60 books read in 2025
And I thought, 18 last year was fantastic. Unthinkable, just a few years ago.
Things I learned:
I tend to not like short stories, but I like novellas
The more I read, the less I can say what genres I really prefer
Orbital by Samantha Harvey was the most pretentious and insufferable piece of rambling BS and it made me really angry
I Am Not Ashamed by Barbara Payton blew me away - the way it was (ghost-)written by Leo Guild was certainly sleazy and exploitative, but somehow appropriately so and made the whole thing feel so real and relatable - even some 80 years later. R.I.P. Barbara
Did books by Machiavelli or Sartre or Hemingway fascinate me? Some of it, kind of, but it's certainly cool to be able to say I've actually read some of their stuff.
I forced myself and finally succeeded in finding some access to poetry. Steven Jesse Bernstein and Dennis Cooper really did it for me. You'll never get me to go to a Slam, though.
