I found myself completely unable to keep up with these reading logs once summer ended — on top of my usual work at a public school, I also returned to college after a 10 year break, and covid has not made either of these things less stressful. Below is most of what I read, with some trims made for sanity's sake; the prospect of compiling and linking to 100+ articles is what had kept me from this task for so long, so I elected not to do so.

I also read much less recreational fiction than usual because I took a Shakespeare class during the fall and spent that time reading (and writing about) four plays multiple times. The materials I read/watched for that class, some assigned and some not, are in their own category at the end of this post.

A ⌛︎ before a title indicates that I have not finished reading it.

Novels

• The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë
• Non-Player Character by Victoria Corva
• Tales of Nevèryon by Samuel Delaney
• Sea of Trolls by Nancy Farmer (reread)
• ⌛︎ Lord of the Flies by William Golding (reread, for work)
• ⌛︎ Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov trans. Stephen Pearl
• ⌛︎ Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin trans. Henry Spalding
• ⌛︎ Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
• ⌛︎ Dracula by Bram Stoker (aloud)
• ⌛︎ The Secret Service by Wendy Walker

Short Stories

• The King in Yellow by R.W. Chambers (reread, 4 short stories)
• “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell (reread, for work)
• Human Domestication Guide (15 stories)
• “The Scruggsdale Organizer #5: Local Man Drives All The Way To Jackson For Grindr Hookup” by Natalie Ironside
• “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson (reread, for work)
• “The Wonderful Stag, or The Courtship of Red Elsie” by Kathleen Jennings (on Tor.com)
• “The Truth” by Stanisław Lem (in The MIT Press Reader)
• “An Explosion of A Pinch of Snuff” by Mordecai Martin (in Timber Journal)
• “Every Cat A Sphynx” by Mordecai Martin (in SORTES)
• “Mother Tongue” by Mordecai Martin (in The Bitchin' Kitsch)
• “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” by Joyce Carol Oates (reread, for work)
• “Egg-Mouth” by Blake Planty (in Butter Magazine)
• “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allen Poe (reread, for work)
• “The Sphinx” by Edgar Allan Poe
• “Jack and Jesse” by Mads Viande
• “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut (reread, for work)
• “penny in a bed of flowers” by Sarah Zedig (Homestuck fanfiction)

Light Novels

• Konosuba: An Explosion on this Wonderful World vol. 1 by Akatsuki Natsume
• Invaders of the Rokujouma vols. 1-2 by Morgan Dreher
• A Sister's All You Need vol. 4 by Hirasaka Yomi & Kantoku
• ⌛︎ The Executioner and Her Way of Life vol. 1 by Mato Sato
• Yes, No, or Maybe? by Michi Ichiho
• Konosuba vol. 4 by Mishima Kurome
• Tearmoon Empire vol. 3 by Mochitsuki Nozomu
• The Ideal Sponger Life vol. 2 by Tess Nanavati

Comics

• Bocchama by Amandurr (ongoing, 7 webtoon chapters)
• Obnoxious Hero-kun by Amandurr (81 webtoon chapters)
• Plain Boy & Prince by Amandurr (ongoing, 64 webtoon chapters)
• Please be my GAL PAL by Amandurr (ongoing, 2 webtoon chapters)
• Kimi to Hamu Hamu shitai no da! by Machiko trans. No Pressure Scans (5 manga chapters)
• Tsubanakasu Haru by Migino Yagi trans. scan beans (5 manga chapters)
• Majo no Geboku to Maou no Tsuno by Mochi trans. Fanatic Scans (ongoing, 8 manga chapters)
• Issho ni Itadakimasu by Mike Nako trans. Pink Cherry Blossom Scans (ongoing, 2 manga chapters)
• 2DK, G-Pen, Alarm Clock by Ohsawa Yayoi trans. Sexy Akiba Detectives (ongoing, 1 manga chapter)
• Can I Get You To Go? by Ohsawa Yayoi trans. Sexy Akiba Detectives (manga one-shot)
• Idiots Don't Catch Colds by Aina Palm (ongoing, 190 webtoon chapters)
• Suitor Armor by Purpah (ongoing, 51 webtoon chapters)
• The Amazing Magic Only You Possess by sono trans. Sexy Akiba Detectives (manga one-shot)
• Gleipnir by Takeda Sun trans. Kirishima Fansub (ongoing, 36 manga chapters)
• An Undesirable Relationship by tmfly trans. Sexy Akiba Detectives (manga one-shot)
• So, Do You Want To Go Out, Or? by tmfly trans. Sexy Akiba Detectives (ongoing, 3 manga chapters)

Interactive & Gaming

• Bread Minus by Freya C. (interactive essay)
• Winter by Freya C. (interactive fiction)
• ⌛︎ Snow Sakura by D.O./G-Collections (visual novel, 2 routes)
• Logging Off by Celine Nguyen (interactive fiction)
• Lesbian Vampire Dating Online by Alison Tam (interactive fiction)
• witchcraft (TTRPG system write-up) by iolbs

Poetry

• “One Source of Bad Information” by Robert Bly (in Morning Poems)
• “Peaches—Six in a Tin Bowl, Sarajevo” by Sandra Cisneros (in My Wicked Wicked Ways)
• “Response, Years Later, to Two Male Poets I Overheard Discussing How Sick They Were of Women’s Poems about the Body” by Meghan Dunn
• “A Toast to the Alchemists” by Laura Gilpin (in The Hocus-Pocus of the Universe)
• “The Pilgrim Reaches Rome (1350 AD)” by A.J. Hammer
• “Binsey Poplars” by Gerard Manley Hopkins (poem)
• “Inversnaid” by Gerard Manley Hopkins (on sowe.li)
• Every Crayola Crayon Color (Past & Present) (Rob Keller/Wikipedia)
• “Hoar-Frost” by Amy Lowell (on Poets.org)
• “Áhàméfùla” by Uche Ogbuji (in Uncanny Magazine)
• “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe (reread, for work)
• Greek Anthology 5.135 by Anonymous trans. Sententiae Antiquae
• Greek Anthology 12.38 attributed to Rhianos trans. Sententiae Antiquae
• “Do You Ever Think About Leaving, My Mother Asks”by Angela María Spring (in Muzzle Magazine)

Misc.

• The Importance of Being Earnest bu Oscar Wilde (reread, play)
• bugwomb by Blake Planty and dev (short fiction/art)
• https://catboy.church/rx.html (zine)
• https://www.surfaces.cx/catboy-church (short stories)
• https://catboys.exposed/2.html (short fiction)
• https://elfboys.com/kiss.html (webpage)
• Elf 9/11 by Porpentine Charity Heartscape (zine/image)
• 102 Total Miscellaneous Articles

Shakespeare (and accompaniments)

• A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare, New Cambridge Shakespeare edition (reread, aloud,)
  • A Midsummer Night's Dream by Benjamin Britten (1960 opera, libretto and BBC recording)
  • A Midsummer Night's Dream (2015 dir. Julie Taymor)
• Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, New Cambridge Shakespeare edition (reread, aloud)
  • Practice Pieces for Actors: Romeo and Juliet by Bertolt Brecht trans. George Tabori (1964 Creative Arts Television)
  • Romeo and Juliet (2009 dir. Dominic Dromgoole)
  • ”'To Free-Town, Our Common Judgement Place': Commoners in Romeo and Juliet” by Barbara Mather Cobb (academic paper)
• As You Like It by William Shakespeare, New Cambridge Shakespeare edition (aloud)
  • As You Like It (2009 dir. Thea Sharrock)
• Hamlet by William Shakespeare, New Cambridge Shakespeare edition (reread, aloud)
  • Practice Pieces for Actors: Hamlet by Bertolt Brecht trans. Michael Lebeck (1964 Creative Arts Television)
  • Hamlet (1996 dir. Kenneth Branagh)
  • Hamlet (2009 Royal Shakespeare Company/BBC)
  • “Shakespeare’s Early Gothic Hamlet” by Gary Taylor (academic paper
  • “More Than Kin, Less Than Kind: Similitude, Strangeness, and Early Modern English Homonationalisms” by Urvashi Chakravarty (academic paper)

Total: 4 completed and 6 partial novels; 34 short stories; 9 light novels; 5 plays; 395 webcomic chapters/updates and 63 manga chapters; 4 short text games/pieces of interactive fiction and 2 visual novel routes; 14 poems; 3 academic papers; and 108 articles, zines, and miscellanea.

#ReadingLog

• I want to try making rock candy. This is a note to self.
• On that note... here is a recipe for a cement smoothie and edible rocks if you wish to eat rocks that have more substance than sugar and food coloring.
• Have you gone sicko mode on a mango lately? Here's your sign if you've been waiting for one.
• This week's menu is: frozen hashbrowns and smoothies (breakfast), lentil-kale salad with grilled cheese on dark rye (packed lunches), chicken noodle soup (dinner), and we're still working on finishing those cookies.

Art Resources

• That repository of vintage art I mentioned last week continues to grow and can now be found on github and itch.io.
• Heritage Type Co. also has some good free-to-use images.
• Flow is a very cool tool to mess with.

Cranesbill from Water-color sketches of plants of North America and Europe

Nature

• Guide to Photographing Mushrooms for Identification
• The fungal mind: on the evidence for mushroom intelligence
• The Intelligent Forest
• How the Pre-Raphaelites Became Obsessed with the Wombat
• Today I separated and transplanted the foxgloves I started in March into a larger container... fingers crossed that they survive the move and make some sexy flowers next spring.

Misc.

• Two essays by Jordy Rosenburg: Gender Trouble on Mother's Day and Trans/War Boy/Gender: On the Primitive Accumulation of T.
• I made some collages with old sex ed worksheets. There are a couple more in this batch I haven't finished yet.

#WeeklyLinks

• An article about Pakistani mango imports.
• I liked the playable essay Bread Minus, “a short narration of my process for baking sourdough bread, interspersed with some tangents on rocket countdowns, oven measurements, and the invention of time.”
• I got a puerh tasting set from Crimson Lotus Tea and it was worth the long shipping time.
• My menu for this coming week is: whatever you can find (breakfast), sambal noodles (packed lunches + dinner), digaag qumbe (packed lunches + dinner), kale-lentil salad (packed snack + side), oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (yum).

from Summer flowers of the high Alps, Somerville Hastings, 1910

Miscellanea

• An article about trawling the comments on the Internet Archive's Greatful Dead collection.
• A little poem about a nice butt from the Greek Anthology, plus some Ancient Greek butt vocabulary.
• The visual novel Butterfly Soup now has web and android ports! I read this a few years ago and really enjoyed it, especially since it takes place in a California high school at around the same time I was going to high school in California.
• A friend turned me on to the joys of industrial safety videos, which are a fun thing to watch in bed on a weekend morning. Please enjoy Shake Hands with Danger and Forklift Driver Klaus.
• Here's a very cool in-progress collection of images taken from public domain books and converted into vector format. My favorites so far are: divider11, frame11, ornament19, ornament28, ornament43 (below), ornatec10, torch, agreatcuriosity, and lazywifepolebean.

#WeeklyLinks

A ⌛︎ before a title indicates that I have not finished reading it.

Novels & Short Stories

• Dreadnought by April Daniels
• Death of a Red Heroine by Qiu Xiaolong
• Gaffe chapters 4 &5 by Casey Callich
• ⌛︎ Tales of Nevèryon by Samuel R. Delaney

Light Novels

• The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya vol. 1 by Tanigawa Nagaru
• Do You Love Your Mom and her Two-Hit Mulit-Target Attacks? vol. 1 by Dachima Inaka
• My Friend's Little Sister Has it in for Me vols. 1 &2 by Hendra Boerma
• I'm in Love with the Villainess vol. 2 by Inori
• The Hero is Overpowered but Overly Cautious vol. 1by Tuchihi Light & Toyota Saori
• The Apothecary Diaries vol. 1 by Sasha McGlynn

Comics

• Ai no su e Ochiro! by Higuchi Misao & Minamijuuji Asuna (chapters 2-4)
• Zettai BL ni Naru Sekai vs. Zettai BL ni Naritakunai Otoko by Konkichi (6 chapters)
• Atarashii Joushi wa Dotennen by Dan Ichikawa (13 chapters)
• Blades of Furry by Deya Muniz & Emily Erdos (37 chapters)
• Let's Play by Leeanne M. Krecic (135 chapters)
• Tricked into Becoming the Heroine's Step-Mother by Hariheen & Mokgamgi (8 chapters)
• Not So Shoujo Love Story by Curryuku (51 chapters)
• Comic on having long-COVID as a young person. by @vitariesocks@tumblr.com
• Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood by Araki Hirohiko (44 chapters)

Articles

• ‘You’re the Problem’: When They Spoke Up About Misconduct, They Were Offered Mental Health Services by Alisha Haridasani Gupta and Ruchika Tulshyan (in The New York Times)
• Why Cookbook Stores Are the Antidote We Need Right Now by Jessica Sulima (in Thrillist)
• England's Upper Classes: A Dangerous Cult by Otto English (in Byline Times)
• This Sweet White Flower Is Actually A Sneaky Carnivore, Scientists Discover by Nell Greenfieldboyce (in NPR)
• New Shape Opens ‘Wormhole’ Between Numbers and Geometry by Kevin Hartnett (in Quanta Magazine)
• Life in the Stacks: A Love Letter to Browsing by Jason Guriel (in The Walrus)
• The Case Against Reading Everything by Jason Guriel (in The Walrus)
• Archival Futures: The Archive as a Place and the Place of the Archive by Sarath Pillai (in Los Angeles Review of Books)
• use computers to store data by J.B. Crawford (in Computers are Bad)
• Book of Lamentations by Sam Kriss (reread, in The New Inquiry)
• The Stages of Not Going on T by Daniel M. Lavery (in The New Inquiry)
• An Accumulation of Nameless Energies by Rob Horning (in Real Life Magazine)
• Just a Girl: Being Briseis by anonymous (in Sententiae Antiquae)
• A history of Simlish, the language that defined The Sims by Brennan Kilbane (in The Verge)
• [The Jean-Paul Sartre Cookbook]()https://pvspade.com/Sartre/cookbook.html by Marty Smith (in The Free Agent, 1987)
• The Mulberry as Placemaker + Community Resource by Kirsten Bradley (on Milkwood.net)
• I Became A Pandemic ‘Wine Mom.’ Here’s What I Learned. by Amanda Montei (in the HuffPost)
• Grizzly bear DNA maps onto Indigenous language families by Rachel Fritts (in Science Magazine)
• Rain falls at Greenland ice summit for first time on record by Kate Abnett and Andrea Januta (in Reuters)
• The Inner Life of James Bond by James Parker (in The Atlantic)
• Safety of folk jamming techniques
• A Secret Spreadsheet Shows There Are No Raises In Coffee by Ashley Rodriguez (in Talk Poverty)
• Starbucks workers in New York are organizing to form first US union by Michael Sainato (in The Guardian)
• Giant bird-eating centipedes exist — and they’re surprisingly important for their ecosystem by Luka Halpin, Rohan Clarke, and Roiwan Mott (in The Conversation)
• Radioactivity May Fuel Life Deep Underground and Inside Other Worlds
• Kasagi: Gates Of Hope by Portland Japanese Garden
• In the Dead Archives by Max Abelson (in n+1 Magazine)
• My Disability Is Obvious In Job Interviews. Is That A Bad Thing? by Wendy Lu & Kelly Dawson (in Refinery29)
• Inside the Secretive, Semi-Illicit, High Stakes World of WhatsApp Mango Importing by Ali Akhbar (in Eater)

Misc.

• Higurashi no Koro ni: Minagoroshi-hen (sound novel arc)
• Earthly Delights ꙮdgo Issue 2A (zine)
• Essay On What I Think About Most by Anne Carson (poem)
• *A Field Guide to Roadside Wildflowers at Full Speed by Chris Helzer (on The Prairie Ecologist)

Total: 2 novels; 2 short story chapters; 8 light novels; 1 sound novel arc; 65 manga chapters, 231 webcomic chapters, 1 short comic; 29 articles; 2 zines; 1 poem

#ReadingLog

• Safety of folk jamming techniques
• Kanten about / Kanten recipe
• This week's menu, all packed or leftover'd: whatever you can scrounge up (breakfast); bánh mì (packed lunches); burritos with veggie and black bean arroz rojo, refried black beans, cheeses, salsa verde (dinner), barley-lentil-chickpea-orzo soup with roasted red peppers and sundried tomatoes (dinner), muhammara (snack), cheesecake (cake).
• My birthday cake this year was a Basque Burnt Cheesecake. I subbed in chèvre for part of the cream cheese as an experiment, and added a little bit of lemon zest, vanilla, and almond extract. It's very good, as with the other times I've made it. I omitted the tiny bit of flour this time and I think the texture was better with it. (Cobbled together from two recipes.)

Science

• Grizzly bear DNA maps onto Indigenous language families
• Rain falls at Greenland ice summit for first time on record
• A Field Guide to Roadside Wildflowers At Full Speed
• Giant bird-eating centipedes exist — and they’re surprisingly important for their ecosystem
• Radioactivity May Fuel Life Deep Underground and Inside Other Worlds
• Elephas Anthropogenus — the evolution of elephant depiction throughout the middle ages up to the age of enlightenment
• Clark's nutcrackers are very fun to watch, especially if they're working over a pinecone

from Water-color sketches of plants of North America and Europe (1888-1910), Helen Sharp

Two things that make you feel weird when you read them

• Gaffe: a clown goes through hell
• Essay On What I Think About Most, Anne Carson

The Rainbow, Nikolay Nikanorovich Dubovskoy

Some photos I took at Crater Lake

#WeeklyLinks

• Beet-dyed challah — I was making challah regularly for a few years to use up an excess of duck eggs, and the visual of a horrifyingly red-pink loaf has me wanting to do it again. For a work potluck, perhaps.
• Spain’s Burnt Cheesecake Breaks All the Rules — I've made a version of this several times (it's very good) and it's neat to see where it originated.
• Another heatwave is coming, so I prepped some cold/easy foods:
  • A tweaked version of this kale-lentil salad
  • Cold noodles, served in a communal bowl of ice water with individual dipping sauce bowls and a platter of toppings and sides — this week it's hardboiled eggs; raw cabbage massaged with salt and fish sauce; cubed daikon and carrot fridge pickle with garlic, chili-garlic paste, soy sauce, and balsamic vinegar; sliced melon. All I have to do when I want some is boil water for the noodles and plate everything.
  • Muesli with yogurt/overnight oats. This always ends up being a collection of pantry bits, and my current batch has steel-cut oats, thick-cut rolled oats, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, almonds, golden raisins, cinnamon-cardamom sugar, a spoonful of coconut cream, and homemade mesophilic yogurt.
  • Low-effort burritos. It doesn't take long to grab the tortillas, rice (arroz rojo with black beans and frozen mixed veggies), beans (refried from a can), cheese (grated cheddar), and salsa verde from the fridge, assembly-line some burritos, and heat them up in a skillet until they're crispy.
  • Mugi-cha. Toast/roast a bunch of barley until it's anywhere from golden brown to dark brown (but not burnt). Bring 1/3-¼ cup of the toasted barley to a boil in 8 cups of water (that's how big my pitcher is), turn it off and leave it to steep. Strain and refrigerate, topping up the pitcher with water or ice since the barley will have absorbed some of the water. You can also throw in a couple black or oolong teabags while it steeps if you want caffeine.

Mental Health™

• Book of Lamentations — the DSM-5 analyzed as a dystopian novel
• From The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, a mood:

Another [story idea]: THE DAY OF THE TWENTY-FOUR CAKES: Either Kafka lit-mag serious or SATEVEPOST aim high: woman at end of rope with husband, children: lost sense of order in universe, all meaningless, loss of hopes: quarrel with husband: loose ends, bills, problems, dead end. Wavering between running away or committing suicide: stayed by need to create an order: slowly, methodically begins to bake cakes, one each hour, calls store for eggs, etc. from midnight to midnight. Husband comes home: new understanding. She can go on making order in her limited way: beautiful cakes: can't bear to leave them. Try both styles: do it to your heart's content.

Archiving, Browsing, Curation

• Life in the Stacks: A Love Letter to Browsing
• An Accumulation of Nameless Energies
• use computers to store data
• Why Cookbook Stores Are the Antidote We Need Right Now
• Archival Futures: The Archive as a Place and the Place of the Archive

Weird stuff

• isopods will inherit the earth
• A history of Simlish, the language that defined The Sims
• This Sweet White Flower Is Actually A Sneaky Carnivore, Scientists Discover
• Two Homestuck-likes I've been reading lately — The Tapestry and Vast Error
• New fursona just dropped, it's Monstrum Philip: #WeeklyLinks