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ongoing reads

11.16.2024: i started MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL by t.s. eliot but i'm gonna have to circle back to this one later cause i was not in the right mindset to be able to parse t.s. eliot language lol

11.8.2024: started and finished BLIND OWL by sadegh hedayat. just wow, the dreamlike atmosphere this book cultivates is like none other. i wouldn't say i particularly grasped it because it's a very dense book but the explicit repeating of themes and imagery and sentences make the most delightfully unnerving reading experience.

10.14.2024: started DANTE'S GIRL by natasha rhodes. i was buying the sherlock holmes hellraiser crossover and saw this and checked it out bc of the title. sounds sleazy and stupid, so i'm not expecting anything, but it should probably be fun to read even if it sucks.

10.13.2024: started and finished THE HELLBOUND HEART by clive barker. i've never seen hellraiser but this was really fun and i devoured it in a single day, which was really nice. easy to read but i quite enjoyed barker's style and thought it was really easy to get lost in despite being such a self-contained story.

9.30.2024: started THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO by alexandre dumas. ideally i'd like to be done with this by halloween but it's a behemoth of a book so i imagine it'll take me a few years. regardless, i've been dying to read this so i'm excited.

9.28.2024: finished THE OPHIUCHI HOTLINE by john varley. this ended up being way better than i thought but it did sort of fall apart at the end when he suddenly remembered he had to make the titulary hotline relevant to the scenario. stuff just kinda happened at the end and tied itself up neatly for no reason. but i liked that for a book from 1977 it was very whatever about the concept of gender transition and same-sex relationships and it was cool to see how an old writer tackled that for the narrative. i also liked the POV changes between the clones and thought the writing style itself was good, it was just a messy plot. also the sex scenes were mid as hell. not sure i recommend but for a pulp sci-fi fiction book i got a lot of enjoyment out of it

9.19.2024: started THE OPHIUCHI HOTLINE by john varley. i randomly picked this up at a thrift store because i was endeared by its pulp cover. it's better than i was expecting it to be so far though!

9.8.2024: finished THE DECAGON HOUSE MURDERS by yukito ayatsuji today! idk how i feel about this. i thought a lot of elements of the murder were very left up to surprise and coincidence and i also felt the whodunnit, while interesting, wasn't intellectually satisfying because so much of its nature was obfuscated from the reader. regardless as an umineko fan it was worth reading because i could see just how much influence it had on ryukishi and his inspirations. recommend to wtc fans

9.3.2024: started THE DECAGON HOUSE MURDERS by yukito ayatsuji. i've been wanting to read this so bad for so long. inspired by and then there were none and very probably inspired umineko in turn. excited to try my hand at solving it!

6.5.2024: finished BLOOD MERIDIAN by cormac mccarthy. finally!! this was a pretty solid read, obviously pretty fucked up and really dense but i liked it a lot. something that is definitely worth a reread since i felt like a lot of it went over my head but probably not anytime soon. the judge is so scary

5.17.2024: started a reread of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by jane austen. love this book soooo much. i like reading it outside at the park. makes me feel like i belong in the 2005 adaptation of this book, which if you ask me is something to aspire towards at all times.

5.16.2024: finished THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. i quite enjoyed this! i like how fantastic the book is while at the same time it always likes to actively dismantle its fantastic-ness by telling the reader exactly how erik does things. raoul is such a loser i'm very endeared to him. and conversely i like how dismal...? christine is in comparison to raoul's idealistic temperament.

5.9.2024: started THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA by gaston leroux for the first time. i enjoy the musical and i've seen enough phantom adaptations at this point that i really felt i should check out the original story.

5.3.2024: DAILY DRACULA started, so i'll be following along with that until i inevitably forget about it and stop. i've already read dracula in its entirety and i really love the book though so it's fun to reread it in bite-sized components.

4.12.2024: finished THE GRAY HOUSE by mariam petroysan i really liked this, a sort of meandering novel that doesn't "do" much but meander in the world created both by and for its inhabitants. this was recommended by r/pathologic and i can really see why it's popular with fans of the game.