elri

A selfie with one hand holding the phone. I’m a white femme-presenting person with a round face, large square glasses, and short fluffy black hair. My free hand is up in a peace sign and I’m doing a lil blep with my tongue with my head slightly tilted. I’m wearing a purple sweatshirt with the photo angled to show off the embroidery on the front, which reads “I don’t struggle with autism, I’m actually really good at it” in white capital letters. Around the text are little yellow stars with eyes and a smiling mouth in black.

my last christmas present got stuck in shipping hell but it’s FINALLY with me, hell yeah

Always a great sign for how things are going in your country when 21-year-olds are like “hey, I innovated a system to play bagpipes in tear gas”

(yet, with all its interest in boundaries, what is *in* and what is *out* - if the sea claims the town, as so often it does…what does that mean, when the bounded becomes one with the utterly unbound?)

actually no im NOT done being insane about the hiding place. it’s a coastal horror novel where the sea does not directly factor into any of the horror. that’s nuts to me. I don’t think i’ve ever encountered that before. i can’t stop thinking about how fascinating that is

need to express something about that book that has made me mildly insane
my family holidays by the coast a lot, a week’s getaway at some point to beachcomb etc.
3 years ago, the house we rented (many floors & attic rooms) bothered my mum with the pervasive smell of damp
it was our whitby trip rental

finishing up the hiding place has me remembering my undergrad dissertation, which used mason’s first novel the wayward girls as a text
i was looking at how teenage girls make their own kinds of wretched justice when wronged
maybe i should go back to that piece and rewrite it to be Good, Actually

A white hand holding a book, ‘The Hiding Place’ by Amanda Mason. The cover is dark blue, showing a house in silhouette around the title in orange letters. Items from the novel - a ballet slipper charm on a ribbon, a hagstone, a key, broken glass, pins and pebbles - line the outside. At the top of the house, seagulls fly, and a figure is shadowed against the orange light of an attic window.

3: The Hiding Place by @amandajanemason.bsky.social
A dark, creeping folk horror novel coalescing to a visceral conclusion, in a quaint coastal town. Things unfold forwards & backwards, revealing the cruelties hidden within a person, the sacrifices women make, and the brutality with which they do so

utterly rage inducing

i was the same! i reached the first mention of “the fields we think we know” and immediately knew i was going to be reading something very special

sometimes the world is very bad, and sometimes a 12 year old from plymouth emails you because he loves learning about universities and wants to know if you have any stickers or postcards you could send him

A white hand holding a book, ‘The River Has Roots’ by Amal El-Mohtar. The cover is white with a snaking greek-brown design interlinked with pink flowers, similar to spider lilies.

2: The River Has Roots by @amalelmohtar.com. Achingly beautiful, gorgeously lyrical, a faerie story about agency & sisterhood. The River Liss flows from north to south, and its magic is grammar. Translation, transliteration, riddles; references to Shakespeare, Dunsany & mythology. Instant favourite😭

After 73 days of hunger strike which began in November 2025, three of the Palestine Action prisoners have ended their hunger strikes after it was revealed that Elbit Systems UK was denied a £2 billion army training contract with the Ministry of Defense, a key demand of the hunger strikers.

i’m a happy critter when i’m adding more books to my TBR
fantasy, gothic and horror novels remain fantastic and so many amazing new ones are coming out continually
sometimes i worry i’ll run out of books and need to break my read each day streak, but uh. i think i’ll be okay at this rate

it’s a froggy socks in the office kinda day today

sidebar but ough ouch i completed my bachelors six years ago this summer. hate that

you ever start reading a book and go “you know what? this 10000% belongs on the reading list for a module i took in my final year of undergrad six years ago”
anyway the river has roots is off to a STRONG start and i need it on the fantasy & fandom module from my bachelors like. yesterday

pattern recognition go brrrr
anyway welcome to elri’s theory of Orange British Gothic

A white hand holding a book, ‘Broken Ghosts’ by J.D. Oswald. The cover shows a deep, blue-black woodland with an orange sky behind. Orange oyster mushrooms and a bee are in the foreground. The tagline reads: “The deepest secrets hide in the darkest shadows. A hidden spirit is waiting to be found.”

1: Broken Ghosts by @jamesoswald.scot. A tragedy that unearths tragedies. A twelve year old girl reckoning with grief and unpicking the memories of the past in a small Welsh valley, told in split time in past and present. A gently gothic tale where the hauntings are deeply human.

Books of 2026:

New year! Time for a new thread: books I read in 2026

a collection of snow….,,things i saw today

hey, he survived from last night!

just had a quick peep out the window. the result:

i live above an industrial workshop, and after hours a lot of folks don’t know people live here in flats
anyway these fellas were having a great time. i have no idea who they are

Can't believe Stranger Things ends with them switching to Pathfinder

telford mentions (derogatory) aside, im reading broken ghosts at the moment and there’s something that’s probably a mark of a great writer that’s so utterly gut wrenching in how oswald writes a 12 year old scottish girl experiencing grief and loss in such a jarring way
this hurts to read

‼️shropshire mention in the book i’m reading‼️