Once, on a first date, I casually mentioned that I tend to like fictional villain characters the best (...it was in context, I promise. We were having a conversation about books or movies or something. I did not just blurt out, “ANYWAY, I’M REALLY INTO THE NE’ER-DO-WELLS!” I mean…it would not be completely off-brand if I did. But I didn’t. This time).

I was late to the game in discovering, This Is How You Lose the Time War. Sometimes, when a book comes out that I think looks absolutely brilliant, I put it on my “to-be-read-list”, but it will stay there until I have the necessary brain space to process something brilliant. I don't want to read it just to check it off the list. I want to read it to enjoy it, to savor it, to give it the attention it deserves. I want to relish a story, not rush a narrative. And so, at the beginning of 2024, I decided the brain space had become available and I decided that I was going to choose the audiobook format.

Are you stressed out? Are you anxious? Are you soothed by the thought of organization and just want to zone out? Well that makes two of us, and I’m here to help with the ASMR equivalent of reading articles.

Many of you felt seen in my article on being an outsider in one’s own family. So I’d like to expand more on topics of abusive dynamics this month.

I started watching Lena Dunham’s Girls on HBO for the first time after moving into my apartment two years ago. I unpacked boxes and held my new, fuzzy kitten, her skin still smelling of humane society, and loosely paid attention to what I guess I deemed as a less glamorous Sex and the City.

As someone with ADHD and a penchant for burnout, I am intimately familiar with the dreaded reading slump. I love reading. There is nothing better than having my whole heart and mind consumed by a rich storyworld – rivalled only by the satisfaction of finishing said story. And yet…

I still slump. I slump hard. But, after many years of slump experience, I understand the barriers that stop me from reading consistently. It really comes down to: Accessibility, Time Management, Accountability and Engagement.

Being an outsider in one's own family is rough. We've all seen these characters before: Harry Potter and the Dursleys. Cinderella and her stepmother and step sisters. Lately, we’ve been given Penelope Featherington and her mama and sisters in Bridgerton. It’s the cat and mouse game of temporary acceptance, of conditionality, of fickle love – of begging for scraps of acceptance and wanting to read more into them than could ever be there. It’s the thrill of an elaborate heist to steal something precious that should have been yours to begin with.

Imagine that you and I are settled in around a glowing campfire. It’s late here. The moon is hidden behind the clouds. We brought the makings for s’mores – but more than that, we’ve brought spooky stories to tell each other. The forest around us is thick and dark, and a wolf howls somewhere in the distance. At least…we think it’s a wolf….we hope it’s a wolf.

You know what I want? I want those nebulous, undefined, unpossessive, healthy, relationships that are deep and meaningful and transcend conventional definitions. I cannot get enough of them. Yet modern media often can’t handle womxn and mxn having those types of relationships.

When I was thirteen years old, I decided to dip my toes into classic literature. I started with Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen because it's supposedly beginner-friendly.

I ordered a cheap copy online; when the parcel arrived, I was thrumming with excitement as I tore it open. But even with a hefty dictionary beside me, trying to read the first line had me intimidated and lost.

I just finished the complete Murderbot series by Martha Wells (I chose the format of audiobooks narrated by Kevin R. Free, which were phenomenal) and I’ve been trying to wrap my head around why I absolutely adore this series; to understand why it resonates so strongly...why the chord it plucks deep within my own experiences are ones so intimately known, in such a multidimensional way.

I am a firm believer in New Year’s resolutions . As one year ends and another begins — and the days are at their darkest — I find it helpful to throw myself into a new hobby or practice a new skill. At its best, New Year’s resolutions are a fundamentally hopeful practice that helps us recognize our ability to change and grow and start anew, even in times of struggle. I especially love reading resolutions.

One of my favorite things to do during the coziest of seasons is to curl up with a good book in my armchair by the window, sip on a mug of hot apple cider, and watch the snow falling through the soft lamplight.

But what to read?!

If you like learning about truths, I encourage you to read further.

If you like Thanksgiving, I encourage you to pause here and consider if you want to choose this particular adventure.

Isn't that nice, being given a choice?

There I was, watching the downpour through my window, stuck in quarantine in the height of the pandemic. I was daydreaming of a summer romance in Cousins Beach, entertaining the idea of camaraderie and burgers at Luke’s Diner, wishing to be as cool as characters in K-Dramas.

I have always found it very difficult to write about love, regardless if it is for people, for places, or for things. It’s hard to tack down an emotional experience so vast with just words. Love is huge, terrifying, unfathomable, calamitous, and persistent. It can’t be ignored. It refuses to be ignored.

Spooky runs through my veins (literally – ask any haunted house designer or movie-magic maven, blood is super spooky). For many, a list of their favorite things would include raindrops on roses or maybe whiskers on kittens. But for me? It’s darkened halls and a shadow moving where it shouldn't…

At age twenty-three, I’m unsure if I’ll continue to be a lifelong superhero fan.

As the weather gets colder, the days get shorter and the leaves begin to change colors, it is once again time for everybody’s favorite fall holiday — I am, of course, talking about OCD Awareness Week.

Over the course of her nearly 12 year career, the mononymous musician Mitski has said many things about love. In “Square,” a track from her 2013 album Retired from Sad, New Career in Business, she cuts to the quick of the matter with scalpel-sharp precision: “God's very simple and love doesn't burn.”

they don’t hang onto the fish once they’ve caught it.

if there is no door then i dream of a door

holding my own hand while asleep. 

I think about the tortured artist a lot.

The idea of turning pain into art.

Taking sorrows, ugly feelings,

moulding them like dirty, wet clay

’til they form a shape that means something. 

“Why do we fall?”

The question circles

my brain

as I attempt to bring

my father’s legacy

to justice.

A man full of endlessness comes home,

puts his coin purse on the table

drops loquats in a ceramic bowl.

He props his sword

—clean, still sheathed—

against the table.

When fear consumes me

As you drive your foot

Down on the gas,

The fumes

Burning my nose

As the trees blur past me,

dinner after daffodils under dim

amber point of view. five golden glowing yolks

to find a furrowed brow

I ask her, “Wouldn’t it be too cruel

for a god to make us and nothing

after?” If she were my parrot,

I could point

to a silver bowl, saying: “What’s that?

What’s that, again?”

When it begins to sink—

When it pains me to believe

that something won't change even though you try,

And all your words mean nothing

all these words are tossed aside

I do not know what he wishes me to write, but I do not know what he sees

 when he looks at me

 for he stares quite differently.

Are you lonely, Little Rose?

Call me. I shall listen to you.

Somewhere in the distance,

the birds chirp through heavy rain.

My name was Daniel.

Son of a former slave-turned-inventor.

An artist by trade. Skilled with a wet paint brush.

I inhale everything through the holes of myself

because I grew where my mother kept her salty tears

and it's lived in my DNA ever since.

Past the very stroke of midnight

It commences—their moment of mirth

Transylvanian legend named Saint George's Night

When undead things crawl on this earth.

Far cry from the modern,

Grand, cosmopolitan

City of London,

The forested land of Blackmoor

Is always densely foggy at night

I am.

And here is where I am.

Before CW’s Supernatural, even The X-Files on Fox, Alan Moore was cranking out Monster of the Week’s like nobody’s business. I wouldn’t dare credit him with the trope, but his work, especially the “American Gothic” arc on his Swamp Thing reinvention, to date, remains my standout exemplar.

In re imagined beginnings / I/She runs barefoot, / Asphalt burning her soles / Towards the mountain, / Out of breath hoping to melt / The ice chips tucked within her ribs.

Salt water stung / on the way / down;