lucas > Recent Status Updates

kicked off 2026 by making things official with my boyfriend. and had a bit of a 'the bed would feel empty. without you in it.' moment. happy new year everyone

welcome back, locke lamora (:

dreamed about threads two last night. it was oddly victorian

felt so out of it the past couple of days. really hoping it is just a post-christmas crash and recovery period because constant exhaustion is kind of suboptimal. i have books to read and write and three family birthdays in the next few days. ursula k le guin save me

was reading the foreword to this while my nephew was sitting next to me and he asked if i could read it to him. influencing a two year old to consider ecosocialist, antifascist paradigms

sat in the living room reading the climax of this book while my parents watched their festive christmas eve movie of choice, venom: the last dance. not sure if it's a step up or down from last year, when it was alien, then predator, then giving up on alien vs predator in favour of small soldiers. better than christmas movies, regardless. not to be a grinch but theyre all a bit shit

i know there are a lot of theories about ren's magic. personally would like her to be able to balance. there's a nice poetry in that

want to finish this reread before christmas. guess that means i have to read two hundred pages in 24 hours. i simply have to. definitely not because i want an excuse to think about my dear magicians constantly

next time someone complains that lila and kell aren't right for each other (by which i mean someone complains that lila isnt good enough for kell, because that's always what it is), i may have to direct them to part two of this book. so what if she isnt soft and doting. the love is so obviously there, and the stubbornness of it is refreshing

colleague i work under explicitly told me to read on company time next week, as there's no actual construction work happening and therefore no work to be done between now and the new year. so i basically get ten day's holiday for the price of two. thank you norfolk offshore wind

looking forward to threads two for many reasons, one of which being that kell finally gets to feel whole again. every moment he spends suffering from the loss of his magic feels like a knife to the chest. as i am so very normal about the antari trio

didnt include this in my last adsom reread as i was saving it for a rainy day, so to speak. and that day has come

had to go into the london office today and was sitting with a colleague on the long and arduous train journey back. started talking about books and she asked if i'd ever read a darker shade of magic. had to pretend to be normal about it as the context to the question was her asking if id read acotar + me saying i tried years ago and couldnt get into it, and that was her adsom experience. jumpscare

have four hours of meetings tomorrow at work, and have voluntarily attended a ninety minute local green party meeting this evening. all online. it is making me yearn for the communal life this book discusses, even with the woes along the way. ive done enough coppicing and woodland management in the past to know it does me some good

got home from work. water bottle leaked in bag. copy of this book is quite badly water damaged, as is my work notebook. fortunately the notebook im drafting my novel in got off unscathed. this could tip me over the edge i cant lie

i originally wanted to do my undergrad dissertation on anarchist geographies and the benefits of communal living in the contemporary world, but decided against it because i thought it would be a pain in the arse to research. if id found books like this sooner, maybe things would have gone differently, and i would have actually found my dissertation interesting. alas

im not used to reading this slowly, but in a way i am glad i took my time with this and read it in quiet moments where i was in the right headspace to take it all in, because this book would have been ruined by rushing through it i think. definitely one i will have to reread at some point + write my notes and quotes (keep forgetting i have a notebook for that). maybe i should read more antifascist hungarian lit

was out after work yesterday with the guy im. not exactly dating but also not /not/ dating. and he mentioned how he accidentally made intense, prolonged eye contact with a member of radiohead at a concert on tuesday. and my immediate response was 'oh, that happened in american psycho [book not film] when patrick bateman went to a u2 concert'. it's a good job he's kind of enamoured with me

'could this, he wondered, be a form of the last judgement? no trumpets, no riders of the apocalypse but mankind swallowed without fuss or ceremony by its own rubbish?' well. not a whole lot seems to have changed in the thirty-six years since this book was published. let's leave it at that.

intrigued by the character in this book who believes the moon landing didnt actually happen because he cannot imagine that anybody would leave the earth and then choose to return. mr eszter you would have loved ursula k. le guin's 'the dispossessed'.
also. bought a copy of children of time for my dad as a birthday gift (he is fond of the expanse and also socialism) and having to fight the urge to read it myself

this book is good, but it is so incredibly dense. classic-esque writing style and no paragraph breaks. that sort of thing. which really does not lend itself well to the schedule im currently dealing with. got back from work at almost 11pm last night and half 7 tonight. no time or energy to read more than a page or two. may have to make use of some low energy ebooks on libby

reading time nonexistent. get to go to parliament for work next week though. you win some, you lose some

they say not to judge a book by its cover, but they say nothing about judging a book by its title. there was no chance of me passing by this in waterstones without at least reading the blurb. i fear i am becoming a little too predictable (also discovered when buying this that my student plus card expired when i had like. eight stamps on it. and my uoy email doesnt exist anymore so i cannot fix it easily. woe.)

finished the book this morning, holding off on marking it as finished because i want to sit and write a proper review this time. and do not have the energy right now

first day of work successful. realised that i am about to experience a drastic reduction in my reading time. and my music time. and my writing time. and pretty much all of my time. the price we must pay for £24,500/yr. contemplating giving audiobooks a go to listen to on my commute but it is barely fifteen minutes so. going to have to see how things go (i was not designed for office life)

i had forgotten how awful paul and julian were. well. mostly paul. 10/10 for toxic homoerotic codependency but bloody hell

very jarring seeing zack polanski on the last leg when i know several people who are quite good friends with the man and are on affectionate first name terms with him. im on eryg committee with a member of his campaign team who messages him semi-regularly. very glad to have helped vote him in

may follow up this reread by locating some strange and niche horror ebooks. something about the genre tickles my brain enough to get me back into the reading mood and makes it almost comforting. even when the books aren't great. which would make for some pretty easy psychoanalysis if i had any interest whatsoever in psychology

driving instructor had me doing loops of the roads near my old secondary school and sixth form, which naturally led to her saying 'oh yeah, someone in your year was arrested for murder'. i vividly remember sitting next to him in ethics class while discussing the trolley problem. even still have my gcse triple science class photo with him in. top five pieces of tsas lore methinks

rereading yet another book about unhealthy homoerotic obsession to get me through these trying times. have to do an intensive driving course this week because so many environment jobs demand a driver's license. not happy about it