go home?
read: books
favourites are bold, things i read for school are italicized, and things that are underlined can be clicked on2024
- Abaddon's Gate by James S. A. Corey
- Caliban's War by James S. A. Corey
- Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey
- Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov
- You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue
- Forward the Foundation by Isaac Asimov
- Foundation by Isaac Asimov
- Evolution by Stephen Baxter
- Prelude to Foundation by Isaac Asimov
- The Long Earth by Stephen Baxter and Terry Pratchet
- The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
- Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
A Good Happy girl by Marissa Higgins
why did i start this book? why did i finish this book? truly my least favourite genre- The Dead Mountaineer's Inn by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
- The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
- Children of the Mind by Orson Scott Card
- Xenocide by Orson Scott Card
- Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
- Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
- Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
- Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
- Equal Rites by Terry Pratchet
2023
- The Hole by Hiroko Oyamada
- Roadside Picnic by Arkardy and Boris Strugatsky
- Homo Zapiens/Generation П by Victor Pelevin (again)
- Omon Ra by Victor Pelevin
- A Mother's Disgrace by Robert Dessaix
- The Two Towers by J. R. R. Tolkien
- Asemic the Art of Writing by Peter Schwenger
- Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata
- Russia: Myths and Realities by Rodric Braithwaite
- We Had to Remove this Post by Hanna Bervoets
- Fish Swimming in Dappled Sunlight by Riku Onda
- The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien
- The Nakano Thrift Shop by Hiromi Kawakami
- The Waves Extinguish the Wind by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
- Mac's Problem by Enrique Vila-Matas
Bunny by Mona Awad
dare i say it? wasted potential.An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green
no offense to hank green, but i was not expecting to love this as much as i did. i am once again forced to face my perhaps incorrect belief that sci fi isnt for me. very fun easy read, even if the audiobook is actually pretty long.Venomous Lumpsuckers by Ned Beauman
i think i've thought about this book every day since finishing it... i cant stop recommending it to people. go read it now- Hysteria by Jessica Gross
- Big Swiss by Jen Beagin
- Last Day by Domenica Ruta
- Dune by Frank Herbert
- Tezcatlipoca by Kiwamu Sato
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness by Nagata Kabi
My Wandering Warrior Existence by Nagata Kabi
i'm embarrassed to say that this changed my life. "wait... crap. maybe there are actually partners out there... who truly love each other??" "all those love songs i listened to, thinking they were just fantasies... that really exists somewhere!" until reading this, i, like the author, had never really put 2 and 2 together that love songs and love stories are in fact real and are not just made up for the sake of entertainment. i have no excuse since my parents are very happily married and have been for 30+ years, but still somehow... i did not realise. and then, it CONTINUES to follow my chain of thought, saying, "i had no idea any of it was actually real. how could i be envious? think of it this way. if someone raves about a dish you've never eaten or even heard of before, there's nothing to be envious of because you don't know what it is." this caused quite the identity crisis this august lol. who was going to tell me (besides the entire world and every piece of media) that people actually fall in love??????- My Solo Exchange Diary 1 by Nagata Kabi
- My Solo Exchange Diary 2 by Nagata Kabi
2022
- One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
related too much to this and in a way i feel cringe about lol- Earthlings by Sayaka Murata
Aquariums by J.D. Kurtness
montreal mention woohoo. great book that some people say can get confusing at times because there arent distinct breaks to distinguish which character is sort of narrating/is the focus of a section, but honestly the characters' voices and lives are so distinct that it is very easy if you just pay attention lmao
The Idiot by Elif Batuman
infuriating in a way that i think is very specific to me. like me, the character is a student of linguistics and russian literature and the way that she goes about talking about the topics specific to those fields drove me insane. i found her to be super frustrating, but i also couldnt help but enjoy itThe Possessed by Elif Batuman
elif batuman is fully redeemed. i love this book so much. taps into every interest and thought and wish that i haveInvitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov
not to be that person, but to me, this book played out in my head like a beautiful crossover of guillermo del toro and laika studios. idk if that actually makes sense, but i dont think there is really a way to describe this book. fantastic.Homo Zapiens/Generation П by Victor Pelevin
anyone who likes the more classic russian literature of the 19th and 20th centuries but wants to get into more modern works should start here. lots of references to the old stuff, but a ridiculous story that imagines the behind the scenes of a newly capitalist russia in the most absurd way possible2021
- Bro, Ice, and 2300 Trilogy by Vladimir Sorokin
- The Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman
- A Dead Man's Memoir by Mikhail Bulgakov
- Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman
- Natural History by Carlos Fonseca
2020
- Tolstoy Selected Stories by Leo Tolstoy
- Childhood by Tove Ditlevson
The Europeans by Orlando Figes
great if you want to learn about opera, railroads, 19th century copyright laws, and #1 pathetic man ivan turgenev- The Secret History by Donna Tart
- A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
really enjoyed it in the moment, but afterwards it just sorta felt like trauma porn. i've never felt a book effect my wellbeing, but this one sent me down the bad spiral lol. i was already not doing well at the time, but this certainly made it worse *clown emoji*
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
forgive me, but i did find it to be a little disappointing after reading dublinersFathers and Children by Ivan Turgenev
super interesting to read as a companion piece to learning about the political and philosophical issues at that time2019
- Flowers of Mold by Ha Seong-Nan
- The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara
- The Vegetarian by Han Kang
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
so many good quotes. saw me in a way that 18yr old me needed to be seenChildhood, Boyhood, Youth by Leo Tolstoy
like above, really spoke to everything i was feeling at that time in my life. i was thinking a lot about my childhood since i had just moved away to go be an "adult" far from family. it was nice to see such familiar feelings and, to an extent, situations, reflected in a very foreign environment (super fancy 19th century russian family)
read: articles/chapters
art and literature
- Zaum: From a "Beyonsense" Language to an Idiom of Theatre by Mladen Ovadija
- Anti-Language in Fiction by Roger Fowler
- Anti-Languages by M.A.K. Halliday
- Mirskontsa (Worldbackwards): Collaborative Book Art and Transrational Sounds by Nancy Perloff
- Futurism & Constructivism: Russian & Other by Arthur A. Cohen
- Futurism and Phonology: The Futurist Roots of Jakobson's Approach to Language by Boris Gasparov
- 1916-1920 Futurist Poetics by Johanna Drucker
- Mayakovsky and Futurism by Zbigniew Folejewski
- On Poetry and Trans-Sense Language by Viktor Shklovsky, Gerald Janecek and Peter Mayer
- Pseudo-Revolution in Poetic Language: Julia Kristeva and the Russian Avant-Garde by Clare Cavanagh
- Re-Thinking the Value of the Linguistic and Non-Linguistic Sign: Russian Visual Poetry without Verbal Components by Tatiana Nazarenko
- Russian and Italian Futurist Manifestoes by Anna Lawton
- Another Language, Another World: The Linguistic Experiments of Velimir Khlebnikov by Willem G. Weststeijn
- The Role of Linguistics in a Theory of Poetry by Paul Kiparsky
film
- 'If we cannot laugh like that, then how can we laugh?': The 'problem' of Stalinist film comedy by Anna Toropova
architecture and urbanism
- Utopia in Space: City and Building by Richard Stites
(anthropology of) religion
- Anthropological Conceptions of Religion: Reflections on Geertz by Talal Asad
- Religion As a Cultural System by Clifford Geertz
- God and the Anthropologist: The Ontological Turn and Human-Oriented Anthropology by Albert Piette
- The Stranger: An Essay in Social Psychology by Alfred Schuetz
- Disjunction and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy by Arjun Appadurai
- Sufi Articulations of Civility, Globality, and Sovereignty by Armando Salvatore
- Senegalese Enclaves in New York City by Ousmane Oumar Kane
- The Transnational Spiritual Economy by Ousamane Oumar Kane
- Picturing Intimacy: Mediation and Self-representation in Boston's Religious Festivals by Federico De Musso and Cristina Grasseni
- The Transnational Umma - Myth or Reality? Examples from the Western Diasporas by Garbi Schmidt
- From Celts to Kaaba Sufism in Glastonbury by Ian K. B. Draper
- Stamping the Earth with the Name of Allah: Zikr and the Sacralizing of Space among British Muslims by Pnina Werbner
- A 'Festival of Flags' Hindu-Muslim Devotion and the Sacralising of Localism at the Shrine of Nagore-e-Sharif in Tamil Nadu by S. A. A. Saheb
- Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias by Michel Foucault
- Holy Places in their Relation to Man by William Robertson Smith
- Mediat(iz)ing Catholicism: Saint, Spectacle, and Theopolitics in Lima, Peru by Kristin Norget
- Religion and/as Media by Jeremy Stolow
- Sensing the Rebbei: Traces and Practices of Embodiment by Bilu Yoram
- Seeing the Rebbei: Chabad's Visual Culture by Bilu Yoram
- Making Paracosms by Tanya Luhrmann
- Talent and Training by Tanya Luhrmann
- Virtual Realities, Visionary Realities by Amira Mittermaier
- The Obvious Aspects of Ritual by Roy Rappaport
- Auroville: Visionary Images and Social Consequences in a South Indian Utopian Community by Larry D. Shinn
- Red Path (Camino Rojo) by Renée de la Torre
- Religion as a Cultural System by Clifford Geertz
- Why we Became Religious and The Evolution of the Spirit World by Marvin Harris
- Religious Perspectives in Anthropology by Dorothee Lee
- The Elementary Forms of Religious Life by Emile Durkheim
- Religion in Primative Culture by Edward Burnett Tylor
- Witchcraft Explains Unfortunate Events by E. E. Evans-Pritchard
- Baseball Magic by George Gmelch
- The Role of Magic and Religion by Bronislaw Malinowski
- On Key Symbols by Sherry B. Ortner
- Liminality and Communitas by Victor Turner
- The Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Category by Talal Asad
- Ancestors and the Afterlife by Rita Astuti
- Remarks on the Verb 'To Believe' by Jean Pouillon
- Adoring the Father: Religion and Charisma in an American Polygamous Community by William Jankowiak and Emilie Allen
Quotes
- "They would, she thought, going on again, however long they lived,
come back to this night; this moon; this wind; this house; and to her too.
It flattered her, whereshe was most susceptible of flattery, to think how,
wound about in their hearts, however long they lived she would be woven"
-Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse - "It spoke to me of beauty, happiness and virtue, saying each was possible
and easy for me, that none could exist without the others, and that beauty,
happiness and virtue were even the same thing. 'How coud I have failed to reaslise
that? How bad I was before, and how good and Happy I could have been and might be in
the future!' I said to myself. 'I must hurry, hurry, and this very minute become a
different person and start to live differently.' Despite that, however, I continued
to sit in the window a long time, daydreaming and doing nothing."
-Leo Tolstoy, Childhood, Boyhood, Youth - "Symbolic thinking is not the exclusive privilege of the child, of the poet or
of the unbalanced mind: it is consubstantial with human existence, it comes
before language and discursive reasoning. The symbol reveals certain aspects
of reality the deepest aspects which defy any other means of knowledge.
Images, symbols and myths are not irresponsible creations of the psyche;
they respond to a need and fulfill a function, that of bringing to light
the most hidden modalities of being."
-Mircea Eliade, Myths and Symbols
to read: articles/chapters
i have hundreds of articles saved, but these 5 are next up to read- Contributions of Roman Jakobson by Steven C. Caton
- Erotic Iconography by Madeline H. Caviness
- Federov's Geographies of Time by Trevor Paglen
- Linguistic function and literary style: an inquiry into the language of William Golding's 'The Inheritors' by M. A. K. Halliday
- Interpreting Diffuse Orthographies and Orthographic Change by J. Marshall Unger
Favourite Books
bookbug bookclub!
noticeboard archive
- dogfish's palestine reading list
- language guessr (seems to need an account to work)
- electric zine maker
- surrealist automatism
currently thinking about
- world-ending impact events
- fish in the frutiger aero aesthetic
- the legitimacy of the ergative-absolutive language label
- the application of direct-inverse case alignment systems in conlangs