.🪽

American Psycho
Arsenic & Old Lace
Love Hurts
Baby Driver
Rachel Rachel
Paprika

Jurassic World
Drive Away Dolls
ConAir
Caught By the Tides
Are We Done Now?
Secret Mall Apartment
Eyes of the Beast
Pornocracy

Q3
The Hobbit
The Hobbit: the Desolation of Smaug
The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies
Cabin in the Woods
Annihilation
Adams Family Values
Parenthood
The Life of Chuck

Movies I've Seen this Year

Q1
Conclave
Manila in the Claws of Light
Mickey 17
Opus
Twisters
Chez Jolie Coiffure
Signed: Lino Brocka
Living Together
Play it Loud: How Toronto Got Soul

Q2
Universal Language
Past Lives
Julie & Julia
Sinners
Mambar Pierrette
Jaws
Challengers
Wicked Little Letters

most listened songs in september 2025: fka twigs - cheap hotel / &team - deer hunter / exo - hear me out / tyla - is it / luna luna - cuando tu me besas / rochelle jordan - ttw / golin - rowdy / troye sivan - rush / wjsn - boogie up / kelela - contact

books i read in september 2025: xiaoly guo's twenty fragments of a ravenous youth & mariana enriquez's a sunny place for shady people

top albums i listened to in september 2025. most listened 6: fka twigs - eusexua afterglow / troye sivan - something to give eachother / magdalena bay - mercurial world / sophie ellis bextor - perimenopop / &team - yukiakari / axmxp - axmxp

movies watched in september 2025 - the hobbit / the hobbit: the desolation of smaug / the hobbit: the battle of the five armies / american psycho / adams family values /magdalena bay imaginal mystery tour (concert)

september

Q3
Enriquez, A Sunny Place for Shady People
Vandermeer, Absolution
Calligarich, Last Summer in the City
Guo, Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth
July, No One Belongs Here More Than You
Lunn, Conversations on Love

Real, How Can I Get Through to You?

Q2
Orange, There There
Vandermeer, Annihilation
Vandermeer, Acceptance
Vandermeer, Authority
Chevillard, Museum Visits
Smith, NW
Chiang, Exhalation
Lispector, the Hour of the Star
Yu, Interior Chinatown
Callard, Aspiration

Books I've Read This Year
Q1
Evaristo, Girl Woman Other
Clarke, Piranesi
Danticat, Everything Inside
Au, Cold Enough for Snow
Adebayo, Stay With Me
Nelson, Open Water
Kawakami, All the Lovers in the Night
Uhart, A Question of Belonging
Kanai, Mild Vertigo
Cameron, the Artist's Way

had him keep driving, or go home for real. but those are probably worse endings thematically than the actual ending. idk. i liked it but i didn't but i did

trope, so i was still able to enjoy the book overall. The ending...well I wish I had written about it while it was fresh. I think I was surprised but not entirely shocked. not a bad ending, but I get it and kinda don't get it at the same time. Narratively, a good ending. but personally...i might've

cousin-of-1ncel type of deal that you see all the time in literary fiction. but i digress.
leo is a lot, if not all of these things, including being a probable self insert, but manages not to be a- (and that's where I stopped in my notes).
i'll say--leo is probably the least annoying example of this

don't posess. this type of self-insert doesn't care about women but is also very good with them and has some deep internal crisis that a woman couldn't dream of understanding that causes a lack of interest in the women who throw themselves at the self insert in question. it's like a weird,

semi-depressed yet inexplicably charming (to the women in the book), well-read & clever (bordering on pretentious & pedantic), etc. the type of character who's every literary man's self-insert who they use, no matter the overall subject matter, as a way to daydream about sexual prowess that they

leo's life is at once glamorous and not glamorous at all--he's aware that as his 30th birthday approaches, he has nothing. he's a rooted drifter in a sense, and i think that piece of him is surprisingly relatable.
leo's the kind of character who i often hate:

the protagonist, leo gazzaro, moves to rome with very little money and an unstable job as a small time journalist and largely relies on his ability to endear himself to rich friends in order to get by.

i saw the scenery and felt the stickiness of the summer during which the book takes place (it helps that i started it in florence, although the majority of the book takes place in rome).
it's at once relatable and not relatable--

(3) unfinished recap from my notes app:
i enjoyed this more than i expected to. it's a pretty short book that wastes no time without sacrificing rich description. i could imagine this book as a movie, not because it's full of drama and action (it's not) but because as i read it,

The author, Natasha Lunn, reflects on the lack of self-worth & self-respect that once plagued her dating life. The part that stood out to me: "...a gut feeling that told me the men I dated were extraordinary humans, always cleverer and more interesting than I was." Dr. Frank Tallis, a psychologist, shares his perspective; "we often 'aggrandize our own confusion or lack of insight' when we have no evidence of real intimacy," as in, we tell ourselves stories that cast a lack of tangible evidence of love & regard ("my partner does [x] to make me feel loved/i try to do [y] to care for my partner/[z] is why we work together") as "gut feelings" & "chemistry," or what Tallis calls "romantic mysticism".

Natasha Lunn describes seeing people shrink themselves in their relationships, the slippery slope that it is. She says that it "starts in small ways: pretending you want to see a horror film at the cinema; making Spotify playlists of songs that might impress them instead of the ones you really want to listen to..."

lied, i'll just post this pics lol

'I've told you twice not to call me after bedtime.' Parents don't do this hatefully. They think they're doing it so you don't become an annoying little asker, but it makes you into one. Because if you don't ask for your needs to be met, they won't be, and that can make you needy."

"Children are told, 'Those that ask don't get.' And then as adults they think they'd be selfish if they said, 'It makes me feel better when you text before you go to sleep to say goodnight.' It doesn't sound like too much to ask, does it? But somehow it feels enormous because of small comments like,

i know there are better ones that i just didn't keep track of. at some point i think i'll probably reread this book and journal about the interviews i like best. maybe towards the end of this year or sometime next year.

(2) i loved this, but i did read it on vacation, so i don't think i really gave it the attention it requires. or really, i did give the book my mental attention, but i didn't do enough to make sure i'd remember the pieces that stood out to me. i'll reproduce some of the quotes i marked below, but

writing, but it has to *do* something, it has to go somewhere, it can't be shallow or for shock value

one just didn't stick & generally left a bad taste in my mouth.
i want to say that the bad taste doesn't come from the dark, dead dove type content that july touches upon, but more the lack of purpose to it, and the lack of feeling. discomfort can be a pretty powerful feeling to evoke through

an hour while sitting in a busy public square, so distraction probably accounts for some of my lack of memory. it's obnoxious though that i can definitely recall way more about danticat's stories in everything inside (read in february) and chevillard's stories in museum visits (read in april). this

(1) i started to write about this book in my notes app, but i got as far as writing out the title before i didn't want to think about it anymore. honestly im annoyed with myself because i don't remember most of the stories in the book, only that i didn't like them. but i did read the whole book in

plain yellow cover with black, sans serif text. no one belomgs here more than you. stories by miranda july

conversations on love by Natasha Lunn, vivid blue serif text on a pinky orange background, with a baby pink stripe on the right side

last summer in the city by gianfranco calligarich. black and white photo of s cigarette in a crystal ash tray with a thick orange border

august

reading experience.
If I could only get one more book out of this series, I, and I think most readers, would vote for the whitby story. i still dont understand what's going on with him at all, but he's still such an endearing and deeply confusing character who provokes a lot of unanswered questions.

chord between clarity and uncertainty, and all of the uncertainty felt purposeful and enriching. the lack of clarity in Absolution felt less masterful and more gimmicky, honestly. I really didn't hate this book, but I think a more outspoken editor or focus group could've really enriched the

But overall - While I'm typically inclined to blame myself for the things I miss, that seems to be the fan consensus as well. Not to keep propping up annihilation (especially since I personally liked acceptance and authority as well), but it (and acceptance, actually) really did strike the right

pushing Jamal off the roof when it doesn't make sense for him to have shown up, and of course the whole conversation with the suit near the border. I don't know that I felt this begrudging affection while I was reading, but right now I can say that Lowry was a mess (affectionate).