doom wasp

 So, I don't live in North America anymore, but I used to. I was born in the US and maybe lived there 10 years (in various states, I moved maybe every 1 or 2 years due to my dad's work), then I moved to Canada and basically grew up there. Now I am in Europe (I say that nebulously because I also keep moving around). I like to read the news. And watch US late night comedy shows. And watch clips of political streamers saying stuff. And go on Reddit and see clips. My brain right now is split between the Europe news, aka "will Greenland be invaded, will NATO collapse, how does Europe disentangle itself from US economy and trade" and then US news, aka "doing war crimes, woman is murdered, people are kidnapped off the street and disappeared, mass violence against protestors". And even though I know technically I would be more worried about Europe, I can't stop thinking about the US. It's scary, because I know that if I hadn't chosen to go to university ...

   So I've recently finished The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, and it was a bit of a weird experience for me. I'm not really sure why, but it took me until maybe 5 minutes after I'd already finished the book to realise I actually liked it. I think that maybe I was approaching this book wrong, to be completely honest. Like, I was looking for a plot with a twist (because I've already read We Have Always Lived in the Castle and a bunch of Jackson's short stories before) but that's not really what this book is about. It's basically about the interiority of our protagonist, Eleanor. Very literally, the book is set in a house that also mirrors the deteriorating mental state of the character's whose mind we also inhabit. I've been reading reddit analysis threads on this book (as one does), and I find it interesting that the two big interpretations of the story are 1) it's all in Eleanor's head or 2) that the house made Eleanor become wo...