december reads / year-end review (Patreon)

hello! i have for you the final puzzle piece from a year of reading...december:

how to do nothing by jenny odell

allegedly self-help(?) to do with attention economy + what it has to do with capitalism

was immediately disenchanted by the first few chapters wherein the author describes herself so listless and depressed after trump was elected that all she could do was conduct many experimental art exhibitions and birdwatch….ehhggg…

immediately felt i’m not the audience…if we wanna talk about ‘work’ my like capitalistic vice is something that also gives my life a sparkling sense of purpose…in that way the desire to ‘do nothing’ rings hollow..it’s like saying stop eating all those delicious meals and do nothing instead..and it’s like ok yeah like..i could..

+ if we wanna talk about social media, i do think social media is bad for some of the reasons she laid out, i do appreciate the freedom found in keeping one’s thoughts to oneself, i do appreciate the idea that in ‘real life’ you’re able to codeswitch depending on your audience but social media stops you from this and you instead become one thing to everyone..sure

basically the beginning annoyed me and so from that point i wanted to disagree with it hahaha. i think that’s maybe the most insightful observation i can pull from this.

how to do nothing, including be likable

i read this because it’s what cj the x was reading for their patreon book club so fuck u cj. fight me out back

lambda by david musgrave

a cop in an ai-gaga near-future surveilles lambdas, a small aquatic humanoid, which were recently discovered and can’t stop being hate crimed

enjoyed this a lot. the structure felt very (in)/(as)pirational to me, the bewildering mr. hello asides, the gimmick that the whole novel is generative...it just worked for me and i liked it

+ funny that characters were introduced with their OCEAN personality test scores, about which i feel similarly cynical to how i imagine the author does..

not one to expect a satisfying narrative from…throwing ideas around…characters are forgettable in favor of bastioning these ideas…i enjoy this kind of fiction (i’m looking at you german tv show dark) so this worked for me

sits in my head as a large metallic rectangle

salmon by sebastian castillo

a clockably young poet moves to a country called SALMON and hijinks ensue

someone on goodreads described it as ‘the lobster meets pinnochio’ which, like, sure. fairy tale feeling, fantastical dialogue and situations, etc..'picaresque tradition of walser and queneau' who i've not read so am missing numerous puzzle pieces but still enjoyed

fun old-timey prose, weird and hallucinatory, funny, bright, playful

weird, when i finished this i was pretty nonplussed but as i write this a few weeks later i remember it fondly and kind of want to read it again lol? has a very clear brightness in my mind when reliving the experience of reading it? excitement related to being a kid? i think that’s nice. idk. enjoyed.

taipei by tao lin

autistic man does drugs with women

standout for me this month potentially this year..tao lin’s kinda recently come on my radar and with his work i feel the sensation of cracking something open

just wonderful prose, very aspirational, the sticky kind that changes my voice immediately after reading..the semi-robotic (sorry) distillation of social interaction to its base components followed by these whirling phenomenological thought spirals....woohoo..

felt genuinely similar to my internal monologue in a way i haven’t encountered before

all that being said i found the last movement insufferable to read in which him and his girlfriend and the doomed relationship rotting between them do just like so many drugs..an obscene amount of drugs…

(i can't stand drug conversations..they’re unbearable..so false and senseless and, like, not even fun? it’s partially a self-consciousness i feel on drugs where i can’t give myself over to them and am instead held by the scruff off my neck by a mean and sober narrator who is so aware i’m thinking like an idiot and i think that is what largely made my first time on mushrooms just dreadful lmao (do u wanna hear about it?..is that what our relationship is)...it also makes being social impossible because i’m feeling like i give off this sort of odd judgemental energy the whole time..anyway all of those feelings were dredged out of me reading that final sequence. yoink)

but/and overall. excited to read the rest of his novels

the complete fear of kathy acker by jack skelley

long-lost episodic novella(?) from the eighties about weird-horny wired guy walking around los angeles

bit of an odd one, enjoyed some passages but i think i was missing some essential context..dunno much about LA in the eighties, not even familiar with kathy acker, bad start (not that you really need to be, the introduction is about primarily how the book has nothing to do with kathy acker)….i tried to keep referencing the very extensive glossary(!) at the back, which is crazy it even needs to have because it’s pretty slim, like, the story itself is less than 100 pages, but just absolutely crammed with proper nouns hahah

intro cracked me up, very serious and academic discussion about a book that is literally like ‘i want to pull her pussy lips back while probing her asshole’ (sorry)

appreciated the weird-horny segments, reminded me in moments of cartoon-fantasy-sexual-asides of 1982 janine which is one of my favorites

god bless the young and deranged you know. i think that's my main take away. love a little freak

i like how the author’s name is almost jack skellington

ok and this is everything i read this year (as chronological as i could possibly make it because i think that’s interesting) with my favorites bolded. funny list this year, a little light, + i think a switch flipped in me halfway through where i said to myself, you know what you like, so just read that forever instead of the newest urgent identity-fueled hardback (+ weirdly i’ve seen more than one list this year where, and this is so cynical of me to make assumptions, but, like, all the covers together looked cohesive? all the same kind of trendy/beautiful? made me realize that was very much not how i wanted to read. i should unfollow those people). obviously was the year of dennis cooper, also felt like i finally got nabokov'd (first read of 2024 is pale fire). not a ton of poetry.

this year i want to go where the curiosity is…keep bulking canon-wise….would like more non-fiction...

american psycho by bret easton ellisexquisite corpse by poppy z. briterouge street by shuang xuetaothe most precious substance on earth by sashi bhatthe world keeps ending and the world goes on by franny choithe employees by olga ravncyber smut by julianne ingles (editor)all down darkness wide by seán hewittboyfriend mountain by kelly schirmann and tyler brewingtonfour futures by peter frasethere must be a reason people come here by brian foleyon connection by kae tempestuserlands by dennis cooper (editor)frisk by dennis cooperthe sluts by dennis coopercloser by dennis cooperdream police by dennis cooperthe fifth child by doris lessinga helping hand by celia daleit’s complicated by dana boydthe time machine by h.g. wellsthe language instinct by stephen pinkerthe prophet by kahlil gibranso sad today by melissa broderpsychoanalysis: the impossible profession by janet malcolmthe idiot by elif batumanthe plague by albert camuscosmic horror by james knightthe plague by albert camusoutline by rachel cuskfear and loathing in las vegas by hunter s. thompsonthe enchanter by vladimir nabokovthe last night of the earth poems by charles bukowskihow to do nothing by jenny odelllambda by david musgravesalmon by sebastian castillotaipei by tao linthe complete fear of kathy acker by jack skelley

please let me know what your 2023 favorites were...i'm very curious