15|11|2024

I am once again here wishing I could hit my phone with a brick and disappear into the woods never to be seen again. I feel so much stress coming from every single social interaction I have I want to scream. If I were by myself without having to deal with other people for like a month I have a feeling I would feel so much better, ugh.

today's productivity:

📖: The Adventures Of Amina Al Sirafi (I am going quite slow because I am tired af but I am really enjoying this book, I am almost half way into it and I really like the characters and I can't wait for the proper adventure part to start!)

The mitochondria being the powerhouse of the cell is a fact which is often discussed on the internet. The Golgi apparatus, however, being the post office of the cell, has not gotten nearly as much recognition. This is in line with the years-long underfunding of the postal service, which provides a deeply important service to society yet does not get the recognition it deserves. In this essay I will

20.10.24 10:52

back with another annual post! have a little nephrology, my treat <3

🎶korban - esmail bnaoe

do not go to university they will make you open pdfs

I was tagged by @oneardentstudybuddy, @selkiestudies and @just-a-cup-of-anxietea (it was a long time ago and I almost forgot about that sorry lgkfkfl)

I tag @eepysylveon , @geriatricfunkyman , @kindastudyingstuff and @lau-and-history

10 Female Written Short Stories Everyone Should Read

I have seen a post circulating for a while that lists 10 short stories everyone should read and, while these are great works, most of them are older and written by white men. I wanted to make a modern list that features fresh, fantastic and under represented voices. Enjoy!

1. A Temporary Matter by Jhumpa Lahiri — A couple in a failing marriage share secrets during a blackout. 

2. Stone Animals by Kelly Link — A family moves into a haunted house.

3. Reeling for the Empire by Karen Russell — Women are sold by their families to a silk factory, where they are slowly transformed into human silkworms. 

4. Call My Name by Aimee Bender — A woman wearing a ball gown secretly auditions men on the subway. 

5. The Man on the Stairs by Miranda July — A woman wakes up to a noise on the stairs. 

6. Brownies by ZZ Packer — Rival Girl Scout troops are separated by race. 

7. City of My Dreams by Zsuzi Gartner — A woman works at a shop selling food-inspired soap and tries not to think about her past. 

8. A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor — A family drives from Georgia to Florida, even though a serial killer is on the loose. 

9. Hitting Budapest by NoViolet Bulawayo — A group of children, led by a girl named Darling, travel to a rich neighborhood to steal guavas. 

10. You’re Ugly, Too by Lorrie Moore — A history professor flies to Manhattan to spend Halloween weekend with her younger sister.

I LOVE THIS POST!!

I’d like to add:

11. Good Country People by Flannery O’Connor

12. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (this one is my favorite short story of all time)

13. The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

14. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates

15. Désirée’s Baby by Kate Chopin

16. The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin

17. Impressions of an Indian Childhood by Zitkala-Ša

(I wanted to put little summaries for each of them, but I’m afraid I’d spoil the whole story if I did!)

adding a few more! all by women of color, & the first four were published within the last few years

18. “My Dear You,” Rachel Khong — love, loss, & absurdity in the afterlife

19. “The Husband Stitch,” Carmen Maria Machado — a feminist retelling of the folklore story “The Green Ribbon”

20. “Inventory,” Carmen Maria Machado — one woman’s retrospective list of her life’s sexual encounters

21. “Boys Go to Jupiter,” Danielle Evans — what happens after a white college student poses for a photo in a Confederate flag bikini

22. “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere,” ZZ Packer — a Black woman attends Yale University

oh i have some of these too! many are science-fiction or science-fantasy, because the woman in those genres are severely under-represented ! The first two authors are slightly older, but their works are so important in the development of the roles of women in scifi as a genre so!

23. “Those Who Walk Away from Omelas” and “Mountain Ways” by Ursula K. Le Guin — The first is a study of philosophical questions similar to the trolley problem, told in very loose form. The second is a science-fantasy story about two women navigating love and sexuality in their society’s polyamorous marriage rituals. But honestly you should read all of Le Guin’s short stories and novels, she’s amazing.

24. “Bloodchild” by Octavia Butler — One of my all-time FAVORITE short stories, about a future where humans live alongside large insect-like aliens, and serve as hosts for their eggs and larval young. It’s gruesome, gory, unsettling, and honestly pretty horrific but it’s really wonderful–if you can handle horror in your stories I highly recommended it. Butler’s novels are also wonderful, please check them out if you can (not all of them are this unsettling)

25. “The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi” by Pat Cadigan — A trans allegory in which future humans go through surgery to become invertebrate sea creatures (cephalopods and arthropods mostly) in order to better work in space. Wonderfully weird in so many ways.

26. “From the Lost Diary of Treefrog7” and “The Palm Tree Bandit” by Nnedi Okorafor — Lost Diary is a story about a woman and her husband exploring an alien jungle told through research log-style journal entries. Very much survival horror scifi. Palm Tree Bandit is told as a mother reciting a story to her daughter as she braids her hair, about her great-grandmother who started a kind of small revolution for women in Nigeria. Nnedi’s novels and other short stories, as well as her works within the comics industry, are all fantastic, so look into her more if you can!!!

(I also got exciting name & gender marker change news!!)

1 September 2024

Not a bad month of reading. Got three books finished and two worked on. I will say these StoryGraph summaries make me very happy!

Currently reading: Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

can you tell I only started tracking my reads daily after @upside-down-uni shared its find of this feature with the gc and I Really wanted my monthly wrap to look as cool as its does?

I learn everything the hard way btw