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.
Not saying all these covers are excellent but if we were to line up all book covers ever, they're probably all in the 20th percentile. That ain't nothin.
Anyway, wild variety here. And some significant books. Among things I'll never think about the same having read these are children's literature, Job, Ecclesiastes, the Salem witch trials of 1692, and the Algonquin Round Table. When you think about it, that's a huge list. Huge.
063) Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children by Mac Barnett, finished October 13
Literally the only bad thing I can say about this book is the asterisks were too easy to miss. Make bolder asterisks, book designer!
Literally everything else about it was absolutely brilliant. Not only was it an excellent argument for and about children's literature, it's one of the finest works of literary criticism I've read in some time. And so accessible! The book is a delight to read.
It helps that we share some of the same interests, perhaps. Although I had my complaints about the book at the time, I too am convinced that Margaret Wise Brown was a mad genius who deserves more appreciation. I'm also convinced that Mac Barnett himself is one of our best living practitioners. (Although I think his best work is with Jon Klassen who, himself, might be even better. But we're not here to rank artists. What a distasteful activity that would be.)
He spends a lot of time (appropriately) taking adults to task for our literary crimes against children. He also spends a lot of time (apppriately) praising the literary bonafides of young readers (and readuntos). I literally sent photos of some pages to my AP Lit students explaining what literature is for and would have sent a lot more if I believed they would get read. I would love to teach it somehow. This is an excellent introduction to literature through the marvels of literature for the youngest members of the literati.
Anyway, I'm not explaining this well. It's a short book and a wonderful read (except for those goldarned asterisks and daggers and doubledaggers, etc) and I'm open to reading it again. It's a brilliant piece of work.
064) The Wisdom Books: Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes translated by Robert Alter, finished October 15
First, excellent. Loved it as much as reading Alter's Torah. Job rocked my world (also because of having just read it in another translation and rewatching Tree of Life and rereading Moby-Dick and really just not being able to leave Job alone). I enjoyed Proverbs much more than anticipated, largely because of the fresh translation and Alter's voluminous footnotes. And Ecclesiastes (aka Qohelet) remains among my favorite books of scripture. I'm not putting The Wisdom Books away—I'm rereading Ecclesiastes starting tomorrow, sans footnotes, in an attempt to put the whole thing in my brain. I'm trying to wrap up my Napoleon Dynamite book proposal and possibly write my Barbie / Book of Moses essay, but this is the time for me to finally write my Ecclesiastes essay as well. I feel its deeply misunderstood. It's not pessimistic. It's realistic. And I know that's the sort of thing pessimists say all the time but I am not a pessimist. The book is joyful and it's time, methinks, to put it in writing. Though I don't think I'm up for an entire book as I hinted might be the case in 2007 (2007!), I do want to get into it.
We'll see.
The good news is Ecclesiastes is short and I can, at any moment, reread it and be ready to go.
two months and eleven days
065) More Weight by Ben Wickey, finished October 16
This story of the Salem witch trials is atmospheric and sucks you into that period of time. By "that period of time, I mean 1692, although there are also many pages of Longfellow taking a tour of Salem with the ghost of Hawthorn, and a greater-than forty-page coda taking us through Salem's history to the current day (the book was published in 2025). That section is good and thoughtful and is essentially an entirely different work of an entirely different genre. And that's not even mentioning the over fifty pages of small-print notes (which I only skimmed)! This is a hefty book: 10×8 (ignoring what comes after the decimal points) and over three pounds heavy. These are big, dense pages.
I'm fascinated by the different styles of art Wickey employs for his different stories and eras—and how these styles of art can bleed into each other as do the stories.
Apparently, there is more available (and more accurate) information on 1692 now than at any other time and although the notes make clear what is documented and what is filled in, it seems safe to say this is the most accurate fictionalization of the story to date. The coda with Wickey's perturbed ramblings concerning the lack of true grappling with horrific events that even just a few months later everyone knew had been absurd, and concerning the tacky and ahistorical and irreverant embrace of mass murder as touristy kitsch are utterly persuasive, having lived through the stupid terrors over several hundred pages.
In short, it is large and unweidly and perhaps too much, but it is fascinating and compelling and truly excellent. It is an ambitious and honest work. It's too great to be perfect and too good to be ignored.
You would do well to pick it up.
(Looking forward to watching his Wickey's vaguely related short film.)
a couple weeks
066) So Big by Edna Ferber, finished October 20
I bought this book as our local Barnes and Noble was being pushed out by its landlord. (The building has since sat empty for almost two years. Typical. Reminds me of the three downtown-Berkeley movie theaters that have closed in the last seven years (and the one in Albany) so something else more profitable could replace them. They all sit empty and undeveloped. It's like the Skydance deal on a local level. Anyway.) I don't remember exactly why I chose this as one of my on-clearance purchases—possibly I recogized her as a member of the Algonquin Round Table—possibly I liked the idea of reading a Pulitzer Prize winner (they've been giving them out since 1918 and this is only my ninth)—maybe I liked the cover:
Dunno. Anyway, I bought it and now I've read it.
I'm amazed it took me as long as it did. I loved it from go. Edna Ferber's an incredible writer (probably best remembered now for novels that became classic movies [Show Boat, Cimarron, Giant] but in her time one of the most admired writers on the scene.
I expected the book to be about So Big (what Dirk DeJong's mother called him when he was a little boy), and it is, but we start with Selina Peake, one of the most vibrant characters I've met in some time. She's so wonderfully alive. She will inspire envy. She finds cabbages beautiful which puts her new neighbors off her. She young and falls in love and becomes an overworked farm wife. For those of us who saw her young and galmorous with rich friends and a bright future, this feels like disaster. But Selina remains full of life and our pity can't keep her down. And when her son Dirk goes on to make a lot of money and know all the right people he can't allow himself to understand why she finds his choices a tragedy.
To get even more spoilery, at the end, when we get one brief scene with people who, like Selina, find beauty and living more important than wealth and seeming—and have dedicated their lives to that belief, we no longer mourn what Selina lost, but only what Dirk has lost. He's still on his way to riches and he still has fine suits and he still has his "Jap servant" to meet his whims—but he himself is lost.
Oh, the things we sacrifice when we, I don't know, think the purpose of college is to get a "good" job or whatever. It's so easy to lose track of what will matter later when we can trade it for more, now.
I'm sorry. I'm making So Big sound all moralistic or something. It's not.
But what kind of love interest are you making yourself worthy of?
Anyway, terrific read. So fun. And only 252 pages.
My only complaint is that my version (Harper Perenniel) came with excellent about-the-author codas—27 pages in total! Of which six (six!) of my pages were blank (blank!). Just utterly failed to accept ink. And the quality of these appendices was excellent. I woulda loved all twenty-seven pages, y'know?
something stupid like five months maybe
067) The Story Eaters of Yamm by Kevin Hincker, finished October 24
(I received this novel gratis in exchange for this review.)
I have a high barrier of skepticism that pops up whenever a book immediately announces that it is funny. And from page one, there's no question that The Story Eaters of Yamm is funny. In fact, its funniness had totally set me off reading it until my 2026 Job obsession made me wonder if this Yamm were the same Yamm God conquered in ancient Canaanite myth. Which is as good a reason to start a novel as any other, I suppose.
This is Hincker's ninth novel. If I'm correct, he's published them all himself. The man's got good hustle, picking up Kirkus reviews. I don't know how the other books are, but this one won me over.
He is giving himself a real challenge in the marketing, though. For one thing, he left his name off the cover.
Which, even with a beautiful cover like this, screams rookie self-publisher. Although—ands up—there is a reason for no author on the cover. It's not a huge payoff, but it's enough of a payoff to justify the choice artistically. But will it impact book sales? I wonder.
Anyway, as I was saying, I came in skeptical. The humor is shades of Douglas Adams, Kurt Vonnegut, and John Kennedy Toole, which is quite a mix. He has a handful of truly excellent running gags and bounty of pretty good ones.
The story is about Larry, a bad science-fiction novelist (bad in terms of his writing, not his morality, though his morality is a tad funky). He falls into a job with some other bad science-fiction novelists (ditto) to imagine an alien invasion. Chaos ensues.
The book proceded from there to developing into a genuinely interesting work of art. But before my conscious mind realized it, the book turned into Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die. (I know my subconscious was ahead on this one because before I realized the novel was playing the exact same game as the movie, I started thinking about the movie in some depth in a way I hadn't since the week I watched it.)
What's in the air? Both the novel and the movie were in the works long before either came out, then within a few months of each other, here they are. Offering the same dismal, pessimistic themes in bright, fun wrapping paper. If we don't want this future, science-fiction novelists seem to be telling us, maybe we should do something.
Anyway, the book works. If you want something genuinely funny that has fun with modern anxieties, dive in.
about a month
068) The Poet by Michael Connelly, finished November 5
Based on what I wrote thirteen years ago, I think this is my favorite Connelly book. I wanted to read this book because it's a thriller called The Poet and it has a raven on the cover. Way to signal that Theric might be interested.
I have both those copies (although the gray one has twice as many pages and its length and width are a good 150% the size of the black—don't trust everything you see) because when this raven-bedecked book occasionally appeared in giant stacks at Costco, I was tempted. I picked up a couple free copies of the years then was paralyzed because which one do I read???
I kept one in the house and one in the car. Ended up reading the big heavy gray more. Just because it was too big to leave in the car and I read less outside the car.
Anyway, I'm done now. I always planned for this to be my final Connelly novel and that will probably hold. Unless they put and even cooler bird on a future novel.
Anyway, the killer is a guy who kills kids (or kid-adjacent adults) then kills the detective following the case. Or that's the FBI's working theory. They have an alternate theory and leave what seemed to me the most likely theory utterly unconsidered. This is a challenging aspect of writing a mystery and exactly why detectives should work in teams. More brains, more ideas. One brain, you overlook some stuff.
Anyway, our pov is a news reporter who stumbles onto the fact that we've a serial killer on our hands and brings his research to the FBI. He then gets imbedded as part of a deal to keep him from publishing.
The novel also offers its weirdo murderer as a pov but it has the same sort of problems I had with the Kinsey Milhone books when she switched to thriller mode, giving us additional povs. If the conceit is that This Book Was Written By Its Protagonist, then how the heyhey are we getting these slices from a person whose perspective we know is never understood by said protagonist? Drives me crazy. Either write a book that's from multiple povs or write a book that's written by one of the characters. I don't think you should do both.
Still, I liked the book. Fun read. I saw the first twist just before it arrived but that left me utterly unprepared for the second. Which is as spoilery as I'll get.
Maybe my favorite part of the book was its journalistic attention to what it was like to be Very Online in 1996. I wasn't online at all until 1997, and then not as a professional and not deeply. It's a fascinating little timecapsule. If you weren't even born then, I hope you'll read The Poet and tell me what it's internetting aspects are like for you.
I'm not surprised the book's never been adapted. Not only does it have to make boring stuff cinematic ala All the President's Men, it also has to deal with child pornography and other brutal stuff.
I did like the leads, however. I suppose if a book about Jack and/or Rachel shows up in a Little Free Library, I'd probably grab it. But I'm disappointed we'll never see Jack's sister-in-law again. Apparently we never even learn if her son is born. Boo.
two or three weeks
previous books
The first five books of 2026
001) Red Harvest by Dachielle Hammett, finished January 3
002) Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, finished January 14
003) Snoopy's Guide to the Writing Life edited by Barnaby Conrad and Monte Schulz, finished January 16
004) You Are Too Much, Charlie Brown by Charles M. Schulz, finished January 19
005) Ice by Anna Kavan, finished January 24
Emotion-of-your-choice Valentine's Day!
006) Midville High: Comic Caper Collection by Matt Blair, finished February 5
007) Guarding the Moon: A Mother's First Year by Francesca Lia Block, finished February 10
008) The Sellout by Paul Beatty, finished February 13
I don't know much about hats Kafka wore
Or if Bottom's dream sunk in
the sea
But I know that George Lucas made a fine film
And that The Shining just isn't for me
009) Where Hats Go by Kurt Wolfgang, finished February 20
010) Kafka's Manuscript, finished February 27
011) Lucas Wars by Laurent Hopman and Renaud Roshe, finished February 28
012–014) A Midsummer's Night Dream by William Shakespeare, finished March 9
Six for 2026
015) The Path and the Gate: Mormon Short Fiction edited by Andrew Hall and Robert Raleigh, finished March 15
016) Hyperion by Dan Simmons, finished March 19
017) The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins, finished March 21
018) Visitations by Corey Egbert, finished March 23
019–021) After the Blast by Zoe Kazan, finished March 25
022) Accidental Devotions by Kelli Russell Agodon, finished March 30
Such poetry! Such hardboiling!
025) New & Selected Things Taking Place by May Swenson, finished April 2
026) Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett, finished April 4
027) Loved Ones by Kevin Klein, finished April 4
028) Grace Is Not God's Backup Plan: an urgent paraphrase of paul's letter to the romans by Adam S. Miller, finished April 5
029) The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler, finished April 9
After 2026—What?
030) Saints Volume 3: Boldly, Nobly, and Independent, 1893–1955, finished April 11
031) Wrapped in Plastic: Twin Peaks by Andy Burns, finished April 11
032) After 1903—What? by Robert Benchley, finished April 15
033) Money: The True Story of a Made-up Thing by Jacob Goldstein, finished May 4
034) Montana 1948 by Larry Watson, finished May 6
035) Clever Girl: Jurassic Park by Hannah McGregor, finished May 11
Fifty-three days and only nine books
(American literacy truly is in decline)
035) Okchundang Candy by Jung-soon Go and translated by Airin Park, finished May 22
036) The Lost Gate by Orson Scott Card, finished May 27
037) Bad Kitty Goes on Vacation by Nick Bruel, finished June 1
038) Backward by Ben Abbott, finished June 10
039) Too Many Cooks by Rex Stout, finished June 12
040) Pickles by Brian Crane, finished July 7
041) Pickles, Too by Brian Crane, finished July 7
042) Lost & Found by Shaun Tan, finished July 13
043) The Arrival by Shaun Tan, finished July 13
One of these things is not like the other
043) Urban Legend Hunters: The Dreaded Mr. Snipe by Joel McKerrow and Wayne Bryant, finished July 23
044) The Firelight Apprentice by Bree Paulsen, finished July 23
045) The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary by Robert Alter, finished August 4
046) Surfside Girls: The Mystery at the Old Rancho by Kim Dwinell, finished August 6
"Remember you can trust me / I am not as evil as you think"
047) Resolution by Robert B. Parker, finished August 8
048) American Zion: A New History of Mormonism by Benjamin E. Park, finished August 23
049) The Candy House by Jennifer Egan, finished September 1
050) Juliet: The Lives and Afterlives of Shakespeare's First Tragic Heroine by Sophie Duncan, finished September 7
051) Lost Girls by Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie, finished September 12
052) Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, finished September 12
053) Apos by Anna M. Wright, finished September 14
And baby makes sixty-one
054) Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare, finished September 21
055) We Can Fix It: a time-travel memoir by Jess Fink, finished September 23
056) The Sculptor by Scott McCloud, finished September 25
057) The Last Words of Dutch Schulz by William S, Burroughs, finished September 26
058) It Girl and the Atomics: Dark Streets, Snap City by Jamie S. Rich and a slew of other people, finshed September 28
059) The Holy Covenant: Living Our Sacred Temple Promises by Anthony Sweat, finished October 4
060) Penthouse Legend by Ayn Rand, finished October 5
061/062) Antony & Cleopatra by William Shakespeare, finshed October 8 and 9
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