Reading, Writing, and Me

Nonfiction makes up a huge part of my reading each year (currently sitting at 48% of my annual total), but I don't really talk about it with you guys. Sometimes, if I manage to make a monthly wrap-up, I'll share mini reviews, but I just don't generally feel like they have a spot on here unless there's something particularly special going on (for those, see the links on the titles). A lot of this comes from the fact that I consume almost all the nonfiction I read on audio, almost more like a podcast, so I don't feel like I've truly engaged with the books deeply enough to review them in a helpful way. (This is not to say audiobooks are a lesser form of reading, just that I know I'm easily distracted and liable to miss things). It's kind of my way of having "just for fun" reading that's for me instead of being for me, for my writing, and for this blog like fiction ends up being labored by. So don't expect frequent nonfiction reviews from m...

Simple Passion  by Annie Ernaux  The shock I had when I saw Goodreads classifies this as fiction. I'd read a bit of Exteriors  for a class in an excerpt, and I considered Ernaux a nonfiction writer, a literary nonfiction writer. Not even really auto fiction because it feels like she liberally inserts herself factually into the narratives that are pulled unaltered from her life. This affair really happened... I'd gotten into this book hearing it talked about by one of my classmates so much that I got curious, and that was a great way to sink in. A slight idea that the prose would be good from my previous skim and then an effusive reverence for the writer as the only precursors. Usually, I'll give you a summary of the book before we get started, but I'm not sure how to do that here except to say this is a slim volume about her affair with the married man. Nothing in the summary speaks to what makes it compelling, though. So, instead, I'm going to give you two quotes I...

Personally—and I've seen this expressed a bit around the bookish internet and various podcasts I listen to so I don't think I'm entirely alone—2025 has felt like a bit of a let down of a new release year. There are years where I nearly every new release I pick up sparkles, and this year, I really struggled to find a 2025 release that really captured my attention the way that, say, the 2024 slate of releases did. Last year, I was struggling to narrow down the list of books from the year to make my final list. This year, it's truly only the top two that I fully recommend without reservations. There were plenty of interesting books this year (I'm about to tell you about nine of them), there were just very few that wholeheartedly captured my heart or got me extremely excited. Hopefully, 2026 is another uptick year (more on the books I'm already anticipating in a minute).  I feel like my best reads of 2025 really came from backlist titles, which you'll see in a ...

What I'd Rather Not Think About  by Jenna Posthuma (translated by Sarah Timmer Harvey) Overview: Posthuma has written a book with a quite simple mandate at face value. The novel chronicles grappling with an incredibly deep grief as a sister works through the loss of her twin brother to suicide. There's not much to say in a summary as the magic of this book is purely in the execution, the use of language, the framing. There's so much beauty and insight into grief to be found here but an equal amount is invested into illuminating life. I had a friend criticize a book as "death affirming" recently, and this is one of those books that's the antidote to that.  The novel follows the sister from childhood through around age thirty-six or seven and the observations that come from that period of growth, of becoming an adult. There's no proper way to encapsulate this for you. You just have to read it. Overall: 5 When you're truly caught off guard by a certain ki...

Universality  by Natasha Brown Overview: The novel opens with a lengthy magazine feature revolving around an assault that takes place at a countryside farm outside of London that's been taken over by a group of anarchist. The night of a rave, thrown by the anarchists, in the middle of COVID lockdown, ends with one man hitting another over the head with a gold bar and then disappearing into the night with the stolen riches turned weapon. The piece bounces around between the man who owned the farm, the anarchists that took it over, the culture wars columnist that links the anarchists and the owner of the farm, and additional unique characters. The second half of the book narratively follows some of these characters as well as the journalist who wrote the piece in snatches that further their portraits. Overall: 4 I'm not entirely sure what to make of this very short novel. My main impulse is that it doesn't quite feel like a novel as a reading experience. It doesn't feel l...

You all know that the first thing I was going to do when I got to Dublin was get a library card. Well, I did have phone/cell service, a government appointment, a Leap Card, and a few other admin things to sort out first, but by week two, I was on my way to my local library branch to get access to even more amazing books. You all know I love to collect library cards from all the places I've lived to add them to my quiver.  So what was it like to get a library card in Ireland? Very similar to getting my LA library card, not surprising as this is another quest in a major city. It's a two step process. I got online through the library's outpost of the government services website and registered. This gives you access to a few basic online parts of the library by providing your address, phone number, email, and other details. Then, to use the physical library, you take a confirmation number to a local branch along with some form of proof of address. For me, I used my ultimate pro...