The part everyone skips.
A personal book review and marginalia blog focused on reflective reading, annotated passages, and the books that stay with you.
Most Anticipated Books: Second Half of 2026
A mix of fiction and nonfiction for the second half of 2026: prison blues, forbidden forests, a Veracruz con job, and the long fight over who counts as equal.
Armchair Euro Fakeation: A European Reading List for Summer 2026
Twenty books of summer spanning Hungary, Ireland, the Calabrian coast, a Swiss mental institution, wartime Berlin, and a crumbling Tuscan villa. The Europe that didn't make the brochure.
Villa Coco by Andrew Sean Greer
I am certain I was no more or less irritating than any other good American son of the century, unweathered by experience and unwise to the world. Whatever attributes one found in me were simply, as in the Pekingese, part of the breed.
Bookish Wishes: A Midsommar's Night Read
Ten books I'd love to own, summer edition: books about food, writing, the Dust Bowl, memoirs, with a little snarky satire, of course.
Look What You Made Me Do by John Lanchester
All their lives, everything has been about them. Why would that change now that they're in their fifties / sixties / seventies / eighties / whatever?
Last Night in Brooklyn by Xochitl Gonzalez
Everybody in Brooklyn—our kind of Brooklyn—believed in a fair fucking fight. But this, we all knew, had been dirty pool.
Quick Lit Short and Sweet Reviews, April 2026
Short reviews of six books I read over the last month and a half — Sisters in Yellow, Last Night in Brooklyn, The Witch, Vigil, How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder, and Down Time.
How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder by Nina McConigley
A good life in spite of. In spite of bad ancestors. In spite of your skin. In spite of colonialism. In spite of capitalism. In spite of nationalism. In spite of the internet. In spite of war. In spite of the patriarchy.
Down Time by Andrew Martin
Maggie spent her time trying to solve problems; she’d be the person trying to untangle the ropes for the lifeboats as the crew sang plaintive death songs up on deck.
Buzzwords and Phrases That Make Me Want to Read (or Avoid) a Book
The descriptors book marketers use tell you a lot about who they think you are. These are the ones that pull me in and the ones that send me running.
Simply More by Cynthia Erivo
With music everywhere, home felt like a place I belonged. I could ask all the questions in the world and was never shamed for my curiosity. I could bring in as much music as I wanted and play it wherever and whenever I wanted.
Books About the Southwest: History, Fiction, and the Stories We Were Never Told
The American Southwest has been mythologized so thoroughly and for so long that the myth has become almost impossible to see around. These books are a corrective.