The Midnight Library

Matt Haig

289 pages - 2020 - fiction, fantasy, sci-fi

April 11th, 2026 — April 14th, 2026

Rating: ⭐⭐½

I have been depressed for a very long time, but I never really let myself believe it. I went through high school working incredibly hard and joining clubs that took up all my free time so I never really had to think. I spent college telling myself that I was homesick and that it was fine I just wanted to do my schoolwork and not much else.

When I finally moved out and had some time to think, and time that I had to spend on my own, the weight of it finally hit me. Part of it was because I myself didn’t really recognize the signs, and part of it was because I finally was forced to confront it all.

Mental health is an incredibly tricky beast, and one that is so heavily stigmatized and enigmatic that it feels like a looming cloud over some people’s heads. Nearly all mental health conditions (and, for that matter, nearly every physical health condition too) are based on a male pattern of behavior, signs, and symptoms. Young girls and women go severely un- or misdiagnosed. Because of that, everyone’s experience with mental health struggles, while they can have overlaps and commonalities, is completely personal.

I’m incredibly grateful to live in an era where talking about it is not done in hushed tones like it used to be. Women who are “hysterical” are no longer sent off for lobotomies or the “seaside cure”. There is so much more ground to cover, and so much more research, funding, and insurance coverage that is needed to truly help people, but we are much better off than we were even a decade ago in terms of knowledge about it all.

The story of The Midnight Library follows a woman named Nora who is severely depressed and suicidal. The first line sets the scene, saying that “Nineteen years before she decided to die….” For people who have been in Nora’s shoes, even for a moment, this could be a comforting book, knowing that there are others (even fictional others) that feel like them. Or it could be a horribly painful thing to read, a reminder of the darkest depths one might have fallen into.

I’ve talked a good deal about reading the right book at the right time. I’m glad that I read this one now, when I did, because I am feeling relatively okay. But I can imagine a world, another me, that read this book and found it very troubling. I can picture 16-year-old me either gobbling this book up or falling even deeper into that depressive hole. It’s really a toss-up, and you don’t know until you’re in the middle of the book whether it’s the perfect time or not the right time at all.

I wanted to like this book, and I’ve heard so many good things about it, but I think if I didn’t love it now, I definitely would not love it when I’m in the throes. I think the message is a great one. However, it’s a little too neat and tidy for me. I’m wary of stories where a mental health crisis is solved by magic or fantasy. Maybe it’s just me, but I find it much more powerful when the impetus for change and growth comes from internal experience, rather than a mystical library to show you the multiverse.

Summary (Spoilers!)

Nora Seed is 36 years old and she has decided that she does not want to live anymore. In one day, she loses her job working as a music store clerk because her boss thinks that she should “move on”, she has an aggressive interaction with a former bandmate, her only piano student cancels his lessons, and her cat dies. Her brother is avoiding her. She barely hears from her friend Izzy all the way in Australia. When she arrives home after being fired, even her elderly neighbor, Mr. Banerjee, says that he doesn’t need her help with picking up his medications anymore.

Her parents died a while ago—her father many years prior, and her mother a few years ago after a difficult battle with ovarian cancer. She had left her (now ex) fiance only two days before they were planning on getting married. She tells herself that she doesn’t have anything left to live for, not even a cat, so she writes a note, leaves one final post on social media, and takes a bunch of pills.

However, when she wakes up, she’s in front of an enormous building that seems to be covered in fog. When she walks inside, the place is filled with books, all green, and the stacks go on endlessly. Nora finds one other person inside: her old school librarian, Mrs. Elm, who had comforted her on the day that her father had suddenly passed from a heart attack.

Mrs. Elm explains that Nora has found herself in the Midnight Library. When Nora checks her watch, she notices that time is not moving; it is stuck at 0:00:00. Mrs. Elm says that this is a place between life and death, and introduces her to “The Book of Regrets”. In it is a detailed list of everything Nora has ever regretted in her life. The pages are not static; they change as she thinks, with some regrets fading in and out of view and some repeated across multiple years.

The other books, however, are different variations of Nora’s life, infinite universes and possibilities. Mrs. Elm says that any book Nora chooses will let her see what that life is like, and how it would have turned out if she had made certain choices differently. It could be as small as choosing a different cereal at the grocery store or as large as sticking with her competitive swimming.

Mrs. Elm also says that Nora will return to the Midnight Library when she starts to feel disappointed in the life that she is visiting. Nora says that she wants to die, so she will be disappointed in any life, but Mrs. Elm encourages her to choose a book from the shelves. Nora does so and finds herself in a life where she had not left her fiance Dan.

She comes to outside of the pub that she gathers they own together, which had been a dream of Dan’s for a long time. Some regulars are saying goodnight to her as they leave from the trivia event there that had just ended. The Nora in this life now is the same one that had lived her unlucky life before, with all of her memories, so she does not know the people passing by or anything about their experiences to lead to this point. Carefully, she talks to Dan, trying to learn more information about their relationship and their life here.

She learns that Dan had cheated on her, and that he was also never a great person—he is passive-aggressive and dismissive of her thoughts and feelings. She realizes that he was always like that, and she finds herself feeling disappointed, returning to the Midnight Library.

Mrs. Elm says that Nora should think of another life she wants to visit. Nora decides that she wants to see what would have happened if she decided to keep her cat, Voltaire, nicknamed Volts, indoors, rather than letting him roam outside. Immediately, though, she finds out that Volts had died beneath her bed in that life. Mrs. Elm explains that Volts would have died in any life because he had a heart condition, and in her original life, Volts most likely went outside because he knew he was going to die, and that’s what cats do. The regret in “The Book of Regrets” about her not taking good enough care of Volts disappears.

Nora thinks of multiple possibilities and visits each life. In one, she has moved to Australia with her best friend Izzy; however, she learns that Izzy had died in a car crash on the way to Nora’s birthday party. In another, she became an Olympic swimmer after continuing with her training at school; her father had lived much longer, but her parents had gotten divorced and her mother had died sooner after becoming embittered with her father’s new girlfriend. She asks to visit a life where she’s successful, and finds herself famous, about to give a TED Talk about success to a packed crowd, but she is lonely and doesn’t have many friends.

Nora sees what would have happened if she had followed her childhood passion and became a glaciologist; she wakes up on a boat in the Arctic. Quickly she finds out that she is on lookout duty for the day and has a near-death encounter with a polar bear, during which she realizes that she does want to live. Later that day, a man on the voyage named Hugo comes up to her and accuses her of acting differently than she had been a day ago. He explains, though, that he is like her—a slider, he calls it—and is constantly jumping between his possible lives.

Nora learns that there are a few people out there who are also in their versions of the Midnight Library. For Hugo, he is in a video store that he used to love, and every VHS tape that he watches becomes a life he gets to live. He likes the adventure and potential of it, and thinks that he might not settle down into another life any time soon.

Nora visits a life where she had stayed in the band with her brother, The Labyrinths, and they had made it big. When she comes to, she’s about to go on stage for the encore; Ravi, the bandmate with whom she had had an aggressive encounter, tells her that they have to do “the usual”, but she insists on playing “Bridge Over Troubled Water” because she doesn’t know any of their songs.

She asks where Joe, her brother, is, and someone says that Joe is “schmoozing” with the press. She goes on and plays to a huge crowd in Sao Paolo, Brazil. On their ride to the hotel, she learns from their manager, Joanna, that Nora is supposed to go on a podcast that night to be interviewed. She learns during the interview that she is caught up in a number of scandals and tragedies, including messy celebrity break-ups and feuds. She also learns that her brother had died of a drug overdose two years prior, and that “Jo” referred to their manager, rather than him.

She continues to slide between lives, visiting all types of possibilities. She learns more and more about herself, but she also starts to lose the essence of who she really is; she starts to wish for a life she could really settle into. Nora asks for the life where she had said yes to a date with Ash, an amateur musician whom she had helped at the music store; he had asked her out when she was still with Dan, and she often thinks of how kind Ash had been to her.

In this life, she is happily married to Ash, with a daughter, who she learns is named Molly. She plays a “game” with Molly where she has the young girl answer questions about their life to learn more about it. She finds out that her parents are still dead but her brother is alive and well, married to a man named Ewan, and that they talk regularly. She also learns that she loves her job, and Ash loves his job as a surgeon. She seems incredibly content in this life, and stays there for a while.

However, she realizes that she did not earn this life. She feels a deep sense of connection to them, but she cannot help but go back to the library because she does not feel like she belongs in that universe.

Nora begs to return to that life, but Mrs. Elm says that she can never go back to the same life twice, and the Midnight Library starts to fall apart. The books catch fire and are falling off the shelves. Mrs. Elm says that it’s possible Nora is dying in her original life, but if she wants to live, she has to find the one book that isn’t burning. She does, and finds that the book is blank; she uses a pen to write variations of the beginning of a story, but when she finally writes “I AM ALIVE”, she returns to her original universe.

She wakes up in pain and vomit-covered, but she is alive. She goes to her neighbor’s house and asks him for help, and he calls the ambulance. She is taken to the hospital where she is treated, both physically and mentally. She reconciles with her brother and her best friend Izzy, and promises to not leave them again. She also goes to an old folks’ home to visit Mrs. Elm, where they play a game of chess, reflecting on the sheer number of possibilities the game—and life—contain.

Spines and Stories

Like I said in the beginning, I did enjoy this book, and I always love a story that advocates for mental healthcare. That is not why I rated it the way I did. I also think that it was a fun read, and an interesting concept. It begs the reader to think of their different possible lives, and what the other versions of them might be doing.

For example, there’s a possibility in one that I’m a bartender in Ireland. Maybe I married my high-school boyfriend. Maybe I had never taken that chemistry class and instead tried to pursue singing—either to great fame or greater failure. Maybe my brother and I had gone to the same school. Maybe I moved across the country instead of him. Maybe I’m living in Iceland studying lichens.

It’s a fun thought exercise to be sure. I do love a story that forces those reading to think about themselves in a more thoughtful way than the usual characterization.

However, I thought that it might have been a little too optimistic at times.

There are multiple moments where we get large, sweeping speeches from Nora about the purpose of life. She gives a TED Talk where she speaks on success and what that word really means; she goes on a podcast and talks about how many possible lives there are, and the luck that she ended up in this one. She has a near-death experience with a polar bear and suddenly realizes that she does want to keep living.

I think a part of it is that I do not relate to this mindset. I know that that is an entirely personal criticism. In the past, though, when I have been at my lowest points, the things that keep me going are not the big, grand, exciting events on the horizon. It’s the little things. It’s a bird chirping next to my window or finding a smiley-face sticker on some park bench or hearing someone laugh behind me while walking down the street. I used to keep a journal of all those tiny little moments, just to remind myself what was truly worth living for.

An argument can be made that Nora experienced much more time in these lives than is on the page. It mentions that she spent days to weeks in some of them, and of course we aren’t going to get the full story of those when there are so many lives to explore. But I felt like it was too convenient and too quick of a lesson that she learned. I’m thrilled that she is no longer suicidal, of course—that is always a win. But I think it’s unrealistic to have someone who is at such a low mentality that they’re about to kill themselves change their mind so definitively because they magically visit a few other lives.

Maybe it’s pessimistic. I don’t love when the fix for someone’s mental health condition is magical. It’s like promising people something that cannot happen. And having it occur right after someone has attempted suicide strikes me as dangerous and a little reckless. The TV show “13 Reasons Why” spawned a great deal of copycats among impressionable teenagers. The message of this story is much less bleak, of course, but I’m nervous for any media surrounding such a critical topic, especially something aimed towards younger audiences.

If this book has helped anybody, then I am grateful for its publication. I’m glad that I read it, too, because it is enlightening to get different perspectives on different lives, even if it’s the same person living those different lives. I just don’t know if I would praise it as highly as I’ve heard it praised. Mental health is an incredibly difficult and sensitive topic; there are things this book might have done wrong, I think, but there were also some things that it did quite right.

Total pages read so far, 2026: 4,469

Total books read so far, 2026: 13

Next book: Tell The Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt

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The Giver

Lois Lowry

225 pages - 1993 - fiction, dystopian, young adult

April 7th, 2026 — April 8th, 2026

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I think that all my life I’ve loved reading, but I remembered that The Giver was the book that made me a Reader. I first read it when I was in 3rd grade, only 9 years old, and I remember suddenly being exposed to the world of subtext, of inference, of new information completely modifying how to view what you’ve learned so far.

In the many years since reading this book, I’ve found plenty of others that have solidified my love for reading. In high school I read Jurassic Park and The Haunting of Hill House back to back, which might have been the most influential few weeks of my life (at the very least, until that point). I don’t think a day has gone by where I have not thought about Janina Matthewson’s Of Things Gone Astray.

But I was curious to see if The Giver would hold up, after being such a beacon of artistry in my mind for so long. I had a feeling that it would—every time I get the chance to talk about this book, I hear nothing but praise for it. But I was afraid that we all were suffering from this softening around the edges, a story that is good for young eyes and maybe a little weaker the second time around.

I am so glad that this fear was wrong.

The Giver is and remains a book that I think should be mandatory reading. Not only is the message absolutely crucial—now more than ever, I think—it is also a wonderful example of what makes art truly beautiful. It is so gentle while also being incredibly hardcore. The story moves so quickly that I quite literally could not put the book down, and had to actually stop myself from finishing it in a single sitting, but it’s not so fast that it’s overwhelming. It’s just so compelling, and so well-written.

If you haven’t ever read The Giver, I urge you to rectify that ASAP. And if you have read it, but it’s been a long time, I’d recommend a re-read. Now, through older eyes, there were pieces of the story that changed in beautiful ways, but that feeling of excitement, awe, “I can’t believe this art is real” still remains.

Summary (Spoilers!)

Jonas is anxious as December approaches, because this year he will go from being an Eleven to being Twelve, which means he will be assigned his role for the remainder of his adult life. Some people, like his father, know what they will be assigned because of their personal interests and volunteer work that they do before the ceremony. Others, like Jonas, have no idea.

His family unit consists of his father, a Nurturer who cares for the infants; his mother, an official in the Department of Justice; and his little sister, Lily, who is about to become an Eight. Each evening, the family has to share their feelings throughout the day, such as Lily feeling angry that a young boy visiting from another community had neglected their playground rules while they were at school. Each morning, the family is mandated to share any dreams that they have had in the night.

The ceremony is two days long, and the first day goes from the Naming of the Ones, where all the new babies for the year receive their names and their family unit assignments, to the Eights, who receive a new jacket with pockets to indicate that they are finally responsible enough to hold onto their own personal belongings. The second day goes from the Nines, who are given their own bicycles, all the way to the Twelves, who each receive their work assignment.

Jonas spends the days leading up to the ceremony very anxious. He plays with his friend Asher at school, and one day while they’re tossing around an apple, he sees the apple change for a moment in midair, but he cannot describe what the change is, exactly. He also goes to volunteer at the House of the Old, where his peer Fiona likes to work helping the elderly. This is where people go once they are too old to work anymore, and they stay here until they are released; Fiona mentions that Roberto had been released that morning, and that the ceremony was beautiful. Not much is known about release, except that they go to Elsewhere, and nobody in the community will hear from the released person ever again.

That night, Jonas has a dream about Fiona, and when he tells his parents, they explain to him that these feelings are “Stirrings” and tells him that he will be taking a little pill every day to get rid of those feelings. He doesn’t fully understand, but he knows some of his peers take them already, and that he will be taking them until he goes to the House of the Old. When he leaves for school, he tries to recall the Stirrings, but they’re completely gone from his mind.

The ceremony begins the next day. First is the Naming, and during that, a family receives a boy named Caleb, whose name everyone starts chanting. Jonas recalls that there had been a child named Caleb, four years old, who had fallen into the river and died; these are the same parents. Fiona’s family also receives a newchild. At the end of the day, Lily receives her jacket. The next day will conclude with the Ceremony of Twelve.

The Ceremony of Twelve starts, and Jonas knows that he will be nineteenth, since that was his number when he was born—the babies are assigned numbers for their year. Fiona was eighteen, and Asher is four. He goes up and is given a friendly roasting about how outspoken and rowdy Asher can be. They assign him to be Assistant Director of Recreation. Fiona is called and receives the assignment of Caretaker of the Old, which is not surprising. However, the next name that they call is twenty, Pierre, skipping over Jonas.

It’s clear that everyone has noticed, and there’s barely any applause by the end of the ceremony. The Chief Elder apologizes for the anguish that she has caused, and brings Jonas onstage, saying that he hasn’t been assigned, but rather selected. Jonas will be the next Receiver of Memory, which is incredibly rare. The current Receiver is a man with pale eyes, sitting up with the Committee of Elders, but slightly apart. The Chief Elder also mentions that they had failed with their last selection ten years ago, which causes some discomfort within the audience. The Receiver has to be unanimously elected by the Committee, and must have some integral qualities, including intelligence and what the current Receiver calls the “Capacity to See Beyond”. Jonas had been eyed for the role for quite a few years by now. They chant his name after he is officially recognized, but he feels incredibly fearful and uncertain.

Immediately he knows that he will be treated differently forever. His peers seem to be avoiding him as they leave the ceremony. Jonas asks his parents what had happened ten years ago and they don’t tell him much, but do say that the previous chosen Receiver was a girl and her name is now designated “Not-to-Be-Spoken”, meaning nobody can say it and no newchild will be named it. She disappeared after her failure.

When he’s alone that night, he reads his instructions for his new assignment. It is startlingly sparse, and among the rules it says that he cannot discuss any of his training, is not allowed to participate in dream-telling, cannot apply for medication or release, and, most shockingly, that he is permitted to lie.

On the first day of training, Jonas goes to the Annex and is greeted by a receptionist with a lot of reverence. She lets him into the back room, and Jonas mentions that he has never seen a locked door before. Inside, he meets the pale-eyed man, the current Receiver of Memory. The man explains that he had been fearful when he was chosen as a Twelve, and that they carry a great burden throughout their lives. He tells Jonas that he will give him memories, and Jonas misunderstands, thinking that he will just be hearing the Receiver’s life story. The Receiver tries to make an analogy, but Jonas does not understand, so he has Jonas lie down to receive his first memory.

The boy is transported to a place that is cold and white, with a flat wooden surface beneath him. He learns, without knowing how, that he is on a sled, and that it’s snowing. He rides the sled downhill, loving the experience. When he awakens, he’s in the Annex still. The old man explains that Jonas now has that memory, and that it is no longer in the old man’s mind.

Jonas has tons of questions, and the old man says that Climate Control is why they don’t have snow. They decided to go to Sameness, which meant that they didn’t want unpredictable weather, or hills, so there’s no more sledding. He gives Jonas a memory of sunshine too, learning the word without instruction, which means that it can be transmitted through the memories. Jonas says that he was told this would be painful, but so far it has not been at all; the old man gives him one more memory, a longer version of sunshine, where he gets a sunburn and feels the pain of it. When leaving that day, Jonas says that since he is the new Receiver, he doesn’t know what to call the old man. He offers the name “The Giver”.

Back at home, his family unit has been (semi-illegally) taking care of one of the newchildren, who is not meeting the milestones. Jonas’s father feels sorry for the young boy so he said he would take him home and nurture him more in the hopes that he would be ready for his own Naming ceremony instead of being released. His father, being a Nurturer, has inside knowledge of his name, and tells the family, secretly, that the boy’s name is Gabriel. Gabe tends to cry through the night, which is typically grounds for releasing a newchild.

On his way to the Annex, Jonas sees Fiona, and for a moment it seems like her hair changes in the same way the apple did, but he can’t describe it. He asks the Giver about it, and the Giver explains that he had experienced a similar thing with Seeing Beyond, although in a slightly different way. The Giver says that Jonas is starting to see the color red. Color had been relinquished when they went to Sameness. The Giver says he will give over a memory of a rainbow to help him see all the colors.

Jonas starts seeing colors in his life, but they don’t stay. He starts to discuss the idea of choice with the Giver, like the idea that people would choose what color clothes to wear or what jobs to have. One day Jonas asks if the Giver had ever applied for a spouse, and he says that his former spouse now lives with the Childless Adults. He mentions that he was not allowed to share any information about his work with his spouse, which was quite difficult. They talk about the previous Receiver-in-Training, too, and how every memory that she had received, when she went Elsewhere, was shared among all the members of the community, which caused great distress and discomfort.

Sometimes Jonas is sent away without any training, usually when the Giver is in too much pain. Jonas asks about this pain, and the Giver transmits a memory where Jonas’s leg is broken. He still feels the memory of pain when he wakes back up. He realizes at home that nobody in the community has ever known pain. Now, there is pain in every memory that is transferred. Jonas says that it isn’t fair that the two of them have to bear the burden of pain, and that they can change it, but the Giver says that this is the way it is now.

Gabriel keeps growing and passing his tests of maturity. Jonas offers to keep the crib in his room for a night, and while he soothes the child, he accidentally gives some of a memory of sailing to the child. It seems to really calm him down, so he gives a tiny bit of memory to get him to sleep again when he wakes up fretting.

On another training day, Jonas finds The Giver in a lot of pain. Instead of being turned away, Jonas offers to take some of the pain away from him. He receives a memory of war, with mangled bodies and lots of pain. The Giver also gives him one of his favorite memories, which is a family celebrating Christmas and giving gifts to one another, with both old people and children, and he learns what love is. He asks his parents that night if they love him, and they laugh, saying that he has to use more precise language. He decides to stop taking his pills.

One day is declared an unscheduled holiday, meaning everyone has off from work and school. He finds Asher playing a game of war and tells him that they should never play that game again. He learns from his father that there are twins being born the next day, identical, so he will have to determine which is larger; the smaller will be released.

Jonas asks The Giver about release, as well as what happened ten years ago. Jonas learns that the Receiver-to-be was selected, named Rosemary, and that she had received painful memories earlier than Jonas had. After five weeks, she learned about loneliness, loss, and abandonment, and it never left her. She went to ask for release, because it was not forbidden back then, and was granted it immediately. The Giver says that he loved Rosemary, and it broke his heart to give her pain. When she was released, all of the memories she had received were dispersed among the community, which caused them a lot of physical and mental distress. Jonas wonders what would happen if his years’ worth of memories, at this point, were dispersed among the community.

At the end of the session, Jonas says he wishes he could have watched the Release Ceremony for the twin. The Giver says that it’s available in the Hall of Open Records, and that Jonas should watch it. He sees his father weigh the two children, hand off the larger one, and then inject the smaller one with a needle. The child convulses and goes limp, and Jonas realizes that he’s dead.

Jonas is horrified and says he doesn’t want to go home. The Giver says he can stay for more “training” that evening, and tries to calm the young boy down. The Giver says that they do this because they don’t know anything else, but that they should make a plan. It is this way now, but it hasn’t always been this way, and it doesn’t have to be this way forever. He says that memories need to be shared. Before Jonas goes home the next morning, he learns that The Giver, instead of seeing-beyond with colors, could hear beyond, and he tells Jonas about music. Jonas says he doesn’t want to take it from him, since the boy will be gone soon.

The Giver transfers memories of courage and strength to Jonas. They make a detailed plan for his escape from his dwelling and leaving the community. He begs The Giver to come with him, but The Giver says that he will have to help the community with their loss and fear. They tell each other that they love each other, and The Giver reveals that he will try to be with his daughter when their plan is done. Jonas says he didn’t know that he had a daughter, and The Giver reveals that her name was Rosemary.

The night before Jonas plans to leave, he learns that Gabriel, despite growing and developing, is too “difficult” of a child, and will be released in the morning. Jonas takes Gabriel on his journey with him to save him. He has taken his father’s bicycle with the child seat on the back, as well as some food. He is able to get past the river and head towards Elsewhere.

Planes fly overhead, but with less and less frequency as they get further away. Gabriel and Jonas grow much colder and hungrier, and Jonas tries to transfer memories of warmth to the child to keep him from dying. They reach a spot where snow is falling eventually, and Jonas recognizes it from his first memory, where he was riding a sled. He finds that exact sled and they crest the hill, sliding down towards the village in Elsewhere. He can hear people singing and recognizes it as music.

Snow and Sunshine

It took me a couple days to write this review, mostly because it’s impossible to pare down the summary of this book. It’s quite short, and it is a YA novel, but every single line has weight and purpose. It is a masterpiece of craft, along with being a phenomenal story and heartbreakingly poignant (maybe even more so these days).

I remembered, from 15 years ago, that Jonas received memories of colors and love, and that “release” was code for euthanasia, but I did not remember the lack of sunshine, the Stirrings, or the fact that the previous Receiver-in-training had been such a tragic character. I think, too, this is another book that benefits from rereading. Realizing that Jonas is noticing colors, in my opinion, makes those scenes hit even harder.

I almost read this book in one sitting this time, and I had to stop myself from doing so. It’s short and so incredibly compelling.

I think it’s fascinating, too, that the more memorable pieces of this story are the horrific ones. Of course, I’ve remembered for 15 years that “release” is euthanasia, rather than remembering that Jonas learns about Christmas and love. We are naturally prone to focusing on the bad over the good. This is the whole reason Rosemary chose to be released; if you suddenly had to learn about all the awful things humanity is capable of, I think it’s fair to say that release would be a tempting option.

Jonas is a wonderful character. I love that he is such a clear choice to be Receiver, and I love that he is sort of a jack-of-all-trades. He is incredibly introspective and so likeable. I love that he is careful about his relationships even as he learns information that is traumatic and distressing. He clearly wants the people around him to be okay, while also wanting them to learn about all the good and bad of humanity. It takes a lot of grace and intelligence to realize that the people in the community do what they do because they do not know any better, or anything else.

I know that I read the second book in this series, and I’m pretty sure I read the third, but I’m unsure if I ever read the last one. I’m so excited to read the rest of these stories. Lois Lowry is a phenomenal writer with a knack for subtlety and poignancy. There’s a reason this book has stuck with me for over 15 years, and a reason it is so widely beloved. Again, I implore you, (re)read it if you can.

Total pages read so far, 2026: 4,180

Total books read so far, 2026: 12

Next book: The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

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Murder on the Rockport Limited!

Clint McElroy, Griffin McElroy, Justin McElroy, Travis McElroy

232 pages - 2019 - fiction, graphic novel, fantasy

March 29th, 2026 — April 7th, 2026

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I have only played one session of D&D, which is a shocking statistic if you know me, I think. I love fantasy worlds, I love writing and creating stories, and I love creative solutions to hypothetical and/or unimportant problems. It’s even surprising to myself that I haven’t sunk hours into a campaign.

I also have this mindset that I am not creative. I think it comes from the ideas of “left brain/right brain”—people are either analytical and science-y or creative, never both. Of course, this is horrifically untrue; science tends to breed creativity, and vice versa. But for some reason there has always been a little sign hung up in my brain that says that I am not a creative person, because I have such an analytical mind (and play with Excel spreadsheets for fun).

When I first played D&D, I had a lot of trouble trying to make a character, and then even more trouble and anxiety trying to figure out what that character would do. I suffered from decision paralysis so bad that I think my character ended up kind of just standing there during our first (and my last) fight. I felt like I would not have any “aha” moments, so I barely wanted to try. But I had also never really seen or heard people playing D&D. I was unaware of the true unlimited nature of the game. I think I didn’t know what to do because I didn’t really understand that you can really do anything.

I started listening to “The Adventure Zone” around the same time as my first and final D&D session. I had been a fan of the McElroy family for a while, and was catching up with some of their other podcasts, so I thought it was a great time to delve into D&D. There are so many actual play podcasts out there, but this one particularly appealed to me because 1) I knew the players already because of their other shows and 2) they state, pretty explicitly, that they aren’t going to care too deeply about the rules of the game.

As soon as they changed one of the pre-made character names from Sildar Hallwinter to Barry Bluejeans, I was hooked. Immediately I was fascinated with how well they played off of each other, and how a bad roll did not mean ridicule or sudden death, but instead led to even more creative solutions and twists.

It’s been a long time since I listened to the Balance arc. In the past few years, they’ve played games involving cryptids, building underwater societies, and superheroes; right now, they’re doing an “Oops, All Wizards!” arc where the players are fighting to determine which wizard will join the conclave of high wizards, and it’s fascinating. I love that these books are bringing me back to where it all began, and reminding me of what I love so much about games like D&D.

Summary (Spoilers!)

This story picks up after the first story of The Adventure Zone: Balance, “Here There Be Gerblins”, where Merle Highchurch, Magnus Burnsides, and Taako (from TV) had encountered Killian, an orc, working for the Bureau of Balance. They are recruited to the Bureau and given official gauntlets. The leader of the Bureau, Lucretia, explains that their goal is to destroy the seven Grand Relics, which, when combined, would cause the user to gain so much power that they could destroy the world.

Their next target is a relic that had been discovered by Leeman Kessler, who had been murdered in the town of Rockport after loading the relic onto the train the Rockport Limited, headed towards Neverwinter. Merle, Magnus, and Taako decide to impersonate Leeman and sneak onto the train in an attempt to take the relic back to the Bureau.

Upon boarding the train (and nearly getting caught), they learn from the attendant, Jenkins, that there is a cryptsafe car, the last in the train, that can only be opened with an hour of prolonged physical contact with the door from an employee of the train.

On the train, the three also meet Hudson the engineer; Jess the Beheader, a famous prize fighter and one of Magnus’s heroes; and Angus McDonald, 10-year-old boy detective looking to solve the case of Leeman’s murder. Jenkins explains that he has a teleportation rod that can be used to send riders to a peaceful place of their choosing.

Angus sees through their ruse right away and explains that he’s trying to solve the case of a serial killer in Rockport who is collecting objects of great wealth by killing their owners. They hear screaming and find that Jenkins has been beheaded and his hands have been removed. They also encounter an aggressive crab monster that they have to defeat before solving this murder.

They realize that the beheading was clean, but the hands were cut off hastily. They try to get into the engine compartment, but Hudson the engineer says that he is too nervous to let them inside. However, they realize that it was Hudson’s body, not Jenkins, that they had found mutilated; Jenkins had used the teleportation rod to kill Hudson, then cut off his hands to use as a way to open the cryptsafe car.

Magnus is able to get into the compartment with Jenkins by athletically climbing outside the train. He fights Jenkins and is able to throw him off the train, seemingly killing him. They find that Jenkins had a golden compass that pointed to the most valuable object in the vicinity. Using this, they are able to locate the Oculus, a relic that allows the user to turn illusory images real.

Without any employees, the train is on a crash course towards Neverwinter. Taako, though, is able to use some of his magic and Jenkins’s teleportation rod to transport the train to Jenkins’s garden, saving the inhabitants of Neverwinter.

The three bring the Oculus back to the Bureau of Balance, where they learn a little more about their missions from Lucretia. She mentions that there are five more relics to find and destroy, and they will talk more about their next steps in the morning.

Unlimited

I love getting to revisit stories that I remember enjoying but forget exactly why. The Adventure Zone has transformed quite a bit over the years, especially as they have gotten a much better grasp on the mechanics of tabletop roleplaying games. It’s so endearing to go back and listen to these early days.

I also love seeing little pieces of story that I know will be important later. I remember (spoilers) that Taako’s Umbra Staff, a magical umbrella, has his twin sister Lup trapped inside, and there was the first whisper of that story arc at the end of this book. Angus McDonald is a fan-favorite character that will be present for the rest of this story. Even seeing the characters level up and gain access to spells and abilities they’ll use at pivotal moments later feels exciting.

This book, too, is so gorgeous. The drawings are wonderfully detailed and colorful, a real feast for the eyes. It’s so fun to read it along with listening to the story, and get to really see it play out in front of you. Of course, it’s not an exact 1:1 adaptation, but all the beats that I want to be there are present on the page, with some more meta-humor and commentary that makes it even more satisfying. It’s a brilliant supplement to the already wonderful source material.

And, to top it all off, they included some fan art at the end of the book! Attributed to the creators, there are drawings and interpretations of this story from the people that love it. It’s a nod to the collaborative nature of it all. Sometimes the players will use objects or names submitted by the fans, and this is just another way to include them—us—in the process of creation. That’s what D&D is all about, making a story together.

D&D isn’t for everyone. Actual play podcasts aren’t for everyone. Graphic novels aren’t for everyone. But I seriously thought I wouldn’t enjoy any of those things when I was 18 and learning about D&D for the first time, and now I find myself really looking forward to the next episode of The Adventure Zone, the next installment of the graphic novels, the next time I’ll get to play a one-shot with my friends. Maybe that will be my next resolution—I want to engage in that collaborative process of creation, too.

Total pages read so far, 2026: 3,955

Total books read so far, 2026: 11

Next book: The Giver by Lois Lowry

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American Psycho

Bret Easton Ellis

406 pages - 1991 - fiction, horror, psychological

March 18th, 2026 — March 28th, 2026

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐½

I grew up in northeast New Jersey, about 45 minutes outside of New York City. We were lucky kids—our parents would take us into the city a couple times a year. We got to see Broadway shows and museums and various exciting stores. (When you’re a kid, the M&M store near Times Square is a wonderland.)

I loved our trips into the city, but I never was a big fan of the city itself. It felt, to me, like a dark place—even during the day, so much sunlight is blocked by the buildings. Everyone is moving so quickly, barely recognizing that there are other people, not obstacles, between them and their destination. There’s also the matter of disparity that is prominently on display, with unhoused individuals shivering and starving underneath the shining gold facade of the Trump Plaza.

Of course, other cities have similar issues. Now I live near Boston, and it is far from perfect—there is still wealth disparity, the anonymity of a big crowd, the wind tunnels created from tall buildings. But it feels a lot warmer (not literally) than NYC. It’s smaller, and there’s just an air about it that makes it seem, to me, like a cozier place.

I don’t know what I was expecting from American Psycho, but I think it increased my disdain for New York City. It follows Patrick Bateman in the late 80s-early 90s world of Wall Street bankers, from bickering in hundred-dollar restaurants to mutilating unhoused men in alleyways. It’s just too large, too distant, of a city. Maybe that means I’m due for a trip back someday soon, to remember the good parts, rather than picture Patrick Bateman terrorizing the streets of the Big Apple.

Summary (Spoilers!)

In 1989 Manhattan, Patrick Bateman is a mid-20s investment banker working on Wall Street. He’s surrounded by other members of the Wall Street elite, and we get many descriptions of him and his colleagues eating at upscale restaurants, name-dropping, and showing off their different name-brand clothes and belongings.

The story is first-person from Patrick Bateman’s mind, and we hear nearly every thought that he has, which at first is relatively mundane. He goes to nightclubs with his friends, where they do a copious amount of drugs and critique the clothing of everyone else there.

He is dating a woman named Evelyn, who Bateman describes as unattractive and simple. He also takes other young women home nearly every night, sometimes a few at a time. Eventually, he starts saying, under his breath, how much he loves mutilating young women; nobody around him notices.

Every time he goes to a different restaurant, people are constantly mistaking identities. Bateman is often introduced with different names, and it seems like peoples’ names change even within the same scene. In the mornings, Bateman describes in excruciating detail all of his personal routines, including workouts,

At the beginning of the book, we see Patrick Bateman mistreating homeless individuals that he sees on the street, tricking them by pretending to give them money and pulling it away. One night, though, he ends up killing one homeless man in an alley and mutilating his body.

He starts to get more and more bloodthirsty, which culminates in him killing his colleague Paul Owen. He takes over Paul’s apartment and starts inviting women back to it, having freaky sex with them before torturing, mutilating, and sometimes even eating them.

At one point, he wants to kill his colleague, Luis Carruthers, but when he follows him to the men’s room and starts to choke him, Luis takes this as a come-on and confesses that he’s always had feelings but didn’t think Bateman would ever feel the same way. Bateman is incredibly homophobic and is disgusted by this whole interaction. He avoids Luis at every turn, but their circles overlap enough that he still sees him and becomes increasingly uncomfortable.

In his daily life, he constantly talks about serial killers, mutters about the crimes he’s committing, and sometimes even openly confesses what he’s done, but everyone either ignores him, mishears him, or thinks that he’s joking. His murderous spree builds to a gunfight with several cops, where he kills several random people in the street. SWAT is dispatched and follows him to his work building, where he calls his attorney and confesses all of his crimes to his answering machine.

This event is seemingly resolved without any fanfare, because we jump a few months forward. He had been approached by a private detective a while back who was investigating Owen’s disappearance. Bateman told the detective that Owen had gone to London, and he had done some preparation in the apartment to make it appear that way—he got rid of a suitcase and some clothes and changed the answering machine message to say that he was taking a trip to London.

When Bateman gets back to Owen’s apartment, though, he finds it clean, and a real estate agent is showing the place to various couples. He asks what happened to Paul Owen, and is told that the apartment is vacant, with no more information.

Bateman continues to spiral. At this point, the narrative sometimes moves into third person, with him describing everything from afar. Sometimes, after a particularly intense chapter, Bateman will spend quite a bit of time explaining the careers and works of 80s and 90s musical artists. He hallucinates park benches following him and Cheerios being interviewed on TV.

At a restaurant one night, Bateman sees his attorney and they talk about the message that was left on the answering machine. His attorney does not recognize Bateman in person, mistaking him for someone else, and laughs about how Bateman could have never committed those crimes because he’s too much of a coward. Bateman blows up and says that it was all true, and that he is Bateman, but the attorney says that his claims are impossible because he had dinner with Owen twice in London a few days before.

Bateman and his colleagues are once again at a club on a Friday night, talking about how economic success equates to happiness in life. There is a sign in the bar that Bateman focuses on, which says “THIS IS NOT AN EXIT.”

Armani or Givenchy

It’s incredibly rare that I find myself nauseated by a book I’m reading. I remember feeling a tiny bit sick reading Tender is the Flesh, and had to take some breaks reading The Laws of the Skies. But this book was difficult to read.

I think part of it had to do with how simple and realistic it is. I do not doubt for a second that people are self-centered enough to ignore what is happening in front of them and to actively laugh off confessions of murder, torture, and mutilation.

In a few ways, this book is even more impactful nowadays. Bateman talks quite a bit about his “hero”, Donald Trump, who has become even more of a corrupt figurehead in the last 30 years. I think that tells you all you need to know about Bateman, really.

It is quite clearly a satire of capitalism and the culture surrounding Wall Street, especially in the 90s. There are parts where the characters are confused that something is a simple dish, rather than something with caviar and pan-seared. There is one lengthy section where many Wall Street colleagues are conference-called in together to try to plan a dinner, and by the time they land on a trendy place and the people involved, all of the restaurants are closed.

It’s also a fascinating look at reality. Bateman being told that his attorney had had dinner with Owen just days before, when he had seemingly been murdered months ago, calls into question the entirety of the book. Did anything happen? Did Bateman really murder all those people, including a child at the zoo? Or was it all daydream? Even Ellis, on a podcast in 2014, said that even he did not know if Bateman was telling the truth, lying, or hallucinating.

While it was hard to stomach, the book was an interesting read. It’s hard to find positive adjectives to adequately describe it—I would not call it “fun” or “enjoyable”—but I’m glad that I read it. I’m also intrigued with the idea of watching the movie, already knowing that the screen version is going to be infinitely more tame than the book. (I’ve been told that Bateman in the movie never forces his girlfriend to eat a chocolate-covered urinal cake, nor makes a prostitute watch a home video of him eating another woman’s brains out of her skull with his bare hands and some Gray Poupon mustard.)

I don’t know if I recommend this book, because it should come with a whole slate of content warnings and possibly a Dramamine. But it has a few moments—some funny, some horrific—that are bound to stick with me for quite a while.

Total pages read so far, 2026: 3,723

Total books read so far, 2026: 10

Next book: Murder on the Rockport Limited! by Clint, Griffin, Justin, and Travis McElroy

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Gregor the Overlander

Suzanne Collins

332 pages - 2003 - fiction, YA, fantasy

March 15th, 2026 — March 17th, 2026

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐½

I love learning how people would play pretend when they were kids. I think it says a lot about their interests, even as they get older. When I was younger, my twin brother and I used to pretend that our swing set was a rocket ship, fueled by placing miniature pinecones from the trees in our yard underneath our swings. Then we would inevitably be hit by a meteor, causing worldwide destruction. He became a rocket scientist, and I have anxiety now!

We would also describe our imaginary friends and include them in our journeys. Some of them were original creations, but a lot of them were characters I (or we) loved. I remember including Snow Miser from “A Year Without A Santa Claus” in many of our excursions. I loved many characters from “Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends”. I desperately wanted to live in the world of the Fablehaven books, and to be friends with the kids from A Series of Unfortunate Events.

I had never even heard of this series until my roommate introduced it to me, and I’m incredibly grateful for it. I’m also grateful that I did not read it as a child, because I think it would have scared me and I think I would have been completely obsessed. I can see my younger self re-enacting these stories, forcing my brother(s) to be rats or roaches. I could see almost all of these characters appearing in my imaginary line-up.

I would be curious to see how the experience of reading this book changes not knowing Suzanne Collins’s other work, but that’s impossible now—even if you haven’t read The Hunger Games, it seems too culturally prevalent to ignore. But I think that reading it with that as a companion makes a ton of sense and bolsters the story. It feels like a natural progression, going from the Underland of today to Panem of tomorrow.

I also find it fascinating that this is Collins’s first novel. It does not feel as refined as some of the more recent works, but she clearly is a phenomenal world-builder and writes hard-hitting commentaries on many less-desirable aspects of society. She is a fantastic writer who makes compelling stories, and I’m so excited to read more.

Summary (Spoilers!)

Gregor, 11, is tasked with watching his baby sister Margaret (nicknamed Boots) while his mother is at work and his sister, Lizzie, is at camp. Their father has been missing for a little over 2 years. Boots ends up falling through an old air duct grate in the basement laundry room, and Gregor falls in after her.

Their fall takes much longer than expected and they find themselves in the Underland, a whole world below them with humans, giant bats, rats, and cockroaches. They encounter the roaches first, and Gregor is wary, but Boots takes a shine to them and ends up riding one of them around.

Gregor and Boots are escorted to the kingdom of Regalia by the roaches, where they meet the human princess Luxa, her cousin Henry, and the bats that are bonded to them. He learns from Vikus, Luxa’s grandfather (he learns later) and some sort of advisor to the throne, that Regalia is at war with the kingdom of the rats, called “gnawers” by the Underlanders, and the rats are led by King Gorger.

Gregor desperately wants to return home and tries to escape in the night. However, he is attacked by two rats and saved by Luxa and Henry. This sets off a more intense conflict between the kingdoms. When Gregor gets back to Regalia with the cousins, he learns about the prophecy.

The Prophecy of Gray was written by the human colony founder Bartholomew of Sandwich. It hints that an Overlander will stop the rats from taking over Regalia with the help of allies: 2 from the Overland (Gregor and Boots), 2 of royal descent (Luxa and Henry), 2 fliers (the cousins’ bats, Aurora and Ares), 2 crawlers (the roaches that Boots befriended), 2 spinners (spiders that join after their kingdom is attacked by rats), 1 gnawer (a rat who is against the war), and 1 “lost up ahead”, who Gregor learns is his father. The prophecy also mentions that four of the twelve will die before the journey ends.

Gregor learns from this prophecy too that his father had fallen through the same grate as him and boots, and he was captured and taken prisoner by the rats. He has survived for so long by promising some inventions to the rats to aid them in their war efforts.

Gregor, Boots, Luxa, and Henry encounter Temp and Tick, the two cockroaches that Boots had ridden, and she is so excited to see them that they say they will join their quest. They call Boots “princess” and worship her. They head to the land of the spinners (spiders) and try to recruit allies, but they refuse initially and fight the group. As they make their way towards the Dead Land (the rat kingdom), they are attacked by rats and saved by a rebel rat, Ripred, who is bloodthirsty and rebelling against the king. They also are approached by two spiders, who say they want to help the Overlander’s efforts because the rats started attacking the spinners’ kingdom. One spider, however, dies as soon as they find the group, succumbing to their injuries.

They continue their journey, but the mood becomes even more somber when Boots falls ill. She is incredibly feverish and barely wakes up. Temp, one of the roaches, carries her on his back. During the night, too, Gregor finds Henry about to stab Ripred the rat while he sleeps. He says that they can’t trust the rat, but Gregor de-escalates the situation.

In the morning they continue their journey. Boots is still sick, possibly more so. They are ambushed by rats, and the roaches are not as fast as the others. Tick, the other roach, sacrifices herself to slow down the approaching rats and save both Temp and Boots.

When they make it to the Dead Land, they find an emaciated and confused man, Gregor’s dad, but his mind is not fully present and he does not recognize him or Boots. He, too, is feverish, and the man and young girl are given some medicine to help them. Gregor’s dad was in the personal prison of the king, who discovers their attempt and blocks them from leaving.

Standing with the king is Henry, who reveals that he had been a spy for the rats all along. He was planning on perpetuating the war to rid the Underland of the “weaker species”. The rats start to attack, with Henry and King Gorger leading the charge. Gox, the other spider, is killed. Gregor realizes that the prophecy says someone will sacrifice themselves to fulfill it. He chooses to lure the rats by running towards and past them, jumping off the edge of the cliff at the end of the passageway.

Gregor is saved, though, by Henry’s bat, Ares, who said that he did not know of Henry’s treachery. Gregor sees, at the bottom of the gorge, hundreds of rats dying from the fall, including King Gorger. He also sees a human fall—Henry, who had actually sacrificed himself.

Gregor returns to his group, who tell him that the rats are now confused without their king and are fighting amongst themselves to figure out who will take the throne. They start their journey back on the bats, but soon they realize that they’re lost and don’t know where to go. Gregor’s dad, however, has regained some lucidity, finally recognizes Gregor, and uses a metal sewing needle as a compass to find which way is north and lead them back to Regalia.

They make it back, and Luxa is devastated at the betrayal. Gregor also learns that Ares will be sentenced to banishment, because either he knew about the treachery or he allowed his bond to die, both of which are crimes. Gregor barges into Ares’s trial and bonds with the bat, challenging the court to banish him now that he is bonded to the warrior who saved their kingdom. Ares is allowed to stay.

The doctors heal Gregor’s dad and the other injured members of the journey as best as they can. Boots is also much better. Vikus and Luxa help them prepare to go back to the surface. Right before they leave, though, they mention the next prophecy, the Prophecy of Bane, and Gregor thinks that he hears Vikus say “See you soon!” while they’re waving goodbye. The three of them return home with the help of the bats and find their mother sitting at the table, waiting for them.

Under and Over

I think I could have read this whole book in one sitting if I had really tried. My first sitting, I read over 200 pages; I read the last 100 or so in the next. It is a book for younger readers, so it’s not the most difficult read, but it also is a fascinating and engrossing story, which made it go by so much faster.

My main difficulty with the book was the imagery of it all. I wish that there had been more description, but I also appreciate the slight ambiguity of it all. Of course, the Underland is very dark and gloomy, so maybe describing it would make it too visible, but I also would have loved to hear more about the architecture and design of Regalia, the rat kingdom, and many other places.

I also think that there were pieces of it that were pretty predictable, but I don’t want to fault the book for that. Even though I predicted quite a few plot points before they happened, it was still entertaining and exciting. Of course, they introduce the fact that Gregor’s dad went missing; the logical conclusion is that he’s lost in the Underland. I don’t think that it changed my experience of the book knowing that before it was revealed. It’s a YA series, despite some of the stomach-churning violence, so I was not expecting a totally unpredictable story. Honestly, it might have bolstered the strength of the plot in my mind. I could see where it was going, which means it was logical, too.

I did not, however, predict Henry being a traitor until maybe a scene or two before. When he almost attacked a sleeping Ripred, I thought he had some sort of secret, but I was expecting him to have maybe lost family members to Ripred himself or maybe have been tortured by rats. His betrayal was surprising in a really fun way.

Boots and the roaches were absolutely wonderful. Boots, overall, is my clear favorite character. I always love a character that is unapologetic, delighted, and uses love and curiosity to broaden peoples’ minds. She reminded me of Rocky from Project Hail Mary, with her unbridled excitement and joy with the world.

I thought it was a wonderfully constructed world, especially in such a short novel. From the moment Gregor and Boots arrive, we get to learn (with them) the customs, language, and culture of the Underland. It didn’t feel heavy-handed or exposition-heavy at all. I thought the rate of information was perfectly done.

I’m incredibly excited to read more of this series. I’ve been a fan of Suzanne Collins since late middle school, and I could feel that this was her first novel, but I could also see her voice and style forming. I think she is getting more and more nuanced as she continues to write—I still think about Sunrise on the Reaping probably once a day—and I already think that this series is wonderful. I’m so interested in finding out where this story goes and in learning more about the world she’s created.

Total pages read so far, 2026: 3,317

Total books read so far, 2026: 9

Next book: American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

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Because They Wanted To

Mary Gaitskill

255 pages - 1997 - fiction, short stories

March 4th, 2026 — March 14th, 2026

Rating: ⭐½

I think one issue I have with reading short story collections is that they often feel like deja vu. A well-crafted book of short stories has variety—some exciting, some less so; some with lighthearted endings and some with dreaded lessons, even some in first and others in third person.

Most short story collections, that I’ve read, at least, tend to have themes running through them. The collection by Ellison, “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream”, is clearly science fiction, but the stories were wonderfully diverse. Stephen King’s short story collections are obviously more horror-based.

This book also had clear throughlines and themes, but I don’t think that I resonated with them as much as others. I found that every story felt exactly the same as the one before. The writing was clean, and sometimes quite lovely, but it was overall rather boring, in my opinion.

It wasn’t for me, which doesn’t mean that it’s bad, or that nobody should read it. But it might be best read one at a time, with some time (and possibly other stories) in between.

Summary (Spoilers!)

Tiny, Smiling Daddy

A man named Stew receives a call in the middle of the night from an old friend, saying that he had seen an issue of Self, the magazine, with Kitty in it. Kitty, the man’s daughter, had been estranged for a long time now. He says that he had reacted poorly when she came out as a lesbian when she was 16.

He finds the magazine in a store and reads the essay. It’s about their relationship and how difficult it has been for her to deal with a disapproving father for her whole life. He remembers when she had been in the house and how much he resented her. He thought that she could be horribly mean and would avoid being around her family instead of eating dinner with them.

She ran away at 16 after coming out, and they found her at an older woman’s apartment. Each time she came home, Kitty seemed to become more and more confident in herself, and it made Stew angry, until eventually he stopped really caring what she did.

The article details a phone call that the two of them had shared, and Kitty’s thoughts after the call. Stew reads it and again becomes angry at her for not saying what she was really thinking. He returns home and takes out a lot of his anger on his wife, who offers him a massage.

Stew thinks back to his own father, who was not affectionate at all and quite possibly had been physically abusive. There is also a flashback of when Kitty came out to Stew and he told her that she meant nothing to him and that he would spit in her face when he saw her even if he were on his deathbed.

Because They Wanted To

Elise is a 16-year-old girl who hitchhikes across the US border into Canada. She is running away from home, and we don’t get much information on the situation at home, but it is heavily implied that her parents are neglectful and abusive. Elise has started panhandling around Vancouver, but is looking for a more steady job.

She finds a flyer one day asking for babysitting services. Elise goes to the address listed and finds another very young woman with three kids, two young boys (7 and 4) and a baby girl. Their mother says that she has some job interviews and is also a runaway, illegally across the border, looking for work so she can stay and take care of her children.

She says she’ll be back either at 3pm if she doesn’t get the job right away or “later” if she does, and also says that she won’t be able to pay Elise for the time being until she actually gets a job, since she is running. Elise agrees to it, but comes to regret the decision.

Elise reveals that she has never babysat before and has very little experience with children. Between moments of her babysitting the boys and learning how to change a diaper through trial and error, there are flashbacks of her family life.

She and her brothers often had to fend for themselves. Her older brother, Rick, would pick on their younger brother, so when their parents got divorced, she and Rick went to live with their father, and their younger brother went with their mother. Their father married a woman with a daughter, and they found both her and the daughter odd. Their father was much more caring with his new family than he was with his biological children.

Elise and Rick used to play a “game” where they would ask why people did all sorts of things, from normal to outlandish, and the other would reply, ‘Because they wanted to!’, which would make them both laugh uncontrollably. It’s a look into the minimal enrichment they had gotten as children.

3pm comes and goes, and there is no sign of the kids’ mother. Elise feeds the boys peanut butter sandwiches for lunch, and later for dinner, despite their complaining that they don’t want to eat the same thing (and Elise’s similar feelings inwardly). Elise oscillates between moments of playing with the boys and telling them off for being rowdy. At one point, the younger boy refuses to quiet down when Elise has finally gotten the baby to fall asleep. Elise slaps the boy.

By 11pm, Elise does not think she can stay much longer. She writes a note and waits for a few more minutes. When the mother does not show up again, she leaves the kids alone. The downstairs neighbors have their door open, and she peeks in and asks them to listen out for the children upstairs. It is implied that they do not speak English, so it’s unclear if they understood her. She heads back to her apartment and asks her roommate if she did the right thing. He shrugs and says that they’ll be fine, and that she’ll find work somewhere else.

Orchid

Margot runs into Patrick, a man who had been one of her college roommates. They had had a close relationship that was not romantic or sexual.

Margot is a social worker and Patrick is a former actor. They meet in Seattle, despite going to school in Ann Arbor. Throughout the story, there are interspersed memories of their past times together while they navigate the awkwardness of approaching middle age.

Margot and Patrick had nearly been lovers, but it never happened. Margot instead had watched plenty of women come and go from his room while they lived together.

In the present day, they get together a couple times, and he bails on her once or twice. He talks about his girlfriend, then mentions they broke up and he’s dating another ex, then says he went back to the first woman.

Margot asks about his older sister, Dolores, who had always been a towering figure to Margot. Patrick says that she had a bit of a mental breakdown and has been in and out of treatment facilities for a while for her intense depression.

Margot reveals to the reader that she had feelings for both of them, and present-day Margot grows increasingly angry at Patrick for not contacting or helping his sister more.

One night, Margot goes to Patrick’s house. They watch an CD-ROM that he had been given about clinical depression, which upsets Margot. At the end of the evening he tries to kiss her. Margot pushes him away and he says he’ll drive her home.

The Blanket

Valerie says that she had been celibate for two years until she met Michael. She was 36 and he was 24, and they would enact various fantasies together. For a while, she said he couldn’t stay over, but eventually that rule fell away.

She tells herself that it’s just a fling, but she also finds that she loves when Michael calls her his girlfriend. One of Valerie’s coworkers says that it sounds like a relationship.

Michael is a musician, and while away on a short gig trip, he’s approached in a bar by a beautiful young woman. They make out for a bit, but he stops and says that he’s in love with a woman in San Francisco. Valerie tells him he shouldn’t have done that, but she’s secretly pleased.

One night they enact the scenario of the woman in the bar, but Valerie starts crying and stops it. She asks if it’s okay that they don’t have sex for a little while. He begrudgingly says yes. They start to open up to each other and Valerie tells him that she had been raped once when she was younger. Initially he thinks that she’s telling him another fantasy, and she is appalled.

He has another gig and begs Valerie to come with him. While driving, he pulls off on an early exit and turns the car off. Valerie becomes incredibly afraid and threatens him, saying not to come near her. Michael realizes that she is serious and brings them home. Valerie is still upset, and Michael begs her to say something nice to him, which makes her even angrier.

In her anger, though, she blurts out that she loves him, and he is thrilled when she calms down and says that it’s true. He says he wants to stay with her instead of go to his gig. She tells him that he can stay but has to keep his clothes on and can’t come under the covers of the bed. However, she notices him shivering in the middle of the night and allows him under the blanket.

Comfort

Daniel receives a phone call from his brother, Albert, who tells him that their mother has been in a car crash. She’s alive, but she broke many bones in her pelvis and spine, and she’ll be in the hospital for quite some time. He tells his girlfriend, Jacquie, and she responds by mentioning how his family seems to get into a lot of car crashes. This angers him, and they spend the night turned away from each other.

Daniel heads to Iowa to visit his mother and stay with his brother. The two brothers had never been close, and are even more distant in their older age. When he goes to visit his mother in the hospital, he learns that his father, divorced from his mom, had yelled at his mother’s family for not asking the doctors for more information. When Daniel goes into her room he nearly faints at the sight of her.

Daniel’s father takes him out to lunch, and they talk about Daniel’s mother without really discussing anything in particular. When Daniel tells Jacquie about their lunch, she replies by calling him a prick; this makes Daniel even more mad. She then tells him a story about how her family had accidentally killed one of their cats, Midnight, when she was younger, and her sisters had cried and couldn’t eat their ice cream, but she did not cry and still ate hers. Again, the story enrages Daniel, and he hangs up the phone.

He visits his mother every day he’s in Iowa, and they discuss Jacquie and his mother’s boyfriend, Harry. She curses at the nurse who comes in to take a sample for a test when the nurse says that it’s not going to hurt. Daniel thinks of calling Jacquie late one night, remembering how judgmental she is of other families and especially how they treat their children. He tries to call twice, but she does not answer.

Daniel flies back to San Francisco after seeing his mother one more time, this time with his father, too, an awkward visit. When he gets there, he asks Jacquie why she didn’t send a card to his mother. She says it’s not something she really does, and she couldn’t find one that was cute enough. Daniel pushes back and says that it’s just common courtesy, and that a card isn’t meant to be a grand gesture, just show that you’re thinking of the recipient. Daniel realizes that even when Jacquie is looking at him, she’s not really looking at or thinking about him at all.

The Girl on the Plane

John is on a plane, arriving about 20 minutes late and getting on well before take-off, which he uses as more evidence that his wife is just nagging him when she says he’s too late for things. A pretty young woman, maybe 30 years old, arrives even later than he does and ends up in the aisle seat next to him. An older man, quiet and business-like, sits in the window.

John strikes up a conversation with the woman, and starts reminiscing about Patty, a woman he had met while they were at community college together in Coate, Minnesota. He learns that the young woman on the plane, Lorraine, also had grown up in Minnesota and gone to her suburb’s community college. Patty and Lorraine grew up in the same town, Thorold, but Patty had gone to Coate Community College because the one in Thorold had not existed back then.

He says that he loved growing up in the area, and remembers how Patty had been a very strange presence, a “loose” woman with a dirty sense of humor, but she was also incredibly shy. He had liked Patty immediately and realized after a long time that she had a crush on him.

Lorraine says that she did not like Thorold and mentions that she was an alcoholic while she was growing up and in college. She had gone to New York afterwards and was trying to become a singer, but now was mostly a paralegal.

Patty had admitted to John that she was in love with him while they were sitting in a field, and he said that he didn’t like her that way, and also that he had a girlfriend. Later, she was incredibly drunk and again confessed her love to him. When she tried to hug him and get him to hold her, John pushed her harder than he meant to, and she fell against a table.

John asks Lorraine why she talked about her alcoholism so publicly. He flashes back to when he was talking to his now-wife, before they got married, and he said that he had been a part of a gang bang once with a woman who he said enjoyed herself. He also remembers a party where Patty was having sex with two men, one of whom poured beer on her. John waited for them to leave and thought of cleaning her up. Another guy came into the room and said he wanted to pour maple syrup on her, but John said that he hadn’t gone yet. She was half-asleep when he kissed her, and he left the room feeling triumphant.

John asks Lorraine why she felt she didn’t fit in while she was in Thorold. She says that she was trying to act the part of the pretty, sexy girl, and says that he probably had a similar experience of projecting who he’s supposed to be. She says that the worst things she did in life were her relationship with a guy named Jerry and the time she turned down an offer to work with an awful band that became famous. He says that his biggest mistake was raping someone.

She immediately grows scared and pulls away from John, telling him that she doesn’t want to talk to him. She shuns him for the rest of the flight. He lashes out, saying that he didn’t want to hear about her alcoholism and that she didn’t understand. He tries half-heartedly to make it right, but she speeds off when the plane lands, glancing anxiously behind her.

The Dentist

Jill sees another ad for the perfume called Obsession, which makes her nervous because she has recently become obsessed with a man. She had gone to the dentist to get her wisdom tooth removed, and then it became infected, so she went back quite a few times. After a few visits, she could not stop thinking about her dentist, even though he was quite a bland man.

She talks to her friends Pamela, Doreen, and Jonathan about him, and they all say that she should just leave him alone. But she starts seeing a therapist when her obsession leaks into her dreams, including ones where the dentist is giving her piercings. The therapist says that she should pursue the dentist and see where it goes.

She learns that the dentist had originally been a film student and made a documentary about lesbianism in strippers, particularly in Pennsylvania. Jill shares that she had been a stripper, and asks if he, as a 22-year-old, was excited to see the shows. He says no, he wasn’t, and that he had worked on porn sets when he was even younger, which was enough images of naked women. He also says that he hated how the women had been treated.

Jill and the dentist see each other every once in a while but it is strikingly platonic when they’re together. They go see some movies together, and Jill invites him inside for “a minute” once, and he indeed stays for a minute, watching her feed her cat, before leaving.

On the phone once, she and the dentist talk about trauma, and he mentions that most children who are sexually abused do actually remember it, rather than repressing the memories. She rebuts and says that she was molested when she was 5, and she didn’t remember until she was 10 and watching cartoons where the mouths of the characters were essentially disembodied. He seems to become uncomfortable and quickly ends the call.

Eventually, she straight-up asks if he has had sexual thoughts about her. He says that he has not ever thought of her that way, and that he’s a shy man from the Midwest where there are still gentlemen. She asks more questions and he becomes increasingly frightened; she finally realizes that he’s scared. When she tells her friends about the encounter at a dinner together, they all laugh about it, and Jill decides to go for a walk alone that night before going home.

Kiss and Tell

Lesly feels that he is being personally victimized because now he is seeing an old friend and former fling, Nicki, all over the place, including ads on his TV. Nicki had been a struggling actress for a long time, and they had had sex three times before.

Now, though, she had moved to LA, and she was starring in an upcoming film that had shot her directly into stardom. He noticed, after the movie had been shot, that when she came back to visit, she was more distant, more polite and less friendly to him. One day when she talked about being hit on by a creepy movie star, he realized that other movie stars—and quite possibly not-creepy ones—would be hitting on her, and she would probably return their affections.

He had bought tickets to a show for the two of them, but Nicki called to cancel only a few hours before, saying that a friend was suddenly going to be in town. Immediately, though, she amends that, saying that it’s actually her girlfriend, and they haven’t seen each other in a while because of their busy schedules. He says that he isn’t hurt, but internally he’s fuming, especially because she lied to him.

In retaliation, Lesly goes home and starts writing a screenplay not-so-loosely based on Nicki. He calls it Kiss and Tell, and includes quite a few salacious details about Nicki’s life. The next time they see each other, she apologizes for not telling him about her girlfriend, and explains that she sometimes is interested in men, and hopes that he understands.

He sends off his screenplay and forgets about it until he receives a call from an agent, saying that they love the script and want to send it to be produced. The agent also says that he has the perfect person in mind for the lead, and asks if he’s seen Nicki’s newly-released movie.

Lesly receives some calls from Nicki, but he ignores her for as long as he can, until one day he accidentally picks up and she says that she’s coming over. She yells at him about the script, saying that it’s clearly about her, and that people can tell. She says that the only reason he wrote the script was because she wouldn’t have sex with him again. Their argument spills out onto the street, and when Lesly slaps her, she starts hitting him back, and he runs away.

Lesly starts to fantasize about what would happen if Kiss and Tell was produced. He imagines Nicki in the role, thinking about sitting at the premiere and watching her, larger than life, on the big screen, him smiling back at her. In the end, he did move to LA and write more screenplays, some of which were produced. Kiss and Tell never ended up being produced, though, and he never saw Nicki in person again.

The Wrong Thing

Turgor

The narrator of the story, a 39-year-old woman who is confident in her body, learns that an old lover of hers has died. She is not too broken up about it, especially because he had been abusive to her before.

She goes to a party one night and meets Frederick, a 26-year-old man, and they have a few awkward moments in their conversation before sharing a cab home. He agrees to come inside with her, and they fool around and make out for a long time, talking every once in a while. However, when things heat up, the narrator stops it, and then Frederick says that he’s too guarded now anyway.

On the way out, he picks up a poetry collection that she had written on her shelf. She snaps and tells him to put it back, and when she apologizes, he says that he understands. She refuses to give him her phone number before he leaves.

Respect

When she heads outside in the morning, she finds that Frederick had left a note on her mailbox with his phone number. She calls him and he asks her out on a proper date. They meet at a bar, and they seem to get along quite well, with some hiccups.

He talks about a woman he had been seeing, and whose house he had just come from; he says that he doesn’t respect her the way that he respects the narrator. He also asks if she can recommend some poetry for him, since she teaches poetry, but she says that she doesn’t know him.

When he walks her home, they share an innocent kiss, and the narrator all but runs inside, thinking that she’s going to be sick. She stays on the bathroom floor, anxious and thinking.

Processing

At a different party one night, she meets a photographer who had taken a picture of her and Frederick that first night at the bar. She learns that her name is Erin, and tells Erin that her name is Susan. They start seeing each other, having a few intimate nights together.

The two of them end up going out quite a bit, often for dinner and drinks and then back to one of their places for the night. They also go out with Erin’s friends, who are all about 10 years younger than Susan, and who usually excite her. One night, though, Susan finds herself feeling embarrassed with some of their interactions, and this leads to a lessened feeling for Erin.

They spend another night together, and despite Susan’s waning feelings, she lets them become intimate. During their encounter, Erin ends up smearing tapioca on Susan, thinking that it would be sexy, but it ruins the mood immediately. Susan showers, and when she comes back out, she says that Erin should probably go, and says that she might not call for a while.

Stuff

Susan goes to another party, where she talks to some people but doesn’t make any friends. Later she is approached by someone who was at the party and says that his friend, Kenneth, was also there, and liked how Susan looked. They had never interacted, but Kenneth would like to take her out on a date. Susan initially says no but agrees later.

They go to dinner, and Susan finds herself disgusted with Kenneth, but still tries to be polite. She learns that Erin is dating a woman named Dolly, but they eventually break up after some difficulties with monogamy. Susan also encounters Frederick one day on the street, and he is curt and cold towards her; Susan’s colleague asks what it was all about.

Susan and Erin end up celebrating the end of the semester together at a bar with some of Erin’s friends. They leave the bar and release some ladybugs out into a garden to help get rid of pests.

Stories and Songs

I wanted to like this collection, but the more I read, the more it grated on me. Every story felt like the exact same thing—same tone, same basic characterization, and same plot (or lack thereof).

I admit that the writing was quite beautiful at times, and there were moments that felt important. But overall I thought that the stories were tedious. The first few, I could appreciate their normalcy; by the fourth or fifth, having the same feeling, I became rather jaded with the whole thing.

Out of all the stories, my favorite was most likely the title story; I thought the beauty of two undocumented young women meeting and helping each other was nice. But the ending of leaving the children to essentially fend for themselves was upsetting, while mildly understandable.

I think that if I thought more on the misogyny that was prevalent in every story, I might be able to have some sort of revelation, but I found myself confused that these stories were written by a woman. They felt, at times, like old Stephen King books (and I don’t mean that in a complimentary way).

I recognize that the stories were written a while ago, too, but it still is difficult to read homophobic slurs over and over again. And there was quite a lot of bisexuality on display without ever acknowledging it—rather, characters said that they were lesbians who sometimes had sex with men, or straight women who also liked women. The biphobia was rampant.

These stories were not for me, and I’m fine saying that. I am not typically a fan of reading hypersexual stories in general, and much less ones that degrade women. There are some lessons and sparklets to find in these stories, but I’ll be glad to move onto the next read.

Total pages read so far, 2026: 2,985

Total books read so far, 2026: 8

Next book: Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins

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Five Little Pigs

Agatha Christie

273 pages - 1942 - fiction, mystery

February 19th, 2026 — March 2nd, 2026

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

I think most people cannot deny the appeal of a good detective story. There’s some mystery that needs to be solved, and a whip-smart person at the center that’s able to solve it. There are maybe some twists and turns, a fake out or two, some drama and tension as the story builds to a satisfying reveal and conclusion.

Some detectives, too, just become so much bigger than their own stories. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle famously tried to kill off Sherlock Holmes multiple times—he seemed to loathe the guy—and yet his fans kept bringing him back to life. This is the 25th Hercule Poirot story, out of 33 novels and 50 or so short stories. Nancy Drew, Columbo, Monk, and recently Benoit Blanc, seem to attract all sorts of people to be captive audiences to their clue-finding, puzzle-solving tales.

Personally, I am thrilled that Benoit Blanc seems to be an up-and-coming big name in detective fiction. He’s only had three stories so far, and of course has only been on the scene for a few years, but I have faith that he’ll go down as a Sherlock Holmes or a Poirot, a name that evokes all sorts of wild adventures and brilliance.

One of the reasons I love Benoit Blanc so much is because he’s silly. In “Wake Up Dead Man” especially, his character is not dour or serious. He makes jokes and listens to “Cats” and doesn’t make himself seem smarter than everyone else. People tend to trust him, so they confess to him, and I think that makes for a thrilling story.

Before this book, I had never read an Agatha Christie work, so I had never had the pleasure of reading a Poirot mystery. I don’t entirely know why, but I went into it expecting more of a Sherlock Holmes character—intelligent to the point of rudeness, a better-than-you attitude, general coldness towards those involved.

I’m so glad that he is much more of a Benoit Blanc.

The title of the book comes from the fact that there are five murder suspects, and Poirot starts using the “five little pigs” nursery rhyme to keep them straight. I found it so endearing that he was muttering to himself, not because of the evidence being presented, but because of how the suspects compared to the titular pigs. Right from the beginning I found him delightful.

After this story, I will definitely be reading more Poirot. There is a reason that he was (and is still) so popular, of course. I just wish I had found out sooner!

Summary (Spoilers!)

Carla Lamerchant, a young woman, has sought out Hercule Poirot for his help in solving a murder. She tells him that the murder was of her father, and it occurred 16 years ago. Her mother was accused of poisoning her father, but was also an incredibly honest woman, and wrote a letter to Carla proclaiming her innocence. Carla has believed her mother’s words and wants to prove that she did not do it once and for all.

Carla’s mother and father, Caroline and Amyas Crale, could often be seen quarrelling, and Amyas often has a string of women with whom he’s having affairs, and who Caroline knows about. At the time of his death, though, he had been particularly close with a 20-year-old woman and the current subject of his painting. Caroline had heard them talking about Amyas leaving Caroline and marrying her instead.

Poirot learns from the defense, prosecution, solicitors, and police that there were five people present that day besides the Crales. There was Phillip Blake, a hardheaded stockbroker; Meredith Blake, Phillip’s younger brother and an amateur chemist; Angela Warren, Caroline’s younger half-sister; Cecilia Williams, Angela’s governess; and Elsa Greer, the 20-year-old woman that was having an affair with Amyas while he was painting her.

He also learns of the story of how the murder took place. The people at the Crale house that day had heard an altercation between Caroline and Amyas about their potential divorce so he could marry Elsa. He went out to paint her and Caroline brought him down a cold beer. They recollect that he mentioned everything tasting funny that day. When Cecilia called everyone up for lunch, Amyas remained down by his painting, which was not unusual. When they returned, he had died, having been seemingly poisoned. Elsa flew at Caroline and immediately accused her of murder, distraught over her love dying. Meredith had found that his bottle of coniine, a poison, had been nearly emptied, and the bottle had Caroline’s fingerprints on it.

Poirot goes to interview everyone and learns of their positions. Phillip staunchly believes that Caroline is fully guilty, and seems to hate her immensely for a variety of reasons. Meredith is less sure, and feels guilty himself knowing that some of his coniine was used as the murder weapon—he had found that his bottle, which was once full, had been nearly empty the morning of the murder. He still believes it was Caroline, though. Elsa, now Lady Dittisham, says that the trial did not distress her as much as her husband believed, and she even seemed to enjoy it; her only goal was to see Caroline hanged for the murder. Even Cecilia, who loudly hates men and vows to protect women, especially those in her care, believes that Caroline did it. Only Angela believes that Caroline is innocent.

After he has talked to everyone, he asks them to write down first-person accounts of what happened on the day of the murder. He knows that there will be some inconsistencies and memory lapses, since it was 16 years ago. But he wants to hear it all from their own minds. They each account the day. Notably, Cecilia mentions that she saw Caroline wiping off the prints from her husband’s beer bottle and using his dead hand to put his prints onto it. Poirot says that this is what has convinced him of her innocence.

He gathers all five of them at Meredith Blake’s house, as well as Carla and her fiance. He reveals that Caroline was innocent; she had been wiping off Angela’s prints from the beer bottle. In Meredith’s account, he mentioned seeing the young girl tampering with Amyas’s beer, and had mentioned a cat getting into his apothecary supplies. Poirot says that it was Angela sneaking in to steal some valerian to put in Amyas’s drink. Valerian attracts cats, so Meredith had an association, not realizing it was Angela. Caroline, having seen Angela tampering with the beer, believed that she had poisoned the drink and killed Amyas. She took the fall for her half-sister because Caroline had thrown a paper weight at her when they were younger, permanently scarring part of her face; for the rest of her life, she felt that she had to atone for that horrible sin.

However, the valerian did not kill Amyas, because there was no coniine in the beer bottle he had drank from. Poirot reveals that it was actually Elsa that had killed Amyas. She had overheard Caroline and Amyas talking earlier that day about how he was not going to leave Caroline, and that his affair was another one in a long line of women. Elsa had thought he was telling the truth about marrying her, so in a jealous rage, she stole the bottle of coniine from Caroline’s room, careful not to leave any of her own fingerprints. She poured it into a warm glass of beer that Amyas drank earlier in the day. When he remarked that everything tasted funny drinking his cold beer, it was because he was still tasting the coniine from earlier. Angela had not even had the chance to slip the valerian into his drink.

Carla and her fiance seem satisfied with this answer. Poirot tells Elsa that he is planning to ask the police for a posthumous pardon for Caroline Crale. He also tells her that there is no physical evidence, and it is nearly all inference, so there is little chance of her having any repercussions. Elsa exclaims that it was her that died that day.

Portraits and Still Lifes

I think this is one of the more slow murder mysteries I’ve read, and yet I found myself enjoying it a lot more towards the end than I have the others. The story of the day in question is told over and over again, with slight changes in details here and there, and I think it made it much easier to understand each character and motivation, rather than just trying to look at the big picture.

I thought the characters were interesting, and I especially liked Cecilia Williams. She is a brash woman who says what’s on her mind, and is vocal about hating men. There were some quotes from her that I have found myself saying a few times. Of course, Christie is a woman, but her writing and publishing those words and knowing that she will have readers, seeing as this is the 25th Poirot novel, is really inspiring. It made the whole thing feel delightfully modern.

The mystery itself might not have been the most fascinating. I feel like it’s a simple enough case, where jealousy is the main component and in the end becomes the motive. But I did like the complexity of the women, especially Caroline Crale. She is not necessarily kind to Elsa, but she is nice, and Elsa flies into such a rage because Caroline feels bad for the young woman when she learns that Amyas is going to leave her and break her heart. Elsa is so upset because Caroline feels sorry for her, rather than feeling triumphant for herself.

I also think that Hercule Poirot is an incredible character. I have never read a Poirot mystery (or an Agatha Christie novel!) before, but I definitely will be reading more. Poirot seems to go hand-in-hand with today’s Detective Benoit Blanc. He spends a good portion of the book trying to fit the suspects into the “five little piggies” nursery rhyme, and finds himself muttering things aloud, to the confusion of his suspects. On top of being a great detective, he is a wonderful character, and I’m interested to see him in more situations.

At first I was a little reluctant about the story because it felt like the same thing was being told over and over again. Maybe it was a little too redundant in the beginning. But I like the way that allowed us to delve deeper into the characters and get to know the minutiae of the day it happened. I thought it was a satisfying story that had a satisfying conclusion, and what more could you want from a mystery like this?

Total pages read so far, 2026: 2,730

Total books read so far, 2026: 7

Next book: Because They Wanted To by Mary Gaitskill

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Project Hail Mary

Andy Weir

485 pages - 2021 - fiction, sci-fi

February 9th, 2026 — February 18th, 2026

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Lately I’ve been surrounded by a ton of media about the Sun dying.

It was completely by coincidence—I played the video game “Outer Wilds” over the holidays at the insistence of my brother, and I do not think I have stopped thinking about it since. I’ve listened to podcast episodes released in the past few weeks about heliology, quantum mechanics and astrophysics, the heat death of the universe, supernovae, the big bang; I’ve heard people around me talking about the Sun finally exploding billions of years in our future.

Also by coincidence, my birthday was at the beginning of this month, and I asked my brother to get me this book for it. He had lent me his library copy of it about 5 years ago, while we were on summer vacation with our family, and I had about 3 days to read it before we had to go back to our respective regular lives. I tore through it, and loved it, but I had forgotten most of the details and a good amount of the plot after all this time. I knew that I loved it, and I knew that I wanted to reread it before the movie comes out (March 20th!).

Rereading it this time, it felt newly profound. The story is about a man who is on a “hail Mary” mission to save Earth after they realize that the Sun is being consumed by a mysterious black matter. Naturally, this is a terrifying concept, and one that is full of depressing notions that the main character actively tries not to think about. It isn’t called “Project Hail Mary” for nothing—he is not supposed to survive, and he knows it.

If you have not yet played “Outer Wilds” and love this book, or if you have played it and haven’t yet read Project Hail Mary, the two feel like love letters to one another and to being alive. Both are about the futility of time and the inevitability that the world will, one day, disappear. They both also offer lessons over and over again about recognizing the beauty of the world around you while it’s there.

After all, there’s nothing like facing the end of humanity and all life/existence as we know it to make you grateful for what you’ve got in the here and now.

Summary (Spoilers!)

A man wakes up in a mysterious place, hooked up to a bunch of tubes and wires. He realizes over time that he has no memories, but they come back in flashes. He learns that his name is Dr. Ryland Grace, and he was formerly an astrophysicist who became a middle school science teacher but was recruited to be a part of a special mission.

His memories show him that sometime in the past, a scientist found out that the Earth’s brightness was about 0.01% lower than it should be. They found some black dots near the Sun and Venus, which emitted a specific band of infrared radiation that they named the Petrova frequency. Scientists around the world started working on learning more about these things, and ended up recovering some for study back on Earth. They realized that at the current rate of consumption, their Sun would decrease by enough power to cause a mass extinction event in about 30 years. Ryland Grace was found by Eve Stratt, the head of the European Space Agency, and recruited to help them study the odd dots.

Grace learns that he had two crewmates on the ship, but they both died, and quite possibly long ago as their bodies have desiccated. He had been placed in a coma for the long journey and was the only one to survive. He explores the ship and learns that it’s called the Hail Mary. He also learns that the star near which his ship is located is not the same sun; he’s no longer in the solar system.

We learn that Grace had written papers debating the theory that all life needs water to survive. This is why they had recruited him—they thought that the dots could be living, since they can move, and they also thought they might not be made of the same materials, since they live so close to the Sun and Venus. Grace tries to study them and finds it nearly impossible until he punctures one with a miniscule needle, causing the dot to turn clear and the organism to die. Inside, he finds a cell with the typical organelles and materials seen in Earth organisms, including water.

Grace wanted to keep studying the creatures, which he deemed Astrophage (for “star-eating”), after Stratt said they were determined safe enough to send around the world for others to study. He convinced her to let him keep three Astrophage for his study and was able to determine that they are attracted to light from the Sun for gathering energy and carbon dioxide from Venus for multiplying when he realizes that his three Astrophage have become four.

Upon hearing this news, Stratt assembled a team to study Astrophage breeding, including Grace, on a Chinese aircraft carrier far out in the ocean. She explained to Grace that they want to breed Astrophage because they’ve discovered that they are extremely efficient at converting energy to mass and vice versa, so they can be used as rocket fuel. They want to breed millions of Astrophage as well as a ship to get the crew, three people, to Tau Ceti.

Tau Ceti is the only nearby star that they’ve found that is not getting significantly dimmer. They want to determine why—is it immune to Astrophage? She mentions that, even with the Astrophage fuel, it’s 12 light-years away, meaning the crew will either spend at least six years in extremely close quarters, possibly leading to fighting, or they will be in comas for that long, which often causes death. She’s found that there are about a million people in the world with a gene that makes them more resilient to comas, leading to less mortality and higher rates of brain functioning when they come out of it. They’ll have to find the most qualified of those million people to go on the mission to save their planet.

Grace’s ship makes it to Tau Ceti’s solar system, and he is able to determine that there is a Petrova wavelength, meaning there are Astrophage there, too, just not dimming the star. He’s excited to recover some and start studying them when he sees something moving towards him and realizes that it’s another ship, one of alien design. They communicate with some ship movements, so Grace notes that there’s a living intelligent being inside. The alien ship sends a cylinder to the Hail Mary, and Grace goes on an EVA to retrieve it, bringing it back inside and learning two things: it’s burning hot, and it smells of ammonia.

When he opens it, he finds a map of stars, with notation he’s able to determine means that they came from the 40 Eridani system to Tau Ceti because of the Petrova lines. Grace adds some marks to Sol on the model and sends the cylinder back; when he receives another one, it’s a model of the Hail Mary and the alien ship, connected at their respective portals to space, an invitation for them to meet one another. The aliens get to work and connect a tunnel between the ships, with a wall in the middle, so they can determine compatibility. Grace notes that his half of the tunnel has an airtight seal and is accessible. While he’s checking it out, he hears three knocks on the wall.

One section of the wall is clear, so Grace and the alien are able to look at one another—the alien, which Grace dubs “Rocky”, looks like a spider made of rock, with 5 articulated limbs, 3 fingers each, and what appears to be clothing. While Grace is in his ship, Rocky leaves another cylinder in his side of the airlock, which contains models of what Grace determines are molecules. For Grace’s one atmosphere of pressure and primarily oxygen, Rocky has 29 atmospheres and breathes primarily ammonium, meaning their atmospheres are deadly to one another. But they are able to communicate how they display time, and Grace determines one Earth second is about 2.3 Eridian seconds, and learns they count in base 6.

Grace realizes through some communication and passing objects back and forth that Eridians cannot see, but instead use sound to map out what is around them. He learns that they make chords as words and starts to map them on his computer, creating a script that automatically translates what Rocky says. He finds that Eridians, or at least Rocky, have an incredible memory, so the alien does not need a translator. Rocky also asks to observe while Grace sleeps, and then asks Grace to observe him sleeping. Before Rocky sleeps for the first time (that Grace knows of), he says that there had been 23 crew members, but they all died, just like Grace’s crew. They did not know about the radiation in space, and all of them but Rocky died. Their star was also being destroyed by Astrophage, and they headed to Tau Ceti to figure it out just like Grace did.

There are flashbacks showing Grace learning more about the process leading up to Project Hail Mary, including a visit to an Australian prison where an inmate had an idea for blackpanels set up in the Sahara Desert to greatly scale the production of Astrophage. Grace had also learned that Astrophage stored energy by creating neutrinos, the process of which emitted the Petrova wavelength and required the exact temperature at which they found that they held. To combat the global cooling, Stratt convinces governments to use nuclear bombs on Antarctica to release methane stored in the ice, which causes the greenhouse gas to build up in the atmosphere for about 10 years and would decrease the rate of cooling.

Grace explains to Rocky what radiation is, and says that he was the only one to not die because he was mostly in the engine room, which was surrounded by Astrophage, which completely shield from radiation. The Eridian planet also has a much stronger magnetic field, as well as a thicker atmosphere and no solar radiation, so they never encountered radiation before their space travel. They also discuss their biology and Grace learns that Eridians are mostly inorganic matter. Rocky makes a life support system for himself and then asks if he can come see Grace’s ship. When he gets there, he asks if he can move his stuff into Grace’s ship so they can turn on the gravity and do some science together to try to figure out how to solve the Astrophage problem. Rocky moves in, bringing tons of stuff with him. Grace learns that Rocky is about 291 years old, with an average lifespan of 689 years; he’s been in the Tau Ceti star system for about 46 years.

Grace met the scientist, Dr. Lamai, who had done the experiments to determine coma tolerance in people. He is uncomfortable with the animal testing happening, but she is trying to engineer machines to keep people in comas alive among any number of issues that arise. While they’re there, Stratt has her blood taken and tested for the coma-tolerant genes, and insists that Grace does the same to “set an example” for the other scientists. The more people that they’re able to test, the wider the pool for volunteers will be. Grace meets the crew and backup crew of the mission, including his present-day and deceased crewmates. He learns that he has the genetic markers for coma tolerance from DuBois, the American man and science specialist meant to go on the mission.

On the Hail Mary, Rocky has gotten to work making some areas for him to inhabit, and Grace has them on a course towards Tau Ceti e, the planet with the most prominent Petrova line in the system. Rocky names it after his mate from Erid, and Grace gives it the English name “Adrian”. Rocky also says he’s going to eat, and that it is a private affair for Eridians; Grace insists on watching, and concedes that it is quite a gross process.

Grace and Rocky are able to collect some Astrophage from the atmosphere around Adrian. Grace examines them with a microscope and finds tons of Astrophage, as well as a bunch of other microscopic life. He and Rocky conclude that this is where Astrophage is from, the abundance of methane in the atmosphere of Adrian is from life, and that there has to be a predator of Astrophage present on Adrian, since there are less Astrophage present than expected.

They find no predators, and come up with a crazy idea to go “fishing” 10 kilometers below the ship to try to find predators in the Astrophage breeding areas. Rocky also says he can provide Grace with the fuel he needs to return to Earth when their project is done, and Grace realizes that Eridians did not know about time dilation, so they have much more Astrophage fuel than they needed. They try their fishing plan, and it works for a little while, until the hull starts to melt from the radiation from the Astrophage interacting with the atmosphere; Grace nearly passes out from the gravitational forces, has to jettison some of the fuel containers, and when he wakes up, he smells ammonia and realizes that Rocky had left his life support bubble to save him. Rocky is curled up and unconscious. Grace is able to minimize the gravitational forces, so he quickly engineers some protection for Rocky, including a robot to blast air in Rocky’s vents to clear some of the soot that possibly happened from his blood being quickly oxidized.

Rocky wakes up, weak but alive, and both of them take stock of their wounds. Over time, they slowly regain function of their facilities and are able to get almost back to full health and speed. Grace, with Rocky’s help, collects the samples from their nearly catastrophic mission and looks at them under a microscope. He finds a predator of Astrophage, which he names Taumoeba, and they start breeding them as well.

In a flashback, Grace asks the three astronauts their preferred method of death should they reach a point where there is nothing else to do. DuBois says he wants to die by nitrogen asphyxiation, either in his EVA suit or the airlock. Ilyukhina wanted heroin, to get high on before overdosing with a cocktail of other pain-relieving drugs. Yao wanted a gun, and to go last, so he could “help” the others before himself. Later, while Grace is in his makeshift office, an explosion rattles the base, and they realize that the research institute exploded, killing all the workers inside, including DuBois and his backup Shapiro, meaning now the mission does not have a science specialist.

Everything on the ship is going well until the lights and all of Grace’s electrical systems turn off. He and Rocky realize that somehow the Taumoeba had escaped the breeding tanks and gotten into nearly every place in the ship where Astrophage were, including the fuel. Nearly all of Grace’s fuel was gone. He and Rocky realized from their small experiments that the Taumoeba seem to thrive in environments without any nitrogen, but will die with any more than trace nitrogen amounts. They use some nitrogen to clean out the fuel tanks, hoping to kill the Taumoeba.

Grace, in the past, enters a meeting with Stratt and the other leaders of the project. They tell him that they have selected the science specialist for the mission—him. He has the coma resistance gene markers, and he has been basically trained on everything necessary for the mission. Grace says he needs to think about it, and Stratt gives him until 5pm that evening. When he meets with her again, he says he’s decided not to go, because he has to stay for the kids; Stratt becomes aggressive, and tells him that they’re going to force him to go anyway. He will be sedated, and she will tell the others on board that he was nervous about the launch because he had not trained to be an astronaut, just to do the science onboard. When he woke up, they might be angry at Stratt, but they would already be on the mission. Grace tries to run away, but he is stopped and sedated.

On the ship, Grace and Rocky are able to connect their ships back together. Grace finds some Taumoeba that have survived in minimal nitrogen environments, so he breeds them together, working on increasing their nitrogen tolerance. Venus has a nitrogen concentration of about 3.5%, and Threeworld (the planet with Astrophage breeding in Rocky’s system) has a concentration of about 8%. Over time, the Taumoeba become more and more nitrogen resistant, and they eventually reach a strain that is resistant at about 8.5% nitrogen, meaning they’ve found the solution.

The two of them work to refuel Grace’s ship, since Rocky had plenty of fuel left over. They modify the beetles, the probes to send to Earth, so that they hold Taumoeba breeding containers and can be sent back to Earth just in case the Hail Mary doesn’t have enough fuel or runs into another problem. Then they say goodbye to one another and head off in opposite directions. Grace checks the Petrova wavelength consistently, watching Rocky’s ship get further and further away based on the thrust from the Astrophage fuel.

Months into his return journey, Grace checks some of his Astrophage and realizes that they’ve been killed by Taumoeba, but the Taumoeba were not supposed to be there. He notices that the Taumoeba have evolved both to be resistant to nitrogen and to find ways to get through xenonite; the tanks made from xenonite all have dead Astrophage, but the tanks made of metal alloys and plastic do not. He is able to make secondary containers to stop the spread of Taumoeba, but he also realizes that Rocky’s ship is made of primarily xenonite, including his fuel tanks. Grace can either continue to Earth, hoping to make it back alive, or he can try to find Rocky’s ship, floating dead in space, and rescue him.

Grace decides to send the beetles back to Earth and find Rocky. He is able to locate the ship and Rocky is thrilled to see him. Grace brings Rocky on board the Hail Mary, and they plot a course to Erid. Grace tells Rocky that he’s most likely going to die, either before they get there or soon after, since he will run out of food. Eridian food all has heavy metals in it that are extremely toxic to humans. Rocky asks if Grace could eat Taumoeba, and he considers this, thinking that it could actually work.

In the last chapter, Grace wakes up on Erid, sixteen years after they had arrived back. His body is much older now, especially with the increased gravity on Erid. They built him a dome in which he can breathe Earth-like atmosphere. They also figured out how to culture some of his cells, so they have made him lab-grown meat to eat along with the Taumoeba. Rocky tells Grace that the scientific council has been tracking Sol, and notes that it has returned to full luminance—that means that the beetles got back to Earth, and they were able to reverse the damage done by Astrophage. Grace says he has a meeting to go to, and he heads to a classroom where Eridian children are excited to learn from him again.

Amaze

I finished reading this last night, and I don’t know if I’ve ever sobbed that hard after the final sentence of of a book. Andy Weir definitely knows what he’s doing. Sometimes, I really do enjoy a book with an ambiguous ending, or one where the threads do not tie up nicely.

But this book, with what I believe is a perfect finale, is always welcome. I love that Grace and Rocky are together. I love that they still recognize that he does not have much time remaining, but the Eridians build him a home and keep him comfortable anyway. I love that they mention that Sol has returned to its original state. I love that Grace gets to teach a new set of children.

The way that this book is written makes it an exciting one from the very beginning. It’s an interesting mechanic that I think could be abused, but Weir perfectly navigates the provision of information to both us and Ryland Grace. We get to learn who he is and about his life as he learns it too, and it is incredibly effective. It makes the revelations of him being forced onto the mission even more impactful and devastating.

He also has a fun way of writing characters. I’ve heard plenty of praise for The Martian being accessible, comedic, and conversational, and this is no different, but I feel like it’s more refined in Project Hail Mary. His characterization shines through in how Grace thinks and speaks. He rarely, if ever, curses, and we learn that he is a teacher; I love how consistent and ingrained that is to his character.

Rocky, too, is phenomenally characterized. I think it could be so easy to have both of them be extremely similar, especially because we are reading from Grace’s perspective and he is translating into English, rather than us reading directly what Rocky says. But they are unique characters, with unique motivations and reactions. I love seeing how excited Rocky is. I love that the alien race is so different to humanity.

Rocky might be one of my favorite characters ever written. I am increasingly nervous and buzzing with excitement to see him on the big screen. From what little we’ve gotten in the movie trailers, I have a lot of hope that they’re going to do him a great deal of justice.

I cannot wait to see what they do with this story. I cannot wait to reread this book again, maybe after another five years passes. I cannot wait to read what else Andy Weir cooks up, if he continues to write. Until then, I’ll be singing the praises of Project Hail Mary for a long, long time.

Total pages read so far, 2026: 2,457

Total books read so far, 2026: 6

Next book: Five Little Pigs by Agatha Christie

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The Bee Sting

Paul Murray

645 pages - 2023 - psychological fiction

January 25th, 2026 — February 9th, 2026

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

In high school, I got to visit Ireland—mostly County Kerry, although we spent a day in Dublin before heading off to Wales and England. It was a gorgeous trip, especially because we were graced with perfect weather. It did not rain a single day, and it was about 85°F the whole time.

I understand inherently that Ireland and the UK are typically much colder, gloomier, and rainier. I know that my desire to move there since then might have been lessened if I got to experience the more common climate.

This book is set in cold and rainy Ireland, and does not shy away from the difficulties of life—heartbreak, loneliness, unrequited love, confusion, repulsion, the fear that one has made all the wrong choices. I’m not sure this book would have worked in a different setting, time and place. It lends a reality to the entire plot that is often hard to find and hold in a story.

I still love Ireland, and I’m so excited to visit again someday. My partner’s family lives in Ireland and I would love to be shown around by them, rather than taking a tourist’s route. I have also learned more to appreciate the sunny days as they come.

Summary (Spoilers!)

The Barnes family was once quite wealthy and well-off, living in Ireland, until the Great Recession led to their car dealerships going under. Dickie Barnes inherited the dealerships from his rich father, Maurice, who lives in Portugal. Dickie is married to Imelda, who is now selling her jewelry online and begs Dickie to ask his father for money. Dickie, a proud man, insists he can fix it on his own. Instead of dealing with it, though, he spends most of his time making a bunker “for the future” with the help of his survivalist handyman, Victor, and his young son, PJ.

Their other child, Cass, began to struggle with school and her family’s issues. Their town is incredibly small and her family has become the talk of it. She begins to drink heavily in the bunker at around town with her best friend Elaine, also from a wealthy family. Their friendship continues to get deeper, more toxic, and more confused with a romantic relationship, without any labels. One day they look through photos of Cass’s parents’ wedding, laughing at how her mother had her veil on the entire time, allegedly due to a bee sting on her eye.

Meanwhile, PJ is bullied at school and is quite lonely. His “best friend” Nev is one of his biggest bullies. Because of this, he gets closer to an online friend named Ethan, a very enthusiastic person who urges him to run away and come live with him in Dublin. PJ works more and more on the bunker with his father.

Maurice finally comes to visit but immediately takes control of the business, which causes Dickie to feel trampled and Imelda to feel irate. With Maurice’s arrival, we also get some flashbacks showing Imelda’s difficult home life and her father, who was abusive to all her brothers but very protective of her. Imelda had met Frank Barnes one day, Dickie’s younger brother, and fell in love with him as she watched him playing soccer. She and Frank were supposed to get married—her father even loved Frank, which had never happened before. Their relationship was rocky, and he seemed much larger than life and the little town in which they lived. One day, though, he was killed in a car accident, and the family, and Imelda, started spiraling.

Dickie and Imelda ended up comforting each other, which led to them using romance to cover up their grief. Imelda’s aunt Rose realizes soon after that the young girl is pregnant. Dickie, hearing this news, proposes to Imelda, saying that he could fill in the hole that Frank left in her life and help her stay on track. Still grieving, Imelda agrees, believing fully that she will encounter Frank on her wedding day and it will all have been a bad dream. Of course, though, he doesn’t arrive, and she and Dickie are married.

We also see Dickie’s days at Trinity College at Dublin, where he was friends with an incredibly outgoing young man named Willie. Willie was gay and out, very rare for the time, and started taking Dickie with him to The Butterfly, a pub with a vibrant gay scene. One night, Dickie is taken home by another man and is forced to have sex with him. The man got violent when Dickie saw him getting dressed in uniform, assaulting him before throwing him out. Dickie realizes slowly that he is in love with Willie, but Willie gets angry upon learning that Dickie will be going back to his hometown to take over the family business after Frank’s death.

Cass believes she failed her exams, but she passes and is able to enroll at Trinity College Dublin with Elaine. They live together, and Cass realizes how narcissistic and selfish Elaine can be. Elaine is stood up one too many times, and Cass decides to tell her finally about her feelings for Elaine. At a house party that Elaine throws, though, Cass gets drunk for the first time in a long time and tells Elaine that she hates her. PJ also shows up at the party, worried about his parents and hoping that Cass can help; she throws him out of the party and onto the street, but immediately regrets it. She leaves the party and tries to find him.

In the present day, Dickie is given a job at the garage, but not as the manager; he is working under Big Mike, the husband and serial cheater of one of Imelda’s friends in town. Phil, another worker at the garage, and Maurice realize that there was a large sum of money that went missing from the accounts, and only Dickie had access to them for a while. They try to contact him, but he ignores them.

Phil mentions that it’s possible their coworker, a Pole named Ryszard, has been stealing catalytic converters from some of their customers’ cars. In another more recent flashback, we learn that Dickie and Ryszard had begun a sexual relationship, often meeting without saying any words in Dickie’s office. However, Ryszard had been filming their encounters and blackmails Dickie, saying he’ll leave as long as Dickie gives him a large sum of money.

Again in the present day, Imelda considers starting an affair with Big Mike, mostly to make Dickie jealous. Dickie is contacted again by Ryszard while working on the bunker—the younger man demands more money, saying he’ll release all the videos. Dickie tries to tell him that he doesn’t have any money, but Ryszard says his girlfriend is pregnant and gives him an ultimatum.

PJ, lost in Dublin, is contacted by his old online friend Ethan. Conveniently, Ethan lives in Dublin, so PJ asks if he can stay overnight at his place. Ethan says he’ll come get PJ, since they had both gotten an app that shared their locations to each other. PJ starts to get more and more nervous, and he’s approached by an old man in a trench coat. When he texts Ethan again, the old man’s phone beeps; PJ runs away to a game store. He thinks that the man is following him and has found him when he gets tapped on the shoulder, but it’s just Cass, and they go home together to find their family.

Dickie has told Victor a little bit about Ryszard’s monetary demands, and says that he has sensitive information that could ruin Dickie’s life if it was released. Victor says that Dickie has to kill him in order to make this go away, or else Ryszard will just use the videos to blackmail him over and over again. They decide to head down to the bunker with some guns, under the guise of hunting the invasive grey squirrels in the area, and shoot Ryszard when he shows up to take the money.

In another flashback, we see Imelda right before her wedding night. Her father was incredibly upset at her marriage to Dickie, and yells at her, asking if she ever even loved Frank. When she answers, her father gets even more enraged and beats her, giving her a black eye. During the reception, she had run off right before the first dance. Dickie went and found her, learned about the abuse, and promised to protect her.

That night, Cass and PJ get back from Dublin and decide to confront their father down at the bunker. Imelda, about to go to Big Mike’s house, learns that he is delayed a bit, so she decides to go to the bunker and rub her impending affair in Dickie’s face. Big Mike says he’s helping out on his cattle farm, but he is actually confronting his former housemaid, a woman with whom he had an affair and had hid in the bunker; some townsfolk saw her walking around town and noted that she was visibly pregnant. We learn that it is Ryszard’s baby, and he has hidden her in the bunker while he is going to receive his money. Dickie tells Victor over the walkie-talkie that he sees Ryszard and starts to shoot his gun wildly. It’s unknown what happens next.

In The Bunker

Although the story is titled after bees, it feels very much like a spider web as the stories unfold and come together. It’s clear from the beginning that there is much more to the family’s story than meets the eye, but learning more about the lies that they’ve told, perpetuated, and let themselves believe increases the gloomy feeling bolstered by the constant clouds overhead.

It took me quite a bit to get into the story, but I think a lot of that was my own personal preference. I would say that this book is not an easy one to read. There are no quotation marks in any of the sections, and any sections from Imelda’s perspective have little to no punctuation at all. The timing is not explicitly mentioned, so context clues must be used almost constantly, as a sentence can go from a flashback to present day and back.

The story itself is heartbreaking for so many reasons. I think my favorite storyline was Dickie’s, but I admit that I had some hopes for how his would end that never panned out. At one point, Cass attends a talk by an “ecologically-minded politician” who is actually Willie, Dickie’s former best friend/crush, and the man, now older, talks about how he was in love with his best friend while at school there, but had his heart broken and never recovered. Obviously it was a little naive of me to think that Dickie would get his happy ending, but the extent to which the ending was open-ended left me wanting a lot more.

I often enjoy ambiguous endings, but this one was just far too ambiguous for my liking. I think, in so many ways, the gun going off and us not knowing who had been shot is a great story thread, but after so much anguish throughout the story, it felt just a bit too dark for me. I would have liked one piece of brightness among the storm.

I thought all the characters were fleshed out, and it really did feel like they were victims of their own circumstances. I think a lot of that can be attributed to the way the story weaves present and past together. Knowing where they are going makes the past even more heartbreaking when they have so much hope for their grand futures, knowing that they will be stuck in their ways seemingly forever.

The book was beautiful, well-written, and hyper-specific in its characters and setting. I did like that more and more of the story surrounded the bunker; that could have been a random piece that didn’t go anywhere, but it ended up being more important than I was expecting.

I talk often about “right place, right time” for a lot of media I come across, and I think this could have been a case of being the wrong time. It’s a pretty bleak time, both with the weather and the political climate, and a part of me is trying to avoid such bleak media. I think if I had read this another time, I would have enjoyed it even more. Overall, though, I think it was a beautifully tragic examination at the intricacies of family life, and how lonely one can feel even when surrounded by others.

Total pages read so far, 2026: 1,972

Total books read so far, 2026: 5

Next book: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

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The Moth Presents: A Point of Beauty

The Moth

377 pages - 2024 - nonfiction, stories

January 17th, 2026 — January 24th, 2026

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Since I was little, performing in ballet/tap groups on stage and singing in the elementary school end-of-year concerts, I’ve had pretty intense stage fright. Not too much so as to make me afraid of performing, especially in groups. I was in the high school plays every year, including playing one of the leads, Wednesday, in The Addams Family musical opposite my brother (who played Gomez). I perform in choirs (and recently joined a local one!). I can do it, but I tend to black out any memories of being up on stage.

I’ve been listening to The Moth podcast and radio hour for years, maybe up to a decade at this point. The Moth is a show where people of any background can put their name in the hat for the chance to tell their own on-theme story on stage. Ten people tell stories each night, and a panel of judges in the audience rates them, and the winner of the night goes on to develop their story for a show consisting of all the winning stories.

When I moved after college, I was finally in an area that held The Moth StorySLAM events each month, walking distance from my house. I was thrilled, and I started going. One of my new year’s resolutions is to go to them more often, because these nights are wonderful. Some stories are heartwarming, some heartbreaking, some hilarious. It’s so surprising and beautiful, the quality of stories that are told by “ordinary” people.

A while ago, I went to a Moth show where the theme was “outgrown”, and I thought I had a story. Usually many more people put in names than get to read the stories, so I thought I could put my name in, not get picked, say I tried, and go home satisfied.

Of course, I got picked.

I told a story about that Addams Family performance, and how my one goal was to not cry on stage when my brother sang “Happysad” to me and we danced. We’re twins, and the main point of the Gomez/Wednesday storyline is that Wednesday is growing up, and she’s going to leave the nest soon, and even though they’ll be apart for the first time ever, they’re always going to be family, so it hit way too close to home. I remember seeing him tearing up one of the nights, which led to full-on sobbing, but at that point, I didn’t care. I was so lucky to get to have those moments with my brother before we both went off to college far away from each other.

I don’t remember telling the story, and I remember even being confused when my name was mentioned as one of the night’s storytellers. They always have the ten people come back up on stage for the crowning of the champion. I didn’t win (thank goodness), but it was such a wonderful experience. Even with my stage fright, I felt like I was welcomed fully.

I’ll admit that I mostly do not remember Moth stories after I hear them. Some have stuck with me, like the one where the man rode a bathtub across the English channel. But there have been so many stories. I was honestly surprised how many of the stories in this collection I recognized at least a little bit. Even knowing some of them, they still were wonderful to relive.

Spinning Yarns

The Moth, and this book especially, does a great job of having a wide variety of stories. I think my favorite one was the story of an NCO whose stuffed Paddington Bear got lost and detained in customs. She was at first nervous to ask for help, seeing as it was “just” a stuffed bear and she thought people would take her even less seriously. But her fellow army folks bonded together and helped her get the bear back.

There were stories from some famous folks sprinkled in, like the story Lin Manuel Miranda told about writing his first musical, or the story of Elizabeth Gilbert and her wife’s wishes for the end of her life after a terminal illness. Most, though, came from people that could be your neighbors, your teachers, your bus drivers.

I love this podcast, show, organization because it really highlights the uniqueness of life. I’ve always believed that everybody has at least some sort of story to tell, but no forum in which to tell it. If you ask people the right questions, you’ll get some incredible answers, but it’s almost impossible to know what the “right questions” are.

I’ve teared up listening to quite a few Moth stories, which goes to show the power of pure true storytelling. I wish there was more of a culture of storytelling nowadays. I’ve heard of libraries that “check out” people, usually older folks, for certain lengths of time, and you can listen to them tell their life stories. I wish that was more commonplace.

I hope I get to tell another story on a Moth stage someday. I hope I get to attend a lot more Moth events in the coming months. I hope that, in supporting these storytelling sessions and writing about them, it makes storytelling more commonplace. I hope I get to hear a lot more stories.

Total pages read so far, 2026: 1,327

Total books read so far, 2026: 4

Next book: The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

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Dark Archives

Megan Rosenbloom

275 pages - 2020 - nonfiction, science

January 10th, 2026 — January 16th, 2026

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐½

The first time I visited the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia, I was 16 years old, a sophomore in high school, and taking my first biology class. I thought at that time that I possibly wanted to be a geneticist, or maybe a forensic pathologist. That biology teacher said that I didn’t have a “passion for science” and should “give up”, so I resigned myself to being a singer instead.

(Lucky for me, I was forced to take a chemistry class the next year in high school because I was in a specific program. I absolutely fell in love with it. Chemistry answered all the questions that I had about the world. I’d love to show that teacher about my “passion for science” these days, but I also don’t want to interact with her ever again.)

We took a field trip as a biology class to the museum. As soon as I stepped inside the atrium, a beautiful and unassuming tiled room, I was buzzing with excitement, and it didn’t stop. When we visited, there was a rotating exhibit that was, at the time, focused on injuries during the American Civil War, with a section talking about phantom limb syndrome. There was even a simulation where you could trick your brain into feeling just a tiny bit of what phantom limb was like, and it was harrowing.

The Mutter Museum is not for the faint of heart, but I adore it. There are drawers of objects from various surgeons that have been removed from their patients, including dice and nails. There’s a wall of silicon molds depicting a horrific array of eye injuries and ailments. There are cabinets spanning an entire wall that boast a collection of skulls from ancient Egypt to the 19th century. There’s also a medicinal herb garden outside, with labels describing how the herbs had been used in the past and even how they could be used today, should someone need a homeopathic fix.

After we went home from the Mutter Museum, I talked about it so much and with so much enthusiasm that my mother took me back not too long afterwards. She’s an embryologist, and I thought she would enjoy their section on fetal development, complete with preserved specimens of human and various animal fetuses. I am not sure she enjoyed the visit nearly as much as I did, but she indulged me and my excitement, and I am forever grateful for that.

On top of the museum being fascinating, they also participate in outreach and scientific discovery. They allow researchers to learn from their archives. During COVID, they held quite a few events—outside, distanced, and masked, of course—to educate people about the influenza pandemic of the 1920s and to emphasize the importance of following medical guidelines and receiving vaccinations. I think they’re wonderful.

There are five books at the Mutter Museum that have been proven, through peptide fingerprint mapping (PFM), to be bound in human skin. In a museum of morbidity, these objects are some of the more beautiful to me. I was surprised to hear that others do not share this sentiment.

I do not think I am nearly as afraid of death as most other Americans. I do not want to die soon, of course, but I believe that I am getting out of life exactly what I am supposed to, and that when I go, I still have the ability to make a good mark on the world. Organ donation can save up to eight lives if your organs are deemed good enough for transplant, and heal up to 75 other people with other transplants like corneas and tissues. I love the idea that my mere existence could help people, especially when I don’t need my body anymore.

I love reading, and I love books as an art form—any time I find a book with annotations in the margins at secondhand stores, it makes it much more difficult to walk away without buying them. I don’t think I would be upset if, after the useful parts were harvested, my skin was used to bind a book I love, and the rest of me was buried with seeds and mushrooms, destined to nurture until all my atoms are scattered away.

Apparently, this is not a popular belief.

This book details the historic examples of anthropodermic bibliopegy, or the act of binding books with human skin. As expected, there were quite a few examples that claimed to be human skin books, but were proven otherwise. Before PFM, people had to go on others’ words, and many of the fakes were shown to be calf or pig skin. There were a few that were rabbit skin, and some that were not skin at all, but rather plant material. Some, albeit rare, were actually human skin—the author estimates about 30 real human skin books around the world, with possibly more specimens in private collections.

Most of the real books were created by doctors and by some unethical means. Often, the doctors were recording observations of their studies, and they would use a the skin of a patient who had died without consent from them or their family. It seemed that many times, they did not even know the identity of the person whose skin bound their words. These books were also often made from the skin of prisoners, usually murderers, as dissection was seen as a fate worse than simple death, since the body was desecrated afterwards. Naturally this introduces more nuance into the discussion around the ethics of anthropodermic bibliopegy, and the lack of it at every juncture.

Words Getting Under Your Skin

I thought this book was a fascinating look into the process of determining whether a human skin book is real or not. There are twelve chapters, detailing more or less twelve excursions the author took to examine and hopefully test the alleged books. At a point, it tends to get repetitive—the book is in a collection with other “problematic” books; the author requests to see and hopefully test it; the librarian is exasperated at how many people want to see the book bound in skin; the author is either denied testing, or she is able to send a small piece off for testing; the book is most likely fake, with some real examples shining through.

I was interested in the conversation around consent that comes with this territory, and was surprised that it came so late in the book. One of the chapters talks about a prisoner who had become rather friendly with the guards of his prison. At the end of his life, he dictated his own life story as a memoir of sorts, and one of the guards wrote it down. After the prisoner died, two copies of his biography were printed, and both were bound in his own skin, which is what he had wished for before his demise. Maybe I have a macabre imagination, but—besides the obvious issues with the prison system and the power imbalance that comes from a prisoner/guard relationship—I found this story to be rather touching.

Similar to this, there was another chapter regarding the practice of preserving tattoos after death. There are a couple groups around the world that work as nonprofits or with museums to help preserve tattooed skin. It depends on the laws and feelings of those in charge wherever you are, but this practice, to me, is fascinating and beautiful. Maybe a little less practical than creating a book that can be read, but still a wonderful way to preserve art. (They even mentioned a man who had a large tattoo placed on his back; part of the terms of the piece was that he would sit as an exhibit in a museum every so often, and when he passes away, his tattoo will be preserved and placed in the museum as a part of their collection. I think that’s so cool!)

The book also goes into the commonly-held belief that Nazis tended to bind books in human skin and debunks it, as well as the myth of human-bound books that were created during the French Revolution. Both are debunked. It seems that most of the specimens were created during the 16th century by doctors who were dissecting the bodies of murderers and prisoners after their death.

Overall, I thought this book was quite fascinating, and I loved all the Mutter Museum shoutouts. A part of me wishes that it discussed the real examples more, rather than focusing so much on those that were proven fake. However, there are not many specimens, so naturally, they can only get so much space on the page.

I heard about this book from an episode of a podcast called Ologies, which was an interview with the author about human leather books. It was fascinating, and I thought the host, Alie Ward, asked questions that I personally had. If I hadn’t listened, I think I would have been more frustrated with the book—I feel like there were quite a few things that I, as someone who doesn’t study these books like Megan Rosenbloom does, wanted to hear more about. I think I would recommend that podcast episode over this book, although it is a nice complement to the episode, and vice versa.

Maybe one day soon I’ll get to go to the Mutter Museum again. My little brother lives in Philly now, so I might just be able to drag him around, pointing excitedly at the soap lady, the megacolon, and the variety of skulls, while he peeks through the slits between his fingers. If you haven’t visited, have the chance to, and are perhaps less squeamish than some, I highly, highly recommend.

Total pages read so far, 2026: 950

Total books read so far, 2026: 3

Next book: A Point of Beauty by The Moth

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True Biz

Sara Novic

387 pages - 2022 - coming of age, domestic fiction

January 7th, 2026 — January 10th, 2026

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

At a school talent show once—I think I was probably about 15—I saw some kids perform a version of “You’ve Got a Friend In Me” fully in sign language. Their sister was Deaf and they had been learning ASL to be able to communicate with her. I know that I was not the only one tearing up throughout.

I have not known anyone who was Deaf, but I find ASL fascinating and beautiful. I’ve picked up some signs here and there, and I’d love to learn more. Even in my limited knowledge, I find it really useful for communicating in busy, loud, or crowded places, just being able to connect with someone from across the room.

When I was younger, my brothers and I were taught a few signs, specifically the one for “more”. It was not only done to fill out our language skills, but to also make it less likely that we would start screaming and more that we would sit and aggressively sign when we wanted more food. As an adult, I think it’s brilliant, but I also think that giving children the ability to communicate, especially before they can speak, is incredibly useful and enriching.

There was a section in this book that I have not stopped thinking about since I read it. The headmistress of a school for the Deaf is enumerating her reasons for why sign language is helpful and not harmful to learn. She says that nobody bats an eye at children learning both, say, English and French; they praise parents for raising a bilingual child. However, some think that teaching a child sign language will somehow hinder their oral language skills, rather than bolster their knowledge and understanding of the world around them.

Throughout the book, there are some minimal lessons on signing, ASL grammar, and Deaf history and culture, sprinkled throughout the story. They teach about Martha’s Vineyard, where the community had significantly more Deaf individuals than the typical population, leading to high instances of ASL usage among the entire community, even between hearing individuals. They taught about the Deaf President Now! protests, which helped lead to the Americans with Disabilities Act passage. There are sections on sign names, jokes and puns in sign language, and questions on how deep ableism goes.

I thought the book gave a wonderful combination of information and an interesting story. The characters in the book provide a wide variety of Deafness—children of Deaf adults (CODAs), hearing-impaired individuals with and without implants, fully Deaf children with hearing parents, Deaf children with Deaf parents—and shows that there are setbacks with each situation, but there are also beautiful possibilities. It shows that Deafness is a spectrum, but there are so many ways to work towards equity and make the world a more inviting place. It made me think a lot about my own personal biases and gaps in knowledge. I hope to keep learning.

Summary (Spoilers!)

The story starts with February, the headmistress of the River Valley School for the Deaf, dealing with a teacher’s nightmare—three of her students have gone missing, leaving their phones behind. Angry parents are already descending on her for losing their children.

Six months prior to the disappearances, we meet Charlie Serrano, a Deaf girl with parents who have recently gotten divorced. Charlie is placed into the primary care of her father, with some visitation to her mother. Her mother had placed her in the typical educational system, and she had started “acting out”; her father enrolls her at River Valley, and also signs the both of them up for sign language classes to take together.

Charlie realizes immediately that she is far behind everyone else at the school, not knowing any sign language. She is overwhelmed learning ASL, Deaf history and culture, and the nuances of life at RVSD. She has also been experiencing some discomfort and pain with her cochlear implant, a device that has never given her much comfort or support; she only has it because her mother demanded it and kept her from learning to sign.

February lives with her wife Mel and her Deaf mother, who has dementia that has been worsening. She and her mother have always been incredibly close. February also learns from the superintendent that RVSD will be shutting down after the school year. Not only will she be losing her job and her school-owned house, but she will also have to deal with her students being sent to hearing schools, meaning they will face even more ableism and oralism. She decides to keep the news from Mel until she feels the time is right, and the teachers are not supposed to find out until a meeting in the spring.

Charlie starts to learn ASL and assimilate into life at RVSD. Her roommate, Kayla, is initially distant, but as Charlie learns to sign, they grow closer. Charlie also meets Austin Workman, a student at RVSD and a fifth-generation Deaf person. His father is hearing, but works as an interpreter, and his mother is pregnant. February assigns Austin to give Charlie a tour around RVSD, since he has been here for years and his family also attended. He immediately falls for her, spurred even more by his recent breakup with popular girl Gabriella.

February and Mel decide to house February’s mother in a nursing home when her dementia worsens. Austin’s mother gives birth, and they realize that the baby, Skylar, is hearing; Austin resents his father for being so excited and speaking/singing to the baby. However, Sky starts to lose her hearing almost immediately and they are told that she will be Deaf soon. Austin’s father was the interpreter at the meeting where February and he learned that RVSD would be closing; knowing this, Sky’s parents start to consider fitting Sky with a cochlear implant. Austin and his Deaf grandparents are deeply offended and hurt, thinking that implants are just a tool to make hearing people feel better.

Charlie and her parents deal with a visit from Charlie’s maternal grandmother, a very proper and judgmental woman. Her mother tends to drink heavily when her grandmother is in town. During their night, Charlie accidentally signs something to her father, and her grandmother notices. However, she isn’t upset at all; rather, her grandmother is thrilled that she’s learning. Charlie’s mother gets drunk and when her grandmother leaves, her mother turns her vitriol towards Charlie.

On Thanksgiving, February receives a call from the nursing home and learns that her mother had had a stroke and was near death. She rushes to the home and is able to stay with her mother for a little while before she passes away. February is immediately bereft and finds solace talking to Wanda, another teacher at RVSD and a past fling of hers, which causes Mel to grow incredibly jealous and cold towards February.

Charlie grows closer to Austin, but still goes to see Slash, real name Kyle, a boy from her old school with whom she had been romantically involved. He’s older than her, in a band, and surrounded with a variety of punk and anti-establishment musicians who start to “fight back” against the Man with graffiti, fireworks, and eventually the building of some pipe bombs.

During a family dinner, Charlie passes out and is brought to the doctor; she is having debilitating headaches, possibly due to her faulty cochlear implant. She has also been part of stage crew for the RVSD production of Peter Pan, with Austin playing the lead. During one of their performances, she starts to have blurry vision and a splitting headache; she stumbles onto the stage and collapses, waking up in the hospital. She learns there that they removed her implant, leaving behind a partially shaved head and a nasty scar. Her mother asks the doctor about implanting her on the other side of her head, and Charlie is infuriated.

Charlie meets Eliot, Austin’s mysterious and older roommate at RVSD who has a prominent scar on the side of his face. There have been rumors about him around RVSD for years but nobody knows what happened. Austin, having heard about RVSD’s closing from his dad, tells them the news, and they are frustrated. Charlie, though, has just learned about the Deaf President Now! protests, and forms a plan to stage a similar protest.

Eliot drives them to The Gas Can, the abandoned place where Slash and his friends live, and on the way, he tells them about what happened to him. He and his parents had been involved in a horrible car accident that killed his father. In response, his mother became incredibly religious; one night, she forced Eliot to come with her to a “Revival”, where the reverend poured molten oil into his ears to help “cure” his deafness, leading to horrific burns. He then sought solace at RVSD.

They get to The Gas Can and plan to take their makeshift bombs to Edge Bionics, the factory that manufactures prosthetics, including cochlear implants, near the school. February and Wanda are out looking for the missing kids and realize that they will head to the factory; they are able to find them and stop them from setting the bombs.

Eliot, Austin, and Charlie head back to RVSD, and a week later, Slash and the other punks carry out the bombing. Austin and Eliot hear the news and send a text to tell Charlie, using the phrase graffitied across RVSD: silence is golden.

See The Signs

One of my favorite parts of this book is how seamlessly it weaves educational lessons in with a compelling story. While it’s difficult to portray signs on paper, especially signs that require movement, I still feel like I learned enough to have a starting point. The lessons are also not all serious—there was one page in particular that shows a variety of quite lewd signs, which I found hilarious.

I also love that it did not shy away from some difficult and nuanced conversations. It was not just informational on the intricacies of Deaf culture and how ableism affects Deaf individuals; there were a few sections with discussions showing the differences of opinion even with Deaf communities and between generations. Austin’s family in particular provided fascinating insight into how vibrant Deaf culture is and can be.

The book does not tie up all the loose ends that are found throughout its story. By the end of the book, February and Mel are still having some marital issues, increased by the loss of their home and February’s possibly still-lingering feelings for Wanda; Charlie and her mother are fighting over differences in opinion over her implant, and her father is waffling between them; Austin’s family has to figure out whether or not to implant Sky, and whether the affront to Deaf culture is worth a potential minimizing of her future difficulty or bullying as she gets older. RVSD is still closing. It doesn’t offer a hopeful view, but I like the realism of it. There was not much resolution. The growth, then, was how the characters got to know each other and became more tuned to their own culture and history.

Parts of it were a little difficult to follow, especially in the beginning, but that is something that can be overcome. I thought it was well-done how clear it was when someone was speaking versus using sign, and how each signer was identifiable. The chapters, too, are noted by signs to indicate whose perspective we’re focused on, which I thought was a great way to immerse us in their story.

It felt quite inspiring. I’ve found myself finger-spelling quite a lot after I started reading this book, and I feel myself getting faster. I want to learn ASL better, and become closer at being able to hold real conversations. Maybe I’ll add that to my resolutions list for 2026—I know that there are many resources for me to find and use!

Total pages read so far, 2026: 675

Total books read so far, 2026: 2

Next book: Dark Archives by Megan Rosenbloom

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Your Table Is Ready

Michael Cecchi-Azzolina

288 pages - 2022 - nonfiction, memoir

January 1st, 2026 — January 6th, 2026

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

What was the best meal you ever had? Would you pick the one that was in a restaurant so decadent, it was surely a one-time experience? What about birthday dinners you’ve had, where the waitstaff brings out a little treat complete and sings to you, drawing the attention of the other patrons? Would you maybe go for a meal at home with your family, one that you had cooked together?

I don’t really know how to answer this question. I have eaten some wonderful meals by my standards, most of which are memorable for the people rather than the food itself. I used to think our local hibachi restaurant was the height of luxury (although I got to visit again over the holiday break, and I think it has a whole new charm as an adult).

Maybe my favorite meal was the one I got with my family in Spain. It was just after Christmas, and we had been wandering around Barcelona, I believe, browsing a street market, when someone mentioned that they were hungry. We stopped in at a tapas restaurant. I was the resident order-er, since I spoke the most Spanish out of all of us (but am by no means fluent).

I asked if the waiter had a favorite meal, and he essentially pointed out the entire menu, maybe twelve plates, and somehow, through a combination of the allure of all the dishes plus the charm of our waiter, we ended up ordering everything on their tapas menu. It was over $200 worth of food, which is not too bad for a table of 5 in the US, but is rather rare in Spain.

I still remember trying all those dishes, the sun warm overhead in December, the breeze cooling off a perfectly comfortable afternoon. The anchovies there were my favorite, and we had octopus and squid-ink rice and a small portion of paella. I don’t recall being disappointed with a single thing there. (To be fair, though, I was rarely disappointed in Spain. It was all delicious.)

There was something about that afternoon and the nonchalance of it. The air in Spain, where we were, carried some sort of sedative. Everyone just seemed so much calmer there. It was the first time my family had taken a trip outside of the US together, and it was phenomenal.

Recently I had a wonderful meal at a local restaurant where I got to sit at the chefs’ station and watch them work. It was possibly the most fancy I’ve ever felt at a restaurant. For my birthday last year, I went to a local restaurant with my roommate, and they brought me a candle in a holder shaped like a frog and sang to me, and it was the most wonderful surprise. As a kid, I remember going to a fondue restaurant for my and my brother’s birthday and getting so excited to pick out my color of fondue forks and the chocolate we got at the end.

A few years ago, I started a tradition where I would go to my favorite pho restaurant and eat a bowl every full moon while I reflected on my past month. It was lovely, but stopped after I graduated. Now, though, I restarted it, with a twist—I pick a nearby restaurant that I’ve been meaning to try at random from my list, ask my waiter if they have a favorite dish, and order that with something else that sounds delicious. So far I have not had a meal that I have disliked, even after trying some dishes that I don’t think I ever would have thought to try.

The experience of eating in a restaurant is one that I have come to really appreciate and enjoy, alone or with others. I am by no means a foodie, but I can definitely respect the theatrics and artistry of it all. There’s a reason “The Bear” was so popular—we all understand good food, and we all can admire how lovely and tantalizing a well-made dish can seem, even through a screen.

Reading this book was fascinating and exciting, especially since I do enjoy learning about the world of fine dining and how everything works behind the scenes. Michael Cecchi-Azzolina takes the reader through every experience, from the soda counter at a local shop all the way to the most renowned restaurant in the country, and all that’s in between.

I would love to have an experience eating in one of the upscale restaurants he mentions, mostly towards the end of the book. I recognize that it is an incredible privilege. Even if I could afford it, the process of securing a reservation at these types of places is excruciating. But one day, I might just get the chance.

Serving

Part of the fun of this book, I admit, is the name-dropping. If you aren’t in the restaurant business or culinary world, many of the names might not mean much to you; I was Googling a lot of the people that showed up with fanfare. But there were quite a few names scattered throughout of celebrities that Michael had served over the years, and it is fun to see names you know. It’s also nerve-wracking, knowing that someone you might admire is horrible to the waitstaff. Luckily, all the names I recognized and liked were described as being wonderful to the workers, which is even more of a plus.

At times, the book is incredibly raunchy. Especially in the earlier days, there is a lot of talk of the sex, drugs, and rock & roll that went on behind the scenes of restaurants. Michael does not shy away from the ugly parts. The 80s had a much different culture than today, and I think it is exemplified in this book as a sort of time capsule of what the extremity of that time was like.

I do not like to pick at the technicality of writing itself usually, but there were some parts where sentences were just a little too convoluted. I think Michael is a good writer, but I had to reread a few paragraphs a couple times to make sure that I had understood what he was trying to say.

The stories in the book were funny, heartfelt, frustrating, exciting, beautiful, gross—it really ran the gamut. I especially liked the ending, when Michael was allowed to come on stage when Le Coucou won a James Beard award. It was fascinating to see how far he had come from his childhood working the soda counter, and how much he loved the journey getting there.

After this book, Michael officially opened Cecchi’s Bar and Grill in New York City in July 2023. Based on his stories and what he appreciates about the industry, I have a feeling that it’s a wonderful place to dine. Maybe one day I’ll be able to stop in. I’d love to see how he runs a place himself, rather than being one of the many staff members making it work. I have high hopes—he has an appreciation that goes beyond just success or money; it seems like he really wants people to have a beautiful experience when they dine in one of his establishments.

Total pages read so far, 2026: 288

Total books read so far, 2026: 1

Next book: True Biz by Sara Novic

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The Kitchen Front

Jennifer Ryan

407 pages - 2021 - historical fiction

December 21st, 2025 — December 30th, 2025

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐½

Since I moved out to live on my own, I have really enjoyed learning how to cook more than just boiling water for pasta. I’m by no means a chef, but I’ve found that I am getting better at determining what a balance of flavors is lacking or how to enhance a dish. Recently I innovated some spicy crab bites and have been making a pretty mean seared tuna steak with an olive crumble.

Part of what makes cooking so fun, though, is when there are people there to try it. A friend of mine came over a few times this winter and we made first butternut squash soup, followed by our attempt at French onion soup (despite the two of us, and my roommate/taste-tester, never having eaten it). I got to make my tuna steaks for my family over this holiday break, and either they’re really good liars, or they really quite enjoyed them.

I also think that my palate is an oddball. I’m not a fan of cheese, or tomatoes, and I’m not the biggest lover of bread, all of which is sacrilege to so many people. But I love seafood of all kinds, pretty much. (Sometimes the cat and I will share a can of tinned sardines.) I’ll eat any sushi as long as it doesn’t have cream cheese, and even then, I might be able to be convinced. My favorite meat is eel, which, when done right, is heavenly, flaky, rich without being overpowering, absolutely delicious.

I love getting to try new things, especially in places that are new to me. I have a tradition now where each full moon, I go to a restaurant that I’ve been meaning to try but haven’t gotten around to, and I ask the waiter what their favorite dish is and taste it. So far, I’ve loved everything—I don’t think I ever would have tried beef tartare without this self-challenge, but it was delicious.

Naturally, a good amount of the food descriptions throughout this book were less than appealing. While I would be interested to try whale meat like they have in the story, I’m not sure I’ll be seeking it out any time soon. But it is wonderful to hear all the innovations, especially using things that are typically overlooked. There were quite a few dishes spread through the tale that I would really love to try.

And one of the best parts of this book—there are recipes to accompany it! I would love to attempt making the Cornish pasties that are described, and because it’s included, it is completely feasible. I found myself taking pictures of nearly all the recipes for dinners at later dates.

I don’t think I’ll ever be good enough to win a cooking competition, but that’s not what I’m doing it for. Obviously everyone needs to eat, and I like being able to eat things that I have created from scratch with my own hands. It’s such a unique and exciting feeling. Hopefully some of these recipes will leave me feeling satiated and satisfied.

Summary (Spoilers!)

In England during World War II, food rationing is becoming more and more difficult, and people are having to make do with less and less. A radio program, The Kitchen Front, airs to help people come up with new and creative ideas on how to use their less-than-appealing wartime rations, like whale meat and offal.

The Kitchen Front is presented by Ambrose Hart, but the program has received some feedback saying that a woman’s voice might be better suited or at least would elevate the program. To decide his co-presenter, Ambrose announces a cooking competition, where whoever wins after three courses will join him on his show.

Four women enter the competition, and the book is written from their perspectives, with each chapter title indicating the point of view. Audrey Landon is a widow, a mother of three boys, and the owner of a bakery business selling pies out of her dilapidated home. Her husband, Matthew, was an artist, but had been presumed dead after his plane was shot down during the war. Audrey is struggling to pay the bills on the house. She had asked for a loan from her sister, Gwendoline, who had married into a wealthy life.

Lady Gwendoline Strickland had married Sir Reginald Strickland, bringing her immediately into a higher class than that of her family. She and Audrey had had a falling out; Gwendoline was always put down as the younger daughter, and their mother made it exceedingly clear that Audrey was the favorite. To retaliate, she had entered into a wealthy but loveless marriage and become a lady, taking care of a stately home and presenting wartime cooking demonstrations to other high-class wives. She wants to enter the competition to prove that she can do it, and to show her husband that she does have some merit.

At Fenley Hall, where the Stricklands live, Nell Brown works as a kitchen maid and as an apprentice to the head cook there, Mrs. Quince. Nell is incredibly shy and soft-spoken, having grown up in an orphanage and started working when she was only about ten years old. Mrs. Quince pushes for her to enter, and they join the competition as a team.

The final competitor is Zelda Dupont, an evacuee and former hotel chef from London who has been working at the Fenley Pie Factory, owned by Sir Strickland. Zelda dreams of being a head chef one day and making it big in the restaurant business, but she has faced difficulty, other restaurateurs telling her that a woman would never be a head chef. She also has fallen pregnant from a man who left her, meaning she is much more likely to receive criticism and jeering.

Gwendoline, in an effort to sabotage Audrey’s preparation for the competition, arranges for a pregnant evacuee from London to stay with her in Audrey’s crumbling home, knowing that she will not be able to afford it. When the woman arrives, Audrey realizes that it’s Zelda, whom she had met at the introductory meeting of the competitors. She is reluctant at first, but cannot turn away a woman in need and takes her in.

Nell and Mrs. Quince work on their starter dish and Nell goes to Fenley Farm to get a fresh hare. While there, she meets an Italian Prisoner of War named Paolo, who has been conscripted to work at Fenley Farm. He catches a hare for her and they flirt, growing close very quickly. Right before the first round begins, Audrey receives a telegram that says her husband’s remains were found and buried.

Audrey wins the first round, Nell comes in second with her hare, Zelda is penalized for using black-market scallops for her too-fancy dish, and Gwendoline comes in last place. Her husband is angry with her, so Gwendoline tries to bribe Mrs. Quince into helping her for the main course round. She refuses, so she seeks the help from a renowned London chef, Jim Denton—who happens to be the father of Zelda’s unborn child. Mrs. Quince, while teaching Nell one day, faints and is sent to the hospital.

Gwendoline finds that Jim Denton is an incredible flirt, and they begin an affair slowly. Nell and Paolo are able to spend an afternoon together cooking in the woods, him showing her how to make his grandmother’s famous cacciatore. However, they are caught, and Paolo is sent to another location. Nell also sees Gwen and Jim kissing and is threatened by the lady; however, the butler sees them, too.

Nell wins the second round of the contest with Paolo’s cacciatore. Audrey and Zelda land in the middle, but Gwendoline is given last place once again after she could not answer questions about the dish, and Ambrose deduced that she had extra help. She returns home to Sir Strickland destroying the house and her belongings, where he abuses her and tells her that he knows about the affair. Nell saves her with a knife and they both head to Audrey’s house.

Audrey and Gwendoline air their childhood grievances and find that they still have a great deal in common. Gwendoline, Nell, and Zelda go to Fenley Hall to gather some of Gwen’s personal items and to get ahold of Sir Strickland’s ledgers, which detail some shady business happening at his factories and with his rations. They are able to all testify against Strickland, and he is taken into custody.

Nell visits Mrs. Quince at the hospital, but she passes away, and Nell is heartbroken. After grieving, she decides to make a rather lavish feast for the funeral, including Mrs. Quince’s famous pie.

The final round of the contest sees all of the women arrive talking and laughing, a big change from the quiet beginning. Zelda wins with her extravagant croquembouche, having used some clever substitutes to stick within rationing rules. However, Nell received the highest total of points, and she is awarded the title and the radio show job.

Paolo is returned to the Fenley Farm and is reunited with Nell. They have to still be careful, but they are finally able to see each other again. Zelda gives birth with Audrey’s help but refuses to hold the baby at first, wanting to give it up for adoption. However, she changes her mind when the lady from the adoption agency arrives. The four women, still living in the house together, say they will all raise Madeleine. Gwen informs Audrey that when they were gathering her things, they also found the deed to Audrey’s house and the loan agreement, and now it is conveniently ‘missing’, meaning she has no more debts to pay and owns the house fully.

Gwen had proposed an idea that the four women all slowly come around on, Zelda taking the longest—she thinks they should open a new restaurant in Fenley. After some strategic planning, the restaurant called The Four Friends opens to a wonderful reception, featuring recipes from the contest.

Making Do

I admit that I was nervous at the beginning of the story, seeing as it is a story about four women who are in competition. I don’t love stories of women fighting with one another and trying to tear each other down. However, this was quite the opposite, and it became clear that it would be very early on.

The book starts off with Audrey’s story, so naturally, I was rooting for her at first. While I was not rooting against Nell, and I was only slightly against Zelda, I was curious to see how Gwendoline could possibly be redeemable.

The beauty of a split perspective story is that any character could, potentially, be redeemed. I think it was done masterfully in this story. Audrey sets up our bias, but we, as readers, learn to question it early on, and the characters learn to question it later. I loved seeing them all grow closer as friends, to the point where they’re all living and working and laughing together at the end.

It felt very much like my favorite Harvest Moon game, “A Tale of Two Towns”, where the mayors of two towns across a mountain from one another are fighting a decades-long feud. You, as the player, have to build rapport with both towns through a variety of means, including a cooking competition that is held between them, and slowly get them to become friendly once more. It had a similar vibe of being a lower-stakes competition, more of a challenge than a war.

I found myself reacting to a good few sections of the book as well. I was smiling at Nell’s reuniting with Paolo; my heart was racing when Sir Strickland was confronting Gwendoline about her “affair”. I think the characters were well-defined, and having the story told from multiple perspectives made me care even deeper about each of them. By the end, I would have been happy for any of them winning the competition.

I think it was a much more feel-good book than I was expecting. Most books involving the war are not upbeat, of course. It’s a story of triumph in the face of pending doom every day, and one of finding and reuniting with family, both given and chosen. While it may be the tiniest bit far-fetched, it was incredibly entertaining. Maybe I’ll try to make Zelda’s winning profiteroles someday soon.

Total pages read so far, 2025: 14,873

Total books read so far, 2025: 41

Next book: Your Table Is Ready by Michael Cecchi-Azzolina

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Odds On

Michael Crichton (as John Lange)

278 pages - 1966 - mystery, thriller

December 18th, 2025 — December 20th, 2025

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐½

Jurassic Park has been my favorite book since I read it while I was in high school. I thought that along with the brilliant idea of it and the excitement that comes with dinosaurs running amok, it was a masterpiece of storytelling and suspense. I had never read a book that dealt with storylines like that and wove them together so seamlessly.

I have been trying to read Michael Crichton when I can, but I have never gone back to the beginning. This book is Michael Crichton’s first novel, which he published under a pseudonym because he did not want his professors at Harvard Medical School to know that he was “wasting time” writing books. As someone who has written books themself, I cannot imagine doing so while in medical school, much less getting it published. I think from the beginning, that shows that Michael Crichton has talent.

After reading this book, I think I prefer Crichton’s science fiction stories more than his mysteries, but even from the beginning, I think he mastered suspense. The heist in this book is so clearly set up. We, as readers, are primed to think that it’s going to go wrong, and he uses that to his advantage at every turn.

It is definitely an outdated book. It’s unsurprising, since it was written almost 60 years ago; there are some tough-to-read descriptions of women, and multiple uses of a rather derogatory racial slur. But I do think that it still has merit, if only to see where Crichton came from and where he ended his decades-long and quite successful career.

Summary (Spoilers!)

Three men are headed, solo, to the Hotel Reina in Spain, which they are planning to rob together. One of the men, Steven Jencks, has used his computer to calculate the odds of how a robbery will go based on a variety of factors. He’s found the perfect scenario, with a chance of 89% minimum that the heist will succeed, provided most things go well.

Each of the men decides to get close to a woman within the hotel to gather more information. They are also hoping to get to know as many other patrons as possible, so that they can get a feel of who has brought traveler’s checks, money, or jewels to the hotel, and who is not really worth their time.

Annette, the hotel receptionist, cares deeply about the state of the hotel and often works after hours. She is initially hesitant to be seen fraternizing with patrons on the clock, but she becomes less restrained as the book goes on, getting drinks with Bryan in the hotel bar.

Cynthia is a rather promiscuous young woman who also likes to partake in marijuana. She and Miguel grow closer as time goes on, and he starts to have to choose between meeting with her and meeting with the other men to plan their crime.

Jenny is rich and proud, and she has come to Spain with her potential future fiance, Peter, a pimply young man who is definitely not “man” enough for her. She grows incredibly tired of him constantly begging her for more—they do not even sleep in the same room—and she begins seeing Jencks, which causes Peter to grow more and more jealous.

There are some other characters at the hotel. The manager is aloof and unpredictable, coming in a few times despite telling Annette that he would be taking the day off and putting wrenches in Jencks’s plans. There is a man who has some kind of police or military background, sometimes going by Alan Brady, who follows Jencks on his trip towards the hotel. There is a rich older woman who is absolutely obsessed with bananas and sells marijuana discretely.

Jencks details his plan to the other two men, saying that they will have a small window to get everything done. He will rig up some bombs to blow up the bridge, stranding everybody at the hotel, which is on an island. There will also be a fire in the nightclub to distract the hotel staff, and the electricity will briefly go out. During that time, Jencks will rob the large hotel safe, while the other two fleece rooms of patrons that they have deemed to be wealthy and may potentially have jewels or money in their rooms.

They have also hired a taxi driver that will slam a door and drive away from the hotel right before the bridge blows, which will hopefully move the blame away from them and onto the taxi driver or whoever ordered it.

Most of the book is the set-up, as well as some rather detailed scenes of the flings happening within the hotel. When the actual heist begins, though, there are some immediate flaws. They did not realize that there would be a group of police officers there for some sort of party, which causes Jencks to get nervous. The bridge blows, and the electricity goes off, but when Jencks looks into the hotel safe, it is completely empty.

The other two have similar luck, finding absolutely nothing in the rooms they check. When they get together to regroup, they realize that the hotel has already been robbed. They confront one of the women, who goes and alerts the old woman obsessed with bananas, Miss Shaw—she shows up at their room with a gun and a briefcase. There is a scuffle, and the briefcase ends up falling down a staircase, landing in the lobby and opening to reveal that it is full of other patrons’ jewels and money.

Jencks and Miss Shaw talk while at the hotel bar, and they compliment each other on their heisting. Miss Shaw ends up giving Jencks her card, saying that she would be happy to work with him one day. He is also approached by Jenny, who has left Peter and wants to come with him to Rome and wherever else he goes. Eventually, he agrees.

Odds and Ends

There is no doubt that this book is horribly outdated. All of the talk of the computing power is laughable now, as well as some of the considerations they have to make with punch cards and other technologies. Those are some of the more entertaining and harmless pieces.

On the other side, there are some descriptions of the women in the book that are downright hard to read now. They are very sexualized, objectified, and reduced. I’m also not the biggest fan of sex scenes, and this book was rife with them, which could be a positive or a negative depending on your preferences. There were also a few uses of an incredibly derogative slur. Sure, the book is old, but I do not think it has a place in this story.

All that being said, I thought that this book was quite fun. I think it does a great job of setting up how “perfect” the heist is, and as a reader, I think it’s intuitive that it’s going to go horribly wrong. Most of the book is setup, and the last one or two chapters are the actual action, but I don’t think it felt particularly slow.

The characterization is also relatively well-done. I thought that the three heisters were strong in their motives, and the variety of secondary characters, particularly the hotel manager and Miss Shaw, were entertaining. The women could have been more individualized and definitely could have had more agency, but again, I recognize that this is an outdated book written by a white man, so I did not have the highest expectations.

It’s exciting to see how far Michael Crichton went in his career. I can feel the beginnings of his style in this book, which eventually led to incredible stories like The Andromeda Strain or the masterpiece Jurassic Park. I’m mostly excited to read more of his work and see that style develop more and more over time. Even with this criticism I have, I think he is a phenomenal author.

If you’re a mystery buff, maybe this one is not the best for you. The heist, at its core, is entertaining, but there are quite a few holes, and honestly the ending felt a bit rushed and like it was not a resolution at all. However, I thought it was fun, light, and personally I like to see (mildly incompetent) men get their comeuppance.

Total pages read so far, 2025: 14,466

Total books read so far, 2025: 40

Next book: The Kitchen Front by Jennifer Ryan

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Empire of Pain

Patrick Radden Keefe

537 pages - 2021 - nonfiction, true crime

December 8th, 2025 — December 16th, 2025

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

This Thanksgiving, I experienced a family first, at least in my memory—the oft-sitcommed visit to the ER. Luckily it was not because I sliced a finger carving the turkey or got injured playing flag football in the backyard. I had woken up with severe chest/upper abdominal pain, and was diagnosed, after some tests, with gallstones.

For now, there is no real “treatment”, except to wait for the day I can get it removed. Thankfully, it isn’t infected, so there’s no real rush, but the doctors essentially told me that I’ll be okay until I’m not. Until it’s removed, all I have to do is take some pain meds when it gets bad again and hope the pain goes away.

Pain meds are everywhere. I keep some in my bag, in case a midday headache comes on strong or someone else is suffering. I know plenty of others who do the same. Most of them are over-the-counter, but there are bound to be prescription meds floating around that are far too easy to access, and that’s not including anything illicit, bought off the streets.

Pain medicine is not necessarily anything new. Even the use of opium, derived from poppies, has been recorded as far back as 8,000 years ago in ancient Sumer. But the ease of access that came with inventions like OxyContin opened a door that can never be closed again.

This book starts with the history of the Sackler family as far back as Isaac, the father who instilled in his sons the idea that fortunes can come and go, but a tarnished name can never be fixed. All three sons of his became doctors, but Arthur, the oldest, showed a penchant for advertising. With his help, the McAdams company started marketing medications directly to prescribers. Throughout Arthur’s life, he refused to have his name explicitly linked to his endeavors, choosing instead to work covertly behind the scenes and silently reap the benefits.

However, the Sackler’s fortunes continued to grow, Arthur’s especially, and they started donating to museums, schools, and various other institutions, which led to their names being placarded onto walls and over doorways. Arthur filled houses with expensive art pieces that he collected before he passed. There was quite a fight over Arthur’s assets that he left behind, and eventually his children sold his shares in the pharmaceutical company Purdue Frederick to the other two major shareholders—Arthur’s brothers, Mortimer and Raymond.

With this money from Arthur’s estate, the two put funding into the research on pain medicines. Purdue Frederick eventually developed MS Contin, a pill form of morphine that allowed for slow-release medication, and then OxyContin, the same type of pill but with oxycodone instead of morphine. They also used Arthur’s innovative techniques, marketing heavily to doctors and prescribers; sales reps received commission based on the milligrams of OxyContin they were pushing. Some doctors gave out free thirty-day supplies of Oxy for their patients to try, similar to what they did with heroin a decade earlier; after thirty days, many patients, already addicted, came back begging for more.

Immediately it was clear that OxyContin was heavily susceptible to abuse, but the Sacklers through Purdue consistently denied this claim, stating that only addicts would abuse the pills. They said that, since the pills released the medicine slowly over twelve hours, anybody taking more within those time frames was simply using it wrong; however, multiple studies, even early on in the distribution, showed that it was more of an eight-hour window, leading quickly to an increase in pain or even withdrawal symptoms, increasing abuse potential.

By 2010, Purdue and the Sacklers could no longer ignore the opioid crisis. They decided to reformulate the pills. This new formulation was much harder to crush into a powder, which was the main method of abuse, since it could then be snorted or injected. However, this new formulation meant that those who were already addicted now had no way to get their fix legally, so many people started turning to street drugs like heroin, which greatly increased overdose rates.

There were quite a few loud objectors to the Sacklers and their complicity in the opioid crisis. Nan Goldin held a few protests in art galleries that displayed her photography, saying that although she was able to overcome years of addiction, she was speaking for those who could not. She organized “die-ins” where people would lie still among empty pill bottles to show the toll that these seemingly safe medications had on people. Domenic Esposito installed a giant opioid spoon in front of the Purdue building which was promptly removed in the morning. Frank Huntley built a skeleton out of his own fifteen years’ worth of OxyContin pill bottles.

Museums and other institutions started refusing donations from the Sacklers and taking their names off. By 2017, the Sacklers could not ignore the public’s worsening opinion of them. Eventually they were sued, but they were able to use the Purdue company as a scapegoat, escaping any financial consequences themselves. Despite a worth of over $13 billion, the Sacklers had to pay a mere $225 million to essentially get off scot-free.

To this day, the Sacklers maintain that they are not responsible at all for the opioid crisis. They say publicly that they did not know that OxyContin was addictive, despite many studies and correspondences (from within the company) that state otherwise. The author also notes that they most likely were using intimidation tactics on him and Nan Goldin, among others, sending men in dark vans to sit outside their houses and watch them before sneakily driving away.

The book mentioned that by 2010, nearly 40% of Americans knew someone who had overdosed from opioids. Since I started reading this book, I have seen an episode of television where someone overdosed on Oxy, and another show where someone nearly relapsed and said that Oxy was their drug of choice. I saw a birthday tribute for a young woman who overdosed about five years ago, with whom I went to high school. It is truly everywhere.

I can understand the want to evade blame, for yourself and your family. But it is clear, from the extensive research that the author did, that Purdue—and, by extension, many of the Sacklers—knew early on that OxyContin was dangerous, and yet they were able to deceive the FDA into approving the drug in the first place with heavily cherry-picked studies and testimonies. At this point, knowing what we know, I personally think that it is clear the Sacklers hold a great responsibility within this whole issue.

Obviously, there is not much to be done now. The author compares the advent of OxyContin to the opening of Pandora’s box. I have always believed Pandora to be naive and innocent, a victim of curiosity. I believe, too, that the Sacklers were motivated solely by money and power. They could have taken much more care opening the box, and they did it anyway with little to no regard for their fellow humans. Their lawyers say that there is unseen proof that would “exonerate” them, but I argue, where is that proof? Why, after the barrage of negative press, would they choose to hold back the positives? I think the likelihood it really exists is incredibly slim.

The opioid crisis may not have been entirely preventable. As I mentioned, opium has been used for over 8,000 years, meaning people have abused it for most likely that same amount of time. But the Sacklers invented something that was essentially addiction in a bottle. People’s lives were ruined because they were in pain and were prescribed something that changed them forever. Families fell apart. Mothers lost children. It is horrific, and it is still happening today.

I wish that the Sacklers would take any responsibility for their role in this, but clearly that will not happen, and it will also not do anything to reverse the damage done. The existence of OxyContin cannot be erased, and the sickness of addiction that was spread is one that is exceedingly difficult to cure. But I think if the right people work towards better care—safer distribution of medicines, detox and rehab centers, easier access to healthcare, less stigma for those suffering from addiction—the crisis can be greatly reduced.

Some may feel horribly helpless—I know I do. Addiction is something that can affect anyone if it hits at the right time. But as individuals, you can carry naloxone, which can reverse opioid overdoses and is incredibly easy to administer (and often given out for free by local distribution programs). Knowing the signs of an overdose can save lives. It will be a monumental effort to reduce this crisis, but it is not impossible.

Total pages read so far, 2025: 14,188

Total books read so far, 2025: 39

Next book: Odds On by John Lange (Michael Crichton)

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The Dispossessed

Ursula K. Le Guin

365 pages - 1974 - science fiction

November 5th, 2025 — December 7th, 2025

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

November is historically a busy month—not just for me, but for everyone. The holidays really start to kick into gear, and there’s so much travel and planning to deal with. On top of that, too, every year I participate in a self-inflicted challenge to write 50,000 words of a novel, starting on November 1st and ending November 30th. That’s an average of 1,667 words a day, and usually I finish with at least a few days to spare, but this year I hit it right at the end, down to the wire.

This November was particularly difficult in some capacities. I became the family member who visits the ER during the Thanksgiving weekend (a story for another time, surely, as I’ll be writing an ode to the organ I will no longer have soon). I dealt with what I originally thought were unrelated health issues, on top of the mental health decline that comes with a near-complete lack of sunlight every day.

But I also had a November filled with laughter. I saw one of my favorite podcasts perform live. I got to celebrate my cousin who lives much too far away on her new journey into parenthood, and another cousin on their recent engagement. I had a Thanksgiving dinner at home with my parents for the first time in what feels like many years, and it was delicious and delightful.

All this to say, I was a bit too busy to read during the entire month of November.

Having finished The Dispossessed now, though, I am both glad that I saved it for a less busy time and wishing that I had read it sooner. It’s a wonderful commentary on society, and humanity, and living life among people, no matter their backgrounds or social mores.

I think this is a book that benefits from consistent reading. At first, when I was reading between my writing sprints and various family gatherings/travel plans, I did not feel like I was fully immersed in the world. The chapters are long, but this is a book that is bolstered by their depth, not hindered by it. Once I could sit down and read at least a chapter at a time, I really found myself on their planets.

This is the second Le Guin book that I’ve read, and I think that I much prefer her adult-oriented novels to the children’s book I read. She has a wonderful mind, and a beautiful way of putting ideas into words, but I think her ideas are too complex not to be explored fully, as she did in this story. I hope to continue reading more of her work, particularly more within this universe, because I found myself really enamored with the characters.

Summary (Spoilers!)

The story of The Dispossessed revolves around Shevek, a renowned physicist who lives on Anarres. His planet is ruled by anarchy and communism, where money is not even a concept and the burden of work is shouldered by everyone. The book starts with Shevek journeying on a ship to Urras, the “moon” of Anarres, a planet ruled by capitalism and classism. He is the first person to travel between these worlds.

There are two storylines involving Shevek: one where we are seeing the events leading up to his journey to Urras, and the other showing the aftermath of his landing on the other planet.

Shevek is amused by the idea of clothes just for sleeping in, as well as the lack of women on board and the idea of money. He only has the clothes on his back. He is greeted by many smiling faces and is brought to a party where he meets chancellors and other wealthy individuals. Afterwards, he is shown to a room that is his, a concept unfamiliar to him.

On Anarres, we learn about how children are raised, and how his mother Rulag had left them when Shevek was two. Shevek got in trouble at school quite a few times by “egoizing” and engaging too much in class discussion. He and his classmates once created a jail, and immediately had to face the reality of the horrors that humans can commit upon other humans.

Shevek falls ill during his first day on Urras, possibly due to an allergy to the air. He is visited by the scientist Dr. Atro, with whom Shevek had corresponded by letter for years. Atro gives him the Seo Oen award, a cube of solid gold, which he had earned for publications he had written on Anarres.

When he finally is feeling better, he goes to museums, the University, and many other facilities. He finds that they are all hierarchical and male-dominated; repeatedly they say that science is not “women’s work”, which confuses Shevek. He gets to Abbenay, the largest city on Urras, and learns about tensions between Urras and Anarres that are kept from boiling over by the trade of materials.

In the past on Anarres, Shevek had been given a room at the Central Institute of the Sciences, sleeping in a room with a single bed for the first time in his life. He also was asked to meet with Sabul the scientist the next morning, who Shevek finds to be cruel and brusque. He doesn’t work well with others and says he won’t work with Shevek until he learns the Iotic language. He also doesn’t want Shevek to share any Urrasti physics texts with anyone, because they have a “dangerous knowledge” in them.

Shevek learns Iotic and about half a year later presents Sabul with a paper critiquing Atro’s work. They send the critique on the next freighter to Urras. When he runs into Sabul later, he is presented with a book that includes Shevek’s critique, but it is credited mainly to Sabul, with Shevek getting a small mention. Sabul says the Production and Distribution Coordination, or PDC, won’t send unapproved materials; Shevek realizes that he has become Sabul’s property.

Shevek had fallen ill with a fever and initially refused treatment. When he woke up feeling better, he saw his mother, Rulag, sitting on the end of his bed. She tells him that his father Palat died eight years ago trying to rescue children that had been trapped in rubble after an earthquake. She wants to help Shevek and be in his life; he refuses and says he does not know her at all, but he cries when she leaves.

On Urras, Shevek meets Chifoilisk, a man from Thu, who says that his people are socialists. He wants Shevek to see Thu, but Shevek declines. Chifoilisk, in return, warns that most of the people he’s been with on Urras are agents of the Ioti government and are reporting his actions to the secret police, as well as bugging his rooms and constantly watching them. He tells Shevek not to write down the General Temporal Theory, Shevek’s life’s work and his master theory that is highly sought after, because once it’s written down, it can be stolen. Later that week, Shevek learns taht Chifoilisk was sent back to Thu for “doing something wrong”.

Shevek is invited to stay with a fellow scientist Oiie for a weekend. He finally gets to talk to a woman, Oiie’s wife, and their two children. They are fascinated when he describes Anarres.

On Anarres, Shevek isolated himself. He tried to get closer to Gvarab, a very old physicist, but she was mentally declining and did not recognize him some days. She died soon after. He finds that he enjoys music, and one day runs into his childhood friend Bedap at the Music Syndicate.

Bedap tells Shevek that their other friend, Tirin, repeatedly quit his assigned posts and was eventually assigned to the Asylum. He also mentions that Tirin had been creating anarchist art, meaning the PDC might have driven him to insanity on purpose. Bedap later takes Shevek on a hike with him and his friends, including Takver, whom Shevek does not recognize at first. They are drawn to each other and begin a meaningful partnership.

In Urras, Shevek finds a letter in his coat pocket asking why Shevek is working within a power system that is betraying his world. Shevek stays with Oiie again and meets his sister Vea, who lives in Nio Esseia; they flirt while he walks her to the train station, and he promises he’ll call if he’s ever in town.

Shevek reads some news about a revolution happening in Benbili, where rebels have taken over the capital. He finds out that it’s run by a military dictatorship and A-Io is sending troops to quell the revolution and return a dictator to power. Shevek blows off class and goes to Nio Esseia, realizing that he is trapped on Urras. He meets up with Vea and drinks through their opulent lunch, dinner, and Vea’s party that night.

At the party, Shevek says that Anarres is an ugly world but he still feels like Anarresti are free and Urrasti are imprisoned. He realizes he’s shouting so he excuses himself, and Vea leads him to a bedroom in the palace. She kisses him, and he starts taking it further; she begs him to stop, and he ruins her dress in the process before realizing what he’s doing and running downstairs.

Oiie and Pae arrive to take Shevek home when he gets sick from the drinking. Oiie is happy he was in Nio and not somewhere like Benbili, since there are pamphlets circulating around lower classes about a “Forerunner” arrival who is an empty-handed outcast come to deliver the poor from toil and obscurity. They have started planning strikes and Oiie worries that there will be a revolution soon. Pae asks Oiie if Shevek is a fraud since he hasn’t written the theory yet, and steals a paper on his way out.

Before, on Anarres, the most intense drought comes on, and food shortages start. Takver finds out she is pregnant and is barely able to get enough rations. Shevek tells Takver that Sabul won’t publish his work, and when she insists he offer a co-writing credit, a heavily-edited version of the book is printed and 15 copies are sent to Urras. Shevek slips the original unedited manuscript into a package with a note to send it to Atro.

Takver gives birth to a baby girl named Sadik. The drought continues, and Shevek is posted to an emergency farm draft far away for 60 days. Takver wrote in one letter that she did not see a new job posting for Shevek at the Institute. When Shevek boards a train back to Abbenay, the train gets stuck outside of a town, and the townsfolks ignore the train passengers so they do not have to share their minimal food. He finally gets home to find a letter from Takver saying she had been placed on an indefinite assignment in Rolny, way in the Northeast; there is also a note from Sabul that says he will not be reposted to the Institute. When he finds Sabul later, he says he didn’t recommend Shevek for a teaching post anywhere, since it won’t help the drought or prevent more famine.

Shevek requests a posting near Takver, but the clerk says there aren’t any. He then asks if there are any famine-prevention postings requiring math, and ends up taking a posting in the Southwest, about as far from Takver as possible and within an area called “the Dust”.

On Urras, Shevek is visited by Pae, who says the Ioti and Thuvian forces fought in Benbili but A-Io “liberated” Benbili and reinstated the dictator. He says travel is limited now and Shevek won’t be able to leave campus. Pae also mentions an ansible, an instantaneous communication device, which relies on Shevek’s equations. Shevek works for days isolated, has a breakthrough, and realizes that soon he’ll be able to complete the temporal theory.

Shevek falls ill again, and Efor, his quiet servant, takes care of him. He finally speaks and mentions that his daughter died in a rat-infested hospital reserved for those in poverty like him. Atro visits and talks about the war, saying that poor people are used to being conscripted, and their use is fighting in the war for them. When he leaves, Shevek asks Efor on a piece of paper if there are microphones in the room; he leads them to the bedroom, where there are no microphones or cameras. Efor says running is a trap but leads him to a rebel house in Old Town.

Shevek finds Tuio Maedda, one rebel leader, who agrees to shelter Shevek. He mentions a demonstration in 3 days to protest the draft and taxes. Shevek is compared to Odo, the original settler of Anarres. He hides out until the demonstration, where it seems like a hundred thousand people are in the square. Shevek delivers a speech there, speaking of brotherhood and humility. Police helicopters arrive and start firing on the crowd. Shevek drags an injured man into the basement of a warehouse, but he dies after three nights.

On Anarres, Shevek hitchhikes across the desert to find Takver after four years. They embrace and he meets Sadik, now 4, who is afraid at first but warms up to him quickly. Takver puts in her notice, and Shevek wanders and reminisces. They talk about Sadik and their old friend Tirin. Shevek realizes he wants to work towards his life’s purpose.

Shevek arrives at the embassy on Urras and demands to speak with the ambassador from Terra. He is taken in and cared for and meets the Terran ambassador, a woman named Keng. Keng tells him that she heard his speech in Nio and was moved. He talks about his near-imprisonment and how his equations will allow for instant communication. Keng says it’ll change billions of lives.

Shevek talks about how he views Urras as a Hell. Keng calls it a paradise and tells Shevek the story of how humans turned their planet Earth into a Hell. The Hainish helped the Terrans survive. Shevek asks if Keng can help him spread his discoveries; he wants to keep it out of a sole owner’s hands, particularly the Ioti, and hopes it will reach every community at once. He also asks for her help in returning him to Anarres.

At a PDC meeting flashback on Anarres, Bedap introduces the idea of Urrasti coming over to Anarres, and is shot down, particularly by the intense Rulag. Shevek mentions instead an Anarresti going over to Urras. It gets heated; Bedap tables the discussion, and the two head to Shevek’s home, where Takver is caring for Pilun, their two-year-old child. Takver tells Bedap that Rulag is Shevek’s mother. Shevek brings Sadik, now 10, home. The adults discuss Sabul offering Shevek another Institute position, and how Sabul didn’t tell Shevek about the award he won from Urras.

Shevek and Bedap walk Sadik back to her dorm, where she breaks down crying. She says the other children call her and her family “traitors” and leave her out. Shevek brings her home for the night, where Takver braids her hair and says she can find a new posting. When Sadik goes to bed Takver and Shevek discuss their future, and Takver urges Shevek to go to Urras. He seemed excited and says it could actually enact real change and reform.

The last chapter finds Shevek on the Hainish ship heading to Anarres again, because of help from Keng. The first mate, a Hainish man named Ketho, asks Shevek if he can come to land with him. Shevek warns that they will be greeted less-than-amicably, but once he is on Anarresti soil, he will be an Anarresti. Shevek is informed that the landing procedures. Shevek jokes that he doesn’t have anything to pack.

Unburdened

Ursula K. Le Guin has an incredible way with words. The last lines were perfectly crafted: “But he had not brought anything. His hands were empty, as they had always been.” It encapsulates the entire book so beautifully. I wish I had written down more quotes as I read, but it’s a good enough reason to reread it someday.

I also wish that I had read it quicker, as I mentioned. I think, because I was not paying perfect attention, I did not really realize the Anarres sections were in the past. But that is much more a flaw of me and my experience than it is of the book.

The commentary that it brings is one that is endlessly fascinating the more I think about it. Shevek is not a perfectly moral being by any metric, but his way of seeing the world makes him a wonderful protagonist. He feels like almost an anti-hero in some ways; he ultimately did rebel against both Urras and Anarres.

Shevek also feels rather passive through the story to me, but in a way that I appreciate. He does not seem like a man of many words, so he listens and absorbs and goes where he’s told to go. I think it makes him such an interesting rebel, because he is not the one leading the rebellion; rather, he gets caught up in it, and, without really knowing or orchestrating it, becomes the symbol of it.

The characters even felt incredibly deep in their stereotypes. Sabul is a man of science who takes credit and lies; Tirin is an artist who grows more and more anarchistic until he is silenced; Takver is infinitely torn between helping the greater good at her postings and building a familial relationship. I felt that each character had a very clear motivation, rather than just working as supporting characters.

I also quite liked the tie-in to Earth. Rather than an alternate universe of some kind, this is our universe, in the future, where Earth has been destroyed by human intervention of some kind. We do not hear about Earth until the end of the book, but Shevek learns about the “Hell” that Terrans created and are trying to escape. It puts it into perspective what we really could lose in a way that I don’t know I’ve seen before. For once, Earth’s destruction isn’t the main story, but an anecdote.

The story is gorgeous in its density, and one for anyone who likes a book that makes them put it down and think for a while. I would not say it’s the scariest dystopian tale, but it still is one that instills a tension in a thrilling way. I’m so excited to see what else this universe has in store.

Total pages read so far, 2025: 13,651

Total books read so far, 2025: 38

Next book: Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe

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Ring Shout

P. Djeli Smith

185 pages - 2020 - horror, historical fiction

October 29th, 2025 — November 4th, 2025

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐½

In college, I was lucky enough to be a part of the school choir. I was in choir in high school too, but it was a class taken by the jocks to fulfill their arts requirement since it was an “easy A” and they could mouth the words on the risers. I was in the concert choir in high school, which had a total of 5 members on a good day, meaning we didn’t get to do many sweeping pieces.

My college choir had a few dozen members, spanning an incredible range from the highest sopranos to basses so low you could feel it in your chest when they sang out. It was the first time I was part of such a big group of singers, and from the first day warming up together, I knew that it would be a wonderful experience.

I was lucky also that my choir director loved to explore musically. We did some pieces by Bach and Mozart, but we also performed contemporary pieces—Jake Runestad, Eric Whitacre, even Nine Inch Nails. We did pieces that the composition students were actively writing. We did some pieces that involved lots of yelling and stomping and clapping.

There were quite a few pieces that never failed to make at least half of the choir tear up. They might not have been specifically sad pieces; there was just something about the swell of music, the flowing of the chords, that brought up unmatched emotions. Our choir director would tear up when we found our footing on a particularly complex and beautiful chord.

Music is powerful. Music is one of the oldest pieces of humanity that we still have today. There is a reason that music is used in religions and at large events like weddings and funerals. Studies show that music can be used to help those with dementia and Alzheimer’s harken back to specific memories or experience brief periods of lucidity. The human brain responds fantastically to music.

Ring Shout explores the true power of music and movement. Within it, there are Shouts performed that are used to fight the forces of hate and evil. While this story is one of fantasy, there is so much truth in that piece of it. Music is universal and powerful. It’s one of the most profound ways to touch people’s hearts. This book made me miss singing with people. I hope to be able to sing with a group again soon.

Summary (Spoilers!)

Three young women—Sadie Watkins, Cordelia “Chef” Lawrence, and the narrator Maryse Boudreaux—are on a rooftop hunting Ku Kluxes. Members of the Ku Klux Klan are turning into monsters, being completely devoured by their hate, but only some people have the “sight” to witness their true forms. Maryse, Sadie, and Chef can see them, so they set traps and fight the Ku Kluxes. This time they are victorious. When they go to examine the bodies, they start to turn to dust; they have been so consumed by hatred, there is nothing left after they die. While fighting, Maryse hears the voice of her brother, talking about Bruh Rabbit and his friends, cheering her on.

They head back home and talk to Nana Jean, an old Gullah woman who is mentoring them on their quest to fight the Ku Kluxes. They had learned from Nana Jean that the Second Klan became realized on November 25th, 1915, which they call “D-Day” or “Devil’s Night”. That night, an old witch summoned Ku Kluxes at Stone Mountain in Atlanta, Georgia. People tried to disband the first Klan, but they couldn’t wipe out those monsters, since they feed on hatred.

The Klan activity increased exponentially when the film “The Birth of a Nation” was released. It was laced with dark magic, causing white folks who saw it to believe the narrative that the KKK was peddling. They believe that the KKK are saviors, and African Americans are evil, leading to even more hatred and death.

While they are at Nana Jean’s place, they see a Shout happening. It is a tradition from Slaves who would participate in Shouts while they were working. There is a Leader, calling the Shout; the Stick Man, keeping time with percussion; and the Basers, who are answering the calls of the Shout. It is more about the movement than the song itself, and it tends to take over those who are participating until the spirit lets them go.

They also talk to Emma Krauss, the current owner of a shop and widow to the original owner, who had caught the Spanish flu in 1918 and passed. She is German and believes in communism, and also loves to study the Shouts.

Nana Jean tells them to talk to Molly, a young scientist who is examining a still-intact body of a Ku Klux who had been killed. Molly does not have the sight, but she is able to see that it is not human; she thinks that it’s evolving.

Maryse goes with Sadie and Chef to Frenchy’s, where they spend a night dancing with their beaus. Maryse is able to talk to Michael George, who is fending off flirtations from some women at the bar, and quickly goes to dance with Maryse.

She dreams that night of her younger self, hiding in a closet from the Ku Kluxes. Maryse tells herself that she doesn’t have to be scared, because she has her magical sword that taps into the suffering of her ancestors, which makes it even stronger. When she “wakes up”, unaware she’s still dreaming, she’s hearing a faint singing, and she heads outside to find a man cutting up chunks of meat. He says he’s happy to finally meet her, and introduces himself as Butcher Clyde.

Butcher Clyde is responsible for a lot of the monsters’ behavior. He feeds them living chunks of meat, which only people with the sight can see; she sees the chunks moving on the plates, but others only see normal meat. Before she runs away, it looks like his stomach has a huge mouth on it, its tongue reaching out to wrap around her.

Maryse meets with the aunties, who are three beings like the Fates, helping her figure out what to do. They had given her the sword, too. They are not human; Maryse says that once she looked for too long at them, and their facade faded away, changing into fox-like creatures with terrifying faces. Auntie Ondine is the nice one; Auntie Margaret is always grumpy; and Auntie Jadine is very odd, as she can see the past, present, and future all at once. They warn Maryse that more evil is coming her way.

Klans attack Frenchy’s, burning it down. Maryse, Sadie, and Chef fight their way inside to help get more people out before they burn. In the scuffle, Maryse learns that the Klans have taken Michael George, as well as a few others from the town. Sadie is fatally wounded during the fight, and dies while talking to Maryse, saying what she wants for her funeral. Butcher Clyde is there when she escapes, and he taunts her about Sadie’s death; Maryse attacks him with a fury she’s never felt before.

Maryse meets again with the Aunties, and they show her some memories of previous battles with Klans and Ku Kluxes. When she tells Nana Jean about her meeting, Chef starts singing about the Night Doctors, telling stories of giant men dressed in white who experimented on slaves. Nana Jean confirms that they were real.

Auntie Ondine had told Maryse to go into the woods in Macon and find the Angel Oak tree. Maryse is able to see the tree as she thinks of Sadie. She uses her knife to make a hole in the bark and is pulled inside. She meets Dr. Antoine Bisset, a Black physician who had gone looking for the Night Doctors. He believed that hate was a physical thing that could build up in a body and change someone irreparably.

Maryse says she can bring him beings made of hate. She says that she needs help fighting the Ku Kluxes and Butcher Clyde, and says that if she can bring him some Ku Kluxes, he might be able to convince the Night Doctors to fight on their side. Giants appear in the sky, Night Doctors, picking up Maryse and examining her. They have 6-fingered hands and essentially no faces. Memories of the fights against the Ku Kluxes flash through Maryse’s memories as the Night Doctors pick through her brain. They find the younger version of Maryse in her mind, and she tells Dr. Bisset about when the KKK came and killed her father and brother.

The Night Doctors tell Dr. Bisset that they find Maryse’s misery “delectable” and start to dissect her. She calls her sword and it comes to her, and she threatens the Night Doctors. She is returned to her whole state and banished from the Angel Oak tree. Dr. Bisset says that she is lucky to be alive after she threatened the Night Doctors.

On Sunday, Maryse and Chef head up Stone Mountain, where “The Birth of a Nation” is being shown. They know that the Grand Cyclops, the incarnation of collective hatred, will be summoned tonight. When they summit the mountain, Maryse realizes that the Grand Cyclops is the meat that those people have been eating; since she is inside them, she can possess them, and conglomerates their bodies into a gigantic throbbing creature with hundreds of eyes and mouths. She also sees a group of Black people, among them Michael George, in line to be lynched.

Butcher Clyde sees Maryse and explains that he wants her to join their side. He says that they will give her the power over life and death because she will have all the power that the KKK have used over her people, strengthening her immensely. She realizes, though, that if she sides with them, her people will turn to hate and therefore become monsters just like the Ku Kluxes. She rejects his offer, and a battle begins.

During the fight, the Cyclops is captured and Butcher Clyde is killed. Nana Jean arrives and performs a Ring Shout so intense and strong that she conjures the spirit of all of those who have been murdered by hate. The spirits that show up—among them, Sadie and Maryse’s brother Martin—help defeat the rest of the Ku Kluxes up on the mountain. After the battle, one of the white women is seen sobbing and saying that she had seen the face of monsters.

Later, Maryse is sitting and talking to the Aunties. They ask her about how she’s doing, and ask about Michael George. She says that she’s working on telling him her whole story, and they’re happy together. They tell her that there is more evil brewing in Rhode Island, and she says that she will keep fighting. She also says that she will keep her sword since she still has some vengeance left. The sword could lead her to be consumed by hate, so she promises to use it responsibly as she continues fighting against oppression.

Fuel to the Fire

The prologue of this story begins with P. Djeli Smith saying that this was a story that came to him that he had to write. I think you can really feel that as a thread through the entire book. It is the kind of story that seems like it came to the author fully formed.

I wish that the book had been longer. I think the story is complete, and that it was a strong tale, but I think there were elements of it that could have been explored much further. Namely, I was confused on the Night Doctors and the Grand Cyclops—it felt like they were mentioned and then all of a sudden they were there, and then they were gone. I wish we had gotten more of a history or a reasoning behind the creatures. Obviously, the Ku Kluxes are easy enough to follow, and the idea that hate corrupts someone into a monster is clear. But I think I wish the Grand Cyclops had been mentioned earlier, or explored further.

I also wanted more from the Aunties. I tend to love stories that involve the Fates somehow, and they were pretty clearly an allegory of the Greek idea of the Fates. They were fascinating characters, and I think they could have been explored much further. They had some powers, such as bringing Maryse through past memories, that could be useful and interesting.

I thought the characters in this story were incredibly well-done, especially Sadie. From the first chapter, I could picture the three main young women and predict their actions. That is not to say that the story was predictable, but I thought that their choices made complete sense.

I also loved that we got the scene of them dancing and having a good time together at Frenchy’s. It felt very reminiscent of the dance in “Sinners”, where people who are so used to living in fear get a moment, however brief, of joy and camaraderie. It made the future battles and Sadie’s death that much more compelling and heartbreaking.

I really liked this story, but I did find it to be a bit whiplash-inducing. It’s maybe one of the first times I’ve wished for a story to be so much longer. I think P. Djeli Smith is a fantastic writer, and was able to capture a voice brilliantly. I’m excited to read more by him, even if it’s not within this universe and with these characters. I am very interested in what else he has to say.

Total pages read so far, 2025: 13,286

Total books read so far, 2025: 37

Next book: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

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Black Water Sister

Zen Cho

373 pages - 2021 - fiction, fantasy

October 15th, 2025 — October 28th, 2025

Rating: ⭐⭐½

The first time I ever used a Ouija board was Halloween night, maybe a decade ago. My family used to throw a Halloween party for our friends—my parents’ friends would come over with their kids, and all us children would trade candy and play Ghost in the Graveyard and watch scary movies. I used to set up stations where people could blindly feel “eyeballs” (peeled grapes) and “intestines” (cold spaghetti), for example.

We always watched the Thriller music video, followed by some Halloween movie, and this year in particular, we watched Beetlejuice. Immediately, it became one of my favorite movies, which stands to this day. There was something so fun about the colorful music-filled afterlife.

Once all of our friends had left, I remember my mom pulling me and my twin brother into the finished basement to “commune with the dead”. I’m pretty sure she did not believe in its “power”, and I know my brother and I just thought it was something fun, not true spiritual communion. But it still felt like something completely magical.

I do not know if I believe in ghosts. I think a part of me really does—as a chemist, I think that life itself is energy, and since energy can’t be created nor destroyed, it makes sense to me somewhat that sometimes that life energy would be “stuck” after someone dies. But as a scientist-at-large, I think that if ghosts existed, there would be plenty of concrete evidence by now.

I do think, though, that ghosts almost always represent something. They are one of my favorite symbols and metaphors. “A ghost is a wish,” says “The Haunting of Hill House”, and I think I agree.

This book plays with ghosts in a very refreshing way. Ah Ma could have been actually possessing Jess, or maybe she was just the personification of the voice in Jess’s head. But either way, it represented Jess’s disconnect from her family when she got to Penang, and Ah Ma—as judgmental and outspoken as she can be—helps immensely to change that.

Summary (Spoilers!)

Jessamyn Teoh has started hearing ghosts. Namely, she has started hearing the voice of her recently-deceased grandmother, Ah Ma. The ghost asks if her parents know that Jess is a lesbian; because of her cultural background, they do not know about that or Jess’s girlfriend, Sharanya. Jess recently graduated from Harvard, and then moved back to Malaysia with her parents. Her father is in remission after a battle with cancer and her mother is chronically anxious.

Jess speaks with Ah Ma and learns that she had been a medium for one of the local gods, named the Black Water Sister. Ah Ma has to enact her revenge on Ng Chee Hin, a real estate developer and mogul who plans to demolish the Black Water Sister’s temple and therefore offended the god.

Jess goes to the temple under the insistence of Ah Ma. Her maternal uncle, Ah Ku, is a medium at the temple for another god, Datuk Kong. While she is there, the temple is attacked by gang members, who are revealed to have connections to Ng Chee Hin.

While Jess is asleep, Ah Ma possesses her and agrees to work for Jess’s uncle at his construction site. When she goes to work, the Black Water Sister appears, making some scaffolding collapse. One of the workers is trapped but unscathed. The workers, despite the horrible conditions, continue their work; Jess realizes that they are probably being blackmailed by Ng Chee Hin.

Jess meets Ng Wei Sherng, the son of Ng Chee Hin, at one of his “hipster” cafes. She brings him to the temple after Chinese New Year, but while they are there, Ah Ma possesses Jess and tries to strangle Sherng to hurt his father. Jess is able to break free from the possession, but she breaks the Black Water Sister’s shrine in the process.

The Black Water Sister appears and demands a sacrifice. She says that Jess must become her medium to pay for what she’s done. Jess learns that the Black Water Sister had been a human woman and had been murdered in these woods by her lover. Her anger at this betrayal turned her into a vengeful god and prevents her from moving on.

While Jess is dealing with spirits and gods, she misses a few phone calls with Sharanya and is unable to tell her exactly what’s going on. She knows that Sharanya won’t believe her, not like her family does, since it is a part of their culture. Sharanya becomes angry and breaks up with Jess, saying that she is not being prioritized in their relationship.

When Jess goes to the Monkey King’s temple, she is attacked immediately by the medium there; the Black Water Sister possesses her and fights back. When they are both their human selves again, the medium explains that Jess has the aura of the Black Water Sister and other gods can see that. Jess also learns that Ah Ku has been arrested on drug possession charges, the punishment for which is death; Jess knows that they were planted by Ng Chee Hin’s men. She wants to go see him, but it is impossible to get an appointment any way except through bribery.

Through some more conversations with Ah Ma, Jess realizes that Ng Chee Hin had been Ah Ma’s lover when they were younger. She also realizes that Ah Ku is quite possibly Ng Chee Hin’s son, not Jess’s grandfather’s. Jess sneaks in to see Ng Chee Hin at his office, posing as a member of an upstanding society. He knows who she is, but still agrees to talk with her.

Ah Ma possesses Jess throughout their conversation and tells him about his potential son. She says that she hates Ng Chee Hin and wants him and his child to suffer. Ng Chee Hin promises to release Ah Ku from prison, and they do not trust him, but he lets Jess leave his office. However, when she’s waiting for a car, she is kidnapped by a man who had posed as a janitor at the office building.

Jess is taken to an alleyway and allows the Black Water Sister to finally take her over fully. The god enters her body and fights off the men attacking her. She wakes up in the hospital, unsure of what exactly had happened and with some broken bones, but mostly okay.

Jess makes her way to the Black Water Sister temple, and restores the shrine to the god. She is able to speak to the god and tell her that her lover and murderer is gone now, and he cannot hurt her anymore. She finally lets go of her vengeance and is able to move on. Jess no longer can hear Ah Ma, but she is no longer possessed by the Black Water Sister, either.

Jess sees Ng Wei Sherng one more time before leaving, and he apologizes for his father’s actions. He says he wishes they could have been friends, and Jess feels the same, but knows she has to move on. He also says that he has been given the rights to the land on which the temple lies, meaning he can preserve it.

When she gets home, she has gotten a text from Sharanya, apologizing for the radio silence and saying that she misses her. Jess has been offered a job in Singapore, which is where Sharanya is also heading; she texts back and says that she also is missing her. Jess decides to come out to her parents finally before leaving Penang.

Shrine of Life

Overall, I found this story to be fun, but I think the tone was a little grating. It was a rather intense story—falsifying evidence for drug possession, murder, gang violence, quite a bit of strangling—with a lighthearted voice to it. I understand Jess’s desire to use humor to escape reality, but I was expecting her to have to face it at some point, and it felt like that never came.

It might be because of the repeated possessions, too, but I felt like Jess was not a particularly unique character. She is a lesbian, which is set up within the first two lines, but it felt like her personality did not go much further than that. As a queer person, I am always hoping for queer representation where the characters are not just their identities, and this felt like a case of that minimization. Her inner struggle was coming out to her parents, and I don’t think we needed a whole book of that.

I recognize that this story is different from something like Simon Versus the Homo Sapiens Agenda, where a young white man is coming out to his progressive white parents. I know that different cultures have different views on queerness, and I recognize that Malaysian culture is being represented within the story, so it makes sense to have that struggle be present. But I wish it was not Jess’s entire struggle.

I thought the gods and mediums described in the story were quite fascinating, and I am somewhat familiar with the myths of the Monkey King, so it felt a little bit like seeing a face I know in the crowd. There were many more fight scenes than I expected going in to this story, which I think sometimes could be over the top, but were overall well-done and entertaining.

I also wish that we had gotten more information on Jess’s family, particularly her parents. It felt like the beginning of the book was explaining that Jess did not know much about her heritage or her parents, and I thought we would get more information. We learn a bit about her aunties and uncles, and we get to meet her mother’s brother, Ah Ku, but other than that, the parents barely make an appearance. I wanted to learn more about them, rather than a whole slew of distant relatives.

Sharanya did not seem like a great partner either. I have done long-distance relationships before, and a lot of them require patience, respect, and understanding. It felt like Sharanya was not giving Jess any of those things. I did not find myself rooting for them, especially at the end when Jess said she did not really want to go to Singapore. It felt like Jess was settling because it was comfortable, and not because she actually wants to be with Sharanya; she just wants to be with someone. I would much rather be rooting for a relationship to work than for them to break up when I’m reading.

It was an okay story, and I did love the immersion in Malaysian culture. There were quite a few slang words in Malay and Hokkien sprinkled throughout the book, and at first it took me a while to parse, but they quickly became words that I recognized. It felt a little like A Clockwork Orange, learning to understand the specific dialect of the world in which I had entered between the pages. It also made me consider the memories I carry with me of family members who have passed on; I hope that I continue to do them justice.

Total pages read so far, 2025: 13,101

Total books read so far, 2025: 36

Next book: Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark

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Let the Right One In

John Ajvide Lindqvist

437 pages - 2004 - fiction, horror

October 9th, 2025 — October 14th, 2025

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐½

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday, and fall has always been my favorite season. Winter is a little too bleary; spring brings pollen and allergies so bad my eyes nearly swell shut; I hate sweating, so the summer and I do not get along too well. But I love when there’s a slight chill in the air, and that changing-leaves smell wafts and surrounds everything. I love seeing plastic skeletons and blow-up pumpkins appear in yards throughout October.

One of my earlier Halloween memories was when my entire family dressed up as vampires. Before then I know I had gone as Dorothy from Wizard of Oz for probably 3 years in a row, thinking that maybe I would be able to get a real dog to dress as Toto if I just kept trying. But the vampire costume, I think, was the first costume I wore that paid homage to the more spooky side of the Halloween tradition.

I loved it. I don’t know what really unlocked my macabre fascinations, but I know that for a while I said that my favorite color was “deep red, like blood” (and yes, I was semi-emo in middle/high school). I know, too, that I wore that vampire costume for another few years after the group costume—long after my family members had moved on to different and more creative outfits.

When I was in college, I took an English class called Monstrous Bodies, which focused on the stories of monsters in literature and how they are portrayed. We talked about Frankenstein’s Monster and how the real villain of the story is Victor. We read Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and dove into the idea of internalized monstrosity. And—possibly my favorite book of the curriculum—we read Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, a story of someone born intersex and how they deal with the world labeling them as “monstrous” simply for not fitting the mold of “normal” human bodies.

I knew I would love the class. I love monster stories. But I did not know how much that class would change my perspective on those types of stories. We discussed how monster stories are almost always metaphors for societal issues—mainly queerness, racial/cultural segregation, political dissent, and general differences. Middlesex, especially, showed how simply being different brings forth labels that one cannot control and that harm more often than hurt. We discussed “freak shows” that traveled around only a couple centuries ago, allowing people to gawk and laugh at people, human beings, trapped in cages, simply because they were different.

This class made me fall even harder in love with Halloween and monster stories. I’ve been working on a book for quite a few years now that focuses on folklore from different countries. I find it fascinating that cultures create folklore to manifest important aspects of their life—a lot of American folklore, like Bigfoot or Mothman, for example, is shrouded in fear, while many Chinese folk stories (like Sun Wukong) deal with luck and status.

Vampires, especially, are often metaphors for a queer experience. Most of the vampire myths deal with creatures that are socially outcast due to their alternate lifestyle. They find themselves shunned by typical society, so they often find each other and form their own pockets of society. Vampires are often used to represent non-conventional sexuality and explore what might be considered taboo in high society.

I think vampire tropes are quite well-known by now, especially with the popularity of franchises like “Twilight”, “What We Do in the Shadows”, and “Interview with the Vampire”. Which is why this book was such a pleasant surprise. It is one of the more unique vampire stories that I’ve ever read, and overall I found it incredibly refreshing and compelling. And it still scratched that monster itch that I get especially this time of year, but in ways that were quite unexpected!

Summary (Spoilers!)

The town called Blackeburg, near Stockholm in Sweden, is so modern that people are still trickling in. There is not even a church. The prologue states that a father and daughter moved in during the night on the 18th of October with almost no furniture. The police contacted the driver of the moving van that December, and when they told him what had happened in the town, he decided to never tell anyone that he was the one who had brought them there.

Oskar Eriksson is a young boy who is bullied relentlessly at school. He lives with his single mother; his father is an alcoholic living in the countryside. Oskar keeps a scrapbook of news stories surrounding murders, and he dreams of one day seeing someone executed or killing them himself—namely his bullies. He goes out into the woods at night and pretends that a tree is one of his bullies, taking out his aggression on it with a kitchen knife.

Håkan Bengtsson is a creepy old man and pedophile who is walking through the woods, looking for a victim. He ends up capturing a young boy—briefly, the reader is meant to believe that it’s Oskar—and draining the boy of his blood, stringing him up by his feet in a tree. He is nicknamed the “Ritual Killer” but makes it clear that he does not take pleasure in killing.

Oskar goes to the park one night, promising his mother that he’ll stay safe, and he meets Eli sitting on top of the playground equipment. Eli initially plans on drinking Oskar’s blood, but the young boy strokes Eli’s cheek when leaning in to bite him. Eli and Oskar get closer, meeting up at the park every night. They realize that their bedrooms share a wall, so they start to learn Morse code so they can communicate with each other and let each other know when they’re heading out to the park each night.

Meanwhile, Håkan keeps heading out to find more victims. We learn that Håkan lives with Eli, and he is draining bodies of blood to feed to Eli. He is desperate to please the child, and in return Eli allows Håkan to spend one night in the bed next to Eli, nothing more. Håkan goes out one more time to get blood, heading to the local pool house. He thinks that he is alone with a young boy he kidnaps and strings up in a changing room, but the anesthesia wears off, the boy screams, and he is discovered. To get out of the situation, Håkan pours acid on his face, attempting to kill himself and destroy his face so he cannot be found; however, he survives, waking up in the hospital. He tries to take out the breathing tube, since his face is gone and he cannot breathe on his own; the nurse stops him, though, so that he can be questioned by the police.

Eli helps Oskar fight back against his bullies, gaining confidence and eventually fighting back physically. One day, Oskar hits Jonny with a stick when Jonny tries to push Oskar into a hole in the ice on a lake; Jonny gets a concussion and his ear is destroyed. However, there is even more of a commotion when a body is found under the ice as well. It is the body of Jocke, a local drunk, who had gone missing a little while ago.

Lacke is a member of Jocke’s friend group, and considers Jocke his only real friend. The other men of the group are acquaintances, but Lacke and Jocke got along very well. They would all go to the bar and drink together. Nobody believed Lacke, thinking that Jocke was either in danger or dead; after his body is found, Lacke’s fears are confirmed. A hermit-like man named Gosta comes out and says that he thinks he saw Jocke on the night he died, being led under an overpass by a child.

One night, Oskar brings Eli down to the basement under their apartment building and asks if they want to make a blood pact. When he cuts his palm, Eli turns into a vampire form and orders Oskar to run away. He realizes after some other clues—only being out during the night, and references to being much older than him—that Eli is a vampire. He goes to his father’s house in the countryside, but regrets running away and feels neglected, so he heads back to Blackeberg.

Eli goes to visit Håkan in the hospital and bites the old man at his request, drinking some of his blood. Eli also finds Virginia in the woods and bites her, drinking her blood. However, Lacke sees this happen and is able to chase Eli away and save Virginia.

Eli and Oskar reconnect, and Eli reveals that his name is Elias, and he had been castrated when he was younger, but now has no genitals. Oskar and Eli share a kiss, and when they do, Oskar can see Eli’s memories of when he was a young boy. Håkan escapes the hospital, jumping 10 stories out the window, looking for Eli; the paramedics all believe that there is no way Håkan could have survived.

Virginia realizes that she is a vampire after she is horrifically burned by sunlight, both on the way to and from work and in her apartment through small slits in the blinds. She also realizes that she is incredibly hungry for blood, and nearly drains herself dry trying to drink her own blood. She goes to Gosta’s apartment to kill him and feed on him but is attacked suddenly by all of his (many) cats. Lacke was also visiting Gosta, so he takes Virginia to the hospital. While at the hospital, she asks the nurse to open the blinds, exposing herself to direct sunlight and killing herself right next to Lacke.

In a rage, now having lost his best friend and his girlfriend to Eli—Virginia and Lacke had told each other that they loved one another right before she died—he tries to find and kill Eli. He gets into the house and finds Eli sitting in a pool of blood in their bathtub. He attempts to kill Eli. However, he does not succeed, and Eli and Oskar end up overpowering and killing Lacke in their scuffle.

Håkan finds Eli as well and tries to rape him, but Eli is able to blind Håkan’s remaining eye and run away. Tommy is a young boy who lives in town and had been trapped in the basement during Eli and Håkan’s fight; when Håkan turns on Tommy, Tommy realizes that he is blind and is able to escape, finally killing Håkan in the process.

Oskar, angry that his bullies are now hurting him even more after he concussed Jonny, heads into school after hours one night and sets fire to his bullies’ desks. The school highly suspects Oskar and tries to contact him and his mother, but they avoid the calls. One night, Oskar gets a call from Mr. Avila, one of his favorite teachers; Mr. Avila offers for Oskar to get out some of his anxieties and worries with a training session at the gym.

Oskar, surprising himself, agrees, and heads to the pool house one evening. When he gets there, his bullies—Jonny and Micke, along with Jonny’s older brother Jimmy—knock out Mr. Avila and try to drown Oskar in the pool. Micke starts to get anxious when Oskar turns blue. Eli finds them and knocks on the window, desperately asking Micke to let him inside; when Micke does, Eli saves Oskar and beheads Jimmy and Jonny, leaving their heads in the bottom of the pool.

In the epilogue, we learn that Oskar and Eli have gone missing from Blackeburg. They are fleeing the city with all of Eli’s remaining money, Oskar’s puzzles, and each other.

Blood and Guts

I know I talk a good amount about reading the right book at the right time, and I do not think this book could have come at a better time. Of course, it’s October, the perfect time for a story about vampires and fear, but it felt even more apt for this October in particular. I don’t know if I can explain it, but I appreciate it all the same.

The most surprising part of this book, to me, was the queerness of it. So many vampire stories are queer-coded at the very least, so it shouldn’t be that surprising, but it was such a tender love story. Oskar and Eli completely accept one another and work to make each other better. Maybe it’s because it is one of the only vampire love stories I’ve read that is not also about control. Oskar and Eli are equals in this story, and I enjoyed that immensely.

Håkan, too, is a great and terrible villain. He is introduced as a creep and only gets worse and worse as you keep reading. The idea of a shambling horror with a deliberately acid-wrecked (lack of) face desperately trying to find the child with whom he is in love is nauseating on an amazing amount of levels. Plus, he is so persistent. He just refuses to die. Even when he’s been beaten, killed, and burned, he is still trying to take advantage of Eli.

In terms of Håkan, too, I loved that the villain of the story is not really the vampire. Eli is only hoping to continue living, and needs blood to do so. Håkan is simply trying to keep Eli alive. Virginia becomes a vampire and refuses to hurt those she loves, so ashamed at her want for blood that she sacrifices herself. It’s the first vampire story I’ve read where the horror is not from the vampires themselves, which was so refreshing.

In the summary above, I was not able to capture so many of the moments and pieces that I loved about the story. If I did, the summary would be much longer. There were so many details that really added to the life of the story itself. Blackeburg and the people that live(d) inside it are so deep and human. They all have flaws and quirks that work towards making the story so rich and fascinating. I loved that, rather than a story about vampires, it felt like a story about people, and there happened to be vampires there. Again, it was quite refreshing. It was the opposite of one-note, a beautiful chord progression through the entire book.

There were parts of the book where I could not put it down. I read a large portion of this novel during two 3 1/2-hour car rides, which was perfect for this particular book’s consumption. It felt like so much happened in every chapter, and I needed to know what happened next. The characters’ individual stories were all compelling, and I loved seeing how they wove together and interacted, then fell apart from each other again.

Overall, it felt like I was reading a Stephen King book with all the aspects I loved about those and none of the parts that I didn’t. I find Stephen King to be a little gratuitous with gore against women, but this book had strong female characters—namely Eli and Virginia—that were not victimized for the sake of victimization. I found Virginia’s story particularly compelling.

I am so glad that I picked this book at this time—not just this Halloween season but this particular year as well. Something about it tickled my brain in just the right way. I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a unique and often quite beautiful vampire love story.

Total pages read so far, 2025: 12,728

Total books read so far, 2025: 35

Next book: Black Water Sister by Zen Cho

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