ari > Recent Status Updates

t.s. eliot your pen game too holy, your swag too ceaseless, your drip unfathomable, your mind too fire

- gerontion (9/10), new favourite, hate how searingly relevant these poems are. christ as no longer a gentle lamb but a tiger, a predator. there is no salvation when weak minds are rife. driven mad with desire.
- burbank with a baedeker (7.5/10) had to pull out the google for this one but once i did, fire

got distracted reading this bcs i could not stop drooling over photos of seol in-ah and kim yeon-koung in suits so now i'm at another level of immersed empathising with the plot of this novel (going crazy with lust over an older woman), i did it for the reading experience

- the love song of j.alfred prufrock (10/10, genuinely unbeatable even after reading it 50 times holy fuck)
- portrait of a lady (6.5/10)
- preludes (image of ancient women gathering fuel in vacant lots has never left my mind, 8/10)
- rhapsody on a windy night (8/10 the world held in lunar synthesis, a madman unable to resuscitate a dead geranium, losing your grasp on reality and still putting the shoes at the door)

the japan glazing in this novel never stops lmao

obviously one of the points of the book is how nopphon is younger than mom ratchawong kirati but it is cracking me up how much of the book is spent with the man being like SHE'S 35??? HOW IS SHE NOT A HAGGARD DECREPIT LADY?? NO IMPOSSIBLE HER BEAUTY COULD NEVER BE THAT OF A 35 year old???

so after scouring the seven seas 🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️, im technically reading the Singapore Oxford University press 1990 edition which has a BEAUTIFULL cover. anyway, this is why its so important to read introductions. David Smyth’s introduction was fab if not incredibly thorough - almost 45 pages. v excited to read kulap saipradit’s work. unfathomably brave brave commie social activist may he live forever

bcs reading t.s.eliot for the first time in english really did fundamentally change me and finding this at a book fair a year ago for $1 did feel like god themself embraced me. re-reading this and listening to rm's RPWP, 2 pieces of art that i feel the most understood in my life by, that mean the most to me oh modernist alienated emotionally paradoxical existential masterpieces you are so near and dear to me!

thematic messaging has the subtlety of a sledgehammer

switching it to have the "bad grammar" as practiced and intentional and all of james's pov being perfect grammar in opposition to huck's from the og.... oh percival everett your mind... "Try 'dat be,'" I said. "That would be the correct incorrect grammar."

bcs i didn't read the awful 'adventures of huckleberry finn' earlier this year for nothing and i have to read this before i forget everything that happened in the og text

reading edward said’s ‘orientalism’ and ella shohat’s theory of topographical reductionism will rlly make it impossible to ignore some of agatha christie’s racism (of which there’s a lot) in the way she describes settings

no one:
agatha christie: women rlly like it when men CHEAT on them bcs they are EMOTIONAL fickle little creatures (✧ω✧)

it's giving when life gives you tangerines, past lives and pachinko all in one, except obviously not korean

pretty low expectations for this one except hoping reading it fundamentally changes my molecular structure and at the same time remind me of ‘past lives’ but other than that, not expecting much

hmmmm trying to take the feminist lens AWWWWFFFFF but the racism keeps on coming LMFAOO

a gigola a lounge lizard!! a middle aged woman cheating on a cheater oh the horror!!

irritating me obnoxiously that i cannot log the exact edition of this i'm reading (wordsworth classics vintage 1999 edition that i got at a thrift sale for $1 :))))) but this is the closest in terms of prettiness and also word count so. also injecting a re-read of sherlock holmes into my veins once again just to fEEEL SOMETHINGGG

am liking this, certainly an easy read but not loving it- atp i'm looking for a book that is "easy" and also one that i don't want to put down and not sure if it meets all of those qualifications. i do wonder if part of what makes this book really good but not like outstanding-seared-in-my-mind-forever is the fact that the main character is a man? honestly that reasoning is probably a bit of reach....

“I know,” I said, and gulped. But I had wanted to be a TikTok genius more than anything.


DJEJEJ THIS BOOK IS KILLING ME

gonna have to dnf approx 50 pages in bcs reading slump meant that i can't renew the book and have to return it to the library but i will be returning to this at some point!

started on the 15th, am eating this up as of current, so so immediately compelling, funny and firmly entrenched in the current digital cultural zeitgeist. incredibly curious to see how the resolution will handle all the digital politics of sex work

cute but even tho this is a #woke book, any implication that gay men are not capable of perpetuating misogyny is irritating to me

i think i actually started this maybe a week ago (and have barely progressed) ?hmmm the 2nd of april? idk anyway note to self

OH MY GOD FUCKING FINALLY JESUS CHRIST its been at least a 150 pages of me going OH MY GOD SAFFY R U ACTUALLY DENSE how do you not know oh my god good grief woman

see this is what happens when i abandon a perfectly book that i was actually vibing with 50 pages in just cuz i was in a weird mental space and couldn't be bothered to read because now when i pick it up i do not have the mental energy to restart or remember this. anyway. putting a temporary pin in this cuz i want to return it to the library and clear my mojo and start anew but note to self to really get back to this

is there a single thing that doesn’t lead back to colonialism/colonialist thought

the depths of depravity the architects of AI have inflicted onto us as a civilisation was something i was already aware of but it continues to horrify me on an inexplicable level

this book is just island whatever mysterious bullshit and din is just constantly reaching unprecedented levels of idgaf-ing. whatever it is- he does NOTTTTT CARE

act. started feb 18. also robert jackson bennett's mind is truly insane lmao.