1,432 books left if I live a long life

My middle-age Modernist awakening, several French dudes, more Scandinavians per usual, and John Tottenham bonus content at the end

I started the year rereading Geoff Rickly’s Someone Who Isn’t Me, kicked over by the opening page again. I heard he revised it a hundred times. I read On the Calculation of Volume 1 & 2, enjoying the first but bored by the second until the cliffhanger finally came. I pre-ordered book 3 which has since arrived, but haven’t cracked the spine. I wonder if this is steaming TV fodder rather than the next great septological series of Scandinavian literature. It spells trouble when scores of readers say it’s Groundhog Day-esque and little more, but time will tell. I’ll dip into the third episode soon to check my inclination. I read Men Have Called Her Crazy by Anna Marie Tendler, which was probably not written for me, then Someone Deserves It, an unpublished heist novel by Kyle Seibel. I read Vonnegut’s Timequake and disliked it as a novel. Pruned it would’ve made a nice 40-page zine, but it was fun to recognize jokes I heard Vonnegut tell at a lecture I attended at Indiana University in 1997. Checking the publication date, I see he must have been promoting the book, which ended up being his last. I finally visited the Vonnegut museum in Indianapolis this year and sad to report that it sucks fat dick. The man gave props to my hometown endlessly, and we’re only able to cobble together one typewriter and a couple of poorly scanned, laser-printed photos. Hoosiers should be ashamed. Next, I reread Jim Lewis’ Why The Tree Loves the Ax. I first came across it in the early 2000s in Seattle when friends and I got super into it. Wasn’t a stand-out this time, but I guess it’s fine. I finally hit Please Kill Me by Legs McNeil & Gillian McCain, the OG oral history music book, and surly one of the best. My first classic of several this year was also my first Edith Wharton. As I understand it, Ethan Frome is the one time she wrote about the not-rich. This was a favorite from the pile, and I’ll endeavor to read more Edith soon. I don’t remember much from Brautigan’s Hawkline Monster, and was annoyed with Steve Almond’s Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow in the end. I read Emily Costa’s Girl on Girl, then ran back to old shit for the 1818 version of Frankenstein, surprised to find it’s not only the monster getting the doctor’s name that movies, cartoons, and Halloween costumes get wrong. The dramatic scene of the creature’s animation (lightning bolts; “It’s alive!”) doesn’t appear in the novel at all. I was picking up confidence and steam for canon, but humbled myself in private, and will now do it here by admitting I read The Idiot’s Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism. Next up was Kyle Seibel’s Hey You Assholes. I read many of its stories when they were first published in various journals, but the true might of Kyle’s prose, the singularity of his style, and the heart of his project is undeniable with these gems together in one place. I read Tropicália by Harold Rogers for the second time. You’re probably watching his Substack ascent where his essays and jokes are a pleasure, but I’m begging you to read this novel. I think it’s eternal, though sales were slow. I was stunned by the lack of humor in Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, but had a blast with my first Houellebecq, The Map and the Territory. I gobbled up Adam Gnade’s food novel, After Tonight, Everything Will Be Different. It was nice to reconnect with Gnade in text and human form this year after meeting him via the U.S. Mail long ago. It seems I’ve wasted a couple of decades not watching the way he moves out there which is a new inspiration. I was disappointed by Hanne Ørstavik’s The Pastor, but can’t remember why, then stoked all over again on my second go with Seibel’s Assholes. Joe Brainard’s I Remember, first published in 1970, was a reminder that few ideas are original, but all available for recycling. Coetzee’s Disgrace is perfect, Gaddis’ Agapē Agape inscrutable, and a reread of the graphic novel Blankets left me cold. I’m grateful I read Édouard Levé’s Suicide early in the year and not recently as it’s dangerous; unapologetic and makes too much sense. I want each of you to find Will Mountain Cox’s Roundabout, a slim and graceful novel about a friendship group, those fragile fucking things. You can skip When She Was Good, wherein Philip Roth writes his one and only female protagonist and misses the mark. The only poetry book I read this year was Promises of Gold by José Olivarez. Many heaters inside. After falling for Disgrace, I was hyped to discover Here and Now, letters between Coetzee and my 21-year-old favorite writer, Paul Auster, but Christ their exchanges were a bore. The only revealing bit was Auster wrestling with the James Wood takedown of his oeuvre in real time. I liked the prose in Harris Lahti’s Foreclosure Gothic, but unsure what the book’s doing. Might be my lack of reading from the genres it samples. I finally spent the money on a used copy of Almost Transparent Blue by the other Murakami (Ryū). I suppose I could only be let down by another Coetzee after Disgrace, and so it was with Waiting for the Barbarians. I read Ulysses side-by-side with Patrick Hasting’s guide, which isn’t quite Idiot-level, but brought the intimidating novel down to approachable. I’ll need to read Ulysses again as the first pass hardly feels complete, but damn it’s good to make it through round one. Michael Bible’s Empire of Light wasn’t my thing, but I’ll try another. Many readers I admire name check him on the regular. Bright Lights, Big City was a pleasure, but I suspect it’s the only Jay McInerney I need. I loved Mrs. Dalloway, which made me miss walking around London. Woolf coupled with Joyce got me appreciating what the Modernists were up to, so I pivoted to the U.S. and fully freaked out over The Sun Also Rises. I followed with Hemingway’s other bookend, The Old Man and the Sea. Saw cynical takes on that one, to which I say: hush up, bitches! I skipped forward in time for Richard Hell’s autobiography, I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp, which is excellent and pulls no punches—Kathy Acker butt fuck and all. I didn’t realize how quickly Hell peaced out from music after ushering in the first wave of punk to focus on writing. I read another music memoir, Heroin is the Answer, by Russell Holbrook from the stoned Christian Rock band Joe Christmas, who make an appearance in my new novel. I read Sara B. Franklin’s The Editor: How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America, then Céline’s Journey to the End of the Night. I’m dug the book, but forgive me: it’s a little interwar Forrest Gump, no? Apparently I flipped all the pages of Paul Auster’s final novel, Baumgartner, though I’ve got no memory of what’s inside, but countless scenes stuck from Franzen’s Crossroads. I wrote about that one a few months ago: Marked Safe From Franzen. I finally read Bill Buford’s Among the Thugs, a cold take from an outsider on a singular subculture, and a fearless look at the pull of group violence, even on the author. I finally tackled some Faulkner this year. I started with Light in August, primarily to see the origin of the Joe Christmas band name. When I finished, I saw a critic note the book is a retelling of The Book of John, I need to revisit the gospel and find the threads. I bounced back to Hemingway for In Our Time, then read Victim by Andrew Boryga. Probably unfair to make Andrew follow Papa and Faulky. Next came The Relegation Reader, edited by the aforementioned Will Mountain Cox. I wrote a long review of that one. Traveled back to Scandinavia for Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson, privately delighted to recognize a Hemingway devotee—I wouldn’t have noticed it last year. I did another biography, A. Scott Berg’s Max Perkins: Editor of Genius, then reread the incomparable Body High by Jon Lindsey while I impatiently wait for whatever he does next. I was not into The Morning Star, the first chunklet in Knausgaard’s new series, and might skip the whole lot, but will go hard on Emmanuel Carrère after finding Yoga, hands-down my favorite read of the year. I hit it twice in a row and wrote about the impact the book had on me. I’m gonna read The Kingdom next. Many times, Mike Nagel has told me to read J.D. Daniel’s collection of essays in letters, The Correspondence. What a remarkable and weird little book. I know nothing else like it. I found Gabriel Smith’s Brat half-baked, and wonder about the editing once Gian passed and the book sold to a big house. The young and sexy diarists of the city are often empty calories for this near-geezer, but I liked Greta Schledorn’s Now More Than Ever. The book’s got heart and her prose kept surprising me as I read it one sitting. The best bit comes when she confronts her mother about her father, and I texted Greta to say I need a full-on dad novel next. John D’Agata’s About a Mountain is… about a mountain. Or mountains. This was another Nagel recommendation, an overwhelming, not-so-pleasant, wildly inventive approach to showing how we live today. My second Faulkner was The Sound and the Fury. It appears late on my list, but I started and stopped serval times throughout the year, rereading, researching, using what help I could find until finishing. Well worth it, but damn. Like Ulysses, I suspect this will come for me again. I ripped through John Tottenham’s Service about a misanthropic and under-accomplished writer working the register at a bookshop on LA’s Eastside. The names are changed, but the novel does not hide its thin veil of fiction. Before I knew who he was, I had a hysterical (and apparently typical) run-in with John at Stories when I visited LA during the gnarly canyon fires. First he refused to open the locked cabinet of collectable books, claiming they’d lost the key, and later I returned to the counter for more punishment and asked if they had a particular book. It was actually that second installment of On the Calculation of Volume. He thought they did, so huffed down from his perch at the register and stood in front of the new releases mumbling about how he’d just seen it. Then, barking What the fuck is this shit?, he pulled a different title from the shelf with theatrical dismay and proceeded to read it for a several minutes. Embarrassed to lurk dumbly beside him waiting on my request, I gave up and moved on. I wish this had happened a few years back when he was still working on Service. I might have become a fictionalized customer inside, which would be an honor. When my wife gave me Carrie Fisher’s Wishful Drinking, she said, “I know it’s an airport book, but you might like the mental health parts.” Unfortunately, that’s glossed over and it’s mostly a Hollywood family soap opera. She’s got another memoir about ECT which might dig deeper on the good shit. I read Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates, which rips. I love when a sad book makes me happy. I wanted more, and started The Easter Parade right away, but didn’t finish yet, so that’ll be my first entry for 2026.