By the [1680s], the demand for human hair for the ever bigger and more complicated coiffures was so great that the “hair merchants” were sending out professional “cutters” all over Europe. They brought pounds of hair at a time back to Paris; it had to be at least twenty-four inches long to be useful for the trendiest coiffes. The Dutch were said to produce the finest hair; within France, Norman hair won the nod. Ash blond hair — the ne plus ultra for female beauty in seventeenth-century France, undoubtedly because there were so few natural ash blonds in France — was wildly more expensive, thirty-eight times more expensive, to be exact, than ordinary brown. ... Across the channel, in England, where fair-haired women were far more common, gentlemen preferred not blonds, but raven-haired beauties. So much for wanting what we have.
— Joan DeJean, The Essence of Style: How the French Invented High Fashion, Fine Food Chic Cafés, Style, Sophistication, and Glamour (2005)
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Currently reading Transformation and Other Stories by Mary Shelley. A slim volume (it's part of a series called "101 Pages" published in the UK and is, fittingly, 101 pages) that collects three of Shelley's best Gothic tales, "Transformation," "The Mortal Immortal," and "The Evil Eye". The title story echoes some of the themes of Frankenstein -- interior vs. exterior beauty and ugliness, as reflected in "the double"; the dangers of runaway pride; the striking of a Faustian bargain for knowledge or power. Shelley's prose is highly wrought, but appropriately so, given the weighty themes and dramatic situations she portrays. It's understandable that Frankenstein has dominated our understanding of her work -- it is, after all, one of the most influential and frequently adapted novels ever written -- but stories such as these, together with her other novels like The Last Man and Mathilda, remind us that she had perhaps the most fertile literary imagination of her generation.
Reading The Shadow-Line: A Confession by Joseph Conrad, the 1915 autobiographical novel (I suppose now it would be called autofiction) of his first command, the sailing ship Otago, and how he passed the "shadow-line" between youth and maturity. It will never cease to amaze me that Conrad, for whom English was a third language, wrote better prose than 99% of novelists having English as their first language.
“Finch always said there were certain places where it was easier to tell stories, and to hear them: around a fire at night, in the mist at dawn, on a porch at dusk. In-between places, balanced on the border between familiar and strange.”
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
May's reading was amazing and May's posting was horrendous. Lets hope in June I can manage both!
Currently Reading:
Fiction:
The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 4 by Beth Brower
The Knight and the Butcherbird by Alix E. Harrow [K]
The Treason of Isengard by J.R.R. Tolkien
Poetry:
Wound from the Mouth of a Wound by torrin a. greathouse
The Penguin Book of Homosexual Verse edited by Stephen Coote
The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien
Nonfiction:
The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson
Graphic Novels:
The Marble Queen by Anna Kopp
Just Finished:
Night Owl by Aimee Nezhukumatathil ★★★★
It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over by Anne de Marcken ★★★★
The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt by Toby Wilkinson ★★★★
The Secret History of Fantasy by Peter S. Beagle ★★★
The Return of the Shadow by J.R.R. Tolkien ★★★★
Selected Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay ★★★★
DNFs:
Inciting Joy by Ross Gay (I just didn't vibe with it. I was having an okay time when I picked it up but I never wanted to pick it up.)
General Reading Thoughts:
I got Three months of kindle unlimited for $1 so expect lots of e-books for a while. I don't love supporting amazon but it was the best way for me to read Dungeon Crawler Carl without sacrificing $$$$ and shelf space so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ That being said since I will have it I might as well use it so my massive physical TBR might be yelling at me.
Current Reading Tag || General Original Content || 2026 Reading Page
Rambles Below:
Emma M. Lion continues to be a delight! I'm trying to to rush though each book because I have no clue when the next is coming.
I technically haven't started The Knight and the Butcherbird yet but it will be my 1st KU read after I wrap up my current comic read.
The Penguin Book of Homosexual Verse is an old anthology that's been on my TBR forever, like over a decade maybe?!?!?! Finally decided this is the Pride Month to read it in.
I wanted to be bowled over by It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over and give it 5 stars but I think I wanted just a bit more solid ground to end on. Still a beautiful study on grief though.
Current poetry reading is Even Time Bleeds by Jeannette L. Clariond, translated by Forrest Gander (Princeton UP, 2026). Clariond (b. 1949) is a Mexican poet of Lebanese descent who enjoys high repute in her home country, both for her own work and for her translations into Spanish of authors like Elizabeth Bishop and Anne Carson. This volume, part of the Lockert Library of Poetry in Translation from Princeton University Press, collects various of her shorter poems as well as excerpts from longer works, in Spanish with facing-page translations. While Gander (himself a Pulitzer-winning poet) is the credited translator, he notes that Clariond collaborated with him throughout the translation process and even revised some of her originals to better match his English versions.
I'm roughly at the three-quarters mark, and I've been very impressed indeed. Clariond is one of those rare poets who can whittle language down to the bone without sacrificing meaning. One has the feeling, particularly in her short lyrics, that she's opened a window onto a plane of hyper-reality we're rarely privileged to glimpse. Her repeated, almost incantatory reference to elemental symbols -- roots, bones, fire, water -- binds the whole collection together like the shuffling and dealing of a tarot deck. Heartily recommended for those who want to better understand the possibilities of Spanish-language poetry, as well as those who just enjoy a worthwhile read.
(Incidentally, this is the 26th volume in the Lockert series that I've read. Yes, I keep count. No, I don't know why.)
