november reads (Patreon)

december's upon us...here's what i read in november...do leave a comment if you read something killer / what your reading plans are for the holidays!!

fear and loathing in las vegas by hunter s. thompson

filthy man has bender in 1970s las vegas populated by american npc’s

loved this rotten piece of autofiction

don’t know why it took me so long to get to…felt like such a rare treat to read…laughed out loud at the pub…had me from the opening scene’s ‘no point mentioning those bats, i thought. the poor fucker will see them soon enough’..

fifty(!) years on america continues to be bad in these ways and more..a necrotic country..

the prophet by kahlil gibran (reread)

talked about this one in my formative poets post. just some great wee scripture

so sad today by melissa broder (reread)

ohhhh melissa. melissa

insane horny person writes essays

candid, irreverent, reads like the sexy older woman you met on a night out is telling you about her love life while on mdma..she’s so mEsSy!!

the standout essay for me by far is the one about her vomit fetish which was such a delight to read the first time and now return to often for comfort and kinship lol

some genuinely very funny lines and predicaments..she conducts her business so differently from me..i am not sure i’d want to know her personally hahaha‘Me: can u tease my pussy over my undies in an ampitheater from like 31-33 AD and then finger me in a dark alley while jesus is crucified and like not know'‘There was a bartender with a bowl cut who I don’t remember sleeping with, but when I saw the used condom on the windowsill the next morning and looked at him inquisitively, he said, You were a disaster. You cried the whole time.’

the enchanter by vladimir nabokov

this is nabokov’s pre-lolita novella…’the first little throb’ of lolita..interesting to compare and see the seeds

notably the protagonist is much less sympathetic – the lolita figure is a more ‘traditional’ victim here without debate

beautiful prose .. written in russian + translated by nabokov’s son

did enjoy reading but my biggest take away was how the bio in my copy mentions nabokov’s ‘cherished pursuit, butterfly catching’.

the last night of the earth poems by charles bukowski

holy cow! holy cow

this is the last collection he wrote before he died and brother he knew it…i’d only read a little bukowski prior to this but knew what his deal was…i don’t know..this felt like something else entirely. not different in subject necessarily but different in the sentimentality the subjects are suspended in…was so moved by this. gentle??

he is such an interesting vessel for this poetry in particular – a poem called ‘confession’ ends with him simply saying ‘i love you’ to his wife with total sincerity…so peeled back. just this big gruff thick-cartilage-nose dude writing confessional verse that’s sometimes, like, twee?? but it doesn’t feel like that because of the vessel…(which side note is why AI can’t write good poetry or if it could people wouldn’t actually care lmao..to be truly moved as an audience member imo one must have a relationship with the author..)

this guy hates the establishment of poetry….’poets with your idiot scrolls’..’you soft lumps of humanity, you imitators of other pretenders’...my fucking dude

it’s such a fat collection as well, 400 pages, which normally puts me off but it’s so damn readable, all felt necessary

sense of worldly movement..he gets writer’s block, recovers..one of the poems is called ‘my first computer poem’!! ‘will this machine finish me / where booze and women and poverty / have not?.....think of all the people who will hate me at this / computer.’

i don’t know!! i don’t know. i really really enjoyed it and it made me sad that he is so deadbaby, air and light and time and spacehave nothing to do with itand don’t create anythingexcept maybe a longer life to findnew excusesfor.