Is This Book Trying To Kill Me?

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&

Doorstops

I have been thinking a lot lately about very long books. Because I mostly read on kindle, and I mostly read galleys, and there is usually a few months between the time I request a book and the time I read it, I almost always start a book having no

On Time and On Point? For Once??

Am I possibly going to write an actual regular newsletter this month? It seems like I am! What a surprise! Sometimes things just align like that. To be honest, it has been a real shitty year so far even though we are not even two full weeks in as I

Not Dead and 2023 Favorites

Surprise! You forgot you signed up for this newsletter, didn't you? My bad, really. It's been 5 months since I last posted. To be fair, this is the risk of a model built not on compensation but on VIBES alone. And while I still prefer this

Patchett Job

I have been a little obsessed lately with the idea of rereading. Not the doing of it, but definitely the idea of it. There was a period when almost everything I read was something I read before. I mined the same books on my shelves over and over again. Now

Coping Mechanisms

The thing is, books are not making me happy the way they used to. It is not books' fault. It is not my fault, really. It is not even isolated to books. What's happening is my primary pandemic coping mechanisms are strained beyond what they can bear.

Borne ceaselessly into the past

I was on a date with a woman and she said that she was going to see a musical that coming weekend. It was one I'd seen before and my first instinct was to respond, "Oh yes, I enjoyed that." But after I spoke I stopped

In It For the Likes

Let us just start by saying that I am not a social media addict. In these sad times I have not even been on Twitter very much. But even I am not immune to the little adrenaline hit of a like. As Twitter is falling apart at the seams, these

Surprise Late Addition

It is my last kid-free evening before the holiday stuff all kicks in and I am beyond delighted to tell you that I have a late addition to my Favorites of 2023 book list. This doesn't happen often! Last year my best list was set by the end

Not a Best List

I always feel obligated to do a Best Books list. But this year I am not really going to do it. I have written about basically all of them here already so it would be repetitive. You are welcome to look at my list or previous issues of this newsletter.