lucas > Recent Status Updates

went up the city today, found a copy of sheldrake's entangled life for six quid in a charity shop, then got another three books from the book hive for sixteen quid thanks to my loyalty card. and five notebooks. i went shopping with the intention of getting some more shorts. which did happen, just after all the books

debating whether to brave a trip to london in october for the victorious tour, if to just get a digital ticket for edinburgh. my capacity to navigate london alone is kind of limited to the liverpool street to mayfair tube journey and that city is the one of the few places where ive had full-on meltdowns. but i do enjoy seeing vic on tour. holding out hope for a norwich date for threads two

i do like the way blackout poetry is interspersed throughout this book, and how fragmented it all feels. perhaps not what i was expecting, but i dont think ive ever read anything structured quite like this before, and ive got a soft spot for oddly-structured stories, courtesy of house of leaves. which i really need to reread

helping a colleague with some year ten work experience this week, and during a break we had a little chat about the books we're reading. she's reading a nice little romcom, i made a joke about us reading very different things so she opened this to a random page and started to read aloud. unfortunately she got the page where one monk asked another about sin and sodomy because of the sex they'd been having

went to york this weekend to visit friends, and made time for a detour to the new topping & co bookshop. finally got my hands on blackouts, which ive been looking for since last year, plus a book on icelandic folklore and another on monsters in fiction. could have spent hours in there

i was not expecting this book to feature a dysphoric monk

this is what a dark fantasy/folk horror novel ought to be. entertaining, with more than a hint of magic. having fun with it

swash and backwash mentioned ‼️ almost certain i could still draw the longshore drift diagram from memory, and i cannot remember the last time i saw it. some things never fade with time

five and a half pages of glossary three, waterways, dedicated to words relating to rainfall across the british isles. it does make sense

i like language, i like landscapes, i like mediations on placemaking, so i expect to enjoy this book a lot. however, i had to check the 'gifts' glossary for a certain something, and have to say that bishy barnabee is not a suffolk term. it is a norfolk classic.

there are some useful points in here, but this book is also incredibly repetitive, and i agree with several reviews pointing out the lack of nuance. this could have been a zine

im always telling myself i want to start doing more in my local community and getting more active with this sort of thing, so hoping this book will give me some good ideas. it was yet another spontaneous book hive purchase. that shop has an incredible selection of non-fiction and i ham not allowing myself to enter until i get through at least five more books on my physical tbr. because i will buy more leftist lit

this was an impulse buy from my notorious favourite local indie bookshop, because i want to read more books by local authors. i was not expecting to be jumpscared by the village i have lived in all my life (uni notwithstanding) being mentioned, let alone being where the main character is from. his description of this place did hit close to home

goodreads keeps recommending me more krasznahorkai novels because im reading this. and i suppose there are some similarities to the melancholy of resistance in the atmosphere and surreal touches, though this is far more intense with both. impossible book to describe in the four hundred characters a goodreads update gives you

what do i even say about what i just read. this certainly is gothic horror and plays well on the reader's discomfort and uncertainty . intrigued to see how it continues

one must imagine sisyphus happy 👍

i have never been particularly philosophical, but i am fond of sisyphus (i ended up with two capybara plushies, and dubbed them 'sisyphus' and 'the boulder'.), which i am sure has nothing to do with having a corporate job in the capitalist hellscape of this century, and i have enjoyed 20th century absurdism in the past. plus, i want an intellectual challenge, and stepping out of my comfort zone should provide that

there was an indie book and zine fair in the city today, so naturally i went to have a wander, and visited a few other book shops and such while i was at it. bravely didnt enter the book hive because i bought three books there last week. and then got the jumpscare of my life when im browsing, see someone waving at me, and realise it is none other than my boss / manager of my team. was not prepared for that one

what do i even do with myself once i finish this. 545,000 words. a month of my life. never have i been so glad to spend so much time with a book, but the thought of reading something new feels wrong. even if i have planned a vicious reread because i need some light reading

the number of character deaths in this book has more than doubled in the past fifteen pages. not including all of the 'this person said this thing about this event before dying in a meat freezer' incidents as that would put the death count of tom's crossing comfortably in the hundreds. bloody hell.

too many terrible moments in this book for me to know where to begin talking about them. utter devastation, mixed in with some damn good social commentary integrated perfectly into the narrative

overall pretty upsetting local election results today, but my division went green (: and reform didnt get enough seats for a majority. mostly and ironically thanks to rupert lowe

it may or may not have taken me almost nine hundred pages to realise that orvop is an anagram of provo. in my defence i dont tend to think about utah and did not make the connection until i saw provo mentioned on mark z danielewksi's wikipedia page. the more you know

starting to regret not taking notes now. there are some beautiful passages in this book, and i admire mark danielewski as a writer, but the only quote i could actually locate is the orpheus one on page 309. alas.

halfway through at last. this book is so very dense

picked up a beautiful hardback of thomas mann's collected short stories from an antique shop today (: and also got a miniature workout when my niece and nephew insisted i chase them around the garden for twenty minutes. still crawling through this book but the activities taking up much of my time are worthwhile

the rage old porch and his sons inspire in me is too great for a goodreads update. egan porch when i get you

going on holiday tomorrow and plan to make the most of the five+ hours in the car to make a proper dent in this book. all these work events have left me lucky to read twenty pages a day, and that is not the way to read a book like this. at least it is slowing down a bit in may. only thing of note is they want to get me on a wind turbine

i keep forgetting most of these characters are mormon. they're even worse at following their religion than those disney+ tiktok mormon housewives were. at least none of them drunkenly killed one of their children and then pinned the blame on a random kid. as far as im aware, anyway. i didnt let my friends force me to sit through the entire first series

decided to go to the book hive and buy a book today, despite having a thousand pages left of this and several unread books on my shelf, and the world got me back for it with a norwich labubu jumpscare. the soulless eyes of a giant labubu are more haunting than words can say