Luke > Recent Status Updates

So I can access Goodreads on data but not on my home wifi. Anyone want to chime in before my brain starts jumping to conclusions?

Rest in peace, Cormac McCarthy.

Anyone else completely unable to access any and all book profiles on this godforsaken site?

Where race previously obscured class divisions among whites, now it came to exaggerate them. For many whites, the measure of whether they've made it increasingly turns on being able to set the terms with which they associate with minorities.

There's something heartbreaking about indie publishers that proudly proclaim their presence on Tumblr. So innocent. So full of hope.

I still can't believe my county library keeps a copy of this, but I'm not complaining.

Oh this is going to be a delightful book, I can tell you that much.

Oof. The Joseph Boyden inclusion hasn't aged well.

When one relies on jocular misogyny to power everything from the characterization to the plot points, one should not be surprised to find the attention of more than a few readers wandering.

So apparently one of my local libraries has a copy of The Arcades Project (for god knows what reason) on their shelves, and the urge to drop all my reading and dive into that is unexpectedly intense.

There's always something exciting about revisiting an author after so long a time. I may not be able to step into the same river twice, but the knowledge of just how much I've grown between the first engagement and the second has become more valuable to me than the experience itself.

It's not everyday you get to read about an area you once worked in described as an ultra-rich WASP enclave and find yourself agreeing with the statement. There are plenty of things I miss since moving away from the Bay Area, but that past workplace of mine isn't one of them.

I'm baffled sometimes by what my local libraries have a copy of, but as they say, don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

White male genealogy is protected by the assumption that anyone who challenges the genealogy suffers from self-obsession.

I'd be liking this a lot more if it weren't at heart a long and involved meditation on Black throwing queer under the bus.

How in the hell could you explain to people like the Knudsens that characters like Goodhue were never nasty—in their sense of the word—to Negroes? That to be nasty or subtly unpleasant would be to put the Negro on a basis of equality.

Intellectual work differs from academic work precisely because one does not need to undertake a formal course of study or strive for degrees to live the life of the mind.

To deflect away from the reality that no attempt to radicalize consciousness through cultural production will be heralded and promoted, colonizers find it useful to create a structure of representation that enable them to project an image that is meant to suggest racist domination is no longer a norm, that all blacks can get ahead if they are just smart enough and work hard.

Until masses of white Americans confront their obsessive need for a black victim who lacks the agency to call for an accounting that would really demand a shift in the structure of this society, the rhetoric of victimization will continue to flourish.

And still, words can barely encompass how fucking good this is.

His first act was to have his half-brother dug up, his head cut off, and his body flung into the Thames.
Although hard to follow, it set the tone for the next half a dozen.

"This is not a question of respecting different points of view but rather of recognizing a group which repudiates the very values that bring us together."

-Joyce Appleby, President of the Organization of American Historians (OAH)

Fuck me this is good stuff.

[H]ad it been mistreatment of the Jews that prompted the Allies to act, they should have gone to war long before they did.

Still waiting for that story that isn't a variation on the theme of "You must care about settler state bourgeoisie cishet white woman's habitus to the exclusion of all other context! You must!" Cause until then, all I'm left with is a feeling of, "You certainly turn out a pretty, fleshed out phrase, but why do you keep hitting yourself?"

So far, this author couldn't write his way out of a wet paper bag.

I can't help but wish that this narrative would bring the queerer of its intimations to fulfillment, however unlikely that will be.

Reminds me of King's 'Dark Tower' series, back when it was my love.

Still a few days left of US Black History Month, no? Besides, Black History Month is every month.

Can't remember the last time I dipped below 1600 books on the TBR. One would think having 13-16 years of a projected reading buffer would be sufficient, and yet. A wisp of anxiety appears on the horizon.