The illusion of this newsletter is that no one reads it so I can say whatever I want here. This is just a convenient fiction. You do read it, there is a dashboard with an uncomfortable amount of detail. And while you are a small group in internet world, you

There's been a lot of fiction exploring gender recently. It's long overdue, of course, and we have really just begun. But I've been thinking, where are the men? I think this a lot. Ever since the beginning of #metoo, even since I gained a

Romance is not my genre. Not that I haven't tried! Once I got into the world of readers on the internet, I learned that everything I'd been told about the Romance genre was basically wrong. They weren't trashy and stupid. Romance novels are like

A surprise bonus July newsletter! Because the rules of the newsletter are my rules for reading: do what you want. Do what feels good. I'm not doing it for money so I might as well do it for love. I have been on a several-year reading slump only

Sometimes this thing happens where you get a flurry of similar books around the same time. This year we've had Lyz Lenz's This American Ex-Wife, Leslie Jamison's Splinters, and now Sarah Manguso's Liars all within just a few months and it feels

I am on a streak of books I didn't really like. I just logged three 2.5-star reviews in a row into Goodreads. We're halfway through June and I haven't enjoyed a single thing. Normally this kind of streak would depress me. I would

Congratulations to me, it is still May, I didn't miss getting a newsletter out! I actually have one newsletter already finished and another I'm ready to write, but they're all about July or later releases, which feels mean to write about so early. But

An hour ago I finished a really great audiobook. My whole experience with this audiobook was perfection, it even ended perfectly, the last sentence coming just before the timer went off and dinner was ready. (The only thing better is when the last sentence of your audiobook plays while you

Rating and reviewing is more complicated than it seems at first glance. At some point you have to make a decision: is it about whether you enjoyed the book or whether the book is good? Because yes a lot of the time these things go together but sometimes they don&