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I tend to be a voracious reader, and I read widely. This list has its origins in an old signature file which I would update periodically with the current book that I was reading. That gradually transmogrified itself into the current massive archive with brief reviews.
| What I've been reading lately |
| Number of books read and reviewed each year | |
|---|---|
| 1995* |  (28) |
| 1996 | (47) |
| 1997 | (74) |
| 1998 | (61) |
| 1999 | (62) |
| 2000 | (27) |
| 2001 | (51) |
| 2002 | (60) |
| 2003 | (37) |
| 2004 | (36) |
| 2005 | (32) |
| 2006 | (46) |
| 2007 | (109) |
| 2008 | (78) |
| 2009 | (65) |
| 2010 | (68) |
| 2011 | (98) |
| 2012 | (129) |
| 2013 | (114) |
| 2014 | (101) |
| 2015 | (88) |
| 2016 | (82) |
| 2017 | (76) |
| 2018 | (67) |
| 2019 | (95) |
| 2020 | (90) |
| 2021 | (85) |
| 2022 | (101) |
| 2023 | (124) |
| 2024 | (154) |
| 2025 |  (83) |
| * Partial year | |
[Finished 19 August 2025] When I first heard of Folk, I was left wondering how does a writer in the twenty-first century get a book deal with a major publisher for a collection of short stories? Where was she published? Well, that second question isn’t that important (or revelatory—pretty much the expected upper-tier literary journals), but the answer to the first question is simple. You do it by writing a collection of amazing, damn near perfect short stories, which is the secret of publishing in general: write a really good book.
The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million
by Daniel Mendelsohn
[Finished 15 August 2025] I first heard of this book when Mendelsohn was interviewed on the Beneath the Covers podcast which resulted in my adding two of his books to my to-read list. The subject matter is interesting enough, although in some ways well-trodden, with Mendelsohn’s attempts at family archaeology made more interesting thanks to his self-reflective account of the investigation combined with some simply stunning writing that would have made a book about tracing the origin’s of grandma’s tomato soup recipe (mix one can soup concentrate with one can of milk and heat on the stove) a compelling read.
A People's Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers by Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams
[Finished 11 August 2025] A challenging read for me because of, well, «waves hand at the world in general». When this book was assembled, at the beginning of the first trump regime, I think we mostly hoped if not expected that it would fizzle out into mediocrity and an ignominious end. That it would return zombie-like from the grave and begun a headlong rush into fascism was not anything anybody predicted then. The precis of this collection, that it was to provide a somewhat optimistic view of the world to come isn’t really met by most of the stories and given where things are, dystopian narratives have lost most of their appeal to me, perhaps to most or all. That said, there were a few absolute gems in the collection and a chance to get a wide selection of SFF writers beyond the usual suspects of straight white men.
God's Ghostwriters: Enslaved Christians and the Making of the Bible
by Candida R. Moss
[Finished 4 August 2025] It was amusing to look at some Goodreads reviews of this book and find a number of readers put off by the necessarily speculative nature of the writing, forgetting that most modern commentary is inherently speculative and culturally layered but fails to acknowledge this (one striking example is the modern conception of the ark as a big boat with a deck house-like structure on that deck, occasionally with holes cut in the roof for the giraffes to stick their heads out, while the object described in the Bible is a big box with no openings at all until Noah cuts a hole out after the rain stops). Overall, with her putting what is known (and unknown) about first century slavery against the Biblical text, I found this a rather startling re-evaluation of much of what’s in the New Testament.
Oh William!
by Elizabeth Strout
[Finished 27 July 2025] I’ve enjoyed most of the Strout I’ve read, but in this one, the narrative voice seemed to work against me and made it a challenge for me to enter the text.
Paul Celan and the Trans-Tibetan Angel
by Yōko Tawada
[Finished 25 July 2025] A challenging book by a Japanese author who wrote it in German (I, of course, read an English translation, meaning that the thoughts here may well have been mutated by three languages). A bit of surrealism and a bunch of philosophy in the sort of work that doesn’t get published by mainstream presses in the US.
The Lady in the Van and Other Stories
by Alan Bennett
[Finished 25 July 2025] After seeing the movie, I was curious about the source material, which frankly, wasn’t that great, although another story in the collection, about a visitation to an Episcopalian church by a rather judgmental cathedral official and the secrets that are gradually revealed did make for interesting reading.
Horror Movie
by Paul Tremblay
[Finished 22 July 2025] Tremblay is another podcast-discovered author. The concept of this novel, of a “cursed” horror film with the sole-surviving participant narrating an audio book of his memories alongside the script and some this is what actually happened accounts mixed in makes for an intriguingly plotted book that mostly works.
Eleven Kinds of Loneliness
by Richard Yates
[Finished 20 July 2025] A collection of stories, some of which I’ve encountered previously. Yates captures a mid-century world quite well, although I feel like to some extent, this is a world of decreasing importance.
The Loneliness Files: A Memoir in Essays
by Athena Dixon
[Finished 17 July 2025] A book I discovered through a podcast interview, Dixon’s writing was enjoyable and evocative, although like so many other authors on the subject, she struggled to really reach her subject.