Uvrón > Recent Status Updates

Second book in a row that starts immediately with Moby Dick, and this one is clearly also full of sad lesbians going for the combo punch to knock out my soul

Really disappointed by the first novelette, which felt like poorly recycled Viriconium—including its claustrophobic male perspective. The undermining of its own sexism seems to be its major goal, but with a man taking up all the emotional and narrative space, I’m not interested in the attempt. Hope the others are better!

First page we got Moby Dick, we got Russians, back cover has Charnas comparing this to Brothers Karamazov uhoh my expectations are making a squishy hole in my brain and asking the book to fit in it good

“But why have two names at a time?”
…
“You change your name any time you want to?”
“If you do it too often, nobody remembers your name… Sometimes youths do that the first years after naming.”

But Marge, what if a woman gets scrambled in time and all her names tangle together?
-Myles Uvrón Vivienne W [M/W/UV/V-namesign] Schaller

So all of chapter one is omniscient narrator exposition, god help us trapped between this deadly worldbuilding

"In view of our years of intimacy, I am deeply hurt that you should hesitate to die with me. Lest it prove to be a barrier to my salvation in the next life, I decided to include in this final testament all of the grudges against you that have accumulated in me since we first met."

Forget Romeo and Juliet, Jinnosuke is the pinnacle of teenage romance.

Marjorie cannot concentrate on keeping the goddamn universe together for five minutes without some dude getting in her way.

One must be patient when one’s ill six-year-old is beaten up by bullies every week, because he has to learn to adapt. 😬😬😬

I don’t think a beginner cryptic crossword should expect you to know that there’s a wine called Soave or a horse breed called Punch. 😭

Hey guys I think this book might be depressing

“I don’t understand German myself. I learned it at school, but forgot every word of it two years after I had left, and have felt much better ever since.”

I love this eerie start. Gormenghast vibes.

"I followed the directions with the happy result—speaking for myself—that my life was preserved, and is still going on."

This book is charming me quickly

"To encounter an octopus is to be implicated in a question about being that engulfs you both."
—‘Such Flexible Intensity of Life’, Verlyn Klinkenborg

I want to move into Octopolis. Human life has been so unbearably stressful lately.

This audiobook said “skin flicks for yaks” and I’ve missed the next two minutes wondering what the heck that means

Trying to get over the discovery of the official pronunciation guide telling me this super Nahuatl language pronounces X like English X. 🤨

I'm tapping out, sorry Delaney

Sick in bed, I had to set aside Dhalgren and pick up Harrow the Ninth… it’s important to know which type of uncomfortable book is a balm for one’s particular soul

Delaney: I'm writing a book about how difficult and laborious it is to write

The world: Cool, man

D: Me and my journal at the bar, struggling to distill my experience down to a single poem. Every word the result of a full page of scribbling, not to say a day of living large

W: people are gonna love that, that's so relatable for us writerly types

D: I finished it while you were talking, it's 800 pages long

W: ???

This is about religion, so maybe the name Zosima is an intentional reference to the pious elder in Brothers Karamazov. But if so it ain’t serving any purpose.

I was trying to figure out the significance of multiple characters with missing fingers until I realized the other character is in Rakesfall. Wish my neurodivergent brain would remember how to read fewer books at once!

As my friends and I read on and see Severian recognize his fuckups, separate from the only roles he’s known (torturer, man pursuing women), and be haunted by past failures and present mistakes as he tries to learn how to be a person with strangers and children… I’m realizing this is really one book, not a series, and appreciating the discussions it’s inspiring

“It should be my city and my past tumbling through these streets, peeking out around every corner, ready to chat with me. But it seemed we were no longer talking.”

the void adores us and that’s why
it keeps on petting our faces
like they’re lyres.

—[To a Strange, Hollow, and Confused Noise, They Heavily Vanish],
Devon Walker-Figueroa
24 Jul 2025

Chandresekera starts books in such fucking dope ways

In a condition of beautiful love, belonging, and melancholy after the Piranesi LARP. Returning from the House to the World is a complicated journey. 🥲

"Discussion of O'Brien's work in Ireland has always been a critical minefield, and facts are often joyfully abandoned in order to cultishly defend and propagate the rogueish Mylesian myth."

It's turtles all the way sideways with this Myles character.

—Myles