scratching my tattoo rn

 ok hello again!! i'm gonna do a report and also just talk more abt stuff that's been on my mind recently i think yay

reading: baby you KNOW i'm always reading smth!! since last time, i have admittedly read another agatha christie book - the hollow, which was my other bday poirot purchase (tm) and it was once again good but not great. some of the characters were interesting but personally, i like it when my poirot novels have a lot of poirot in them and this one did not have enough of that little guy. after finishing the hollow, i picked up one of the most expensive books i've bought in recent memory: dream count, by chimamanda ngozi adichie.

i have a complicated relationship with adichie; for a long time, she was my favourite author and i considered her to be a generational voice. she was my gateway into diversifying my reading habits, really. unfortunately, she tarnished her reputation with a series of weird and contradictory takes on trans people, eventually allying herself pretty overtly with jk rowling. i've joked a lot about how it was easy to have her as my favourite author despite this because she hadn't written a book in a decade so i didn't have to worry about if i could continue to support her, but... um, well, then she wrote a book and i had to decide if i was going to buy it or not. and i did buy it. so that's that. anyway. i really wanted to love dream count. i mean, it cost £20 so it needed to be good. it was... idk, idk. parts of it were amazing. however, parts of it were just weird. it reminded me a lot of critiques that cindy pham levelled at yellowface. the majority of the book's protagonists were insanely wealthy, at least one of them through corrupt politics, but any criticism of this was delivered from the mouths of characters that existed largely as the stereotypical 'woke left' parody. it just felt so weird. like, i don't know, in 2025, i think we can handle more nuanced feminism than 'corrupt millionaire man bad, corrupt millionaire woman good'.

my other issue didn't come until after i'd finished the book. one of the four protagonists is a guinean woman called kadiatou who works as a hotel maid in america and is sexually assaulted by a wealthy french politician. in dream count, kadiatou is swept up in a media frenzy as the story heads towards her facing her assaulter in court, only for the case to be dropped when the prosecution deem kadiatou an unreliable victim due to her poor english causing conflicting accounts of her past. when the news is broken to her that the case is being dropped, kadiatou and her daughter celebrate, and the book closes with the two basking in the joy and relief of knowing that their ordeal is over. if this was a wholly fictional account, i could appreciate this as a nuanced, albeit strange, depiction of the way that the legal system treats victims of sexual assault. imagine my surprise and horror when i started to read the acknowledgements and realised that kadiatou is very heavily inspired by a real woman who really was sexually assaulted by a wealthy french politician, and whose case really was dropped. i just can't fathom choosing to fictionalise that, seemingly without any permission from the real victim, and then choosing to let the moral of the story be that she would have been much happier never seeking justice. looking back, i don't really know why i gave dream count 4/5 on goodreads but ah well. cheers to another long book review.

eating: i have a lot of one-sided beef with shops and cafes in my local area. these are all for completely arbitrary reasons. for quite a while, i've nursed a deep hatred for a cafe that brands their takeaway cups with slop-brained girl dinner in my very demure era etc etc bullshit, because i hate those trends and because thinking about all those disposable plastic cups going to landfill once the memes become dated makes me furious. recently, i caved to their £5 coffee and elaborate treat deal and i've eaten quite a few of their jammy dodger 'brownies' in the last two weeks. i hesitate to actually call it a brownie because it has the texture and taste of uncooked cookie dough, but it is unfortunately delicious. their coffee is shit though so at least i'm vindicated there.

playing: my partner bought us it takes two so we can actually play a game together for once, and it's been fun! the dialogue is a little horrendous but the gameplay itself is very silly and fun. i was worried i'd be shit at it because i've seen so many tiktoks of people being bad at it, but i think maybe all those people were just bad at games. i'm always in favour of more co-op games that aren't just farming sims or shooters

obsessing: SEVERANCE!!!! it's the best tv show in the whole entire world and this week's season finale was INSANE. i cried so hard that i had a nosebleed and had to take a break from watching. i can't remember the last time i was this moved by a tv show. it's got me reading fanfic on my lunch break and making my own playlists and shit. please watch severance you can get a free trial of apple tv if you have amazon prime and then you can just cancel it afterwards pleaseeee

recommending: SEVERANCE!!!! sorry that's all i can think about atm. pleas watch it

treating: cannot stop having baths at the moment. if i need to shower but i'm really enjoying whatever i'm reading or watching? baby i'm taking that to the fucking TUB. i don't even have any nice bubble bath or anything, i'm just laying in plain hot water for the love of it all.

UM yeah okay. thats my report. the reading part always gets longer and longer because i'm really back into reading again yay!!! i used to be a voracious reader, when i moved out when i was 18 i had hundreds and hundreds of books i had to get rid of - bookcases in my bedroom, bookcases in the hallway, sliding drawers under my bed full of books (and bottles of sourz) - but over time, i really lost my passion for it. whenever i had a long train journey, i'd read during it and then have a flurry of books afterwards, but i could never sustain it for too long. i think obsessing over agatha christie has helped ease me into reading more strenuous stuff again. there's something very enjoyable about reading things that actually engage your brain, that force you to consider what's in front of you and what you're going to take away from it. i've got han kang's latest book lined up to start next, so hopefully that hits me as hard as the vegetarian did.

i was going to write more about the leigh bowery exhibition i went to at the start of the month but this has already gotten too long and i need to stop at some point if i want to post this briefly on my insta story and not feel completely mortified so im done now ok byeeee

whoopsies!! i did not post weekly!! to be fair to myself i did Write some posts abt stuff ive been doing, but i got embarrassed thinking about posting them :/ if i want people to see my posts (which i think i do) then i have to share this page w people, but then that means people see my posts!! wah wah

anyway lol i'm gonna do another report (reading eating playing obsessing recommending treating) because it's less vulnerable than sharing my thoughts on stuff :))

reading: i'm still on my agatha christie kick!! i most recently read postern of fate, which i discovered afterwards is not very popular At All. i think if i hadn't read more about the context of the novel, i would have agreed that it was quite shit. it's filled with weird rambling dialogue and lapses into descriptions of things that seem like they're going to be relevant but never get another mention: random items from the protagonists' house, plots of real children's novels, error-riddled recollections of previous christie novels. i would be lying if i said it was an easy read, or even a particularly satisfying one. sometimes, it seems like the characters themselves have forgotten that they're meant to be solving a mystery. however, knowing more about the background has made me feel quite fond of it. it was one of the last books christie wrote before she died. as is often the case, the book's setting (a rundown house being renovated by its new elderly owners) is inspired by a place from christie's own life. in this instance, it's inspired by her own childhood home. suddenly the obsession with old toys and idiosyncratic details about the house make total sense. i can't help but feel this weird bruising sadness when i imagine this elderly woman struggling to hash out yet another novel, continually lapsing into nostalgic interludes about her childhood. in the novel, the house's previous owners leave behind an array of children's toys and books, and the protagonists go to great lengths to lovingly care for and play with these things. i wonder if christie found pleasure in imagining her old possessions being loved again.

eating: i went back to the korean restaurant that i posted about in my last report lol, it's not really interesting but it's worth noting :)

playing: i'm doing music instead of a viddy game this time!! i can't stop listening to joyride (yeah the kesha song lol) but i especially love listening to it while watching this stupid video edit set to it. it's like fucking cocomelon to me, i'm transfixed every time.

obsessing: almost 20 years late to the party, i'm finally playing dragon age yippee!! i got fomo seeing people playing veilguard (the newest installment in the franchise, very long-awaited and very nearly scrapped many times) and i knew i'd love it if i played it. however, dragon age lore is very dense so i decided to start from the very beginning by playing dragon age: origins, which released in 2009. it's almost old enough to be one of my teenage coworkers. despite some expected hiccups (both in terms of trying to get the game to run + encountering some classic 2000s humour/attitudes) it's been very very charming, and i understand how people fell in love with the franchise so immediately. i put this in my 'obsessing' category because i think about it constantly when i'm not at home, and then when i do get home, sometimes i'm so hooked on having a 'perfect' gameplay experience that i don't even play the game.

recommending: for this report i am recommending just CHILLEN!!! from now until january i think everyone should do as little as possible, esp if u work in retail or any other industry that is absolutely ravaged by the christmas period

treating: i finally ponied up and got myself quite a hefty treat this month - some fancy and weird PERFUMES!! i've been a longtime admirer of sixteen92 perfumes and love reading reviews of their bizarre fragrances. i really enjoyed the fragrance oils a friend gifted me from black phoenix alchemy labs and decided to finally delve a little deeper into weird boutique fragrances for myself. i apologise in advance to my coworkers who are going to be smelling them on me 5 days a week. the one i'm most excited for is inspired by the IT novel/films/etc, and promises to smell like "rain-drenched iron, distant circus lights, candy floss, a red balloon". wonderful.