weekly digest no.3
i swear every single day this week felt like it was either 48 hours or 30 minutes
My favourite unexpected thing about writing these weekly digests has been articulating thoughts that are entirely my own about what I’m reading. In whatever capacity, recommendation or review, I feel like I only ever write about books when I have finished them. Writing about them while I’m reading has been so fun in terms of forcing me to lean on my own ideas and think more deeply more frequently. Usually I like to see what other people think of a book after I read it, I want to read reviews and sometimes criticism or analysis of a novel. Predictably so, that often colours my own opinions of the book. Documenting my thoughts in progress is so like… pure? Anyway, onto this week!
march 28th
evolution is so crazy and weird, and this is such a fun piece. the researcher offers up some really interesting potential evolutionary reasons for play, but i did read this piece and think, what about the aspect of play that must exist simply in the pursuit of pleasure? someone in the comments thought the same and the author had a great response. anyway, perfect light friday read, don’t miss the comments!
as promised last week: banana coffees!!
bonus: i forgot to add a pic of my glorious breakfast when i posted last week
march 29th
olive oil carrot cake!
started reading walden, or life in the woods by henry david thoreau
the most unexpected development for me of being on substack is my yearning for academia lol. i’m finding that i miss writing essays and i miss reading criticism and reading about big ideas™. I was always interested in ecocriticism in undergrad, but i didn’t get to do a lot of readings about it, so here we are. I have vaguely heard that this is a core ecocriticism text and so i thought i would start making my way through it.
march 30th
sunday bagelssss (not pictured, plain bagel with strawberry cream cheese)
first sandwich of sandwich spring!!!!!
tune in for sandwich spring, where boy will be making a new sandwich every week in spring!
march 31st
post pottery cafe stop!
merlin of the crystal cave BBC (1991)
ever since watching BBC merlin, Tubi is desperate to recommend me other merlin content they have and I just couldn’t resist this. It’s so old and grainy and like shot on a potato, but baby merlin is so cute. I’m only two episodes in so I haven’t seen much of arthur except for the opening scene, but the actor they had for him looked like a middle school girl while merlin is like a swashbuckling smirky little guy. also ralf, love ralf. so stupidly charming.
april 1st
portrait of a lady
i am really loving this book so far, but i fear i have chosen the wrong time to read something so dense. the latter half of this grad school semester is so so busy and i just can’t find the time to read more than 10 pages at a time and its leaving me feeling really unsatisfied even though i’m enjoying this read so much. ugh.
I don’t know that I have much to say about this piece, but it was interesting and i learned something, which i think are good enough reasons to share it here.
Unpacking My Library - Essay by Walter Benjamin
found this absolute gem in my research for a substack piece i’ve been working on for ages about book collecting and the history of the home library. i am working through ideas of consumerism vs the collector and this piece was a beautiful ode to being a collector of books.
april 2nd
butter
holy shit. without giving too much away, this book is the kind of slow burn where you don’t realise that it has been slow until it picks up speed all of a sudden and 60% in, and then, holy shit. i’m also loving the exploration of sensuality, pleasure, and attraction, not just between humans but in our attitudes to food and other forms of consumption.
Butter is a translated Japanese language novel, and explores a recurrent theme in Japanese literature; the subdued public facing culture in Japan and exploring what is going on underneath the surface. The exploration of these theme works magnificently within the psychological thriller genre. deeply unnerving.
i’m also far enough into this book that i can now confidently recommend reading this physically over the audiobook. the narrator is actually quite good, but this book does that thing where sometime we switch pov or suddenly time jump/location jump in the middle of a chapter, which when you’re physically reading is easy to understand, but via audiobook occasionally leaves me confused and having to rewind to make sure that i didn’t just miss something.
breakfast for lunch <3
aglio e olio!
april 3rd
butter
“what did it mean to be loved in any case? was it to be needed?”
these last few chapters have been such an interesting exploration of what it means to love and be loved, romantically, platonically, and familially. also how sexuality and sexual desires are informed by and manifest within these types of love.
i’m increasingly curious to see how the themes in this novel will develop. currently (74% in) we seem to be at a point where our characters are coming to terms with certain truths, one of these suggested truths being the idea that desire is a form of deceit. or maybe that desire is never entirely truthful. that the tangible manifestation of desire is not pure because it is often a conduit for other desires and is therefore duplicitous.
merlin of the crystal cave BBC (1991)
i finished merlin of the crystal cave tonight, the opening theme is gonna be stuck in my head for weeks. its so old and charming, i love the ‘dragon’ in the sky lol. my favourite thing about this adaption though is that they call him merlin the enchanter, but he barely does any magic (other than seeing prophecies from the gods). he just like is a little mischievous who is good at physics and engineering, which i suppose is a magic of its own. anyway, six episodes of pure vibes, now the question is should i try to find the Mary Stewart trilogy this was based on and read them?
shrimp and bacon fried rice for dinner!
april 4th
posting this while eating a vanilla cream filled donut and editing the monday post! have a good weekend everyone!
as always, if you enjoyed this weeks weekly digest <3
Keep it coming; I love the buoyancy in your writing. It’s calming.💕
I wrote my undergraduate thesis on Walden! I was completely (weirdly) obsessed with it and Thoreau. Looking forward to reading your thoughts on it if you decide to share :)