#it's a really short one bc i was super engrossed in the movie

[djservo]

cutting it soo close to the wire oopsie but i'm here!! 2023 is out, 2024 is in. also in: your december reading update? did you hit 50 books read? what are your 2024 reading goals, anything that suprised you about your 2023 reading other than falling in love with Dennis Cooper?

I read 12 books last month man it was a blur!!

ok there's just too many for me to indulge in any rambling so I'm gonna try and keep things short n sweet

Nana Vol. 1-3 by Ai Yazawa - I was never really into manga growing up but this is like exactly the type of story and style I wanna wrap myself up in always!! so much fun!! the rumors are true, I love a roommate story!!! I read each one in a single sitting so I wanna pace myself thru the rest of the series so that I don't spoil + finish it all at once </3

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury - honestly not as fantastical as I was expecting for some reason but it reminded me of Coraline which was fun! I could see Neil Gaiman getting inspo from this (edit: literally just looked it up and yes Gaiman indeed cites him as a direct influence yup yup)

Out of Time by Samira Azzam - something almost Steinbeck-like in these vignettes of everyday life in a very culturally-specific way that I really enjoy. really insightful introduction that mentioned how although most her stories didn't explicitly mention Palestine, they still were recognizable as a Palestinian existence + therefore shaped a sort of Palestinian consciousness for readers that were often blocked from accessing their own culture in academic settings

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison - I can't believe it took me this long to read something by Toni Morrison / that I never read her in any English classes?? like she seems so foundational to the grand scheme of American literature.... ridiculous! so phenomenal and gripping and darker than I expected. not just an engrossing story but also a really intentional and haunting use of language that really sinks you into that world/shifting perspectives

Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood by Ibtisam Barakat - this is like the only Palestinian book my local library has (shameful!) so I checked it out on a whim and was so surprised at what an amazing memoir this is!!! touching and vibrant and left me so eager to read her follow-up memoir based around her teenage years. I feel like this is a great introduction to Palestinian literature in general bc while it does (obviously) tie in the history and reality of occupation, the amount of love & detail given to the everyday things - merely going to school or playing with her brothers - was so enlightening and relatable

Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris - the first/main story, SantaLand Diaries, is still one of my favorites - I love stories about odd jobs + boy does Sedaris have so many tales to tell about those!! reread this in one sitting before I sent it off to a friend who seems to find herself in a new odd job each year so I figured she'd resonate

Gaza in Crisis and On Palestine by Noam Chomsky & Ilan Pappé, edited by Frank Barat - 2 separate books but I'll talk about them together since they're companion pieces. surprisingly accessible, probably due to the format of essays mixed with interviews. On Palestine echoed a lot of the sentiments of Gaza in Crisis so I'd recommend On Palestine for a sort of "updated" version (and in my opinion, more thorough). a good stepping stone for some of the meatier/more history-dense books on my TBR

Like Water For Chocolate by Laura Esquivel - yknow the thing about recipe bloggers who will intersperse their super personal life story into the recipe? this is like a whole book of that it's kinda iconic... honestly a little juvenile and ridiculous at times but I had a fun + have made hot chocolate every single day since reading this which literally wasn't even one of the recipes included/the title itself comes from like 1 short part towards the end but still... Ms. Esquivel's impact... the movie adaptation was really well done too, captured the magical realism surprisingly well without making things look hokey + Man I just love food in film!!!

Good Sense & the Faithless by Michelle T. Clinton - beautiful sexy thoughtful angry hopeful healing.... I really love her and I'm glad I ended the year with this!!

YES I surpassed by goal which honestly did surprise me bc if you recall I sliced my 50 down to 36 a few months ago because 50 didn't seem feasible at the time, but I guess the lesson is to never underestimate winter reading!! still I'm playing it safe and declaring 40 as my 2024 goal... for now.... a few weeks ago I made a little reading syllabus for the year where each month is a different theme (except for january + august to give myself some time to get the wiggles/impulsive reads out ya know) and I mostly sourced from books I already own or books in my TBR so I'm really excited to have more structure to my reads + actually get through some of the books in my ever-growing TBR!! shameful and embarrassing that it's nearly at 1k books like GOD just READ them, woman!!! I think I'm also surprised at how many graphic novel collections I read (3!) which maybe shouldn't be that surprising bc I always have a good time with graphic novels but I think these particular reads opened the door to a buncha different authors and artists and literary circles which ofc I'm always grateful for! yay reading!!

#asks #cheesehair #reads

[pansyfemme]

followed for your fashion photos (GREAT style btw!!) but staying for the family stories, your folks are so fun (fascinated by your dad's two pockets of wildly different orbs)

thank uuuuuu

its a well known fact by anyone who knows me irl or has followed me long enough that my father is a known oddity. he’s very particular about everything but mostly if he can make a bit out of it. he’s 62 and he falls down the stairs sometimes and everyone rushes to make sure he’s ok bc he’s. 62 and that’s scary and he’s always like ‘MAN DID YOU SEE THAT?? i bet my legs went up in the air like a cartoon!!’ like nothing is more important than making a joke to him. In highschool it was a joke of mine that my father was more popular than i was, and maybe that wasn’t true but i’m always asked about frequent updates. He’s a cool dude, writes about music and theatre and art. He dresses in such a recognizable way and walks so much that people knew him as ‘that guy in the bowler hat who’s literaly always downtown’ for a while. he used to walk i’m not kidding. fifteen miles into boston on a regular basis in his youth so he could go to screenings of marx brothers films and buy archie comics. He’s got european parents so he spent a lot of time in the uk as a kid which ended up exposing him to the punk scene over there, so he was fully engrossed in the east coast punk scene since it literally began. He consumes more media than anyone else i know, all of it. music, tv, movies, short films, comics, poetry, theatre, books.. he consumes everything and has a intense historical knowledge and niche favorites for every one. He has a collection of archie comics and merch that if he didn’t actively use all of it all the time would probably be worth scary amounts of money. it’s fucking HUGE. and he has a second one that lives at a friends house that’s apperantly bigger. he owns 20,000+ books, thousands of records and cassettes and cds. Our garage is basically his collection, which he organizes nearly everyday. there are entire shelves dedicated to topics like vaudville and feminist cartoonists, it’s that in depth. My grandfather, who i never met, was a theater scholar, translater of plays, model train enthusiest (his model train set is literally in a museum know and takes up an entire room) and puppeteer so being a weird queer dude who’s really into very specific things literally runs in the family, which is why my dad is so fucking proud of me for being a decora boy transfag art school going twee pop fan in a way very few fathers would be. to him, every strange thing i get super into is a sign he raised me right lmao.

[the-one-blog-to-rule-them-all]

kristian liveblogs rogue one

i liveblogged it for jamie and i literally want to fucking die

so i totally forgot to start livebloging until like ten minutes in oops but literally bodhi and that other guy are so cute starts with a c i think whom is this big tall droid boy i love droids spoiler alert CASSIAN that's his name he is too damn cute k2 is my new son i love him holy fuck i love k2 why do i love all the droids so goddamn much and his cgi looks crazy good bodhi's puppy dog eyes are everything to me, god he's so lovely why does this old man, tarkin apparently, look like he's cgi??? it's so uncanny valley i'm gagging k2 is me as a droid KRISTIAN2 i love it BODHI STOP BEING SO IRRESISTABLE OMG i've seen enough hentai to know where this is going lol at the stormtroopers being so loud and unneccessary with force at these randos THIS ASIAN GUY IS EVERYTHING TO ME WHAT'S HIS NAME HIS SMILE OMG PLEASE THIS POOR LITTLE CRYING GIRL KILL ME SHE'S SO CUTE "did you know that wasn't me" BYEEE LMFAO god i love this droid "there's a fresh one if you mouth off again" i'm literally in love with this droid he's my favorite omg my cool guy is ack holy fuck there's no reason to be this cool ever holy FUCK "is your foot alright?" BAD ASS "no hostiles..... ONE HOSTILE" "are you kidding me i'm blind" FUCK i wish i knew what his name is but i didn't understand him the first time he said ITTTT this guy has a fucking spaceballs helmet i swear to god BODHIII BABYYYY oh nooooooo baby what did they do to u bodhi is out his fuckin mind NO IT'S NOT BEAUTIFUL YOU FREAK UR KILLING THEM ALL god damn this thing really is a planet killer i'm sorry but this cgi guy is fucking me up bodhi you are my moon and my fucking stars, i love You i hate that this is becoming my letter to bodhi, but i really truly love him, and he is so cute and precious and sweet looking like a little angel cassian literally never touch bodhi again if i ever see u shove him  i swear to god i literally refuse to watch thems shoot these old men for being traitors i literally refuse noOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MADS YOU'RE SO BEAUITFUL why is chirrut so fucking badass holy god god this music is so powerful wtf is this eye of sauron lookin ass building what kind of lord of the rings ass vader u a fuckin mess "be careful not to choke on your aspirations, director" BAD AND BOUGIE THAT'S MY ANAKIN "i'll be there for you... cassian said i had to...." k2 you're my fucking bae yo cassian is tryna fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhk they got palm trees on this little island, my kind of place there is such a highly militaristic vibe this movie is giving me more than any other star wars movie ugh chirrut your such a beautiful force of nature 3P0 OMG AND R2 ALRKGJALKRGJLARJGLAKGLKARJGKL ALL MY BABY BOYS IN ONE MOVIE OMALRKGJALK Chirrut are u okay bodhi you are everything to me did ODHI JUST GET HIT k2 is taking a lot of hits and it's making me raelly nervous K2 NO STOPPPPPPPP I DON'T WANT THIS THE FIRST SET OF TEARS God i'm so nervous this music is amazing oh chirrut no see this is why i didn't want to watch this fucking movie because i alreayd know how this ends for everyone fuck me bodhi that smile my god you really are my fucking angel NNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO I HATE THIS MOVIE FUCK THE EMPIRE FUCK TE EMPIR yes YES KILL THAT MOTHERFUCKER I'M SICK OF HIM THISS SCORE IS SO BEAUITFUL I'M LITERALLY SOBBING BUT THIS SCENE WIT VADER IS REALLY FUCKING COOLL HEY REAL QUICK THIS MOVIE RUINED MY LIFE AND I KNEW THIS FUCKING THING WAS GONNA HAPPEN WHICH IS WHY I DIDN'T WATCH IT AND NOW I DID AND I FUCKING HATE THIS MOVIE IT WAS REALLY REALLY GOOD BUT I SINCERELY FEEL SO DEEPLY AFFECTED BY THIS I'M DEAD OMG

#it's a really short one bc i was super engrossed in the movie #but there's my general thougts #today in kristory