Luke > Recent Status Updates

This has been so engrossing that it's almost baffling to me, but one really can't complain about a read coming out of left field turning out to be page-turningly superb.

So Amazon's made it impossible to view book pages if you have an ad blocker. Really encompasses their priorities on this site.

Good reading so far, but I have yet to purge myself of feeling disgustingly smug whenever my workplace is mentioned in a piece of media. The locals are riddled puerily greedy slags, but area truly is, more often than not, as charmingly gorgeous as they say.

There's a certain level of unremittingly sardonic (if gender essentialist) wit operating here that could easily become excruciatingly unbearable, but as that's the mood I myself am most often in when confronted by the daily news, it's very much doing the trick.

Rest in peace, Hilary Mantel 😔

Just my luck that the most interesting entry thus far doesn't have a complete English translation.

Have to wonder if Glass considered becoming a librarian but got scared off by all the changes and tech and acronyms. Ah well, she certainly writes well enough for me to not mind the aborted career path.

Finally got around to this due to a patron at my library of work requesting that it be added to the collection, which isn't the worst way of choosing what to read next.

A very English sort of work, where every eroticism has been replaced by ritual and every community by hierarchy. The mass inculcation of such as 'universal' is a wound that humanity continues to slowly recover from.

"Do you think murderers would brag to their children about their "heroic" past?" Well, the USA wouldn't exist if they didn't, for one.

I can't say that this is brilliant, but it is for the most part quite a bit of fun.

All these people griping about "social media attention spans" who haven't read a single Classic Chinese Novel to completion. Who exactly are they trying to fool?

I couldn't run the risk of someone knowing me, because I couldn't take the risk of knowing myself.

Then we ran into the black heart of northern Ontario in the 1960s and we were hated. Hated. There's no other word for it.

"The pellets of rain were warm and Benjamin and I caught then on our tongues as our grandmother laughed behind us." As of 2022, there is no place on earth where rainwater is safe for humans to drink.

For anyone who thinks being a librarian means having a cushy job, I just came back from the ER with six stitches in my knee from a package opening situation gone wrong. Be careful with your box cutters, folks!

Amazon's new 'book page' sacrifices every lick of utility for the sake of maximizing clicks and shoving shopping and influencers, even the blocked ones, down readers' throats. Fortunately, that's what uBlock is for.

Finally, some far less clownish queerhood.

At this point in my life, I doubt third time's the charm will get this work that fifth star in my estimation. However the fact that I, who truck so little with rereads, am more than willing to go a third round with the same work says a great deal indeed.

...the English take their time over everything except sex...

Chrome really needs to stop trying to correct my word choice.

One man in San Bernardino last year, when an Indian would not take a bottle of sour wine for pay for a day's work, shot him in the cheek with his pistol, and told him to mind how he was insolent anymore!

This is one of the most audacious, plot hole filled displays of Schrödinger's racism that I've seen in a long time.

But this fragility of ours and of the world — said Walter, pausing for breath and sighing hugely — is not necessarily good or evil, glad or sad. It depends on your mood on waking, on which side you get out of the bed.

One benefit of being a librarian for a number of folks who are way too rich for their own good is being able to take home copies of the latest and greatest lit once the patrons have rapidly stopped hyping it up amongst themselves.

Gotta love a book that declares that the Mona Lisa has a bisexual smile.

This already wasn't going well, so having it compete with Palinuro of Mexico from here on out is likely going to be the final nail in its coffin.

I wonder if Murdoch had any familiarity with Murasaki Shikibu's Lady Rokujo, or whether the confluence of the concepts are simply coincidental.

Reading this is like taking shots of vodka: lovely while it lasts but holy SHIT am I glad I established daily limits for myself.

So the app at some point stopped showing community reviews for books. Just swallow the whole hard length of the soullessly invasive algorithm down why don't you.