I read Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid and I didn’t have any expectations going in and it’s randomly one of the best books I’ve ever read. I love an island postcolonial novel (e.g. Wide Sargasso Sea)
I love Kincaid’s descriptions:
“It rained every day for three and a half months, and for all of those days I was sick in bed. I knew quite well that I did not have the power to make the atmosphere feel as sick as I felt, but still I couldn’t help putting the two together. For one day, just as mysteriously as my sickness came, so it left. At the same time, just as mysteriously as the rain came, so it left. It stopped raining for a day, it stopped raining for two days, and then it stopped raining altogether. Drought returned, and, except that the sea was bigger than it used to be, everything was the same again. When the sun started to come out once more, my windows were thrown open and the heat and light rushed in. I had to shield my eyes, I was so unused to seeing everything."
I read paradiso on yeso’s recommendation and liked that too—I think anything on that fitzcaraldo editions would be a good “conversation speaker” for romance.
Likewise, anything on Dalkey Archive would be a good conversation sparker for angry loners.
The title is Paradaís. It’s Polo’s attempt at pronouncing the English word “paradise” which the condo building is named rather than the Spanish word “paraíso.” This is of course a thematically significant detail.
Just started The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia—has anyone here read it? I don’t often read philosophy but this is pretty modern and thematically in my wheelhouse so giving it a shot. It’s really delightful so far: A Socratic discourse between the Grasshopper (of Aesop’s Fables fame, who played all summer and so didn’t store up enough food to survive the winter; as opposed to the hardworking Ant) and his disciples. And the whole apologia is basically like, insisting that play is the highest ideal of life and so worth dying for… I’ve been thinking/writing a lot about work + play recently and so it’s feeding me in a big way. It’s v much like a hopeful tonic for the whole Protestant work ethic thing imo.
I gave my copy of Slow Days, Fast Company to a friend so she can look hot at the beach this summer
Also, last week I saw a girl at a coffee shop reading one of the Penguin Little Black Classics (White Nights by Dostoyevsky, specifically) and that felt like a very chic choice
Interestingly, the next day this article came up on my feed:
So I feel like the universe is telling me to buy that sleek copy of The Death of Ivan Ilyich and while I’m at it I should add some of Emily Bronte’s poetry to my cart as well
in washington dc? where I currently live? gross! those nerds who work on the hill are just so… mid pussy alert
Fun to toy with though! If someone tells me they work for DoD I love the riposte “Oh cool! I love drone strikes!” - if they find it funny, they’re usually cool. If they don’t find it funny… flee immediately
my old friend married a woman who quit a climate sciene job at a university to go work for the DOD (as the joke goes, the pentagon is the only department that takes climate change seriously). everyone in my friend group had a huge falling out with them when oct 7th happened because his wife is also a zionist and our other friend is palestinian. the palestinian friend made a post on instagram calling the IDF cockroaches and the zionist DOD climate scientist wife CALLED THEM ON THE PHONE to tell them how disrespectful and antisemetic it was
The other day I saw a guy very publicly reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed in the still-a-radical aging millennial coffee shop and was like ‘wow is this guy trying to get tail on a Wednesday morning’
mid pussy alert 
