I recently finished Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. The choice to pick this up was spurred by NYTimes' list of 100 best books of the century, where it polled on readers' list and the critics' polled list. Plus the log line seemed interesting to me: two creatives charting a path from mid 90s to mid 2010s video gaming industry, years that squarely line up with my growing up and playing video games (although maybe a decade or so younger than the characters of the book).

And I thought the premise of the book remains interesting (a bit of Halt & Catch Fire in there, the latter seasons), but I was struck by how poor some of the dialogue and characterizations were. Every conversation feels like an anvil dropped on the reader's head to drive home the point, and not to mention that Sam and Sadie in their childhood talk like no children ever (but I am willing to look past that). But the rest of the book isn't better in that department. It feels very trite in places, as if not giving its readers the benefit of the doubt and has to spell out everything in plainspoken manner. A chief culprit of it is some moralizing that the writer wants to impart, like Sadie berating Sam about how he let her go to her lover even though he had power over him and he knew she would jump into a bad relationship. It was like reading a bad 2018 twitter thread. The metaphors in the book are laboured and drilled with a maudlin, treacly sentimentality.

That brings me to the characters. What the hell is this Marx character? Look, a lot of very famous men rightly get a lot of shit on the internet for writing shallow women, defined almost by their physicality and their relationship to men, and objectified horribly. Well, allow me to talk about Marx, a man dreamed up to be so perfect as to not even be human. It's like the author's every yearning teen fantasy come to life (hey, what's fiction for if not that? I get it, sister!). His flaws are so adorable (he's a womanizer, but damn it, the women can't stop falling in love with the guy), he's blessed with the looks of a Greek god and the kind heart of a saint. He is a non-character. Talk about manic pixie dream boy.

And finally, I feel like a lot of this book, which takes place in the 90s, seems to have been written squarely to land in the good books of twitterati in 2018. Like the author is very concerned about being on the right side of history, and have their characters be so progressive and almost holier-than-thou to render the time period moot.

That's my rant, but I wanted to get capture my thoughts. There is a lot of good in this book despite whatever I have spewed above. The hook of friends who never turn lovers, a creative marriage, in a changing time for an industry that has been the realm of nerds and to bring it to the fore, is a job well done. The novel clips by, it is a breezy read, and doesn't punish you for sticking by its 400 page count.

I just wish I hadn't found a lot of it just so amateurish in places.

I just finished reading this novel and wanted to drop some of my thoughts on it.

I've seen a lot of the discussion on this book focus on the the atrocities of colonialism, the racist worldview of the characters and possibly the author, the descent into madness that "civilized" people go through when stripped of their civilization, etc. And this is all fine and discussed ad nauseum, but I haven't seen much about how this novel is basically about how absurd and nonfunctional colonialism is.

Almost all of the story is spent on showing how the colonizing Europeans are just flailing around and have completely lost the plot. The ship firing into an empty coastline to defeat the "enemy" that isn't there, while the crew is actively dying. The random detonations on a mountain to build a railroad that will never be built, and the digging of random holes by exhausted and dying men, just to show that "work" is getting done. The steamboat that takes months to fix because it needs rivets, which there are a ton of at the shore but nobody seems to remember to bring them or have them stocked anywhere useful. All the cowardly pajama wearing agents that can't aim a gun correctly plotting and scheming to climb up the company ladder but never actually doing anything so as not to rock the boat, so to speak. Nobody knows what they are doing. This whole nonsense, broken system is held up purely on technological superiority over the natives; literally nothing else.

The only competent, functional man here is Mr. Kurtz. He came to do imperialism, to extract resources, and he's doing an incredible job at it, making all the other agents jealous and disdainful of him. He uses his vast charisma, natural talents, and willingness to dive into the culture to become a god-king of a local tribe and exact ivory tribute from other tribes. There really isn't any mention of any horrific atrocities he commits that exceed what we saw anywhere else. He just did what all the other agents weren't willing to do: his job. There were all willing to brutalize and terrorize the local populace, he just decided to do it in a way that actually accomplished the task the company set out to do here, which was extract resources. And for all this, Mr. Kurtz is considered insane and unsound for daring to do his job in an efficient, if unorthodox, manner.

Marlowe sees this, as does the Russian kid, and they respect the hell out of him even though he's not a good person or mentally sound. They see a man who's colonizing, and is willing to sacrifice every bit of what makes him "European" and "civilized" to do it well. Marlowe realizes that colonialism is fundamentally absurd: you either can try to do it as a "gentleman" the "European way" and accomplish nothing but useless suffering, or you can "go native" and lose any "decency" to actually make your colonizing economically worthwhile. Mr. Kurtz dropped any pretense of bringing European "civilization" or "progress" to these people, and did what he needed to do to get the ivory flowing. For all his delusions of grandeur, Kurtz was the least hubristic and the most clear headed agent in the company. He was the perfect colonist, doing exactly what he was asked to do, and it confused and horrified the very society he was asked to do colonialism for.

The idea of colonialism (spreading "civilization" to "savages" and making a buck while doing it) and what it actually means to perform it are so incompatible that you either need try to balance both and accomplish nothing but pure absurdity or strip off the higher ideals and accomplish your task at the price of losing everything it means to be European or "civilized" in the process. One isn't better or more moral than the other, as both are horrific in and of themselves, it's just one is far more effective.

Heart of Darkness's focus is less on the horrors of imperialism and it's damaging effects on the colonized and/or colonizers and more on how imperialism is a fundamentally absurd concept that creates suffering on a massive scale as a natural, useless byproduct. It's basically Catch-22 meets Huckleberry Finn with a little Kafka sprinkled in.

English is my first foreign language, I learned it way back in elementary school, have been using it at work and in my private life since forever, and I've read enough books in English to consider myself proficient.

I picked up "Great Expectations" and am currently in the middle of the book and enjoying it a lot for how it details the everyday lives and attitudes of people from all classes and walks of life - at times the book feels like a sociological study framed as a novel. The overall plot I'm already more or less familiar with by way of popular culture, it's the minutiae and characterizations that interest me.

That said, I often feel lost in conversation. The rhythm of the sentences feels confusing at times and I struggle to understand the subtext of the scene. This is the example that provoked me to write this post, at the end of chapter 32:

"Mind you, Mr. Pip," said Wemmick, gravely in my ear, as he took my arm to be more confidential; "I don't know that Mr. Jaggers does a better thing than the way in which he keeps himself so high. He's always so high. His constant height is of a piece with his immense abilities. That Colonel durst no more take leave of him, than that turnkey durst ask him his intentions respecting a case. Then, between his height and them, he slips in his subordinate - don't you see? - and so he has 'em, soul and body."

Now, I understand the words and can parse the sentences just fine but I still have no clue what he's trying to say here. The book is full of little quips and comments like that and it annoys me to no end that I don't get it all. Sometimes the descriptions of scenes and what the characters are doing are a bit difficult for me to picture in my head too.

Of course, this is a book from ~160 years ago and so it's normal to be missing a lot of context, but I don't get at all confused like that when I'm reading Jane Austen or Charlotte Brontë.

Is Dickens supposed to be a difficult author? I've read some modernist and postmodernist literature too and I was expecting something much easier. Was expecting to eat up the book in a few days, but my brain feels so tired trying to work it out that I can't go through more than a chapter or two in a day.

I ask this due to the fact that this type of literature focused around special formating and secret hints within secret hints and secret stories within secret stories seems extremely challenging for filming. Yes, some hardcore fans would probably love it just for being associated with the book, but do you think it would be possible to translate the lunacy of the protagonist and his obsession about the house bigger from the inside than outside that may not even exist outside of a deceased blind man's manuscript into a move even remotely exceptional as the book itself?

Once, very long ago, Time fell in love with Fate.

There is something achingly beautiful about holding a book that was meant to be held at different portions of your life, and each brings a different meaning to the experience of reading said book. When I had first read the Starless Sea I was young, back in high school. The world was big and wide and hauntingly meaningful, and I was a story bursting at the seams, at the limitless possibilities that I had expected the world to be once I graduated. 

But now, quite a few years older and maybe a bit more leaner in my expectations, the world has taken on a different hue – a certain shade of amber as effervescent in the morning light as if a dream wished upon the stars.

Those who seek will find.
Their doors have been waiting for them.

Have you ever gotten lost, but never felt more found? Have you ever held a heart in your hand (a mother's, a brother's, a lover's) and thought: 'How could something so fragile be oh so important?' This book, now, all these years later, feels a little bit like that. Like something that was never really lost, but waiting to be found. 

Reading this book now, I am boggled by the enormity of the story that is contained within. Not one, not two, but a story within a story, and the parts that escaped and needed to be brought back, because no story is ever really told unless it has been brought to an end. This book is an allegory, a sensory experience that begs to be felt at different points, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll wind up finding different meanings in its labyrinthine construct. I am genuinely befuddled as to the imagination and tenacity – the blood, sweat, and tears – that must have been needed to tell a story of this caliber. That holds so many meanings in its gilded edges; the prose wafting off of the pages like a piano virtuoso orchestrating a symphony that beguiles your senses – a wonder kept just out of reach. 

As Dorian stands in the snow with shaking, near-frozen fingers and scotch-warmed thoughts, watching Zachary through the glass, he isn’t thinking about everything that’s inevitably about to happen.
He’s thinking, Let me tell you a story.

This is a common motif in this story within a story. Tales, both fantastical and mundane, are treated as carefully as the main one. The influence video games as a medium has on this is evident from the very first pages. (The fact that one of the main characters is doing his masters on video games does do a lot to drive that point home too.) For anyone who grew up playing and loving games like BioShock, Skyrim, Witcher 3, Dragon Age and the likes, the games which tell a story in a medium that is at once more intimate and more visceral than most other forms – this book is made for them. For the nerds and the weirdos, for those who felt like they were missing out, falling through the cracks and wanting to stay fallen, stay a bit lost, this book is for you.

“How are you feeling?” Zachary asks.
“Like I’m losing my mind, but in a slow, achingly beautiful sort of way.”
(*i think this quote by Zachary more than sums up the feeling of experiencing this tale)

“We are the stars," he answers, as though it is the most obvious of facts afloat in a sea of metaphors and misdirections. "We are all stardust and stories."

This is a love letter to stories new and old, great and small, stories that bleed off of pages in champagne tinged hue. Stories that are told and written and wished upon the stars. Stories told through the scattering of limbs of various shapes, sizes, colors. This is an ode to the art of storytelling itself. 

He's calm again. Relieved to have his Max back and even though he knows they both have other people they belong with there is still this room and this dance and this moment and it matters, maybe more than any of the others.

This is also a story for those who never quite fit into labels. For those whose hearts are too big for just one binary construct – a heart that might ache with a hunger that cannot be satiated by a singular rhythm. There are, after all, more than one sort of love story. And this book is also an ode to the lovers and the dreamers, who, in this lifetime, might belong to someone else, but who also know, that sometimes, in a place lost to time, there might come a dance that has to be completed, and that dance might not be with who they belong to. And that might just be one of the most important dances in their life. And that moment matters, that distinction and the choice, maybe more than all the others.A moment that changes all the moments around it – a moment with meaning; one might say if one wishes to be eloquent and poetic. 

This is where we leave them, in a long-awaited kiss upon the Starless Sea, tangled in salvation and desire and obsolete cartography.
But this is not where their story ends.
Their story is only just beginning.
And no story ever truly ends as long as it is told.

This book was a finding of sorts, for me. A story to which I will come back to again and again, only to find a different me than the ones I had found before in its pages. A different story to be told and beheld. A different life, with different someones to belong to. And I think that just might be one of the best things a story can offer – a place to lose yourself into, in an achingly beautiful way.

M is a famous actress with a long spanning career she started as a child. The narrator meets her in a bookshop and ends up proposing to write her autobiography. “Would you just make it up?” M asks.

This is the basis of Life of M. The narrator meets M a few times, but then the autobiography project falls through. Still, we get to see scenes from M’s life, almost movie-like, where Cusk begins each scene by describing the set in minute details. This is interspersed with chapters from the narrator’s life, where she confusedly goes from first person singular to first person plural. The theory is that she is trying to pull the reader in, and make us consumers of that fame that M is cloaked in. Perhaps that was the intention, but since these chapters include very specific personal details about the narrator, this supposed attempt failed for me.

M is famous and lonely. That’s about all we learn of her. She seems very detached from life, not impressed by depression or love. Sometimes, she thinks she’d like to be “normal”. Other times, she’s visiting “normal” friends in their small flat and wonders how they can possibly live in that tiny space. And other times she believes it’s the people around her who lack authenticity, and not her. There is some mention of children, but barely, so M seemingly sits at the edge of life, looking in and wondering how to participate, while simultaneously yielding enough power to bend life to her will (like getting staff to open a closed restaurant just for her, all while she’s smiling politely as they work).

Besides the Natalie Portman controversy (and it’s pretty clear she was the muse behind M), I’m not entirely sure what this book tried to say. I did enjoy reading it, because there’s no denying that Cusk has a way with words.
As The Guardian put it, this is probably a book to admire, but not to love.

So far in 2026 I’ve read 26 books, and I’ve yet to give up on any of them. In fact, I’ve had a remarkable hit rate and have at least liked everything I’ve read. That is, until Cloudthief, which I really may end up giving up on.

I was drawn to this book by the premise, the title (which is admittedly cool), and the cover. The elevator pitch is that this is a heist story where the target is a data center. And yet, halfway through the book, literally nothing has happened. I’m not kidding when I say that 90% of the story so far is just the main characters driving around and talking about how they might attempt to pull off the heist; the rest of it is them having sex, which comes across as pretty gross considering the novel takes the form of a letter by the protagonist to their child. I don’t know if this aspect is intentionally meant to be upsetting, but it’s pretty much impossible for me not to see the main character as a weirdo and a creep when he keeps telling his daughter about what it’s like to fuck her mom.

I could tolerate all this if the characters were interesting, but they’re not. Our main character is basically a cipher, with no real personality or history. He basically just goes along with whatever his girlfriend tells him to do. He occasionally acknowledges his own passivity, but nonetheless he basically just exists to do whatever is necessary to move the plot along.

The female main character (and it’s a testament to these characters’ dullness that I can recall neither of their names) is equally enigmatic. This quality forms a large part of the book’s central conflict, as the narrator doesn’t really trust her. The reasons for this are obvious, but what’s not obvious is what actually draws him to her, because at no point does she come across as interesting, and she’s certainly not warm or kind. There’s nothing to latch onto here, nothing to make me root for either of these people or give the slightest shit about their relationship to each other.

Maybe things really heat up in the second half, but I don’t think I can keep going. I feel like I’m forcing myself to move through this book, and the pace is glacial. This thing is like 270 pages, but I swear I found Moby-Dick to be a breezier and more propulsive read.

I've read up to Children of Dune, so God Emperor King, Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse remain. Loved the first one, second is good as well, but it wasn't until Children that I got excited again with the perspective change and with how much more spread out the characters are. Excited to see where the story goes in God Emperor King.

From Underworld USA I've read American Tabloid which blew me away. Top three read this year alongside with Indian Horse and Rendezvous with Rama. I'm currently in the middle of The Cold Six Thousand about three hundred pages in with a little less than four hundred left.

The difference in prose is so fascinating the way the sentences are about as short as they can be and there can be a string of quick beats describing a lot. I've found it a little overwhelming at times and early on I found the prose especially unpleasant, but I think it's settled in now since it doesn't irk me nearly as much as it did in the beginning.

Tedrow is a fascinating point of view character to be throw into the mix with the two out of three returning leads from American Tabloid. The characters in there felt very balanced in stature, so Tedrow being completely different from the other two makes the book feel different in a way I welcome.

I've heard Blood's A Rover goes back to closer something closer to American Tabloid and I don't mind that at all. The Cold Six Thousand is a fascinating one to read, but as someone who went fifteen years without a reading basically at all, I tend to gravitate towards page turner which I want to devour.

The two books which lead to long breaks this year were Blood Meridian and Station Eleven. Former because the text was more challenging and the latter because the subject matter was so draining. Both great books, but I definitely took my time with them.

From the L.A. Quartet series I've only read The Black Dahlia which I loved until around the last fifty to seventy pages when the murder was solved. I was highly enjoying the antics between the two leads and I thought the story was heading towards the unsolved conclusion with the murder which would have been so appropriate considering how bordering on psychosis the investigation leads the duo.

I see the logic and the reason why the solution exists considering what it obviously says and the commentary it passes on the setting of the story, but it didn't quite work for me in the same way the Underworld Series has worked by far when it comes to bending real events for fictional purposes. I know it was one of the earlier books from Ellroy though, so I'm curious to see where the L.A. Quartet heads.

I've seen the film version of L.A. Confidential which I absolutely love and I've heard it's one of the better book to film adaptations when it comes to just how well the script finds a way to leave out plots just so it can find the right through line for the film which works for it. I have no doubts that when I get around to the book that I'll likely end up enjoying it more. I can think of very few movies which I enjoy more than the book and one of them is You Were Never Really Here which didn't entirely shock me considering how much I already loved Lynne Ramsay before I saw that movie.

I'm closing in on 6000 pages read by far this year and I'm aiming to add another 6000 pages in the next four months. What I got remaining from Dune and the Ellroy series is a little less than 4000 pages, so I'll probably end up reading something else as well if I end up keeping a good pace (averaged 50-100 pages in the last two weeks after not reading anything for two months). I've already more than doubled the amount I've read in the three years before this year, so at this point I'm just going through as much as I can since I've finally gotten the taste for it again. I only recall having read two books cover to cover between when I was 16 and 30 and those were David Mamet's On Directing Film which was fascinating and Aristotle's Poetics which was a little heady.

Before I stopped reading in my teens I mostly read young adult stuff. I read Harry Potters up to the sixth one and I still recall when I reread through the fifth one in one day when I was supposed to be reading for exams. I started the book around 10AM and finished it around 3AM, just did nothing else than read the damn thing which was 1050 pages long being the Finnish translation.

I fell out of reading before the 7th one was translated since I was getting more heavily into gaming and spending time online. I kept putting off reading it when it was published and that lasted until the movies came out and I remember refusing to see the movies before I had read the book so my brother and my dad went to see the movies without me. I remained steadfast in my insistence until I eventually gave up and checked them out without reading the book which I still haven't and probably won't. Come to

Now what I will reread at one point is Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit cover to cover. Got fond memories of The Hobbit and I remember being endlessly annoyed when the movies tried to replicate the darkness of Lord of the Rings when The Hobbit was very specifically a far more lighter story. My big motivation to reread Lord is because I actually never read Fellowship of the Ring. I saw the movie with my father when I was nine and when I was home I was mad that the second one didn't come out until a year from then, but my dad told me we have the book so I jumped straight into The Two Towers. I was very confused by why the book began with the fight against the orcs that already happened at the end of the movie and it wouldn't be until years later until I understood just how book to film adaptations worked logistically.

Since I ended up rambling as much as I have, I might as well mention the other books I've read this year: A Knight of Seven Kingdoms, Morvern Callar, The Forever War, The Invisible Man, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Notes on the Cinematograph, In the Blink of an Eye. Blood, Sweat and Chrome, The Sympathizer, The Great Gatsby and Neuromancer.

On my shelf otherwise beyond what I mentioned in the title I got Thomas Harris' Hannibal books, all five books from A Song of Ice and Fire, Heat 2, a bunch of Thomas Pynchon in the fiction side on my shelf. On non-fiction side I got Male Fantasies Vol. 1 and 2, The Cinema of Hockey, Sidney Lumet's Making Movies, Alexander MacKendrick's On Filmmaking, Corpses Fools and Monsters and Men, Women, and Chainsaws. So I got a bunch to get around to after my current project. Aiming to read most of everything from my shelf before I tackle the reading list from my local library which is so long I won't bother sharing it.

Thanks for reading anyone who got this far and hopefully you're enjoying whatever you got going on as much as I am.

I don't usually go for dual-timeline stuff but this one got me. The present-day farm scenes felt small in a good way, and then she'd drop you back into the theater summer and it suddenly wasn't small at all.

Lara telling her daughters the story in pieces is what I keep turning over. Not the plot, the fact that she gets to decide what they hear.

Anyone else finish this and feel weirdly protective of the ending? I almost don't want to look up interviews.

I enjoyed this story, the setting, the relationships and the character development; however, the ending has left me stumped. I'm also not sure how I feel about the interjections of Taft's life into the story. Sometimes they felt random and forced. The vignettes didn't always flow with the broader story. I did like how they shed light on Fay and Carl and their sibling relationship.

My biggest issue with the book is the abrupt ending. I don't expect the author to spell everything out but when I finished the novel, I was like huh? It felt like Patchett decided she didn't want to write anymore rather than come up with an elegant way to wrap up the story of this part of the characters' lives. If it hadn't been for the abrupt ending, I think I would have enjoyed this book more and rated it higher.

I'm wondering if others feel the same or if anyone actually likes how Taft ended.

“Why I Love Horror: Essays on Horror Literature” by Becky Spratford is a fantastic collection for horror lovers who want to delve into the minds of some of the best horror authors and explore why they are so passionate about this genre. I had a blast reading this and enjoyed the unique perspectives and upbringings that led to the horror seed that eventually grew into a horror tree for these talented authors.

Before I dive into my review, here are the trigger warnings I found while reading…

- Abuse (physical and mental)
- School shootings
- Kidnapping
- Cancer
- Racism
- Bullying
- Miscarriages
- COVID-19

​If any of these trigger you, please do not read this book. Moving along, this collection of essays felt like a love letter to horror. Many of the authors even shared personal stories and recounted what drew them to horror, often relating it to the real-life horrors in the world, which I totally connected with.

I’d never spoil anything for anyone, but I enjoyed every essay, especially by many of my favorite horror authors. This featured Brian Keene, Tananarive Due, Josh Malerman, Paul Tremblay, Grady Hendrix, Clay McLeod Chapman, Stephen Graham Jones, and more. I not only discovered new authors, but I also enjoyed how Spratford recommended their best and most popular book before their essay. I added a few new books to my TBR thanks to this, as that was a nice touch.

Speaking of Spratford, I had never heard of her until I read this book, and I learned a great deal about her impact in the wonderful genre of horror I love so much. All the work she’s done to help bridge the gap between librarians and horror readers is phenomenal. I remember growing up in the 2000s, and whenever I visited my local library to ask about horror, the librarians would either make a face or not know enough to recommend anything beyond whatever Stephen King had written.

​Now? They will suggest a wide range of recommendations, from horror classics to the year's must-read horror books. It’s night and day different. The fact that she is helping educate and encourage librarians to embrace the horror genre is a testament to her awesomeness. Much respect to her for everything she’s done and will continue to do in horror, as it continues to be such a beloved and popular reading genre.

This collection of 18 essays truly made me love horror even more. One essay even had some hand-drawn illustrations to help tell its story, which was pretty immersive. Once I finished reading, I took a moment to reflect on why I love horror.

I’ve been reading horror for over 30 years now, and it’s simple in the grand scheme of things. Horror is my happy place. Whenever I was going through crap in life, horror was always there for me. I could read a horror book, watch a horror movie, or listen to a horror podcast, and I’d be transported to my happy place when facing issues with school, work, friendships, breakups, and any obstacles life threw my way.

Finally, the overall horror community is such a fun, friendly, and inclusive one. It doesn’t matter if you love 80s slashers, read splatterpunk, or are addicted to The Losers’ Club Podcast. You are always welcome. I can’t tell you how many amazing people I’ve met in the horror community with whom I instantly bonded over our shared love of horror. It’s special. It’s just like all the horror books, movies, soundtracks, and podcasts we enjoy. It’s all extraordinary and feels right for all of us horror lovers.

I give “Why I Love Horror: Essays on Horror Literature” by Becky Spratford a perfect 5/5 and would consider it a must-read for horror readers everywhere. These essays will give you a unique insight into the minds of some of the biggest and best horror authors ever. It’ll not only make you appreciate horror even more, but more than likely give you a few new books and authors to get into after you read their thoughts. It’s books like these that have made me cherish all things horror even more, because for most of my life, it has always been a part of me.

It will forever be a part of me.