Luke > Recent Status Updates

First of the bunch: Egil's Saga. Quite a bit of build up before the titular character is even introduced, but I do like my historical context.

"They were usually christened with feminine names, perhaps in recognition of the fact that their personalities were sometimes slightly unpredictable." So this is why The Martian sold so well.

Ah yes, that inimitable first-world-white tone of writing: so bloodthirsty, and yet, so sterile.

After a brief respite, I'm back to chipping away at the doorstoppers I have planned for this year. At least this one promises to be a very singular, and with any luck a very good, reading experience indeed.

Didn't expect humanized queer, but I'm not complaining.

Time to see whether I truly read and loved this book all those years ago, or whether I just got it confused with a certain work of science fiction.

The ringleader in every species of mischief within our grave walls was Mr Shelley, afterwards so celebrated for better things, though I should think to the end half crazy.

I'm at the point where, while it does disappoint me to find the pinnacle of narrative sympathy wrapped around a bigoted little incel, it also doesn't surprise me.

Beginning to wonder if the memoirist is describing symptoms of lactose intolerance in her details of her childhood woes involving several varieties of dairy.

"Tame and curious when Darwin visited, it's now extinct." Sounds about right.

To say that I've been looking forward to reading this is a rather monumental understatement.

Can't wait till GRAmazon starts spewing out "Why unions make your oligarch overlords sad :(" thinkpieces/ads all over this site cause they'd rather throw a subliminal messaging tantrum than treat their workers like human beings (and no, this is not an April Fools' joke).

Starting to wonder if the author did any real research whatsoever, or whether he just shoved in whatever European construct proved the most sensational into the gaps/unpalatable truths left by indigenous/Black participation in the historical events and left it at that.

Darwin keeps insulting Australian species when it comes to their long term viability, which is hilarious, considering that continent's reputation for having some of the most vicious non human creatures on the planet. I suppose there could have been some changes in the flora/fauna during the last couple of centuries, but surely not that much.

Don't choose a book by its cover and all that, but two variations of the n-word showing up in the first few pages of a book by a white woman is rather concerning.

I should like to get my hands on Davis' Waiting for the Verdict: 868 pages of US Civil War drama, "severe and uncultured strength...disfigured by an injudicious straining after realistic effects" that ultimately results in "[s]entimental propaganda for the negro." Sounds well worth unburying to me.

Ah yes, the two genders: brainwashed lumps of rapeable flesh, and villains out of Resident Evil.

I imagine there are quite a lot of tramps who thank God they are not tramps.

It is the work of civilization, therefore unquestionable. This point is worth considering.

The narrative proclaims religious conversions, I prefer to dwell on queer awakenings. We'll see where the subtext goes.

Roughly speaking, the more one pays for food, the more sweat and spittle one is obliged to eat with it.

There are people who do fasting cures of three weeks or more, and they say that fasting is quite pleasant after the fourth day; I do not know, never having gone beyond the third day. Probably it seems different when one is doing it voluntarily and is not underfed at the start.

Seeing reviewers lose their minds because they can't imagine a text existing without a clear and present capitalist marketing campaign is really amazing. And by amazing I mean pathetic.

Thus far, the sort of cobbled together fearmongering that pays little heed to both sociocultural cohesives and histories of political economics, and helps keep the collective military budget of my own country higher than the GDPs of many of the world's independent nations. We'll see if it ever grounds itself in something more tangible than the uneasy dreams of those all but asking to be fodder for the guillotines.

I've a feeling such went over my head when I last read Spark nearly a decade ago, but she's rather marvelous at generating scathing portraits of various dastardly types, isn't she.

Say what you will about TikTok, but at least these days folks don't get PhDs by treating cis dicks like puppies that get kicked whenever a woman exists too much for more than a second or two.

White boy falls victim to classism and thinks he'll solve it with racism. More at 11.

Naming and talking to one of your own boobs. And here I thought I wasn't reading something by Philip Roth.

As always, missionary work breaking ground for the sake of capitalism: the desecration of nature, the conscription of immense amounts of native labor so as to travel without paying respect to the environment, the training of native rulers who think more about vacations to Europe than to what their people actually need. It's always easier to buy when you've convinced them that everything they are is for sale.

Not surprised that protest via refusing to keep prison areas "presentable" exacerbated the authorities more than did hunger strikes. Without a solid line of communication between the strike and the public view, starving oneself to death just makes you easier to clean up.