What I haven't Read

If you were holding your breath for this quarter’s instalment of books I’ve read, don’t - because I’ve read nothing. Nada. Not one novel, not one classic. And I’m okay admitting that.

At the beginning of the year, I found myself unable to stick to a book. I tried many, hoping something would land. 

The Dressmaker by Rosalie Ham was an obvious choice because I love the film so much, but I couldn’t separate the characters from their screen versions. There was no room left for surprise. The Cicada House by Ella Ward felt close to the plot of All Fours by Miranda July, with its escapist tone, but it didn’t stick. A Body Made of Glass by Caroline Crampton was too heavy for me at the time. The Summer Book by Tove Jansson sits on my shelf still (gifted by Chanel), but I can’t seem to get through it. And When the Going Was Good by Graydon Carter was, in my opinion, just boring. I’ve tried it so many times I’ve basically memorised the first chapter.

It made me wonder: if I don’t feel the urge to read something, if I’m not excitedly reaching for a book, am I just reading for the sake of it? To say I’ve read it, to appear well-read, to participate in discourse? If there isn’t a single piece of literature I’m yearning to indulge in, then what’s the point of forcing it?

Of course, I’ll still read things when I need to — a research study, some Instagram prose, whatever — but despite borrowing books, trying audiobooks, asking for recommendations, and keeping lists, nothing has been calling me to the page.

It also made me think about how much weight we place on reading in general. We’re not in school anymore, being forced to analyse and report back, so why does it still feel like a measure of intelligence or worth?

Is it because we feel we should be making the effort to read, especially now, when information is so easily accessible in other forms? Do we read to say we do, or do we read for enjoyment?

Personally, I used to read to be inspired to write. The different ways something could be said expanded my understanding of language. Plot twists and narrative turns opened up new ways of thinking and expressing. Reading felt essential.

But this year, I’ve found that same inspiration elsewhere — in supposedly ‘menial’ shows like Sex and the City. It’s not high art in the traditional sense (though it’s iconic and singular in its own way), but I can’t pretend I haven’t read books that enticed me for the same reasons and still didn’t live up to their reputation.

A lot of the books I’ve found most inspiring also centre writers as protagonists — many of Stephen King’s novels, or narrators in books like Butter by Asako Yuzuki and Penance by Eliza Clark. Lately, SATC has been filling that gap through Carrie Bradshaw.

When I read, I visualise everything like a screen already playing in my head. One could argue reading demands more imagination — that you have to build the world yourself — but I’d argue that watching someone else’s interpretation of a script can create a similar kind of expansion. It’s not lesser, just different.

Like feminist literature, I’m drawn to feminist screenwriting too. Both give me glimpses into how others navigate womanhood, and both soften the guilt or uncertainty I sometimes attach to my own thinking.

Watching Girls through Lena Dunham’s lens gave me permission to sit with cringe — to accept it as part of being alive rather than something to avoid at all costs.

And now Sex and the City is offering me a glimpse into my thirties, and into ageing in a way that people in their twenties, like me, are often taught to fear.

I do still yearn to be lost in a book. It has its own charm, its own kind of immersion, and I want to be one of those people reading on trams and trains, completely absorbed again. I hope that desire returns at some point. But I’m not going to force it.

So while some people might already be on their 50th book of the year, I’m sitting here with zero under my belt. I hope this is some comfort to those in a similar place, because I know I’ve felt insecure before about how many books I was or wasn’t reading.

At this point, I don’t really care to know anyone’s book count anymore (or at least, I'm trying not to care). If anything, I’m side-eyeing people who report 100+ books by the end of the year because, genuinely, where did you find the time, and how deeply were you actually engaging with each one?

Even when I was reading three or four books a quarter last year, they would eventually start to blur into one another. A lot of them, I couldn’t reliably recall the main characters or plot points, simply because of how much I was consuming at once.

Maybe those people are better at it than me — maybe they can retain everything and deeply connect with each piece of literature they tick off their list. But it’s not sustainable for me, and I’ve made peace with that (for now).

Who knows, you might see a “10 books I’ve read in 10 days” post here one day (unlikely), and I’d probably feel a sense of achievement if I did. But if not, there’s always the possibility of a “media I’ve consumed in the second quarter of 2026” instead.

Books I've read in the last quarter of 2025

Final instalment of the books I’ve read in the past quarter is here, and she did pretty well in October, November and December, reading five books. Let’s get into it:

Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez

Unaccounted for, I read a lot of feminist literature this quarter. October started with Invisible Women, which was full of stats and facts that I knew from the beginning would enrage me, but I think I needed that fuelling. I’ve been feeling as if I haven’t been angry enough for the right reasons, and so this definitely did the job. Although a difficult and heavy read, it was a really important one and I’m glad to have it checked off my to-read list. I needed a book full of substantial facts that give me real-life situations to look over, to see how every aspect of a woman’s life is disrupted by the lack of data for and around them, from and because of which they continue to be the ‘invisible’ sex.

I would quote the whole book if I could, because I don’t think there was a single page in there that didn’t provide hard-hitting facts with a side of much-understandable rage veiled as dark humour. Likewise, I was thoroughly impressed by the extensive research that went into it – so much so that around 150 pages at the end of the book are dedicated to references and annotations. Not that I needed proof to convince me of the injustices, but more so, I could tell others (mostly men) that there are real-life studies and research done on this, and that it should be taken seriously.

A few things I underlined whilst reading:

There is no such thing as a woman who doesn’t work. There is only a woman who isn’t paid for her work. (Page 70)

A 2016 study from the University of Sussex played a series of cries to parents (twenty-five fathers and twenty-seven mothers) of three-month-old babies. They found that although babies’ cries aren’t differentiated by sex (sex-based pitch differences don’t occur until puberty), lower cries were perceived as male and higher cries perceived as female. They also found that when male parents were told that the lower-pitched cry belonged to a boy, they rated the baby as being in more discomfort than when the cry was labelled female. Instead of believing women when they say they’re in pain, we tend to label them as mad. And who can blame us? Bitches be crazy, as Plato famously said. Women are hysterical (hystera is the Greek word for womb), crazy, irrational and over-emotional. (Pages 224–225)

We no longer lock women up and cut out parts of their brains. Instead, we give women drugs: women are two and a half times more likely to be on antidepressants than men.
So why are more women being treated with antidepressants? Are women simply more ‘feeble-minded’? Does living in a world in which we don’t quite fit affect our mental health? Or are antidepressants the new (and obviously preferable) lobotomy for women dealing with trauma? (Page 226)

There is an irony in how the female body is apparently invisible when it comes to collecting data, because when it comes to the second trend that defines women’s lives, the visibility of the female body is key. The trend is male sexual violence towards women – how we don’t measure it, don’t design our world to account for it, and in so doing, allow it to limit women’s liberty. Female biology is not the reason women are raped. It is not the reason women are intimidated and violated as they navigate public spaces. This happens not because of sex, but because of gender: the social meanings we have imposed on male and female bodies. In order for gender to work, it must be obvious which bodies elicit which treatment. And clearly, it is: as we’ve seen, ‘the mere sight of a woman’ is enough for the viewer to ‘immediately elicit a specific set of associated traits and attributions’. To immediately class her as someone to speak over. Someone to cat-call. Someone to follow. Someone to rape. Or maybe just someone to make the tea. (Page 313)

And, as with male violence against women, female biology is not the reason women are the bum-wiping class. But recognising a child as female is the reason we will be brought up to expect and accept that as her role. Recognising a woman as female is the reason she will be seen as the appropriate person to clear up after everyone in the office, to write the Christmas and birthday cards to her husband’s family, and look after them when they get sick – to be paid less, to go part-time when they have kids. (Page 314)

From Here to the Great Unknown by Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough

I have no interest in Elvis Presley or any of his songs. I don’t even know if I’ve heard any, except maybe in the movie where Austin Butler plays Elvis, but this book came up as available on the audiobook app I use, and I thought, why not. It’s the account of Elvis Presley’s daughter and his granddaughter, and it’s an interesting look, again, at how women were treated: Elvis’s life was made possible by the women around him, but there is an added element of fame in the mixture here, as the women were also thrown into the limelight.

I don’t think I necessarily took much away from this book. It was a very quick read, and in the audiobook version, there were extracts from recordings which Lisa Marie Presley left for her daughter, which I thought made for an interesting addition and layer. I enjoyed reading about the extravagant lives they lived and the details about rooms and people coming in and out of their house when Elvis was in his prime – the abundance and excitement of it all. (Although I thought the name of the book was a bit dramatic, lol.) This book was quite a blip in my reading journey this quarter, and I’m not sure if that’s because I was so interested in it or if I just wanted to say I’d read another this quarter.

All Fours by Miranda July

Now THIS was a book – I was totally and utterly hooked, and I felt as though I was the protagonist. Reading about femalehood through this lens, I feel, made me wiser. A woman approaching menopause is still a girl at heart who may not have all the answers and may not have untangled all feelings and emotions.

I think I will cherish this book for how raw and vulnerable it was in exploring topics I’ve personally not hit at before, and for giving me a glimpse into thought patterns or monologues I may encounter in my years to come. I think I’ll feel supported knowing someone else has felt these things before, no matter how embarrassing they may seem. The author also seems intertwined with the narrative, and I wonder if any of it is derived from her own experiences (which it probably is, as all writing, in my opinion, is just fictionalising the non-fiction we’ve lived).

Looking through her Instagram after reading, I found I had imagined the protagonist to be quite like the author – there were videos of her dancing in the way she talked about in her book, and a video where she sat in what seemed to be a motel room, not unlike the main setting of the book. It also explored relationships and different ways of coming to terms with what you may want to feel or experiment with, and finally be happy with, and that what you may think is the life you want for yourself for the future may not remain that way when the future becomes the present. The audiobook was read by the author, and it made it that much more involved, as you could really tell she wrote every bit of it with such pleasure and purpose, and her reading made it so much more ‘her’.

I also appreciated the protagonist not gendering her child – something which inspired me to think deeper about gender (further expanding on the readings from Invisible Women).

Highly recommend.

Down the Drain by Julia Fox

I’ve seen so many people talk about this. I find it a bit funny that the cover is just an image someone took and put into Procreate to write some text over (maybe it adds to the authenticity of it). The book is fascinating, to say the least. What a life she’s lived – and definitely one that would’ve been untold if luck wasn’t on her side. I’ve seen criticism of the book that it doesn’t seem real or is exaggerated, but I completely believe the things she went through – I’ve seen it myself, with friends from Perth who had nothing better to do than to end up in situations like hers (whether they wanted to or not).

I found it a bit hard to keep up with all the people in the book – there were just so many, and I kept wanting to know who she was referring to in real life. You can bet I was on those Reddit threads trying to find the real-life versions of those in the book. I came across her pictures from her dominatrix days – images of her profile on the website where her ‘specialities’ were advertised, news articles where her name wasn’t mentioned but the events were detailed and matched her accounts in the book. That aspect of it was really thrilling for me – it was like I was uncovering secrets just beneath the surface that not everyone was privy to (they probably were).

I find her life fascinating, and her self real. I will say, though – and I haven’t heard or read many people share this opinion – that the writing was very mediocre. Short, simple sentences that seemed less ‘literary’ and more conversational, like with a close friend. Perhaps, again, it adds to the authenticity and proves she wrote it herself, but I found it interesting how the praise around her work was often for her writing, when in actuality, I think the writing seems great because what is being told is extraordinary and has shock factor. I did watch Uncut Gems after reading the book, and it was thrilling to know what went on behind the scenes.

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

A Room of One’s Own has been on my to-read list for the longest time, as have most classics. I think I was scared to read it. Scared that it would make me want things I can’t give myself or aren’t accessible to me in this economy. It’s such a short book, but it was daunting to start (something the woman next to me on the flight to Perth also said when she saw what I was reading). Now, having read it, it wasn’t all I was making it out to be.

Woolf’s whole premise is basically intertwined with all the other feminist works I’ve read thus far – that women need to work for others to maybe have time to work (or rest) for themselves. That women are just as intellectual as men, if not more, but haven’t had the privilege and freedom to express such because they’re busy with other things like housework or having children.

I suppose Woolf’s perspective lends us a vision of the world she was in, before we had stats such as those in Invisible Women, or before we knew and understood women’s workload and its unfairness. She talks from observation and compares the male writers of her time to the lack of female writers. There is inherent privilege in her speech – she is white and, as she mentions, rich from the money left to her by her aunt, which allows her to write freely. However, she is not privy to other privileges that dictate her life – her race and sexuality, namely, where she uses slurs or derogatory words to refer to gay or Black people.

There is inherent racism and homophobia in her, which confuses me – how can she be so astute in her observations of the disparity between men and women, but not pick out the same discrimination in her own understanding of Blackness and queerness? I suppose it goes to show one can only advocate for things one has personally felt and encountered, and that dismantling deep prejudices is hard, tiring and empathetic work one may not even know needs to be done, because of the privilege that keeps them out of sight of prejudices unapplied to them.

——

I’m not sure how many people tuned in and actually read these posts throughout the year, but regardless, I think it kept me accountable and meant I had to read to report. If you read them, thank you. I hope to continue the same way next year too, and in the meantime, if you’re looking for more about books from me, here is my latest article with RUSSH on how books are a form of therapy, with a few recommendations at the end.

It’s been an incredible year for me work/writing-wise, and you can have a look at all the work I’ve done this year (for other publications/magazines) here.

Catch ya in 2026 x

Books I've read in the third quarter of 2025

It’s time to report on the books I read in the third quarter of 2025. A moment I knew would come — yet still dread — is finally here too: I only managed to read two books in the past three months...I have my excuses: new job, copious freelance work, inability to focus, inability to find something interesting, laziness... 

Part of the problem is also the fact that I tend to enjoy non-fiction more, which doesn’t always make reading the most relaxing activity, regardless of how interesting or captivating it may be. Often, it feels burdensome when I’m delving deep into someone’s research of a woman’s life overshadowed by her husband, or into a murder case inspired by real-life events. As much as I decide to pick up this genre, it does make it harder to digest, especially if I try to do it quickly. 

I enjoy non-fiction because it feels easier to grasp, and I’m sure some part of me finds it more “productive” than fiction. But then we end up with what we have here today — two books read in three months. Alas, I made my choice to report on my reading at the end of each quarter, and so here we are.

Penance by Eliza Clark

Clark’s ability to pull together so many threads, tangle them, and then untangle them again is remarkable. As someone who has tried (or is trying) to write a mystery/crime novel herself, I can really appreciate the timeline, pacing, and dot-connections that Penance rounds out. Not only are the characters well-defined, with traits and mannerisms grounded in reality and current pop culture, but the writing itself makes it difficult to remember that the story isn’t true, which, to me, is a great indicator of strong crime writing.

As a true-crime watcher, I felt exposed when the chapters began delving into Violet’s thinking. It became apparent to me that Clark must have shared some of those tendencies herself to be able to articulate Violet’s inner world so vividly. I also think her descriptions of teenage girls’ social lives are presented with scarily accurate dialogue, digging deep into that immaturity-ridden hatred that fuels their actions.

It’s also a book that, whenever I’ve spoken to anyone about it, has always been met with the same reaction: how great it was. And I think that’s because it truly is so difficult to come out of a crime book feeling satisfied — much like its parallels with real-life cases, where justice never feels achieved, only arrived at. With Penance, the reader leaves knowing that justice has not been fully achieved, but that what could be done has been. Additionally, the layer of the unreliable narrator/journalistic POV adds an interesting element of constructed truths and personal influences that shape the story being told.

Altogether, I think the book replicates the feeling of being a jury member, where you’re presented with facts (to some extent), but also the POVs of all involved parties. At the same time, you’re constantly aware of inaccuracies in reporting and personal influences, and so you’re left to make a decision, even if you don’t fully agree with it or believe there’s a simple outcome.

Wifedom by Anna Funder

I think part of me doesn’t want to accept that her life turned out the way it did, because from all accounts (in the book), she seemed destined for so much more than being just a wife. Not that it’s a small feat, but it’s clear it wasn’t meant to be her defining trait. I think it scares me to know that possibility still lies out there for me, too. It feels all too easy, all too accessible, to give up on your dreams as a writer, as a woman. There’s always something else you could be doing with your life — having kids, getting married, taking care of a home. These things aren’t out of the question for me either, and so I can’t help but wonder: what factor(s) will it be that lead me to the same fate?

If a woman of such intelligence could make the choices Eileen did and still end up alone on her deathbed, what hope is there for the rest of us — women who fear her fate but are not so far from it? What one decision am I going to make that will continue me on a downward path of similar mistakes, until I’m buried under the names of those far greater than I, simply because of the inherent privileges they might benefit from — be it whiteness (not necessarily addressed in the book) or maleness?

This is far from a book review, but I cannot help becoming attached to the idea of Eileen, however inaccurately she may have been portrayed — and will continue to be portrayed — because that in itself speaks to the unimportance women are dealt with. I will continue to be haunted by the decisions she seemingly made, in the fear that one day my story could end up the same, or worse, reimagined in a way that couldn’t be further from the truth, yet still delivered.

It’s not so much a criticism of Funder — I think she did the extraordinary work of spending time and resources to uncover the life of Eileen as separate from Orwell as possible — but more a haunting reminder of the loose grasp we all have on our stories, and how easily they can be manipulated with time. Whether that’s because of lost resources and forgotten accounts, or invented and constructed ones, the result is the same: the truth becomes fragile, and our lives become stories told through someone else’s lens.

-----

That concludes my reads for July, August, and September. Can’t believe there is just one more to go — what a speedy year!

Also, I’ve been thinking about starting a bi-monthly newsletter...? Ideally, I’d love to do it bi-weekly and update subscribers with all the freelance work I’ve been doing, any media outings I’ve been on, etc. But I don’t know how consistent I can be with that when I keep flip-flopping between transparency and a mysterious persona, and over-productivity and laziness. We’ll see...

Until next time, for the final instalment of this quarterly series for 2025!