Helen of Nowhere by Makenna Goodman
Helen had money. You betcha. She used to say her life was like the inside of a golden egg, and that people with normal shells wanted nothing more than to be golden. And instead of thinking about their yolks or whites, they thought only of their shells and how they were missing some kind of decoration, whereas she had the decoration and wanted it to be normal, like theirs.
New-to-me Authors Read in 2025
A Top Ten Tuesday list of new-to-me authors I read in 2025, plus the real question underneath: was I pulled in by the author, the premise, or the hype, and did the book deliver?
Books I Wish I Could Read Again for the First Time
A list of books I'd love to read again for the first time, that didn’t just entertain me, but woke something up too.
Goals for 2026 & Defensive Book Quoting
This year I'm setting reading and book goals while trying to stay out of the performance trap.
The Grace of Reading for Transformation, Not Consumption
Reading doesn’t need to be optimized. An essay on escaping reading-as-productivity and rediscovering reading as transformation, not consumption.
Quick Lit: Short and Sweet Reviews — January 2026
A grumpy bookseller novel, Lydia Millet’s razor-sharp short stories, Joy Harjo as the wise auntie we all need, and a strange new Roxane Gay–imprint release about grief, obsession, and the soul of a dog.
New Books I’m Looking Foward To This Year (First Half of 2026)
Books that arrive already humming with questions: about how we live, what we inherit, what we automate, what we grieve, and what we still hope books can do for us when the news is unbearable and the group chat is tired.
Best Books I Read in 2025
A curated list of fiction and nonfiction exploring burnout, work, grief, attention, and belonging. Personal notes on books that helped me think more clearly about modern life.
Serviceberry Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer
The book argues that joy and justice are not separate pursuits, and that caring for the earth is less about sacrifice than participation. By treating the world as a gift rather than a resource, Kimmerer reframes responsibility as relationship—and asks what becomes possible when we take only what we need and let the rest circulate.
Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkehead
My conversations helped me recognise a deeper issue, too, which is the way our ceaseless efforts to get into the driver’s seat of life seem to sap it of the very sense of aliveness that makes it worth living in the first place.
Most Recent Additions to My Bookshelf
My Top Ten Tuesday Post-Christmas book haul reveals: translated Nobel Prize winner I keep abandoning, writing guides that might finally crack my note-taking chaos, a bookseller so bitter it might be too mean even for me, and the best neighborhood book box score of 2025.
Ten Books I'd Love to Be Gifted This Year
Top Ten Tuesday - From the only cookbook Marcella Hazan brought to America to Pynchon's 'great cheese novel,' this year's wishlist has some stories to tell. (Plus: the housing market horror novel that might hurt too much to read.)