Reading – DONFOOLERY

2025 Reading

So, here’s my 2025 longform reading list. Books I actually finished are in bold. Not as many, percentage-wise, as last year, but I exposed myself to a lot of different stuff. And I’m still plugging away!

The Little Green God of the Library Slip. Poster by Magazine & Book Co., 1910. Prints & Photographs Division

BITTERSWEET by Susan Cain
GUILT & GINATAAN by Mia P. Manansala
LET THIS RADICALIZE YOU by Kelly Hayes & Mariame Kaba
READING THE WAVES by Lidia Yuknavitch
SPRING, SUMMER, ASTEROID, BIRD by Henry Lien
NONWHITE AND WOMAN: 131 MICRO ESSAYS ON BEING IN THE WORLD by Darien Hsu Gee & Carla Crujido (eds.)
THE CHRONOLOGY OF WATER by Lidia Yuknavitch
PRANKSTERS VS. AUTOCRATS by Srdja Popovic and Sophia A. McClennen
LOVE AND INDUSTRY by Sonya Huber
DEAD NOTE by Victor Manibo
AUTOCORRECT by Etgar Keret
THE BOOK OF ALCHEMY by Suleika Jaouad
THE ASK by Sam Lipsyte
THE BOOK OF JOAN by Lidia Yuknavitch
THE STORY CURE by Dinty W. Moore
A CATALOG OF STORMS by Fran Wilde
WHIMSY: A LITERARY DOOM AND GLOOM ANTIDOTE by Naomi Daniluk (ed.)
UNRELIABLE NARRATOR by Aparna Nancherla
POWER: WHY SOME PEOPLE HAVE IT AND OTHERS DON’T by Jeffrey Pfeffer
SOME PEOPLE NEED KILLING by Patricia Evangelista
WEIRDSCAPES: AN OTHERWORLDLY ANTHOLOGY by Kyle Thompson (ed.)
UNCERTAIN SONS by Thomas Ha
DEATH BY DUMPLING by Vivien Chien
CATCHING THE BIG FISH by David Lynch
THE SUBJECT STEVE by Sam Lipsyte
FRIDAY BLACK by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyan
NEXT OF KIN: A MEMOIR by Gabrielle Hamilton
JOYRIDE: A MEMOIR by Susan Orlean
THE ANTHONY BOURDAIN READER: NEW, CLASSIC, AND RESDISCOVERED WRITING by Kimberly Witherspoon (ed.)

Looks like I’m going to start 2026 a little behind the 8-ball. And that doesn’t even include the stack I got for Christmas that I have yet to crack open!

Back in the High Life Again

Close up of an orange tabby cat chewing at the foam cover on a microphone hanging off a boom.

I’ll be back in the high life again
All the doors I closed one time will open up again

–Steve Winwood, “Back in the High Life Again”

In the past couple of months, I took my first intentional post-pandemic steps back into the spec-fic writing world. I’ve dipped my toe in the waters for a couple of years now, what with the occasional local event or online con like Flights of Foundry and a bit of Wiscon online.

Last month, I was graciously invited to take part in a local reading series, and managed to find things that I was actually not embarrassed to read out loud. Hell, at the beginning of the month, I even submitted a short story for the first time in god-knows-how-long. (I don’t know because I’ve purposely avoided that particular page of my Submission Grinder account.)

Yes, I’m officially back on my bullshit! Now, I just need to find a way to make it sustainable.

TBR

Like a moth to a flame, I’m drawn just about every year to the Friends of the Tompkins Co. Library Book Sales. They’re held over three weekends in May, which coincides with Ithaca’s Spring (W)rites festival, and in October. It’s one of those local rituals one falls into in this town, whether you’re here for four years of college or for twenty-to-life.

I always, always manage to find a few treasures, even when I saunter in on the last weekend of the sale when books are the cheapest and the shelves have been all but picked clean. It looks like I neglected to post last year’s haul, but I got a lot of stuff in 2023.

Anyway, here’s what I found this time around…

A stack of 4 books: SWORD STONE TABLE edited by Swapna Krishna and Jenn Northington, THE TOKYO-MONTANA EXPRESS by Richard Brautigan, NINE BAR BLUES by Sheree Renee Thomas, and MY DATE WITH SATAN by Stacey Richter

SWORD STONE TABLE by Swapna Krishna and Jenn Northington (eds.)
THE TOKYO-MONTANA EXPRESS by Richard Brautigan
NINE BAR BLUES by Sheree Renée Thomas
MY DATE WITH SATAN by Stacey Richter (which, come to think of it, I might already own…? I’ll have to look in storage.)

Weeknotes S05 E04: We’re Here For a Good Time

Weeknotes–more like “monthnotes,” amirite? It’s a personal cliche by now: a spontaneous burst of posts after an extended period of radio silence followed by a hiatus where I just “never get around to posting.” If past is prologue, I’ll keep this up for longer now until I drop out completely for a few months. But if I’m not gonna be on here for a long time, let’s at least make it a good time!

1
Speaking of good times, that SUPERMAN movie, huh? It’s not often a film puts an honest-to-god smile on my face.

Look, I never hated on the DCEU Henry Cavill Superman, but I can honestly say I love James Gunn’s take. SUPERMAN (2025) exceeded every high expectation the trailers stirred up in me.

2
The reading list:

I finished THE ASK by Sam Lipsyte. It’s an almost too-relateable story of a guy bumbling his way through family life and his job in his administrative University job. (Thank the gods I’ve never had to work in alumni development!)
Because I can’t get enough of deeply wounded and traumatized characters and have been on a Lidia Yuknavitch kick anyway, I’ve cracked open her novel THE BOOK OF JOAN. Not that I was ever the type of reader who got too bent out of shape one way or the other when a “literary writer” dips a toe into science fiction, but for those who are, I’d say if this book is good enough to get blurbed by Jeff VanderMeer, it’s good enough for you!
Picked up another “The Book of…,” THE BOOK OF ALCHEMY by Suleika Jauoad, which has a series of essays and writing prompts, including one from–surprise, surprise–Lidia Yuknavitch, in which she throws an IYKYK shout-out to Tom Spanbauer.
I’m about to polish off the last 2 or 3 stories in Etgar Keret’s latest collection AUTOCORRECT.

3
Had a birthday a few weeks ago and my driver’s license was up for renewal, so I finally got the REAL ID version. Technically, I already had one in my passport card, which is set to be renewed in a couple of years, but I wasn’t too keen on carrying that around with me, or my passport for that matter.

At least now I have something conveniently on me if and when some balaclava-wearing dude in a matching camo tac vest and blue jeans carrying an AR-15 stops me on the way to my job at an Ivy League university in a Sanctuary City saying, “Papers, please!”

What is this world coming to?

4
Seen out in the wild, something else to file under: some ol’ bullshit. I didn’t have “spot a racist coded dog whistle on the bus ride to work” this past week, but just my luck…

A bus ad for the company for a tech company with the tagline "A moment of reckoning has arrived for the West." The portion toward the top right is wrinkled.

I like to think the wrinkle in the upper right was someone’s failed attempt to take it down, but maybe I’m just being too optimistic about the state of humanity at this point. But you know what? After seeing SUPERMAN, maybe that’s not such a bad thing to be.

Weeknotes S05 E03: Proof of Life as Resistance

When I write my future memoirs, I hope never to include the line, “I was napping when World War III started.” I mean, c’mon, it sounds more like the opening line of an Etgar Keret short story. But if (when?) future generations ask me where I was when I heard we bombed Iran, the sad truth will be revealed.

With everything going on, I don’t know what the point of a weeknotes post would be right now. Like Charles Bradley sang, “This world is going up in flames”. But maybe that’s why I need to write one. Proof of life as resistance.

There are moments when my typical attitude of “The only way out is through” works against me. Moments when I only have one or two spoons left and it seems like everything on my list takes at least three. And so I look for ways to use the one or two I have left to get me forward anyway, even if 99% of the time all that generates is resentment which is a lousy feeling, but better than the alternatives (not really).

I’m not the only one to know this. I came across this reading Sam Lipsyte’s THE ASK:

I had learned long ago how to refine the raw guilt into a sweet, granulated resentment.

I had a burst of writing energy for the past couple of weeks which is on the usual trend downward and I know I’m there because while I know I need three spoons to working on my current short story, I feel like I need to be using use the one or two I’ve got to do what I “should” be doing. Like, reading all the stuff that’s won Nebula, Locus, or Stoker awards this month rather than 15-year old litfic novels. Or grousing about an article on AI boosterism I never expected to see in BREVITY, of all places.

I mean, c’mon…

And just as a hammer can build Habitat for Humanity or take a human life, the tool is dependent on the human user.

Yeah, except that hammer’s design wasn’t stolen off of the work of people’s blood, sweat & tears and mass-produced via a gross waste of natural resources. But I digress. After all, that’s not the worst thing going on in the world this week, is it?

Writer Harvey Pekar narrating a comic panel from a piece called "The Terminal Years" (c) 1999 Harvey Pekar Art by Gary Dumm — From “The Terminal Years”
(c) 1999 Harvey Pekar
Art by Gary Dumm

Maybe holding on to my remaining spoons would’ve been a better idea. On the other hand, maybe fellow Clevelander Harvey Pekar has it right.

Fuck it, here’s one skirmish. Now, what’s my next one gonna be?

Weeknotes S05 E02: Carnival Like No One’s Watching

It’ll be a short one today. I’m tired, my family’s tired, it’s been A Week. While the world is on fire, our home had a couple of plumbing-related mishaps that had to be dealt with along with everything else. Still, we found the time and a little bit of energy to enjoy a tiny little pop-up carnival held for the second year in a row in the parking lot of the local almost-dead mall.

Elevated shot of a pop-up carnival in a mall parking lot in front of an abandoned Dick's Sporting Goods

When you think about it, it really is our way of protesting. The Fam is actually a perfect intersection of about 99% of everything the current regime hates. ICE has already been through here once and they’d probably still be here if they weren’t busy handcuffing US Senators in California while “liberating” Los Angeles.

WRITING
I was only 3 days out of 7 trying to keep The Chain going. Like I said, it’s been A Week.

But I did have a couple of bright spots.

LISTENING
Last fall’s release of DANCE, NO ONE’S WATCHING by Ezra Collective got by me, but I rectified that this week!

READING

I had a chance to pick up THE ASK by Sam Lipsyte on the cheap and the discovery of this passage made it worthwhile, hitting me in a personal way that I haven’t been since Etgar Keret’s “What Do We Have In Our Pockets.”

I’d had a hard time deciding whether to carry a knapsack, a messenger bag, a canvas book bag, or a briefcase. Each seemed to embody a particular kind of confusion and loss.

2024 Reading

2024 was a “good enough” year for reading, but this was definitely the best year I’ve had actually documenting it, at least the book-length stuff. I even managed to finish some things (in bold). Pen and paper saves the day!

THE LONELINESS FILES by Athena Dixon

THE BODY KEEPS THE SCORE by Bessel A. van der Kolk

1000 WORDS by Jami Attenberg

PLACES WE LEFT BEHIND by Jennifer Yang

BODY WORK by Melissa Febos

THE SITUATION AND THE STORY by Vivian Gornick (reread)

UPRIGHT BONDS by Lincoln Michel

FUGUE STATE by Brian Evenson

LOVE & INDUSTRY by Sonia Huber

TRUTH IS THE ARROW, MERCY IS THE BOW by Steve Almond

FARAWAY PLACES by Tom Spanbauer

PERCHANCE TO DREAM by Charles Beaumont

CREATIVITY by John Cleese

SCRATCHED by Elizabeth Tallent

A COLLAPSE OF HORSES by Brian Evenson

WRITING ON EMPTY by Natalie Goldberg (reread)

BLOOD, BONES & BUTTER by Gabrielle Hamilton (reread)

VERGE by Lidia Yuknavitch

RIVETHEAD: TALES FROM THE ASSEMBLY LINE by Ben Hamper (reread)

MURDER AND MAMON by Mia P. Manansala

QUIET: THE POWER OF INTROVERTS IN A WORLD THAT CAN’T STOP TALKING by Susan Cain

I sandbagged on documenting the short fiction and non-fiction I’ve read, but maybe that’s a target for next year.

Weird Nonfiction? Why Not?

You all know I love Weird Fiction, so I couldn’t help but click on this article title from the LARB. I honestly can’t tell whether or not this is a put on. And that maybe tells me this piece is actually doing the genre’s work.

More often than not, weird nonfiction is intended as either comedy or horror—sometimes both. Its natural home is the internet, where disinformation and pissant humor are architectural principles. The element of unreality in all of the titles listed above is not just a fib or a joke but also an outright structural provocation, daring the audience to follow it into an abyss. Like weird fiction, weird nonfiction is built around some unknowable terror, replacing the tentacled horrors of H. P. Lovecraft with the many-tentacled horrors of being online and alive in the 21st century. It also suggests, in the process, that there is something unfathomable at the heart of reality itself, and that it is the duty of journalism to circumnavigate this terror if never speak it aloud. I humbly submit that weird nonfiction seems particularly well suited to reporting on climate change, but have not seen it done with the vigor that subject deserves.

—“Weird Nonfiction” by Clayton Purdom

Scratched

Every family has its crucial sentences: things it loves saying about itself.

Elizabeth Tallent wrote one of my favorite short stories ever, “No One’s a Mystery” (paywalled pdf from HARPERS). I figured since I know Tallent’s work and am very familiar with the subject matter, this memoir would be right up my alley.

It’s kind of scary how right I was, which is why I can recommend this before I’m even halfway through it.

Scratched: A Memoir of Perfectionism by Elizabeth Tallent

Weeknotes S04 E07: TBR

It’s fall, and around these parts that means the October Friends of the Library Book Sale. It’s where I was last weekend instead of writing this. I always find a treasure there. Always. And it’s probably one of the few places I’ll buy a dead tree book–not because I have anything against dead tree books. We just don’t have the space, and ebooks are the only way I can practically read in the interstices of an otherwise busy life.

I usually focus on two sections before I start wandering around the place: the science-fiction/fantasy section and the literary short story section, which is where I scored what I discovered was the inaugural issue of the lit mag NOON, edited by Dianne Williams and Christine Schutt. Then, I’ll wander around the other sections and finish off at the CDs. The big score here was a recording from Return to Forever’s 2008 RETURNS tour, the first album from this classic jazz fusion band in over 30 years. I remember freaking out when I first saw the YouTube videos of the Montreux part of the tour. They didn’t lose a step, that’s for sure!

I picked up a copy of the HEAVY METAL soundtrack as a lark, and the interaction I had with the older volunteer who sold it to me made it totally worth the price. She goes, “Great soundtrack! Blue Öyster Cult… I was actually listening to them before I came here today.” Rock on, auntie!

There are two other conditions where I’ll buy a dead-tree book: (a) When I want something that’s only offered in that format and (b) I want it right the fuck now and don’t care if it’ll end up in an ebook later on. That doesn’t happen very often and when it does, I tend to forget when I pre-order them. So this week I got, not one, but two pleasant surprises from past me.

I guess if I go another month between Weeknotes, we’ll know why.