Books

This page contains a list of books I have read. They aren’t listed in any particular order except roughly chronologically based on when I finished them. If a book left an exceptional impression (usually positive), I will mark its entry with a + and sometimes a link to a summary or review. If I didn’t finish a book the entry will be marked with DNF. I try to engage with a book for ~100 pages or half its length (whichever is shorter) before DNF-ing.

This page exists mainly so I can remember what I’ve read over time, and so friends can check if I’ve read something without spoiling the surprise of a book they want to gift me. But, maybe you’ll find a new book to read or see one you’ve read before and want to talk about. Or maybe it will remind you of a book you think I might like. In all of those cases I hope you’ll let me know!

2025

The Years by by Annie Ernaux +

The Years is a memoir that spans the life of Annie Ernaux from 1941 to 2006. The first sentence is efectively four pages long. It is insanely relatable. This is somewhat shocking given that I was alive for less than fifteen years of that interval and that I am not a French woman. Ernaux wrote the memoir in the third person we with the exception of a handful of passages that use she. The passages that use she serve as transitions between different epochs in the narative and ground you in details that feel more concrete and explicity about Ernaux’s life than that of the abstract composite of her generation. The book is slim at 231 pages, but it is dense with passages that made me go “aha!” or “yes!” I highlighted 52 pages worth of these passages so I could read them again later… Every few pages I would see a nugget and think to myself, “I have to mention this in my summary!” But, Ernaux summarizes the book best in the last nine pages, the first eight of which comprise the last passage that uses she. Read this book.

Creation Lake by by Rachel Kushner

This is a fun espionage novel. It’s about Sadie (I can’t remember if this is her actual or assumed name), an ex-FBI agent, who becomes a private spy after getting fired so the organization can save face after an operation goes off the rails at the last minute. She embeds herself in and proceeds to less-than-subtly sabotage a group of French anarchists who built a commune in the countryside after becoming disillusioned by decades of toil in the name of leftist ideals within the capitalist order. By the end of the book, she seems to have bought into the ideology espoused by the group’s mysterious chief intellectual who lives in a cave and communicates with the group via a mailing list. The transition to the buy-in felt a bit rushed, though. Perhaps this an intentional unreliable narrator thing. Sadie is drunk or severely hungover for most of the book after-all. Throughout the story I kept thinking about two books I’ve read before: Back from the Land by Eleanor Agnew and The Myth of the Machine: Technics and Human Development by Lewis Mumford. I was reminded of the former because of how the members of the commune were quickly disabused of any romantic notions they had of country living, just like the young people who’s lives Agnew traces through the 1970s. I was reminded of Mumford, and perhaps Ivan Illich, because of the polemical nature of the cave-dwelling intellectual’s emails.

Darryl by Jackie Ess

This book is hilarious! I gave it to Andrea after I finished it and she made a good observation that I’m going to steal: there are two stories in here. The primary story is about the protaganist and narrator, Darryl, a cuckold, circuitously discovering that he is gay and that he’s in love with one of the men who’s been banging his wife. There’s also a parallel small town murder mystery cenetered on several other members of the cuckold community. Darryl regularly abuses drugs and alcohol, most notably GHB. This, coupled with the fact that every chapter is less than five pages, makes reading this book feel like reading the disjointed archives of someone’s posts on livejournal.

Stag Dance by Torrey Peters

This book contains three short stories and a novel. My favorite of the stories is The Chaser: a story about a boarding school romance. After hooking up with this bunkmate, a boy at a quaker school in the middle of nowhere is terrified to learn that his sexuality is more complex than he expected. The resulting inner turmoil and campus drama that unfolds is heartbreaking, scandalous, and at times a bit horny. The titular novel is about a crew of lumberjacks that try to pull off an illegal timber operation in a remote forest under the cover of a harsh winter. To keep their spirits high, they organize a gender-bending ball which some of them attend as women. It’s fun to read as the crew grow gossipy and covetous as they compete for the affections of those jacks attending as women. The novel mostly follows the narrator: Babe Bunyan, a self-described ugly sonofabitch whose burliness and axe skills are the stuff of local legend, on an arc of self discovery after electing to attend the dance as a woman. The story is equal parts heartening and heartbreaking. I recommend reading it!

Ask me again by Clare Sestanovich +

I enjoyed this book! I always felt a bit melancholy after stting down to read it, but in a good, almost wistful or nostalgiac, way. The story spans the young adulthood of a woman named Eva and her best friend (the most succint way to describe their relationship) Jamie. With the exception of one chapter it is written in third-person, but it feels a lot like the narrator is actually Eva. It might just be third-person omniscient and I’m overthinking it, but I’d be curious to see if this is a thing… Parts of the story felt similar to moments in my and my friends’ lives during the past fifteen years. I enjoyed the dream-like quality of the narrative; it’s mostly chronological, but the transitions between episodes in Eva’s life feel a bit like how you remember the parts of a long dream after you’ve woken up. A bit fuzzy, but not disjointed or random. I’ll probably read it again to see if I can get a better sense of “what it’s about.”

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson DNF

Man, lately I’ve consistently been striking out on biographies about important people. I had some reasonable momentum going on this one about Franklin, but ran out of steam about halfway through and kept getting distracted whenever I sat down to read it. I blame Robert Caro for this. His four-volume series about Lyndon Johnson set a bar for readability that nothing else in this genre has been able to match. Isaacson seems really enamored with Franklin, which is a little distracting. The book does have lots of fun facts sprinkled throughout, though. For example; until lightning rods were widespread, apparently church steeples were constantly getting struck by lightning and burning cities to the ground.

Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid +

I enjoyed this book. Kincaid does a great job of illustrating how disorienting and uncomfortable puberty is. She also tells a compelling story about the relationship between the narrator and her mother. I wish I had read this before I read Lucy— it feels like a fitting prologue.

Mr. Potter by Jamaica Kincaid

At the Bottom of the River by Jamaica Kincaid

Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid +

A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid

The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley

Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico

All Fours by Miranda July

According to Mark by Penelope Lively

Transcription by Kate Atkinson

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston +

The Beast Must Die by Nicholas Blake +

The Body in Question by Jill Ciment