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August

The Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead (2026) 368 pages

the conclusion of Whitehead’s The Harlem Trilogy. this novel is split into three parts that tell the story of part time criminals dabbling in crime while fighting for what's theirs in 1980s New York City. I liked Part 2 the best and it was interesting seeing how both the main characters and city have grown over the decades. sharp writing that tackled themes like conflicts in identity, gentrification, corruption, and aging, but all three of these books were lacking something in my opinion. maybe it was the structure of dividing each novel into novellas that made the stories too predictable and not fully fleshed out. feel like Whitehead is a bit overrated but I still like his books enough to check em out, and will be interested to see what direction he goes in next. it was recently announced that Apple TV will do an adaptation of this trilogy which I'll definitely watch

7.4/10

Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay (1967) 189 pages

novel set in 1900 Australia about a boarding school for girls that takes a field trip to Hanging Rock and tragedy strikes. interesting plot with a memorable beginning and ending but the middle part was so inconsequential and frustrating that it kind of ruined the reading experience for me. wasn’t expecting a mystery novel but there were far too many unimportant characters and storylines for a short novel and the ending didn’t really hit as hard as it should’ve because of narrative choices. still want to check out the 1975 film but this book and Lindsay’s writing really didn’t work for me

6.0/10

The Big Nowhere by James Ellroy (1988) 472 pages

the second book in James Ellroy’s L.A. Quartet and though the stories and characters aren’t connected with The Black Dahlia, the depravity, corruption, and moral decay of post WWII L.A. continues to make for unique and hard hitting noir. this novel tells the story of an investigation of both a string of gruesome murders as well and communism's influence on Hollywood. it’s textbook Ellroy with sharp writing, three perspectives, and a complex and dark police procedural that pulls you in. towards the middle it felt a bit convoluted but the last third was very strong and Ellroy is really in a league of his own when it comes to noir and character development. enjoyed this more than The Black Dahlia, and though I need a break from the series, I look forward to reading L.A. Confidential and White Jazz sometime next year

8.4/10

Nocturno de Chile / By Night in Chile by Roberto Bolaño (2000) 152 pages

short novel about a Chilean priest and poet on his deathbed looking back on his life and the people he met during the political turmoil of 20th century Chile. Bolaño is one of my favorite authors and I love The Savage Detectives, 2666, and his short story collections, but this book was everything I personally dislike in literature; stream-of-consciousness writing with no chapters or even paragraphs. it had some memorable storylines and dealt with the typical Bolaño topics like literature, wanderlust, Latin American politics, etc. in a sometimes poetic way. but I found especially the first half a chore to get through and though I liked the second half more and respect the book for what it is, this kind of novel is just not for me. still gonna work through the rest of his bibliography the next two years and hope his other work is more up my alley

6.3/10

page 100 lets goooo fellas the literary man does not die on ktt2

You want paragraphs of prose and sentences so long you lose the plot but it's so good you just want more? You want mescal? You want the absolutely soul crushing pain of love lost due to no fault but your own you degenerate alcoholic? You want it all in one day under the volcano? Read this s***

4/5

and how alike are the groans of love, to those of dying

The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K Le Guin

After loving Wizard of Earthsea I thought I would try another Le Guin. This one is pretty gruesome, it's obvious she was drawing a pretty direct parallel to apartheid South Africa (and various indigenous genocides) and when the cauldron finally bubbles over into civil war, none of the brutality is spared. There's a messianic thread running through it all a lá Dune which lends some pathos and character to the book. But as it wraps up it becomes so didactic that it's kind of boring to read. 3/5

Who Killed Palomino Molero? by Mario Vargas Lisa

This would be my dream season of True Detective. Two local cops (underfunded, under-armed, even underfed) attempt to investigate the murder and disembowelment of an Air Force Colonel on a remote Peruvian Air Force Base. They continually find themselves against forces bigger than them that intentionally obscure the mystery. Great dialogue, interesting questions about the role of police in society, and a fascinating portrait of how power is meted out in countries caught between the poles of the American-Soviet cold war. 5/5

The Unifying Force by James Luceno

I finally finished all 19 books in the Star Wars New Jedi Order series! It wasn't worth it. It's all extremely predictable, and so the attempts to artificially lengthen the series become so rote and frustrating that it's almost funny. The series as a whole tries to present a new threat on the level of the Empire in the original movies so that Luke can finally determine how best to raise Jedi going forward, but by the end it's slowly hammered and forced into an Islamaphobic retelling of the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. And the two major character deaths are ineffective. Skip! 2/5

Black Wings is incredible. Love that book

Baldwin pulled that out of his head fully formed. Read a lot of it out loud and really got a feel for his sentence structure. Kind of a bridge between Albert Camus and Patricia Highsmith. The alienation the protagonist feels for his own suffering is devastating. As if experiencing any would be an admission. I need to read Ellison's Invisible Man again.

Moorecock is clearly ahead of George RR Martin when it comes to engaging with the genre's expectations for itself. The foundational work of Robert E Howard and Tolkien is decades decades old by this point. You can see a lot of the Targaryen Doom of Valyria here. Love that he tells this story with novellas. Can tell he's a contemporary of Jack Vance as well. I probably will read one or two more. Fun stuff.

Sylvia Warner-Townsend is aspirational to me. Only gets flowery when the moment calls for it. Never feels indebted to an audience. The epitomy of taste and ability. She's an early feminist writer, but it's all built into the framework and experienced viscerally. This one connects to her earlier novel Lolly Willowes in a super interesting way with that being a fantasist liberation and this being a captive reckoning with mortality. The difference between being in your 30s and 50s. God and the Devil.

Page 100

Always enjoy seeing you guys knock out books. Add so many to my list which I'll never get through. It's the journey not the destination. Reading is a mindful exercise. It's like getting out for a jog in someone else's shoes. Maintenance and fresh air. 100 more otw

Kinda blown away at how anxious this made me. Dialogue so natural it had me looking around in public. 4/5

Inspector Imanishi Investigates.

There is just as much to say about man's tendency to forget as there is about his capacity to do evil. So much scar tissue occludes the wounds we call history. Violence rationalizes itself going ahead and covers its tracks leaving. Williams interrogates how these four men make sense of their villainous folly. Their butchery is a search for meaning, a whetstone to hone oneself against, a transaction to profit by, God's will to be done. No amount of suffering or punishment can stay their hands, and they would hold them to the stove all over again if given the chance.

John Williams' Stoner left a deep and profound impression on me as a young man which I was only slightly skeptical of until I later read Richard Yates. Reading Butcher's Crossing now I am similarly affirmed by my lasting love for Melville's *Moby D*** and Hasford's The Short-Timers*. If Williams truly is an heir of Henry James' then I look forward to tracing that lineage for myself. Williams' scant bibliography is becoming very precious to me.

I’m reading Stoner now. Feel like it’s kind of picked up hype over the last decade

I read Stoner around 2013 I think. New York Review of Books had just reissued it. Saw a review for it in the Times and ordered a copy. That's when it got established to my knowledge.

Now it's some hot point of debate. I'll never understand why.

Jon Ronson is such a perfect buffoon, a model idiot, that his latest book ends with him getting bofa'd

September

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939) 536 pages

the novel that encapsulated The Great Depression and put John Steinbeck on the map. an epic that follows the Joad family as they are displaced from their farm in Oklahoma and head west to California in search of work and a better life. powerful critique of modernization and the seemingly unstoppable and faceless power of automation, it’s chilling how relevant this book is in 2026. very important work that had a lot to say, but this one didn’t resonate with me on the same level as East of Eden. the first half especially felt superfluous at times (do we really need to hear how a nameless diner cook prepares his hamburgers?) but the second half was strong. felt like the ending, though unique, lacked some closure, but this was still a book worth the hype and Steinbeck’s prose was impressive as always

8.3/10

The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis (1987) 283 pages

second Ellis I've read and this is somewhat of a spiritual successor to Less than Zero. follows a group of young adults at an affluent liberal arts college in New Hampshire. mainly a chronicle of hedonistic nights filled with sex, d****, and alcohol. similar to LtZ with the characters sharing the same self-destructive detachment, very short chapters, and pop-culture references, which I guess is BEE’s style but in his second novel here I think the coldness made some of the moments that required emotion feel lackluster and I found the ending unsatisfying. still was an enjoyable read tho and next year I'll probably check out American Psycho (Patrick Bateman made a short appearance in this as the main character’s brother)

7.5/10

Dead City by Shane Stevens (1973) 307 pages

can't remember how I came across this novel but think it was recommended by a crime author and Stephen King also called it “one of the finest novels ever written about the dark side of the American dream”. not sure wtf he was smoking as I found this derivative and poorly written. story about a crime boss in New Jersey and two young guys trying to make a name for themselves. overly violent for shock value with useless s***scenes throughout, there was nothing all that redeeming about this and tho the ending was good, I was just as happy to be finished with it. maybe more impressive when it came out, but there are many novels depicting the mafia that are much better. not worth the hype at all

5.8/10

The Stone Face by William Gardner Smith (1963) 234 pages

somewhat autobiographical story based in the early 60s about a young black journalist who, tired of the racism in the states, relocates to Paris and though at first feels free, comes to understand that the Algerians in Paris are suffering from the same fate he escaped. this book had so much to say about oppression, freedom, immigration, survivor’s guilt, belonging, and purpose. could understand the critique that it was a little too on the nose at times but I found it thought provoking and moving and devoured it in just two days. very impressive novel that deserves more recognition. will go down as one of my favorite reads of the year

9.4/10

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1963) 288 pages

novel about a young woman on the east coast who seemingly has it all but as her mental health spirals she starts to lose everything. sharply written and I can see it as being an important book for its time but there was such a sense of detachment throughout that I never much cared for the main character.

7.1/10

it was ok. i wonder if the autobiography was better.

Not much to say about the Dunk and Egg stories. Loved the television adaptation of the first season. Loved reading the main series. Appreciate these being one shots instead of tapestries. Looking forward to more television which expands upon them and adds more jokes.

Re: Three Month Fever

The media playbook of ascribing society's ills to the sin eater is a tired cliche, and gentler inclinations towards expressing sympathy for the devil aren't any less glib. That's how Gary Indiana sees it. He wades into the waters of true crime if only to demonstrate how shallow they are. With one derisive line, he invalidates the conceit of his own book: how might we ever know the searing truth behind this idiotic anecdote?

Cunanan's amorphous qualities conform to that futility. There's no there there. Not in a lurid, sociopathic way. In a "I didn't know the medium of postcard writing could be this agonizing" kind of way. He's typical. The scene is typical. The culture is typical. Placing undue significance on these grizzly melodramas is a consequence of that tedium. Contempt is warranted.

Israel in Palestine by Yakov Rabkin

4.5/5

This came out in 2025 but it is more damning from the time I read it two months ago. It's a short read but cogent. If you wanna read about Zionism tackled by a Jewish scholar, this is a must read in my opinion. Late in the book, he makes a powerful parallel of Gaza with his own kin who survived the siege of Stalingrad.

Worth noting that "Normal People" author Sally Rooney has just been blocked from distributing her books through UK publishers over her support for Palestine so the rot is really deep with the colonizers

Y’all in here reading heat. Still in a slump but currently reading Angel Down

The Stone Face!!!

don't know if i'll finish anything else before the end of the month, so here's my october reads

My first Murakami and I come away from it feeling underwhelmed. I really enjoyed the airy prose and how vivid the imagery was but I didn't find the narrative or the characters to be all that captivating. I don't mind ambiguity in stories but this felt like it needed more time to avoid falling flat like it did for me.
2.5/5

I thoroughly enjoyed about 85% of this. The atmosphere is thick, there's strong body horror elements, it could be quite funny at times, it's an easy and quick read and while the story wasn't anything new it was presented in an enjoyable way. It very much felt like a late 80's/early 90's mid budget thriller. The mentions of instagram, iphones and "liberal news media" were very immersion breaking though. The story would've worked just as well (if not better) without anything tying it to modern day. The villain is also cartoonishly evil, which was disappointing cause I felt everything else was fleshed out fairly well and this guy is just bad because the story needs a bad guy to be bad. Despite those few issues I'll definitely be checking out more of Sodergren's work.
3.5/5

I relate so deeply to the desire for connection and intimacy but also the feeling of fear that comes along with allowing those things into your life. At times, Ali can rip the words straight out of my heart and plaster them onto the page but on the other hand, the moments of endless, helpless yearning often reach the point of wallowing in self pity and Raif isn't a sympathetic enough character to make those moments tolerable.

I can't say I ever felt a real connection between Raif and Maria either. Their relationship pretty much begins on a whim and they just sorta monologue to each other until the scene ends. As individuals they are interesting to explore, but as a couple they are not. It's beautifully written and there are gems all throughout but it landed in the middle of the road.
3/5

Mixed feelings about this one. The moments where the narrative is focused are really interesting and kept me wanting to read and dive deeper into the story but inevitably that gets interrupted with stream of consciousness ramblings that go on for pages and pages and the momentum of the book drops to a standstill. Having an unreliable narrator is fun and added to the mystery of the story, but I wish he wasn't so incessant on reminding you that he's unreliable. It takes away from moments when he jumps in to quickly remind you that he can't be trusted. The turn of the century bourgeois language could be a bit difficult to follow at times but it was manageable for the most part.
2/5