Hey y’all

Sorry I’ve been slow on here lately, I had the plague 😷

I just wanted to give a little update on some of the audiobooks I’m reading now or have recently read.

I am going through a bit of a time right now, so I might not be so active over the next week or two. If anyone has any audiobook suggestions to get me through the black hole of my life feel free to let me know lolllll 🥴 (for context I am losing Lulu aka the only reason for my being)

** I couldn’t tag howling woman or misbehaving at the crossroads I think because they aren’t out yet?? anyway they’re available for pre-order! You can check my bookshop.

Thanks no thanks to Dylin Hardcastle for bulldozing their limb through my gut, tearing out my heart and throwing it into a wood chipper

Dylin wrote A Language of Limbs as part of their PhD and it is their debut novel. (How they are ever going to top this - I have no idea!!)

The story is set in 1970’s Newcastle, following two queer youth referred to as Limb One and Limb Two. Spanning three decades, these two lives bring us through moments of collective queer history and culture where joy and grief exist side by side, inseparable. (Australia’s first Mardi Gras, the AIDS crisis, etc)

A Language of Limbs is a collection of lives stitched together with poetry, art, fragments, and feelings. The seemingly little moments carry enormous weight, reminding us how terrifyingly close we always are to a completely different life. The book is about love being policed, friendship as love, queerness lived loudly & quietly, and everything in between. It’s so dang heartbreakingly tragic, and yet sooo deeply hopeful. I cried and cried and cried.

This is an essential queer read. It is going to stick with me for a long, long time. The AIDS epidemic section had me fucking winded, gasping for air and sobbing (literally!!)

Shoutout to the author for their recognition and appreciation of Indigenous peoples, as well as the impact Indigenous liberation movements have had on queer ones. That was super cool of them to acknowledge and I am very grateful for it.

I will (and already have started) gifting this book to everyone I know.

I can’t wait to read more from Dylin!!

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“Let me tell you / my dead friends were so much fun / let me tell you / we had so much fun / let me tell you / it was worth it.”

“I am most free when I am in connection, because I know my liberation is bound up with yours,"

“Grief is not sadness. Grief is the body cut open. Flows of blood and joy and salt and ache and words and memories and memories never made. Grief is undoing. Grief is wanting flesh, yearning for a voice. Grief is fear of forgetting...a face...the contour of a hip...your brilliant red hair...Grief is wondering what could have been made and what could have become. Grief is what if. Grief is endless cycles of why, and I wish I didn't. Grief is the guilt of the living, of my living. Grief is the sobbing into my birthday cake, because I'm older than you, now. Grief is the building of a world without you in it.

Then there’s the less obvious, the part no one writes about. How grief is horny. How I bend myself over the bed head and feel your fingers in my ass, real and imagined. Fried is pining for your touch. Grief is being wet for a ghost. Grief is not sadness, it is a kaleidoscope of desires like white lights refracted through skin. Sadness, it think, is the object. And grief is the negative space.”

“Queering. Queer, as in adjective, as in being, as in I am this. Queer, as in verb, as in doing. As in I queer this. Queer, as in fucking queers. Queer, as in I queer’d this, as in, I made it beautiful.

"Once, you hear a lesbian say I don t believe in transsexuals. And Daphne cries heaven forbid I believe in myself. I believe myself." 

“Against the impossibility of it all, joy persists. [...] I think, look at us. Witness us. In a world that wishes for our annihilation, here are our bodies, spectacularly colliding. [...] Look at our family. Look at our joy, our glorious, glorious joy”

“it is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in a language chiefly made by men to express theirs.”

Holding space on this TDoR with love, gentleness, and stillness.

Sending strength and tenderness to those mourning, to those carrying weight.

You are held and loved beyond measure.

You matter

You belong

Your survival is revolution.

Those in your orbit are changed by your existence. May we meet that gift with protection, with solidarity, with care that breaks systems open. Our liberation is tied to one another, our paths woven together. I will always show up for those who are fighting to stay whole.

Today, I am out on the land with my furry pal, connecting with the old growth trees while honouring our grief, our memories, our love in action 🫂🫀

BLEAK.

And tbh not as radical as I was expecting.

I went in completely blind re: the plot, but had heard this was politically poignant. And honestly, I have very mixed feelings.

The writing is undeniably skillful. It’s minimalist, emotional, and existential. The author builds this overwhelming despair without using violence or spectacle. It’s just an entire atmosphere of emptiness - little plot, no action, yet totally fuckin soul crushing. IMO it puts The Handmaid’s Tale to shame. I who Have Never Known Men achieves a deeper horror and sadness through quietness alone. Nothing is resolved or explained, and it still feels whole.

But the more I sit with this book, the more uneasy I feel towards its messaging.

It’s very clear that Jacqueline Harpman was writing from a Jewish perspective. There’s this recurring idea that the guards are also prisoners, trapped in the same invisible system. On first read, it felt like commentary on how power structures replicate themselves, how people end up enforcing the very systems that crush them. But upon reflecting, the framing seems more like absolution than critique. A cop out?? Everyone’s trapped, so no one’s really responsible. And in thinking about the world’s current events I can’t help but wonder if Harpman would extend that same empathy to Israeli soldiers, to colonizers?

Something I didn’t love was the stance on ownership. The narrator never had property, never been taught about possession, but the second she finds stuff it’s hers. She finds a bunker, arranges it, and claims it. And it’s treated as human nature instead of learned colonial violence.

Another thing that cheesed me was the topic of sexuality. As a queer ace person I found it weird that the narrator is immediately attracted to the one young man despite having literally zero exposure to romance, attraction, or gender roles. She’s literally never known men. Her puberty happened in captivity and her development was completely fucked by trauma but there’s still this automatic heterosexuality with no questioning/ ambiguity. Just the default setting. Why?

And lastly, there’s the book’s engagement with death, dignity, and assisted dying. It’s rare to see those topics handled with such acceptance and pragmatism as in this novel.  I respected that the narrator could help people die when they asked. BUT then she refuses to help the one woman who isn’t physically ill????? The narrator has no religion or inherited morals so where’s that line coming from? It seems like the author’s own unspoken values.

SO the more I think about it the more this book feels like a missed opportunity. It’s packaged as radicalism, but sorta reinforces the status quo. But maybe that there is the point after all ????

“What does it mean to have lived, once you’re no longer alive?”

Congrats @tmdreads!!

Dm me on Instagram your mailing info please :)

I’ve been working on some book reviews, but TBH I’m a really slow processor so it’s taking a bit of time. 

Just wanted to post this with some of my book mail from last week. Still waiting on quite a few — the post strike has been brutal. 

Feel free to tell me in the comments what you’ve been reading. I’d love to chat books with y’all!