2025 books read. Not pictured, Lutz’s Backwardness. Best of the year: The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford, with Purdy’s Cabot Wright Begins close behind.

Frank Moore Colby, 1902.

Up next (to see where it lands amongst AUGIE and HERZOG)

Shameless self-promotion. I was recently published in Wintersweet Magazine’s first issue. Snippet and link below. wintersweetslitmag.com/issue…

We are a speck of dust in the history of time. If reading is important to you, finding time will be no issue.

Cynthia Ozick an outside chance.

I don't resile from this.

Anne Carson deserves it imo. If Murnane wins I’ll legally change my name to Gerald.

Recent arrivals.

As of this morning, there are now two books that have made me miss my bus stop: White Noise by DeLillo and Brideshead Revisted by Waugh.

Give me your best albums for reading. Looking to update my good (yet stale) playlist.

One of the best opening lines for a biography.

Does anyone fuck with E. L. Doctorow anymore?

In the final 100 pages of this and for what was 300 pages earlier a near-DNF, it’s shaping up to be a fantastic book with far too much preceding baggage.

Where your email finds me.

A recent haul

Found at a charity shop (unfortunately the person pricing it was aware of its scarcity)

I’ll never get sick of reading Updike’s criticism; he is peerless, in my view, when it comes to reviewing not only with wit but a deep compassion for literature. He was a fair, but robust critic; told it how it was, but let the author speak for themselves.