Reading Log

Ever since I added the “currently reading” section to my front page, I figured I should probably start actually writing down the books I’ve read. At times I miss having Goodreads and such, but it’s also just a lot of work and too fancy for me. I am happy with just a plain list. I’ll try to remember to enter books chronologically by year, but it’ll be a very loose chronology. I should’ve been doing this all year, but oh well. More to come.

2024

Finished

• Heather Radke, Butts: a Backstory (2022): What an absolute joy to read! All you ever wanted to know about butts throughout history!
• Kathleen Riley, Imagining Ithaca: nostos and nostalgia since the Great War (2021): An interesting book on the theme of nostos (“homecoming”) in literature since World War I, and more modern media’s engagement with the classics.
• J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), Unfinished Tales (1980): A deep dive into paths not taken in Tolkien’s sprawling legendarium. It’s not a quick read, and is very dense, but is very good.
• Michel Chion, David Lynch (2005): An interesting look at David Lynch’s films (and of course, TV, including Twin Peaks and On the Air).
• Homer, Emily Wilson (trans.), The Iliad (2023): A heartbreakingly lovely translation of a brutal, grueling, intense epic, and the first translation (AFAIK) by a woman. Wilson’s earlier translation of The Odyssey is also amazing.
• C.M. Mayo (ed.), Tameme: New Writing from North America (“Sun and Moon”) 1.2 (2001): This is an issue of a bilingual literary magazine with contributions from the USA, Canada, and Mexico. It was an interesting read, but I’m going to donate it for someone else to enjoy.
• L. E. Modesitt, Jr., Overcaptain (2024): I’ve read all of the other Saga of Recluce books and they’re great. I’m excited for the next one to come out in August 2025!

Did Not Finish (DNF)

• Jack London, White Fang and Call of the Wild: Literary classics about the frozen North.
  • I tried but really did not love this. Nope.

2025

Finished

• L. M. Montgomery, The Blue Castle (1926): A woman is stuck in a mansion with her stuffy, terrible family, but eventually finds a way out. And it’s a really interesting ride. Made me think of mistaken-identity stories like Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe and such. It was really good, and had a happy ending.
  • I found out that Montgomery also wrote Anne of Green Gables and now I want to read it too!
• Sarah Archer, Midcentury Christmas (2016): This was a delightful little book, all about ’50s and ’60s (and modern, ish) aesthetics of Christmas. I heard about it on a You’re Wrong About episode recently. I apparently got the “stocking stuffer” edition from the library, which hopefully didn’t abridge it too much!
• Mahmoud Darwish, Memory for Forgetfulness (1995): a collection of prose poems about the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Sadly, extremely topical. It was a puzzling, confusing, terrifying, challenging, but also beautiful read. Highly recommend it. I don’t know if it’ll help make sense of what’s gone on or what is happening now, but it’s well worth a read.
• Kate Chopin, The Awakening and other stories (2000): A collection of the writer Kate Chopin’s short stories, as well as the full-length novel The Awakening. It was an interesting read, the short stories were kinda cool, and even some of the short story characters come up in the novel!
• Alexandre Dumas, The Wolf-Leader (1857): This was a trippy Gothic horror novel, with Satanism, lycanthropy, and all sorts of weirdness!
• Mike Diver, Retro Gaming: A Byte-Sized History of Videogames (2022): This was a fun little read on the history of video games!
• Annabel Abbs-Streets, Sleepless: Unleashing the Subversive Power of the Night Self (2024): I heard about this on the always-lovely Nocturne podcast and really enjoyed it. A memoir about insomnia and embracing the depths of the night.
• Gregory Maguire, Wicked: I saw the movie before I read the book. I enjoyed the book but it’s a one-and-done for me, I think. Worth a read, but not entirely my thing, unfortunately.
• Mary Ellen Chase, The Story of Lighthouses (1965): This was a cool read! Lighthouses are fascinating.
• Thomas Johnson (ed.), The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (1976): This book of all of Emily Dickinson’s poems took me literally years to read (with long breaks), but I’m glad I read it. It was a trippy collection.
• Paul Neilan, Apathy and Other Small Victories (2007): A friend bought this for me years ago and I haven’t gotten around to reading it. I need something to break up the 3 other dense, dense books I’m reading. NB: the cover for this book has suicidal imagery, caveat legens… After finishing it, it was a weird, nihilistic, sometimes funny, but mostly just sad book that didn’t really age well. Definitely a one and done.
• Robert Descharnes & Gilles Néret, Dalí. The Paintings (2013): A wide-ranging collection of Salvador Dalí’s paintings, interspersed with a meandering biography of him. It was fine. I don’t think I like Dalí as much as I thought I did, but it is still interesting to check out the paintings. It’s going to the donate pile.
• S. H. Fernando, Jr., The Chronicles of DOOM: Unraveling Rap’s Masked Iconoclast (2024): This is an absolutely excellent biography of MF DOOM (ne Daniel Dumile), one of my favorite rappers, starting from his childhood and covering his whole (sadly too short) life. It reminded me why I love his music so much, and it is a scrupulously-researched deep dive, with tons of quotes from his family and friends. I got it from the library but now it’s out in paperback too!
• Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (2006): Everything you wanted to know about Lincoln, his campaign, and his successes as a president. It was an excellent book!
• Elly Blue (ed.), The Bicyclist’s Guide to the Galaxy: Feminist, Fantastical Tales of Books and Bikes (2023): What a delightful collection of stories dedicated to bicycling, with a sci-fi/fantasy and often space setting! Loved it!!
• William S. Burroughs, The Cat Inside (1986): This was a strange read, a weird paean to cats by William S. Burroughs, already a master of weird fiction. This was autobiographical, in a way, and about how lovely cats can be. It is a one-and-done but I’m glad I read it.
• Gou Tanabe, H.P. Lovecraft’s The Hound and Other Stories (2014): A manga adaptation of a few Lovecraft stories. It was trippy, but I have really mostly sworn off Lovecraft since he was an inveterate and unapologetic racist. My sister bought this for me though and it was an interesting read. I couldn’t find a Bookshop.org link unfortunately so here’s a review.
• Gretchen McCulloch, Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language (2019): An excellent book by one of the co-hosts of one of my favorite podcasts, Lingthusiasm! It’s a lovely look at the various languages of the internet.
• Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (1998): This was a trippy read, although most of it went over my head. Hawking did his best to make everything approachable and intelligible, but I think I preferred the Cosmos approach instead. Glad I read it though!
• Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements: This was recommended in a work training to me. I think it had a few kernels of knowledge, but overall I really did not love it.
• Bora Chung, trans. Anton Hur, Your Utopia (2024): I had no idea what to expect with this book. I picked it up at our local indie from the “staff picks” shelf, which never steers me wrong. It’s lovely and terrifying and weird. Sci-fi, horror, all sorts of stuff in here. It’s well worth a read!
• L. E. Modesitt, Jr, Sub-Majer’s Challenge (2025): The latest Saga of Recluce book. More about Alyiakal and the early days of the empire of Cyador. I’ve been reading this series since probably 2000 or so and I always really enjoy it. The order/chaos magic system (black/white, respectively) is very interesting, and it’s got cool elements of both fantasy and sci-fi.
• Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism (2018): My spouse let me borrow their copy of this to read. I found it useful, and I think it’s important to always interrogate whiteness.
• J. W. Ocker, The United States of Cryptids: A Tour of American Myths and Monsters (2022): This was an absolute delight! I loved reading about various cryptids across the US.
• Tricia Hersey, Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto (2022): I first heard about Hersey’s work on a lovely episode of the Nocturne podcast. The focus of the book is on making time for rest, and indeed, rest as a form of resistance against the capitalist hellscape we are suffering through. It was lovely.
• Philip Pullman, The Rose Field (The Book of Dust vol. 3) (2025): I mostly really loved this! It’s hard to top the ending of The Amber Spyglass, to be sure. But this was an ending and I very much enjoyed the book. One of these days I’ll have to reread His Dark Materials and then The Book of Dust, once some time has passed. We didn’t put a passage from The Amber Spyglass in our wedding for no reason…

Did Not Finish

• Jules Verne, The Mysterious Island (1876): This one just didn’t grab me, unfortunately.
• John Steinbeck, East of Eden (1952): I stalled out. It was just too much.
• Philip Pullman, The Ruby in the Smoke (1985): I love Pullman’s His Dark Materials and The Book of Dust trilogy, so I figured I’d check this one out. But this was not my thing, unfortunately.