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My Ántonia by Willa Cather

June 6, 2026 / Literature, Reading

A literary classic set in rural Nebraska during the late 19th century. The book is narrated by Jim, an orphaned youth who comes to live with his grandparents just as a family of immigrants arrives to stake their claim to this new land of plenty. Cather’s descriptions of the Nebraska countryside are so rich and atmospheric, I felt a longing for a place I’ve never seen.

As I looked about me I felt that the grass was the country, as the water is the sea. The red of the grass made all the great prairie the colour of winestains, or of certain seaweeds when they are first washed up. And there was so much motion in it; the whole country seemed, somehow, to be running.

We follow the lives of these two families as they endure bitterly cold winters and lush summers. The American settlers are stoic, self-reliant, and often miserly. The immigrants are full of life, completely unprepared, and generous to a fault. The contrast between these two groups is a key theme that runs throughout the novel.

The story unfolds in episodic adventures, which felt a bit like something out of Little House on the Prairie. Most of the book centers on Jim’s relationship with Ántonia, four years his senior, and on whom the book is titled. In one way, this is a traditional coming-of-age story of friendship, romance, and small-town values. Yet, what made the novel special for me was its use of place and memory as anchors for happiness.

Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.

It’s hard to share more about the story without spoiling it. Ultimately, this is a love letter to a place and time that now exist only in memory — and in classic novels like this one.

A Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhirst

June 1, 2026 / Reading, Travel

I thought I was getting a modern-day account of a shipwreck at sea. But instead, the author rehashes a fairly well-known account from the 1960s of a couple enduring the sinking of their sailboat after colliding with a whale in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

The book focuses on the marriage between this English couple as they struggled to survive at sea and later under the pressure of media interest in their story. The husband is an introverted pessimist with asshole tendencies. The wife believes things happen for a reason and everything will work out if only they keep a positive attitude.

It is not so much the feats of endurance that keep people alive as the absence of surrender.

Elmhirst circles back so often to this idea that the couple’s ultimate survival hinged on a positive attitude, that I guess that’s the main point of the book. I’m sorry, but these sailors made so many errors in seamanship that it’s shocking they survived at all. The author admits in the afterward that she’s never stepped foot on a sailboat. She doesn’t know port from starboard, stem from stern. Who writes a survival at sea story without having sailed?

I am clearly not the target audience for this one.

The Book of Alchemy by Suleika Jaouad

May 31, 2026 / Reading, Uncategorized, Writing Guides

Suleika Jaouad is a true believer in the power of journaling. Here, she shares 100 mini-essays by notable writers and artists, with tailored journaling prompts after each. You read the short essay, then respond to the prompt in your journal. The prompts are organized into ten sections that plumb the depths of human experience. Jaouad introduces each section with perspectives from her own life, many sharing how her journal helped her navigate her battles with cancer.

Every morning for the past four months, I read one of these short essays and answered the journal prompt as I sipped my coffee. For some, I wrote a few paragraphs. For others, I carried on for two or three pages. Often, how I thought I would approach a prompt changed as I wrote in surprising ways. This is one of those special books that gives back what you put into it.

Any collection of one hundred essays is bound to have its share of duds. No exception here. There were a few that felt rushed, or pointless, or disconnected from the journaling prompt. And the included essays from Jaouad’s family and friends felt indulgent. But most found a ready pathway to my subconscious through the power of quiet reflection with pen and paper.

If you’re looking for a book to help you start a journal or reinvigorate an existing journaling practice, this is a great choice.

The Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King

May 24, 2026 / Horror, Reading

My multi-year quest to read the entire Stephen King catalog continues with this 2015 short-story collection. I listened to this one, which included a bonus story (Cookie Jar) not in the original print edition.

King shows his range of writing styles in this collection. There are straight-up horror stories, mysteries, a western, a creepy noir story, a sparse, depressing story that felt very much like a Raymond Carver story, and a short epic poem.

My favorite was UR, a novella featuring an e-reader that taps into books and news stories from millions of parallel universes. This is a must-read for any diehard Dark Tower fans.

In looking back over the twenty other stories, there were two really good ones (A Death and Summer Thunder), but the majority were just okay. King wrote introductions for most of the stories, which I often liked as much as the stories themselves. There were some terrific insights into how he approaches the craft of writing. Our generation’s greatest storyteller makes it look effortless, but, as he says in one introduction, “easy reading is the product of hard writing.”

I’ve now read all twelve short story/novella collections King has written (so far). For me, this one ranked near the bottom in terms of overall enjoyment. My top two recommendations in this category are Night Shift and You Like It Darker.

Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton

May 23, 2026 / ★★★★★, Memoir, Nature, Reading

Chloe Dalton, burned out from a hectic career as a crisis-management policy expert, leaves London to work remotely near her family in the English countryside. She stumbles upon a helpless baby hare and rescues it from certain death. Thus begins a story of how this woman raised a wild hare.

Underlying the wonderful and often humorous stories of coexisting with this wild animal, we watch an adrenaline-addicted professional find balance and peace through a connection with nature. Thoreau had Walden Pond; Dillard had Tinker Creek. Dalton makes a meditative study of a Buddha-like hare within a few acres of wild English countryside. Buried within her observations of the hare and its environment are subtle lessons: let go of any illusions of control; find the joy and serenity in the present moment; and understand that your place is within the natural world, not outside of it.

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The Good Life by Jay McInerney

May 14, 2026 / Literary Fiction, Reading

New York City may be the greatest city on earth, but it’s sure tough on marriages. That seems to be the theme that runs through The Good Life, book two of the Calloway saga. The Calloways are now in their forties, raising twins, and still struggling to keep up with the frenzied and moneyed lifestyle of Manhattan.

The novel is set just before and a few months after September 11, 2001. That terrorists could so dramatically disrupt New York, and could do so again at any moment, serves as a midlife crisis accelerator for Corinne and Luke, who meet as volunteers at Ground Zero. They form a special, once-in-a-lifetime bond and must balance their own desires with the needs of their families in a war-torn city.

I loved Brightness Falls, the predecessor to this one, which wrestled with such big themes that I felt it was one of the very best American novels of the past century. This one, with its modest scope and almost cliched theme, was merely good.

The First Forty-Nine Stories by Ernest Hemingway

May 6, 2026 / Literature, Reading

I’m slowly making my way through a reread of the Hemingway canon. I read many of these stories in college, but I’ve never read all of them straight through like this. This time, I read just one story a night, letting it sink in, and then ruminating over it in my journal the next morning.

These stories are, of course, pure Hemingway: short, punchy sentences; deep emotions tucked just below the surface; a palpable disdain for characters who aren’t manly enough, especially those who relinquish their masculinity to a woman’s charms. Such persistent misogyny felt wearisome by the end of forty-nine stories.

My favorites from the collection: The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Cat In the Rain, Fifty Grand, Hills Like White Elephants, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, and Fathers and Sons.

I’m sure there are stories here that would have alarmed readers when published, but the world has moved on since the first half of the 20th Century. I wonder how a modern-day Hemingway would shock readers today. I’m pretty sure Papa would have found a way.

Departures by Julian Barnes

April 17, 2026 / Literary Fiction, Reading

Julian Barnes’ latest book, Departure(s), is difficult to classify. It’s part memoir, part literary analysis, part diary, and part meditation on friendship, memory, and the finality of death, while still leaving room for the story of how the narrator (unreliable?) introduced two friends at Oxford, and how, after a 40-year gap, he brought those same friends together again with hopeful intentions. Unlike a novelist’s artistic godlike designs, we are soon reminded that there are few happy endings in life. Things happen for no reason. Or don’t. And death is cruel and final.

It seems to me that humans are often so busy living that they forget they are human – or at least forget what it is to be human, and what its consequences are – and therefore what it means to be dead.

Along the way, we are treated to glimpses of the author’s private life: his adoption of a dog, his insomniac writing in the middle of the night on his IBM Selectric typewriter, his eccentric journaling practice, the many vagaries of aging, his battle with cancer, and his grief of losing his wife of thirty years. There is a continual flow of dark wit, though melancholy lies just below the surface of almost every page.

Barnes turned eighty when this book came out. He says it will be his last, preferring to have the final word, and dreading the potential for dying in the saddle, mid-sentence. And yet, I can’t help wondering if he might still have more to give us. Earlier this year, he married his former publisher and long-time partner. This seems like an optimistic act. If not another book, we can at least hope he finds peace and love. We should all be as lucky.

Roads of Destiny by O. Henry

April 12, 2026 / Literature, Reading

I got the idea to read some O. Henry during our time last year in Manhattan. While wandering around Gramercy Park, we happened upon Pete’s Tavern, where the author allegedly scribbled out his stories, including his famous The Gift of the Magi.

The twenty-two stories in this collection were all good. My two favorites were A Retrieved Reformation and Friends in San Rosario. The language is peppered with slang and colorful metaphors:

I was coming out of a printing-shop one afternoon with a batch of fine, sticky prospectuses when I ran against Denver coming round a corner. I never saw him looking so much like a tiger-lily. He was as beautiful and new as a trellis of sweet peas, and as rollicking as a clarinet solo.

Almost every story included the trademark twist in the last few lines. After reading the first ten stories, this became predictable and a little tiresome. I got the feeling that O. Henry cranked out these stories on a deadline in the smoky confines of that old tavern, probably after a few beers. There’s genius here, but it’s formulaic. It’s maybe best to dip in and out of these stories when the mood strikes, not straight through like I did.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

April 11, 2026 / Reading, Science Fiction

This classic science fiction novel drops you in the deep end of the pool from the start. There’s strange new vocabulary and culture to learn from an alien race on the planet of Winter. Even stranger is the gender fluidity that all the inhabitants of the planet possess, except for the rare sexual deviants born exclusively male or female.

I love the elaborate world-building of truly successful science fiction writing. Le Guin brings this world alive by tapping into all the senses of what being on this frigid planet is like: the perpetual chill, the descriptions of the mountainous terrain, the unique architecture designed for the deep cold of long winters, the strange smells and tastes of alien food, and the many different kinds and even sounds of snow. The immersive descriptions for a completely imagined world is astonishing. Couple this with luxuriant writing that flows with such rhythm, bordering at times on poetry. Even if I didn’t always understand the vernacular, I marveled at the language.

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So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan

March 29, 2026 / Literary Fiction, Reading

Claire Keegan is fast becoming my favorite living author. This latest book features three short stories, though just the title story is new. The others were reprinted from her earlier two collections of short stories (Antarctica and Walk The Blue Fields, both of which I now have on order).

A theme connects these stories, as hinted by the book’s subtitle: “Stories of Women and Men.” Indeed, each story depicts an unhappy encounter between the sexes with unsettling consequences.

My favorite was So Late in the Day, where a man reflects on his sad life on what should have been his wedding day. He treated his fiancée horribly, but can’t seem to accept responsibility for his deplorable behavior once she broke off the engagement. A flashback to a breakfast with his family when he returned home from college will haunt me for a long time.

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Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed

March 24, 2026 / ★★★★★, Essays, Reading

How to sum up this wise, wonderful book? Cheryl Strayed, writing under the pseudonym Dear Sugar, wrote a weekly advice column from 2010 through 2012. The questions covered the gamut of the human experience: grief, love, infidelity, abuse, parenting, estranged families, friendship, wedding planning, divorce, you name it. Sugar’s response often included heartfelt sorrow or sometimes an upbraiding, but almost always a story from her life that fit the situation perfectly. These weren’t two or three-paragraph responses. These were beautifully crafted, thoughtful, deeply moving essays. This book collects the best of those essays.

I listened to this while driving and taking walks around the neighborhood. Since this book is narrated by Strayed, the feeling of a personal connection was amplified, especially when her voice cracked with emotion as she related her own stories. There were times I would stop on a walk and marvel at this raw emotion wrapped in unconventional yet utterly appropriate advice.

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The Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis

March 20, 2026 / Reading, Science Fiction

An alien from a dying planet arrives on Earth to establish a sanctuary for his home world. All goes well until the alien decides to deaden his homesickness and sensory terrors of humanity with copious amounts of gin. Substance abuse runs through all of Tevis’s books. Even extraterrestrials aren’t immune. Tevis himself battled alcoholism for most of his life, so there is an autobiographical ring to the struggles that almost every character in this novel faces with drinking.

He had discovered, quite by accident, that it could be a fine thing, on a gray, dismal morning—a morning of limp, oyster-colored weather—to be gently but firmly drunk, making a pleasure of melancholy.

The broader message of this cautionary tale is that while sufficiently advanced technology may bedazzle us, it will eventually destroy us.

The Hustler by Walter Tevis

March 9, 2026 / Literary Fiction, Reading

Fast Eddie Felson is a hustler trying to make a living playing pool. He has the talent, but lacks the grit and endurance to prevail in a game that requires a gambler’s mental toughness. As someone who has spent way too much time circling a pool table in dive bars, who, in fact, met the love of his life playing pool in a dive bar, reading about Eddie’s love of the game put me in a fine reverie:

Eddie loved to play pool. There was a kind of power, a kind of brilliant coordination of mind and of skill, that could give him as much pleasure, as much delight in himself and in the things that he did, as anything else in the world. Some men never feel this way about anything; but Eddie had felt it, as long as he could remember, about pool.

There are parallels between Eddie Felson’s pool and Beth Harmon’s chess in The Queen’s Gambit (also written by Tevis). Both protagonists have a self-destructive side, both are alcoholics, and both find a way to overcome adversity with the help of a coach or a friend.

Unlike Beth Harmon, Eddie isn’t a likable person. He makes questionable decisions, treats people badly, and seems to care only for himself. This made it hard for me to root for him as he faced his demons later in the novel. Knowing more about his life before we meet him as an small time pool hustler could have deepened his character for the reader.

Still, if you have even a passing interest in pool or gambling or gritty city life, this is a great read.

The Best American Essays 1986 by Elizabeth Hardwick (editor)

March 7, 2026 / Essays, Reading

This is the inaugural volume of the Best American Essays series, which has celebrated the best annual essay writing for forty consecutive years. This one showcases the essayistic talent of some literary icons in their heyday: Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen Jay Gould, Julian Barnes, and Cynthia Ozick, among others.

Many of the collected pieces here failed to stand the test of time, but there were exceptions. I loved On Boxing, which I read as part of a larger collection by Joyce Carol Oates (see my review). And The First Day of School by Cynthia Ozick was a wonderful, evocative essay about the excitement and nerves of the first days of college at NYU’s Washington Square campus in the 1940s.

The standout for me was Kai Erikson’s Of Accidental Judgments and Casual Slaughters, where he muses about the deliberations leading up to the decision to drop atomic bombs on the civilian cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II. Why not a test on some uninhabited part of Japan to demonstrate the awesome power?

There is no law of nature that compels a winning side to press its superiority, but it is hard to slow down, hard to relinquish an advantage, hard to rein the fury. The impulse to charge ahead, to strike at the throat, is so strong a habit of war that it almost ranks as a reflex, and if that thought does not frighten us when we consider our present nuclear predicament, nothing will. Many a casual slaughter can emerge from such moods.
Kai Erikson, Of Accidental Judgments and Casual Slaughters

The notion that humans have a natural, unstoppable killer instinct is a depressing but plausible conclusion.

John Adams by David McCullough

February 28, 2026 / History, Reading

A riveting history of the people and events of the American Revolution from the perspective of arguably our most important forefather. This is timely reading to remember the causes of revolution and the original intentions of the U.S. Constitution as we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

I had been lulled into thinking of our Founding Fathers as selfless and intrinsically wise. McCullough dispelled any notion that these men were perfect, including Adams. The revolution led to heroic moments, for sure, but time has glossed over the miscues, indecision, and backstabbing that plague all of humanity. Adams stands out as a beacon of honesty and decency in a sea of selfishness, pompousness, and betrayal. No spoilers, but I will never feel the same about Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson!

Beyond the American history lesson, I enjoyed learning about Adams as an attorney, farmer, father, devoted husband, voracious reader, and lifelong scholar during a time of incredible turmoil and uncertainty. He achieved tremendous success and suffered utter heartbreak throughout his life, all while staying true to his personal values and beliefs. Adams embodied the very best of what it means to be American.

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The Best American Essays 2025 by Jia Tolentino (editor)

February 13, 2026 / Essays, Reading

I love essays. I have a shelf full of these Best American essay collections dating all the way back to its inaugural volume from 1986. I’ve dipped in and out of these over the years, picking and choosing what looked interesting to me.

I’m taking a different approach with the latest volumes (I read the 2024 collection last year). I’m reading all the essays straight through, cover to cover. This means I’m reading essays I probably would have skipped after the first two or three paragraphs, thinking the topic or voice wasn’t for me.

This new diligence has been both frustrating and rewarding. Frustrating because, out of 21 essays in this volume, four did absolutely nothing for me. I should have skipped these and been better off for it. But rewarding because there were a few essays I wouldn’t have read that surprised me. I either learned something fascinating or developed an appreciation for a different style of essay writing.

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The Running Man by Stephen King

February 9, 2026 / Horror, Reading

Continuing my quest to read all of Stephen King’s published works with this Richard Bachman dystopian thriller, published in 1982. The Running Man is set in a 2025 America with extreme income inequality, a polluted environment, an authoritarian government, and a population obsessed and controlled by streaming media and ultra-violent reality TV.

The hero of the story is Benjamin Richards, who signs up for the most dangerous “Free-Vee” show to save his sick daughter. Richards is tough, gritty, and smart. A badass that we rarely see as a protagonist in a Stephen King novel (hence the Richard Bachman pseudonym).

Hijinks ensue as Richards attempts to evade his would-be game show killers. It’s a fast-paced read with some good plot twists. I won’t spoil the ending, other than to say it’s another example of King’s uncanny ability to predict future events.

Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe

February 2, 2026 / History, Reading

A meticulously researched history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Keefe delves into the motivations behind the horrible actions taken by both sides of this decades-long conflict, which I had never really understood. Ultimately, the book is a tale of tragedy and woe for both sides of a pointless war.

There were necessarily a lot of names, places, and dates included in this account, which for me didn’t translate as well in an audiobook. Reading the physical book would have been a better experience, though I loved the Irish accent of the narrator.

Foster by Claire Keegan

February 1, 2026 / ★★★★★, Literary Fiction, Reading

Another masterpiece from Claire Keegan, this one about an unnamed child who spends a summer with her aunt and uncle on a farm on the coast of Ireland. We soon learn that the child has been utterly neglected and is in dire need of love and attention. Her aunt and uncle have their own grief, and we bear witness to a summer of tremendous healing for this newly formed family.

Her hands are like my mother’s hands but there is something else in them too, something I have never felt before and have no name for. I feel at such a loss for words but this is a new place, and new words are needed.

It’s astonishing how Keegan crafts so much story with characters of real depth in so few pages. The language is economical, yet lyrical. And moving. I did not want this to end. When I finished, I turned back and read it again to savor it more slowly and pick up on things I missed.

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