Ada, or Ardor - Vladimir Nabokov
Couldn't find the cover of my library copy online so I picked the one that made me giggle the most. A shame because mine is awesome, but I do keep having to hide it on public transport on account of it having full frontal nudity. Recommended to me by K. Porcelain after one of Ari's apartment shows! Their music was a solid enough collateral to make me trust their book recs.
This has been a slow read so far but I am locked into finishing it now (is what I told myself a month ago when I started writing this). I think the general premise is dramatic and funny ala One Hundred Years of Solitude (maybe it's the incest making me draw connections) but Nabokov is such a strange writer... on one hand I adore, in theory, how much of his writing is clearly serving his own whims/humor. It is a sweet feeling to read something so tailored for its author's own enjoyment. However that does mean at times it is brutally inaccessible and confusing !!!! I keep getting a kick out of telling people how it has one very dedicated scholar who has crafted a website dedicated to decoding every line, allusion, motif, etc., which has honestly been really helpful in my reading. It's so truly nerdy I feel intense affection for the whole ordeal (as with the writing itself). I dunno guys I really want to finish it but it has not been an easy read! (Editor's note: I finally caved and allowed myself to start reading other things and am so much happier so this might be going back on the TBR shelf for now)

Simple Passion - Annie Ernaux
God bless the Internet Archive. What a strange and beautiful and interesting memoir. Intro/first two pages had me hooked instantly. The rest reads very accurately like the neurosis of my earliest crushes. Who am I kidding I still feel like this (maybe with just a bit less despondency) whenever I have a crush. The poetry of it all, and her commentary on exposing yourself through writing really resonated with me-- "It is a mistake therefore to compare someone writing about his own life to an exhibitionist, since the latter has only one desire: to show himself and to be seen at the same time." Yeah ow. Definitely going to read more of her !!!

Caleb Williams - William Godwin
One of the most unintentionally funny opening paragraphs in the history of literature. I am chopped, no prospects, no one likes me, no one stands up for me, and it's not even my fault, etc. Reading this for my english class :D Have really enjoyed being back in a formal teaching setting pertaining to fiction, and my lecturer freaking rocksss. Been getting lots of interesting insights on Godwin as a philosopher/early anarchist/father/husband (dude was RIDE OR DIE for Mary Wollstonecraft) that has been enhancing my enjoyment of his writing. Otherwise the text has been a bit of a slog... really excited to read Frankenstein next (Mary Shelley is his daughter!)

A Cyborg Manifesto - Donna Haraway
Thank you Brigid for making me so comprehensively aware of this essay. Haraway and I have had a bit of a contentious relationship so far. Unbenownst to me until recently she was the one responsible for the useless foreword to A Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction... and the first time I tried reading A Cyborg Manifesto I felt truly so stupid. HOWEVER ! Finally made it through by way of audiobook + text combination. This shit is awesome. At least two moments where I exclaimed out loud. I saw a Goodreads review of one of Haraway's other books that more or less said she's at her best when she's feeling herself and that humanized her to me, lol. Found a lot of good here on totalizing theory (as she puts it), and the overwhelming exclusions/disctinctions/boundaries created by modern feminist theories that maintain white womens' insistence on their "purity" and the continued oppression of women of color + how to combat that in a meaningful way. New ways to look at gender plus a take on science fiction that isn't derogatory!! The attempt to do away with dualism-- technology does not equate to evil!!! I am often frustrated by the boundaries of political discussion and peoples' unwillingness to envision a quote unquote better world but haven't really had words to describe what exactly I'm looking for and this feels like an excellent starting point

Viscous Porosity: Witnessing Katrina - Nancy Tuana
One of those essays that takes a concept you have an inkling might be true but have no way to succinctly describe, and puts it into words so, so elegantly. We affect our environments and our environments affect us, we are constantly interacting and playing off of one another and changing the actual physical makeup of each other! Also such a relevant dissection of disaster mitigation/response or lack thereof, the conditions that facilitate "an epistemology of ignorance" and institutional distrust. Wonderful wonderful writing. And the central concept, the viscous porosity, can be applied to soooo many things, I have been interested especially in how it can pertain to art!

No Archive Will Restore You - Julietta Singh
Most convincing argument for cannibalism I have yet read. This is full of wonders..... was referenced in Viscous Porosity ^ and recommended by new friends Brigid and Mazie :> I really, really loved the first four sections. My jaw actually dropped when I read about her dad. The concept of the body as an archive, not only including what is physically there but also what is mentally present, or felt for its absence, or collected from others... beautiful and actually very relevant to my current work... also mentioned was a poem I later read in its entirety and LOVE, On the Road to Sri Bhuvaneshwari by Robin Coste Lewis. Stunning language. The last two sections (of No Archive) were only hard for me in moments of real vulnerability so I admit this is probably my own fault. It can be VERY hard to read unfiltered depictions of early intimacy between people... especially millenials (I assume) so I was a little pulled out of rapture but man when this is good it's really good. I think the whole thing is good I just have a very sensitive cringe meter.

Lecture on Nothing - John Cage
Wonderful if only for its capacity to cause great controversy in my peer group. The more I learn about Cage the less I like him but there are some gorgeous pieces of poetry in this, for instance:
"Our poetry now is the realization that we possess nothing. Anything therefore is a delight (since we do not possess it) and thus need not fear its loss."
"[U]nlike the snail, we carry our homes within us, which enables us to fly or to stay,-- to enjoy each. But beware of that which is breathtakingly beautiful, for at any moment the telephone may ring or the airplane come down in a vacant lot."
"I remember loving sound before I ever took a music lesson. And so we make our lives by what we love."
Is he jerking himself off basically the whole time? Yes. Are there still many small kernels of goodness... yes! Saw someone in a YouTube comments section comparing this work to Kierkegaard's metaphor of the woman weaving an altar cloth which is beautiful and probably accurate to how Cage saw himself