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Whistler (2026) is my first time reading Ann Patchett and I went in not knowing what to expect. And let me say the hype surrounding this novel is real. Whistler is going on my top ten list at the end of the year for sure. ​The cover is somewhat misleading. Whistler is not about a… Continue reading

1979 – “What actually happens after a revolution? I could ask, though we’ve answered that too many times already…: class struggle, radical change in the institutions, a dictatorship of the proletariat. But actually, Sohrab and I have just spent the last few days walking around prisons and universities… and actually every program is now full… Continue reading

That Artsy Reader Girl for this week’s Top Ten Tuesday has asked us to choose the book we were reading on August 11 over the past ten years. I’m going to change it a bit to a book I read during the month of August over the past ten years. I can’t find a book… Continue reading

In 2019, a 19-year-old young man by the name of Zac Brettler jumped off the balcony of a London high-rise apartment to his death. At the time it was a story that barely made the news. But the award-winning journalist, Patrick Radden Keefe, based on a conversation he had with a friend of Zac’s family,… Continue reading

“Was it a poor decision for Kelly to walk home in the dark? Teenagers routinely make poor decisions. Does that justify them being hurt, or assaulted, or raped? No it does not. A person should be able to walk home, even in the dark, even through an isolated field, and arrive home safely.” – Megan… Continue reading

An American Plague (2003) by Jim Murphy is an award-winning young adult non-fiction book. The subject is the yellow fever epidemic that devastated Philadelphia during the summer and fall of 1793. I knew very little about this historic event, and Jim Murphy does a fine job of telling us what happened, the personalities involved, and… Continue reading

“I sit at my desk …. I can’t just tell jokes any more, I need to tell a story of some sort. Once I have a theme, I will be the sort of comedian who is invited on literary podcasts to talk about my favourite books and asked to host radio documentaries about the Culture… Continue reading

“Who knows why Fabritius painted the goldfinch at all? A tiny, stand-alone masterpiece, unique of all its kind? … Why this subject? A lonely pet bird? … Why does it seem so significant to me that the wall is plain—no tapestry or hunting horns, no stage decoration—and that he took such care to inscribe his… Continue reading

Over at BookTok they are doing a half-year yes, no, maybe review for all of the books they have read so far in 2026. I thought I might do something similar. And so here are the books I did read cover to cover in 2026 that I did not get around ro reviewing at the… Continue reading

​”At forty, Peter, an asylum lawyer in New York City, is overworked and isolated… But when the asylum case of a young gay man pierces Peter’s numbness, the event that he has avoided for twenty years returns to haunt him.…As Peter’s case plunges him further into the memory of his first love and the night… Continue reading