What’s something in books that instantly makes you feel deeply unsettled? Like scary or just that weird creeping dread. For me it’s caves, deep water, outer space. I love horror books that have these elements.

Also pregnancy makes me deeply uncomfortable but not in a good way, I stay away from that trope 😭

Yo Stella Prize fans!

The longlist dropped tonight - how are you feeling about it?

And what do you do next?

I’m pretty stoked with the list, I’m really happy to see Debra Dank, Lee Lai, and Evelyn Araluen end up on another longlist. 58 Facets looks really interesting, as does Apron-Sorrow/Sovereign-Tea.

I put on library holds for everything I can as I was watching the announcement, and now I wait for them to come in so I can read as many as I can before the shortlist is announced. I think this is the first year I’ve not read anything on the longlist, and I’m very excited to dive in!

(The Stella Prize is a prize for works by Australian women and non-binary authors across fiction, non-fiction and poetry).

The fact though that Patrick is a better actor than a lot of dudes I’ve known these days because even when he hangs out with his shitass awful friends he still is performative and saying hey guys racism bad! Like that’s more than a lot of “boys next door” do when their girlfriends aren’t in the room. 😭

4 pages of furniture description. 4 pages of skin care. 2 pages of his breakfast. 1 page describing his outfit. Patrick you would thrive as an influencer. It’s so funny that the movie monologue is so long and is still a FRACTION of the original. A whole chapter in his head and it is literally just the stuff around him and how he stays handsome. Iconic.

rivers solomon’s worldbuilding is phenomenal; their writing drops you into the deep of the ocean—into a world of sea creatures and fragmented histories—with such ease. their prose is at once accessible and so, so rich, swelling with the stain of past lives and a culture of unsaid things. i’m curious to listen to the song that it was inspired by, and to find out how much of this is solomon’s own imaginings versus the source material. i’m also fascinated by this novella being adapted from a song full stop, rather than the other way around.