.

(previous editions) bold = favourite

class, race, & labour

the kids aren’t alright: the race essentialism of sci-fi hybrids

brazil at work: black and held back

corruption has shaped history. why do we ignore it?

rise of the racist robots – how ai is learning all our worst impulses

south korea: why so many struggle to sleep

how europe’s far right fell in love with australia’s immigration policy

gender & sexuality

‘lives were being ruined’: the dark history of girls gone wild

the race to build the world’s first sex robot

why are so many gay romance novels written by straight women?

the femicide unit turning back the tide of deadly violence against women (mexico)

analysing the ‘bimbo’: a reading list on hollywood blondes

politics, climate change, & covid

dozens of australian raaf pilots are operating drone strikes from the uk

if you want decolonisation go to the economics of samir amin

rice and the climate crisis (thailand)

life after deportation: ‘no one tells you how lonely you’re going to be’ (uk)

history, culture, & media

britain destroyed records of colonial crimes

cowboy progressives (usa)

leaving home meant losing my mother tongue

justifying colonial rule in post-colonial singapore

a warm cuppa in your hands, sitting near the window, enjoying the rain

with a sprinkle of amour

The Girl at the Lion d'Or by Sebastian Faulks

The Collector by John Fowles

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë

The Broken Wings by Kahlil Gibran

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

with a dash of existential crisis

South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

Fish in Exile by Vi Khi Nao

No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai

with a pinch of dark academia

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Maurice by E. M. Forster

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio

with a side of je ne sais quoi

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Death with Interruptions by José Saramago

Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

Orlando by Virginia Woolf

After Dark by Haruki Murakami

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

God Of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yōko Ogawa

The Woman in the Purple Skirt by Natsuko Imamura

If Cats Disappeared from the World by Genki Kawamura

under the covers, with a flashlight in your hands, in the middle of the night

Carmilla by Sheridan le Fanu

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice

The Hole by Hye-Young Pyun

The Yellow Wall-Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Frankenstein: The 1818 Text by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein by Kiersten White

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

The Maidens by Alex Michaelides

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

you wanted it, you got it, babes! caveat: this list is long (seriously, sorry about the length) and i can’t write blurbs for everything, but i highly recommend going and looking at anything that sounds interesting. some books will fall under multiple headings, so i’m listing them twice. i am linking to their purchase pages on bookshop.org, because amazon sucks and bookshop helps support indie booksellers, but if your local indie bookstore offers delivery or curbside pickup, buy it there. and i’m trying to keep this list confined to pretty recent titles, so even though a few older ones might slip in there, it’s definitely centered on releases from the past few years. okay let’s do this.

if you want a book that feels like a primal scream:

godshot by chelsea bieker

the book of joan by lidia yuknavitch

girl, woman, other by bernadine evaristo

her body and other parties by carmen maria machado (short stories)

trust exercise by susan choi

my dark vanessa by kate elizabeth russell

the rehearsal by eleanor catton

indelicacy by amina cain

the answers by catherine lacey

the mars room by rachel kushner

the love affairs of nathaniel p. by adelle waldman

if you want clever social commentary and/or hilarious female protagonists:

you too can have a body like mine by alexandra kleeman

the new me by halle butler

queenie by candice carty-williams

prep by curtis sittenfeld

the idiot by elif batumen

my year of rest and relaxation by ottessa moshfegh

oksana, behave! by maria kuznetsova

where’d you go, bernadette by maria semple

convenience store woman by sayaka murata

nothing to see here by kevin wilson

made for love by alissa nutting

the pisces by melissa broder

the herd by andrea bartz

if you want to start reading the unhinged women canon (not all recent):

mrs. dalloway by virginia woolf

the awakening by kate chopin

we have always lived in the castle by shirley jackson

gone girl by gillian flynn

rebecca by daphne du maurier

white oleander by janet fitch

cousin bette by honore de balzac

wide sargasso sea by jean rhys

play it as it lays by joan didion

the piano teacher by elfriede jelinek

valley of the dolls by jacqueline susann

postcards from the edge by carrie fisher

if you liked the secret history:

if we were villains by m.l. rio

social creature by tara isabelle burton

the basic eight by daniel handler

the incendiaries by r.o. kwon

bunny by mona awad

hex by rebecca dinerstein knight

if you like speculative/dystopian fiction:

the dreamers by karen thompson walker

the book of joan by lidia yuknavitch

severance by lin ma

gold fame citrus by claire vaye watkins

the farm by joanne ramos

followers by megan angelo

the power by naomi alderman

the glass hotel by emily st. john mandel

if you want a book that reads like a good fanfic:

normal people by sally rooney

fame adjacent by sarah skilton

stay up with hugo best by erin somers

the seven husbands of evelyn hugo by taylor jenkins reid

circe by madeline miller

the nobodies by liza palmer

evvie drake starts over by linda holmes

if you like dark stories about complex relationships between women:

my sister, the serial killer by oyinkan braithwaite

baby teeth by zoje stage

dare me by megan abbott

eileen by ottessa moshfegh

social creature by tara isabelle burton

the worst kind of want by liska jacobs

the girls by emma cline

oligarchy by scarlett thomas

devotion by madeline stevens

baby by annaleese jochems

marlena by julie buntin

bunny by mona awad

necessary people by anna pitoniak

if you like stories about complicated families:

red at the bone by jacqueline woodson

the care and feeding of ravenously hungry girls by anissa grey

mostly dead things by kristen arnett

bee season by myla goldberg

bowlaway by elizabeth mccracken

everything i never told you by celeste ng

the nest by cynthia d’aprix sweeney

the grammarians by cathleen schine

ask again, yes by mary beth keane

if you like smart and thoughtful books about relationships between women:

my brilliant friend and the neapolitan novels by elena ferrante

such a fun age by kiley reid

gingerbread by helen oyeyimi

the female persuasion by meg wolitzer

the burning girl by claire messud

expectation by anna hope

the animators by kayla rae whitaker

if you want something queer that isn’t YA:

my education by susan choi

permission by saskia vogel

mostly dead things by kristen arnett

real life by brandon taylor

after dolores by sarah schulman

patsy by nicole dennis-benn

wilder girls by rory power

enter the aardvark by jessica anthony

less by andrew sean greer

exciting times by naiose dolan

you just want something good and are willing to take a chance on one of these books i love (these are not all recent, i just like them a lot):

dept. of speculation by jenny offill

the interestings by meg wolitzer

godshot by chelsea bieker

play it as it lays by joan didion

the bonfire of the vanities by tom wolfe

wolf in white van by john darnielle

things you would know if you grew up around here by nancy wayson dinan

sex and rage by eve babitz

wise blood by flannery o’connor

leading men by christopher castellani

saint x by alexis schaitkin

the cosmopolitans by sarah schulman

lake success by gary shteyngart

odds against tomorrow by nathaniel rich

the great believers by rebecca makkai

hello everyone! i thought i would share some keyboard shortcuts in notion that i use the most often and that save me the most time.

note: most actions from word processors, like ctrl + b for bold, will already work in notion!

#, ##, or ### + space to create large, medium, and small headings respectively

> + space to create a toggle block

/, the forward slash, lets you create any page you want. just type out what you’re looking for (i.e. page, table, link)

ctrl + \ toggles the sidebar on and off

ctrl + shift + n opens a new notion window (i use this for notetaking)

ctrl + shift + u lets you go up a level in the page hierarchy (i.e. from february to all months)

duplicate any content by holding option or alt and dragging. you can highlight as many blocks as you want

ctrl + / to change the type of blocks you have selected

ctrl + shift + p to move the page you’re on to another one (i like to use this for my article list to move them to my already read list

This post is 100% completely due to @post–grad who introduced me to Notion via this post. A literal game-changer. I am a total sucker for new productivity tools and apps.  Like, I’m pretty sure I have accounts on every productivity app from A to Z: Asana, Trello, Evernote… Anyways! Once I read Chelsea’s post, I knew I totally had to make an account and try it out myself. So, I thought I would show you guys a quick sneak peek on how an undergrad uses Notion to keep up with schoolwork under the cut!

in a bullet journaling rut? unsure of what to bujo? try some of these spread ideas, both conventional and unconventional, to include in your 2020 bullet journal and beyond!! 

these are categorized based on different traditional bullet journal categories.

the basics 

year in pixels 

yearly overview 

habit tracker 

sleep tracker 

food and drink tracker 

[insert year here] schedule 

quarterly goals 

water tracker 

bucket list 

resolutions/goals 

best of the last year/last decade

learning about yourself / covering your person

about me 

words for this year 

birthday wish list 

[amount of years you are old this upcoming birthday] i learned before [upcoming age] 

example: 21 things i learned before 21 

favorite quotes 

a decade in review 

caring for yourself 

self care ideas

mindfulness ideas 

living in quarantine practices 

positive affirmations

date ideas 

dates with myself 

i.e. things you’d like to do with yourself that you’d enjoy. or self dates 

things to improve on 

workout plan 

gratitude log for this year 

gratitude log for previous year 

life organization

master grocery list 

ideal morning routine 

ideal evening routine 

yearly achievements 

brain dump 

weekly to do 

monthly to do 

things to sell 

wardrobe capsule 

cleaning routine 

daily to do 

surveying your life 

podcasts to listen to  

movies to watch 

tv shows to watch 

book reviews

places to go 

things i want to buy 

books i want to read 

playlists in the works 

academic 

assignments due 

dining dollars or meal exchange budget (if you guys have those are your schools) 

grade calculator 

grade tracker 

attendance tracker

courses left to take/courses you want to take 

financial 

needs vs wants 

income tracker 

no spend challenge 

30 days or more

budgeting goals 

“decadence”

rewatch pride & prejudice (2005 or 1995, your pick)

take a long shower & shave legs

stare at face in mirror for a long time, reflect on changes that have occured in past year

sara bareilles cd on repeat

“deep mystery”

lying on the floor listening to music you liked fifteen years ago

watch dust motes travel across the room in the late afternoon haze

what would be different about my life if i had been a cheerleader in high school?

what was the title of that book you read in the fourth grade?  you only remember the main character’s name and nothing about the plot.  you spend the next three hours googling and then you drop $60 for a first edition on ebay

cup of tea, then another

are you there god?

“efficiency”

take out five boxes of paperwork from the closet and spend the next three hours making small piles around your body on the floor

write first chapter of novel

cover wall in post it notes

lists lists lists

highlight everything

now’s a good time to start that bullet journal

must empty email inbox

plan out next five years of life down to the month, week, day

“shake it up”

blast nsync while scrubbing out microwave

rearrange living room four different ways

today’s a good day to repaint your bedroom

let’s research and plan a trip to san francisco

develop new fashion style, must throw away all items of clothes that don’t work with it

“rain day”

light candle, open windows, put on sweater

reread old favorite book

pet a cat

how i use google drive for university - pt 1: digital notetaking  by kkaitstudies

idk about you but i’ve tested a bunch of note taking methods. in my last few years of university, i was indeed lazy and rarely referred back to the professor’s slides in the course shell. i opted to read off the slides in lecture and take notes. while MS OneNote is great, i found myself enjoying Google Drive much more. so here is a quick overview of how i take notes using Google Docs. 

folders are your friends

make separate folders for each of your courses. google drive even gives you the option to change the colours of the folders. in these folders, add any relevant coursework such as the syllabi, readings, and your notes document.

use one doc for notes per course

once you receive the syllabi, take some time to take note of required readings, and assignment deadlines. i have created a free template you can save to your own google drive that you can access here. fill out:

- course code & name - prof’s name, office hours, and email - date(s) for each week of class - weekly readings (tip: if you have online readings, you can link them in the doc!) - & open the document outline (view > show document outline)

you also don’t have to use all these features. T B H, i didn’t do weekly readings. a lot. oops. BUT i did always pay attention in lecture. i simply deleted the “reading notes” header every week i didn’t bother to read.

make use of early access to lecture slides, headers, etc. 

some profs (bless their souls) post the slides sometime before the lecture. if you have the time, copy the lecture slides into your notes. and if they don’t…type real quick to get all the info as it’s happening (or go back to slides online after lecture to see what you missed out on). i separate lecture topics with headers, with the bullet points underneath (see above). if there is anything that the prof says during class that isn’t in the lecture slides, i will change the colour of the text to a different colour. any important concepts or testable material are highlighted.

…and that’s how i take notes! everyone is different. not all note-taking methods work for everyone. this is what worked for me in my last 2 years of uni. hopefully a similar structure works for some of y’all! also, let me know what you think and @ me if you end up using my template. have a great semester!

whether you’re currently a grad student, going to be a grad student, or want to be a grad student (or if you’re an undergraduate student doing a lot of research) organizing, maintaining, and indexing our plethora of reading notes can be… hard. there are a lot of ‘em! what do we do with all this research goodness! the answer, friends, is we make a system, and we do it as early as possible. i didn’t create a system that worked until the second year of my MA (maddening!) so hopefully this helps y’all get a head start on me. this post is about to get real long, so if this is a ‘too-long, won’t-read’ situation, let me spoil it for ya: make a system! keep it simple! always summarize the argument!

now, into the depths of my research-reading, note-taking, indexing system!

my system involves two key things: 

my seminar notebook(s)

microsoft’s onenote

my seminar notebooks are actually a very small but integral part of this system because i never take my laptop to class. i want to have reading notes that are accessible during seminar, so all seminar-assigned-reading note-taking happens first in my notebook (and, realistically, on a paper copy of an article), and it is then transferred into onenote after seminar (post-seminar i usually have a clearer idea of what an article is doing, especially if it’s particularly dense).

my onenote system is very, very simple, and i refuse to let it get cluttered. i don’t use onenote for anything other than my reading notes. i don’t use it for brainstorming, day-to-day note-taking, or seminar notes - it is specifically for my reading notes (i still need a better system for regular notes, but at this point, i’m just a pen and paper sort of gal with boxes full of notebooks, and i’m accepting that). here’s how i set up my system in onenote:

i create a ‘notebook’ for each individual research project (”MA project”, “DPN article”, etc) and for each semester of grad school (”fall 2018″, ”spring 2019″, etc)

in research project notebooks: 

i create three ‘sections’ in each notebook: ‘primary source notes’, ‘secondary source notes’, and ‘reading lists’

in the primary and secondary source note sections, i create a new ‘page’ for each source (i typically title those like this: “author’s last name, title of the article”)

in the reading lists section, i make two pages: primary sources and secondary sources (these are lists of things i want to read but haven’t read yet - kind of like a long to-do list, or a dumping ground for all of the sources i come across while reading)

in semester notebooks: 

i create a ‘section’ for each class: for example, “book history & print culture”, “professional development”, “restoration theatre and authorship”

i create a separate ‘page’ for each assigned reading for those classes in those sections, using the same titling system as above

my indexing is not complicated: i just want to make sure that i can find whatever the heck i’m looking for. doing this, for me, looks like making sure i have the important info easily accessible, and doing what i can to make it so that future me doesn’t have a harder time than they need to. in my system, this looks like including ‘must-have’ info at the top of each ‘page’, followed by ‘the three keys’. what are those, you may ask? excellent question.

to create your must-have info, start at the top of the ‘page’, right below the page title, and list the following:

the full title of the article (”jane austen’s ‘excellent walker’: pride, prejudice, and pedestrianism”)

the author’s name (olivia murphy)

the citation in your preferred citation method

a link to the article if it’s available online

the date you read it (july 2016)

to create the three keys (so named by me because they’re the three key items i look to when i’m trying to find a source i can’t remember the name of), list, below your must-have info, the following:

a summary of the paper’s argument (murphy argues that elizabeth’s walks in pride and prejudice from the beginning of the novel to the end shift in accordance to her shifting position in society, turning her from a ‘rambling romantic’ into a female walker of the upper classes; acknowledges that darcy, even as the novel sets him up as ideal for the period, limits her free spirit)

an indication of how they argue it (historicizes pedestrianism, acknowledges etiquette requirements around women’s exercise qand movement, compares the novel to other canonical works of the period, compares her early walking to her later walking, references austen’s walking)

create a short list of keywords (pedestrianism, jane austen, pride and prejudice, romantic walking, etiquette, mobility)

between the ‘must-have’ info and the three keys, i usually have a lot of luck finding whatever it is i’m looking for! having one particular place where i keep my reading notes - onenote - and having a system that works for me - notebooks, sections, pages in onenote - means i always know where to look (as opposed to, say, trying to remember that one article you read for a seminar two years ago but you only took notes on in that one notebook that you can’t find). 

my actual note-taking for readings can vary depending on what i’m taking notes for, since the purposes the notes serve differ:

for seminars: i’m thinking about how the reading aligns with the upcoming class, how it informs or challenges the primary texts we’re working with, how the argument is formulated. i focused more on jotting down notes that summarize main points, new terms and vocabulary, framing points within the context of the class, and writing down related ideas or question.

for research projects: i’m thinking about the writing process. i don’t want to just understand or question the readings, i want to have a useful resource for when i’m brainstorming and writing later. i jot down useful quotes into my onenote notebook, accompanied by thoughts on how it connects to my project, along with any gaps i’m identifying. i make sure to summarize key points.

when i revisit my notes, i keep these frameworks in mind! i was reading with a really particular lens, and that affects how i’ve chosen what to include or what i was thinking about when i was working on them.

if you’re short on time or struggle to note-take since it can make doing your readings more time-consuming (completely valid), try, at the very least, to do the ‘must-have’ info and the three keys (summarize the argument, indicate how they argue it even very briefly, and give yourself some keywords). these are going to help you when you revisit your notes or want to try and figure out if a paper you’ve read before is going to be useful for you. 

when i need to revisit a resource for writing or research purposes, being able to go back into my notes and read the argument summary (which is a pain to write at the time, but a lifesaver later) helps me figure out if it’s still a useful resource - if it is, but my notes are really skewed towards the class’s focus, i can edit and adjust my notes as necessary on a second read-through, which is automatically a more efficient and productive task because i’m going in with at least a shallow understanding of the argument.

ig: actuarystudies

it’s all based on louise desalvo’s concept of a process journal for writers, from her book ‘the art of slow writing’ which i read way back in 2014 but has stayed with me all this time. she based that concept on sue grafton’s journal, which “stands as a record of the conversation she has with herself about the work in progress.” desalvo talks about her own process journal : “to plan a project, list books i want to read, list subjects i want to write about, capture insight about my work in progress, discuss my relationship to my work (what’s working and what’s not, whether i need to make changes to my writing schedule, how i’m feeling about the work)” 

her view of the concept is so interesting and can easily be applied to grad school : “keeping a process journal helps us understand that our writing is important work. we value it enough to plan, reflect, and evaluate our work. a process journal is an invaluable record of our work patterns, our feelings about our work, our responses to ourselves as writers, and our strategies for dealing with difficulties and challenges.”

she says, and i quote : “our progress journals are where we engage in the nonjudgmental, reflective witnessing of our work. here, we work at defining ourselves as active, engaged, responsible, patient writers.” and like ???? yes, go off louise!

every week i make an entry with my three to five priorities. since i currently still have seminars, my entire week cannot be dedicated to my thesis, so these priorities allow me to really focus on specific things. they can be bigger or smaller depending on the amount of time i have to work on my thesis.

every day i work on my thesis, i make an entry. i try to answer two questions : “what did i do that day to make progress on my thesis?” as well as “how am i feeling & what i can do to feel better?” i also choose two to five specific tasks to achieve that day and write about the progress. for example, if my task is reading an article, i’ll write it down, check the box once i do it and write a summary of the “experience” (how was the article, was it useful for my research, should i read more of that author’s work, etc.) that way, i can look back at previous tasks, know what happened and learn from it.

i also use the journal almost like a bullet journal (the OG kind) with ongoing lists of important things. of course, there are some to do lists here and there (even though i prefer having my comprehensive task list on todoist), but it’s mostly things like

names of people who have helped me so i can thank them in my thesis

call numbers of books to borrow or archives to consult

research hypotheses 

things to look for in the archives i consult

questions to ask my professor/advisor/archivist/etc.

issues that need to be fixed in my thesis

books/articles to read

additional things to research

i also use it as a regular notebooks for all things thesis. one of my seminars this semester is a methodology course, so i take notes in my journal as reference. i also sometimes will write some reading notes if i don’t have my computer on me, such as key quotes or arguments. also, all of my notes from meetings/calls/emails with my advisor are put in the journal, as well as a any pertinent meeting notes (with an archivist, fellow student, my mom, etc.) lastly, sometimes it just becomes a catch all for brainstorm sessions and random thoughts.

a lot of you have asked how I actually use notion in my day to day life, so I’ve broken down my task manager for all of you! hope this helps :) happy notion-ing! 💖

my other posts on notion: goal setting 📚

entire post below!

• september 7, 2019 •

here’s to a soft 2019

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Finished my final exam of my degree today.

The ABCDE Method: Accomplish Tasks more Efficiently