itself so deeply into the fabric of Who I Am that i cannot extricate myself from it!!!! that's not my fault!!!!! it's too early for a re-read...and far too warm outside. i miss it, though--just for you to know.

"the half-paralysis of my own sense of unbelonging, lacking that innate interior alchemy that would allow me to push myself from the ranks of the supporting cast."

too early to say anything with certainty, but this may become a shattering addition to a very specific type of affecting novel for Me Personally. stay tuned...

have been engaged the whole time but things are really picking up here. enjoying! having fun! i'm intrigued and excited to see where things end up

oh brother i'm kinda slogging through but i will finish this book. i've come this far i guess

"I'M TOO ALONE IN THE WORLD, YET NOT ALONE ENOUGH / TO MAKE EACH HOUR HOLY."

oh lord they got a guy named roman in here...

"my weakness is for teratology and for freaks. i believe, unswervingly, agonizingly, that it is in freaks that Being breaks through to the surface and reveals its true nature.
the hideous metal skeleton that suddenly pops out from the velvet upholstery; the eruption of a spring from within a cushioned armchair that shamelessly debunks any illusion of softness."

i have got to stop listening before bed bc i have accidentally listened to it all the way through in my sleep twice. maybe i'm osmosising it or something

ugh had to dnf i'm a fan. i was, obviously, Not one.

"now he is alone. / i think he must still exist, / for no one does to him what he did to me."

"i sense my older brother lies awake / as if accused. / night offers itself to me, / not to him."

ohhhhhh rilke when i get you rilke

i am especially tired of this subplot. across the board. very rarely is it handled with the care it deserves, as this one is notedly Not.

i hope you all see in me not only the "martyred outrage" but also "haunted fragility" <3

sigh... i'm beginning to feel like this specific brand of "woman living life For Herself in a nuanced and complicated but Human way" novel is getting old; perhaps i've read too many and am thus growing tired, but it's beginning to feel grating. i know there are still some that do it and do it Well, but they feel fewer and further between. good luck, charlie

reminds me of delicious life in its simultaneous hungry and tender prose. delicate and full-bodied. ugh. this is literature for Lovers.

"she thought that might have been joy, or something like it. something that feels sad as much as it feels like love."

Um Yeah I'm Locked In

kinda iffy atp but i'm too far into it to give up now

this damn water motif...

"i wait listening, always. / just give me a sign! / i'm right here. / as it happens, the wall between us / is very thin. why couldn't a cry / from one of us / break it down? it would crumble / easily, / it would barely make a sound."

"i know that nothing has ever been real / without my beholding it. / all becoming has needed me. / my looking ripens things / and they cone toward me, to meet and be met."

"the memory is a neat-edged knife pressed tight into her ribcage--a quick slit, a gentle downward slicing."

finished anthropocene and library last month silently on accident... halfway through book of hours so i fear the goodreads tl will be inundated with houkalerts and rilkeposting when i get off work... my b y'all

in other news, i am so thoroughly saddened, frustrated, and generally unsatisfied in so many avenues of life rn that i can no longer resist dostoy's pull. demons, ur time is now

"funny too, despite this, to recognize their weak moments of alliance, of affection . . . the three of them, trying to be less isolated and frequently failing, trying to be less conclusively the product of their past."

u already know what i'm thinking

"the problem has always been the way he left them alone in the house for long periods, the way he spoke to his daughters, the way he pitted one against the other--left each to struggle for a love they should have known they couldn't earn. the problem has always been squaring one fact with another, her father's great ease and easy cruelty."

rlly wanting to add what i talk about when i talk about running to the tbr but seeing as i've held off for so long with the intention only to pick it up when i myself have acquired the habit... perhaps it's finally time...

"she remembers him looking at her--opaque expression of one thinking of something else--imagines she is eight again, thirteen again, and the nothing she always was in his company."

king lear retellings we are SO back!!!! roman roy you will always be famous

oughhh there's nothing like a king lear retelling. thank you three siblings with an ever-present father figure who permeates their lives even after death; thank you succession, thank you shakespeare, thank you julia armfield