come on in, have a seat
i've always been an avid reader, and for the past few years one of my greatest passions has been learning history (hello, double-major english & history BA). this is my little space to share what i'm reading right now and what i've read in the past that has shaped how i view the world.

currently perusing
The House of Government, Yuri Slezkine
Eugene Onegin, Alexander Pushkin

to-read list
Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia, Dan Healey
The Problem of Dostoevsky's Poetics, Mihkail Bakhtin
The Aeneid, Virgil

recent reads
No Blood in the Water: The Legal and Gender Conspiracies Against Countess Elizabeth Bathory in Historical Context, Rachel L. Bledsaw (Thesis, 2014)
I mentioned this one in a diary entry about my fascination with Elizabeth Bathory. Does a good job of situating and contextualizing the person behind the stories.

Orlando, Virginia Woolf
For some reason I thought this book was older than it is. The prose is very nice, and the gender politics are perfectly cogent, which just makes the blatant racism all the more jarring and unfortunate.

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African, Written by Himself, Olaudah Equiano
I saw this on a display table outside of used bookstore in Hamilton and picked it up immediately. I've read a lot of stuff from the 19th century, which is unfortunately but unsurprisingly almost always from the white colonial viewpoint. So when I saw an autobiography from 1789 written by an African man who survived enslavement and went on to travel the world and become a successful writer in the abolitionist movement, I knew I needed it. My copy is the Norton Critical Edition, which includes a detailed introduction and supporting documents and essays. I'm not very far into it yet, but this book is worth it for the introduction alone, which illuminates the abolitionist literary tradition that is most often ignored nowadays in favour of the "no one at the time knew better" excuse. Equiano is also just a good writer.

pivotal books in my history
I'm a really big fan of Dostoevsky. I first read The Idiot in the summer of 2021 and then I was hooked. So far my Dostoevsky collection includes: The Idiot, Crime and Punishment, The Devils/The Possessed, The Brothers Karamazov, The Gambler, Notes from Underground & The Double, and Memoirs from the House of the Dead.

online magazines, etc
The Third Sex, Talia Bhatt
in-depth look at the creation of academic ideas of "third sexes" as the expense of the actual marginalized transfeminine people in question

Faggotization and The Extant Gender Ternary, The Sizhen System
really fascinating new analysis of gender as a system from a materialist lens

Everyone Is Beautiful And No One Is Horny, RS Benedict for Blood Knife
THE piece on body dysmorphia in media