Top 6 Authors I Miss the Most

Here is a question I like to discuss frequently with my book nerd friends: Which writer, if it were announced that a new book by them was forthcoming, would cause you to freak out and lose several hours of your day searching for details? That is, which writers do you miss the most? 

Until recently, Chad Harbach would've been high on my list. In fact, when RoscoeBooks owner Erika sent me a photo of an ARC of The Brightness she got at booksellers conference earlier this year, not only did I audibly gasp, I couldn't breathe for a few seconds. (I just finished reading The Brightness, and yes, it was worth the wait.)

Part of the equation, but not all of it, is time elapsed since the last book. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, it's true. So I think a writer with a long gap between books becomes much more freak-out-worthy. 

Look, I know writers don't owe us anything. And now, in the midst of trying to write my own novel, I finally fully realize how fucking difficult it is. So don't take this too seriously: It's just a fun question to consider.

Also, while it would be fun to think about the question for dead authors, I'm keeping this to writers who are still alive, and presumably, still working.

So here's my list: 

6. Nicole Krauss -- Krauss's 2005 novel The History of Love is quite literally one of my favorites of all time -- quiet, elegant, and profound. Her last novel was Forest Dark in 2017 (there was a story collection in 2020, too). Okay, so this is fun: In googling to make sure I had the years of her books right, I discovered Krauss DOES have a new novel coming in Sept. 2027. Woohoo! And yes, I freaked out!

5. David Mitchell -- Mitchell's last novel was 2020's Utopia Avenue, and he's usually on about the 6-7 year plan between books. So...aaaaaannnnny minute now? No other writer can be counted on to so thoroughly blow your mind as David Mitchell. 

4. Jonathan Tropper -- I was texting with my friend Doug the other day about Tropper's fantastic 2007 novel How To Talk To a Widower. And it occurred to me not for the first time that he's probably never coming back to fiction. Which made me really sad. His last novel was (the now presciently titled) One Last Thing Before I Go in 2012. Tropper has made it big in TV, creating and writing hit series like Banshee and Your Friends & Neighbors. It's a safe assumption the money's a bit better in TV than in book publishing. But if he were ever to come back to books, boy, would I be ecstatic. 

3. Barack Obama -- Dear Barry, I hope this finds you well. I'm writing just to check back quickly on the overdue second part of your memoir (after 2020's A Promised Land) you promised us around 2023 or so. Let me know how things are looking, and if we can slot your book into our 2027 reading schedule. No worries if not. But we NEED it badly. 

2. Gillian Flynn -- I mean, right?! Gone Girl was 2012.

1. Dexter Palmer -- Bit of a deep cut here, but Palmer's novel 2016 Version Control is one of the more criminally underrated novels of the last decade. He published another little-read novel in 2019, but nothing since. I'd kill for another.

For real now, tell me who is on your list of most-missed authors!

The Insanity and Joy of Reading Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle Series

Recently, my friend Mike sent me an Instagram Reel captioned "POV: your friend who's always reading an insane book" and it's a guy joking about reading Moby Dick at the beach and The Epic of Gilgamesh on a plane and War and Peace to his dog before bed.

I responded: Wait, am I that friend?

Reader, I am that friend. 

But it's only with the perspective granted by a few months' time that I can now see clearly how reading six volumes of autofiction by an irascible Norwegian writer might be seen as insane to many other readers.

Yes, so back in June of this year, after an on-again-off-again two-year odyssey, I finally finished all six novels in Karl Ove Knausgaard's epic 3,000-plus-page My Struggle series.

Why? Why did I do that? Honestly, because I enjoyed the first one, and maybe against all odds, continued to enjoy them. (Maybe that's the most insane part.) I'm being purposefully self-deprecating here, but I'm not alone in my insanity: Enough high-level readers, from Zadie Smith to New Yorker critic James Wood have raved about these, as well. 

When I started this series back in the summer of 2024, I just wanted to know the answer to a simple question: Why do these work? Why do readers like Zadie Smith and James Wood love them? When I got through the first three, I wrote about why I thought they'd been working so far and why I was enjoying them. Basically, despite being a truculent jerk, he's really relatable -- and his mundane, everyday struggles are rendered in such a way that you often go, "Yep, I know what that's like."

But was that relatability really enough to draw me through 3,000 pages? It was. But just barely. Book 6 is 1,200 pages and contains a nearly 500-page section that's a close read of a German poem, a long look at Hitler's biography, and a bunch of other literary theory that is, not going to lie, eye-crossingly dull. This last book in the series was like running a marathon, and suddenly the only hill on the entire course is at mile 25. But I made it.

Speaking of marathons, another reason I'm glad I read these is the same reason why people enjoying doing hard things: When you finish a hard thing, you get a sense of accomplishment. Readers read for a variety of reasons. Among them for me is that I like a project. And this was certainly that. When I finished these novels, in addition to mostly enjoying the reading experience, reading these felt like doing something productive with my reading time, like I'd set a goal and completed it. Does that sound insane? Maybe it sounds insane. 

But relatability and accomplishment aside, there is much to be learned here is well -- another important reason to read. These novels are about a writer's life -- that is, how he sees the world and translates it from head to paper. In that sense, these books were inspiring and helpful to my own modest writerly aspirations.

Finally, one last reason I read: Dude is an absolute trainwreck. He makes terrible choices. He drinks a lot. He fights with everyone he loves. He constantly shoots himself in the foot (figuratively). And he's completely honest and forthright about everything bad he's done, knowing full well you're judging him harshly as you read. All that is incredibly entertaining.

Look, I know these books probably have limited appeal. I'm certainly not trying to talk you into reading them if they don't sound interesting to you. I'm just telling you why I read them: Because they brought me joy. I looked forward to reading the next one when I was between books. And I'm sad they're over. Hey, the people who are the most insane are often the happiest, too.

(Hey, have you heard about William T. Vollman's new thing? A Table for Fortune is a four-volume, 3,000 page box set publishing Oct. 6. Who's with me?! 😅)

A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness, by Michael Pollan: What Is It Like to Be Human?

Dan Brown’s latest novel The Secret of Secrets is all about an intriguing concept called noetic consciousness. When I read the book last year, I was like “Huh. Fascinating. I wonder if that’s actually a prevailing theory. Or is it just sort of a Brownian crackpot theory of consciousness, like the Da Vinci Code stuff?”

So to learn the answer to that question is the main reason I picked up Michael Pollan's new book, A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness. Hey, there are lots dumber reasons to read nonfiction, right? 😅

It turns out, Brown's plot device is as good a theory as anything else going right now. We actually know very little about consciousness — and Pollan admits he knows less after finishing writing the book than he did when he started.

Consciousness, like cosmology, has the problem that there is no way to study it from the outside. We can't leave the universe to observe it externally. And similarly, your consciousness is what allows you to think about being conscious. And that just blows it. By observing it, you're changing it.

Pollan takes us through the prevailing scientific and philosophical views of consciousness, starting, interestingly with a question of whether plants are sentient, conscious, or something else. That discussion gives us a baseline way to think about consciousness in animals and us. 

There's no agreed upon definition of consciousness even, but the most commonly used phrase to describe consciousness is "what it is like to be" something. If you can tell, say, what it is like to be a bat, then that bat is conscious. But what is it like to be a tree? Harder question. 

Speaking of hard problems, Pollan devotes much ink to the "hard problem" of consciousness — pinning a specific biological part of the brain (or in the case of plants, something else) or chemical function to “Aha, that’s consciousness.” So far, we can’t do it. Which makes the "tuning" theory of consciousness, that are brains are just tuned to an external collective consciousness and we're receiving signals like a radio antenna (incredibly simplified), intriguing to some (me included) for now.

There's a discussion of consciousness in artificial intelligence -- not just whether it's possible, but whether it's already happened. Probably not, to that latter question. Pollan details the case of the Google engineer who got fired for going public after claiming a chatbot was sentient. Pollan subtly makes fun of the guy and guys (they're always guys) like him: Maybe they're just really lonely. Of course, it's more detailed than that, but that's the tenor. 

There’s even a foray into psychedelics — a way, like meditation, of expanding consciousness. Even some leading scientists are beginning to think that there is something to studying psychedelics from the standpoint of how they alter our consciousness and divorce us from the Self.

Even if reading the book leads to more questions than answers, what it does is give you the framework of knowledge to be able to consider those questions. And that's why I liked it. Pollan does tend to insert himself into the discussion maybe a little too frequently for my taste, but he's an affable intruder. And we don't mind so much that he's there. Glad I read this. My brain hurts a little, though. Can someone pass the magic mushrooms?

Famous Men, by Julie Buntin: Should Art, and Ourselves, Be Separated from Artist?

In Claire Dederer's whip-smart book, Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma, she ponders the difficult question about what we as consumers of art should do about the art created by terrible men. Should we always separate art from artist? Sometimes? When? How? If we do separate art from artist and consume the art of terrible men, can we still enjoy the art of these men with "biographical stains"? The answers are not universal and every person must carefully examine these questions for themselves -- often for each individual case (Roman Polanski? Woody Allen? Norman Mailer? Philip Roth? Etc, etc, etc -- there is no shortage of terrible famous men who made/make great art). 

In Julie Buntin's new novel Famous Men, she asks us to go even further; to ponder not just whether we should separate art from artist but whether we should separate ourselves from artists with whom we might have a personal relationship when we know they do deplorable things. 

Famous Men is a novel about nuance -- about sexual power dynamics, #Metoo, and mutually beneficial, symbiotic (transactional?) relationships that maybe aren't as anchored to equal ground as they might seem on the surface. And it's a novel about writing and art and learning to find your way on your own in a brutal world. 

Wilhelmina (Will, to her friends) grows up, fatherless (a key detail), in the small town of Greening, Michigan. The otherwise forgettable town's claim to fame is that it's the birthplace of famous writer Nathaniel Fellow. Will's mother works in the cafeteria of a fancy boarding school Nathaniel attended, and when teenage Will discovers the poetry Nathaniel wrote as a student at the school and evidence of an encounter between her mother and Nathaniel as young people, she becomes deeply interested in learning more. She moves to NYC and she writes and she manages to insinuate herself into Nathaniel's trust and spends the next decades of her life hunting truth -- about her life, about poetry and literature, about friendship. 

It's almost wearisome at this point to complain about the lost art of considering nuance in this hot-take culture. But this novel is a smack-in-the-face wake up call to remember there's always a story, context, and more than meets the eye behind what appears to be a simple issue. 

And my goodness, Julie Buntin is a magnetic writer! This is my first time reading her (her debut Marlena was a bookstore favorite a few years ago, but I never got to it) and I'm mesmerized by her detail and description. But she keeps us quickly moving, too.  

I really, really loved this novel. I picked this up on a whim based on this fantastic interview at the Chicago Review of Books. And it turns out to be a favorite of the year. But I need you to read this too and tell me what you think. I highly recommend you do! 

On Reading Dungeon Crawler Carl and Letting Your Geek Flag Fly

I am likely one of the nerdiest readers you know. I love long and stupidly complicated and sometimes really obscure (sometimes in public, even -- ugh, so performative😅) literary novels. So believe me when I tell you I'm in no position to turn my nose up in haughty dismissal at any book trend. 

But when the Dungeon Crawler Carl series became ubiquitous this summer, I thought, nah, not for me. No way would I, a person who has never played Dungeons & Dragons and hasn't touched a non-Mario Kart video game since grade school, possibly enjoy these books. I didn't even know what LitRPG meant. It sounded like a new club drug.

But...One way to talk yourself into reading the book du jour when you're not sure you'll like it but want to read for cultural literacy's sake is to plan to write about it. Motivation! 

So I recruited my bookseller colleague Adi Alsaid to do a Critics in Conversation piece with me at the Chicago Review of Books. In the piece, we discuss how we -- both of us primarily literary fiction readers -- talked ourselves into reading this book that's far outside both our comfort zones, Adi's experience with the audiobook, and whether Dungeon Crawler Carl is the beginning of a LitRPG trend. 

You can read that conversation by clicking this button.

But here's the spoiler: Yes, Dungeon Crawler Carl actually IS a good time. It's really goofy and a lot silly, but it moves as quickly as a book like this must. It is literally like reading a video game. I will say, even through about the first 200 pages, I still wasn't sure what the hype was about and WAS sure this wasn't for me. But by the second half of this first novel in a planned 10-novel series, the actual plot starts to take shape (as opposed to the somewhat repetitiveness of fighting monsters and collecting prizes and learning about the rules), the stakes are raised (beyond just dude and his talking cat need to survive), and I got swept up in the story. 

So yes, to distill it to its essence, Dungeon Crawler Carl is just a lot of fun. A sugary and geeky piece of brain candy. And no, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. 

Under Story, by Chloe Benjamin: An Ambitious Deep-Dive Into the Natural World(s)

I can assure you this: Even if you don’t enjoy every page or plotline of Under Story, Chloe Benjamin's new 500+ page epic, you WILL be wow’ed by it as an ambitious feat of storytelling and imagination.

It’s like if Blake Crouch (Dark Matter specifically) met Richard Powers and they had a joint fever dream about The Time-Traveler’s Wife or Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life.

The story is about a Madison, Wisconsin woman named Laurel, a former mycologist, who, reeling from a divorce, signs onto kitchen duty at a research base called McMurdo in Antarctica. For the first 200 pages or so, we watch Laurel fit into the day-to-day and slowly learn about her backstory relationship with a dude named Eli, a physicist, who she met in high school. That's the setup and it big-bang-explodes from there -- not just plotwise, but this novel is teeming with life; asides about physics, mushrooms, the natural world, consciousness, the spark of inspiration, the need for connection, and so much more. 

Within the first 20 pages, I knew I was in the hands of a talented and engaging writer who was going to tell me a story I wouldn’t soon forget. And I wasn't wrong. In this wonderful piece at the Chicago Review of Books, writer Rowan Beaird sets up her interview with Benjamin by describing the novel as "immersive," like the novels we stayed up past our bedtimes to read when we were kids. And that feels like the perfect description for this book. 

But.

In the back half of the story (which I can't tell you about without spoiling the major plot hinge, though I can tell you this is speculative fiction, so things get weird), we spend a lot of time learning new "rules" (which, if you’re a “guy in my MFA”-type reader, and you spend just a little time thinking about, you can probably poke some pretty big plot holes here). And we get a little bogged down. So I think here the storytelling becomes almost too big of a swing and the novel nearly collapses under the weight of its own ambition. You know me, I love long novels. But perhaps some judicious trimming might've speeded things along a little. 

Still.

Even as we slow a bit, you cannot stop turning these pages. You NEED to know how this winds up. These characters are so compelling and so beautifully human. 

So I say don't let the fact that this novel's not perfect get in the way of the fact that it's very good -- and I think some readers will forgive its "sins" more readily than I did. I enjoyed my time with it, for sure. And I'm truly in awe of the craft and imagination it must've taken to pull this off as well as she did. 

If You Haven't Already, Trying Reading a Joe Meno Novel...Or Two...Or Maybe These Three

To celebrate its 10th anniversary, the Chicago Review of Books is running a series titled The New Chicago Renaissance. Here's how editor-in-chief Michael Welch describes the series: "The New Chicago Renaissance series revisits exemplary works of literature about Chicago from the last 10 years and explores their continued relevance. Join us all year long as 12 leading writers and artists explore books that they love and why they’re meaningful to our understanding of modern Chicago.

So far, the series has included essays by writers like Rebecca Makkai (on Toya Wolfe's Last Summer on State Street) and Nathan Hill (on Halle Butler's The New Me), just to name a few. 

This week, I got to add my own entry. I wrote about Joe Meno's trilogy of coming-of-age Chicago novels -- Hairstyles of the Damned, Office Girl, and Book of Extraordinary Tragedies.

If you've never read Joe Meno, please, stop what you're doing, and fix that. My recommendation is to start with Office Girl -- it's such a beautiful (and subtly funny) novel about art and love and figuring out how to fit into the world. It's a novel that literally changed my life; a book I deeply love. 

If you're so inclined, swing over to the Chicago Review of Books and check out the piece. Honestly, it's my favorite thing I've written this year, and it was such a privilege to get to contribute to this amazing series. 

Here's a brief excerpt:

Jack and Odile in Office Girl. Brian Oswald in Hairstyles. Aleks in Extraordinary Tragedies. All of these characters are searching for what’s real through art, just as Joe Meno himself is doing with these novels, just as I did as a new Chicagoan. These novels explore the fictional authentic—and if you’ll buy the idea that nothing is more real than fiction, then what these novels are really doing is mining the truth of what it’s like to be young and creating and being part of a grand Chicago tradition.

On "Performative" Reading and The Brothers Karamazov

Apparently, it's the Summer of Dostoyevsky! So, happy Hot Fyodor Summer, to all who celebrate. I don't claim to understand weird book trends, and because I'm not on TikTok (gasp! I know, I know.), when something like this happens, I just assume the kids are TikkyTokking about it and that's the explanation. (See the bizarre chicken caesar wrap trend from a few years ago. Except in this case, Dostoyevsky would be a VERY weird TikTok trend. So I'm flummoxed. But I digress...) 

Anyway, apparently everybody is reading The Brothers Karamazov. And so I did too. And I loved it! It's soapy and dramatic, and up until about the last 100 pages when we get a little bogged down with Dmitri's trial, there isn't a whole lot of drag.

Even the philosophical/theological bits -- most notably The Grand Inquisitor chapter, perhaps the most famous part of the novel -- are really interesting if you are caffeinated enough and give yourself the time to think through the arguments. 

If you're not familiar, The Grand Inquisitor chapter is basically a story one of the brothers (Ivan) concocts and tells another (Alyosha) about a bishop mansplaining to Jesus that he actually really fucked everything up, everything he did was wrong, and here are all the reason why. And to me that's hilarious! It reminds me of one of my favorite jokes (which I'm pretty sure I've relayed here before, so just bear with me if you've already heard it): It's 2021 and two MAGA dudes die and go to heaven (for some reason). St. Peter asks them if there is anything they'd like to know the truth about right away. One guy asks, "Yeah, who ACTUALLY won the 2020 election?" St. Peter says, "Joe Biden." The MAGA guy turns to his buddy says, "Oof, this conspiracy goes even higher than I thought."  

(Pause for laughter😎 )

Anyway, I'm glad I read this novel at a time when a lot of other people were too. It was fun to discuss online, and in one memorable case, in person.

Which brings me to what I really want to write about here. About a month into reading this book, I brought it with me to a coffee shop on a Sunday afternoon. This resulted in this Note on Substack that would end up going slightly-mini-viral.

I don't understand why this pithy snippet struck such a nerve (or how Substack's algorithm works), but it's still getting views and likes more than a month later. What's crazy about this, though, is not how many people saw it, but rather the several comments accusing me of "performative reading." Wait, what?!

Let me back up: What I assume they mean is that I either wasn't ACTUALY reading this novel, or if I was, I was just reading it to show off. (Neither of which are remotely true, of course.) Now, I know trolls gonna troll and when a lot of people see something on the internet, it just increases the odds more jerkass people are going to see it, too.

But, "performative" reading? What the hell, man?

I've heard mention of this so-called "performative reader," but I assume this is just internet people making noise -- conjuring a thing that doesn't actually exist in the real world. 

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm dwelling in a little bubble here and not fully understanding what's happening in the larger world. But my tiny GenX brain can't really grasp the notion of a performative reader in the first place. What's the fucking point? 

Two of my favorite pieces debunking the notion of the performative reader are by writer John Paul Bremmer here and Jason Diamond here. Both are essay-length eyerolls basically arguing that this whole idea is a made-up nonissue. (Quick note: Apparently there is a difference between a performative reader and a performative male, of which being a performative reader is just a small part. What a world.)

And now here's the rub: Accusing someone of performative reading says more about the accuser than it does about the reader. Like that person can't fathom that someone would actually enjoy reading a book they don't think they would. And therefore, it must be performative, not authentic. It must be an affectation, a show-off. This is dumb, or to quote David Foster Wallace (apparently the patron saint of the performative reader), "so stupid it practically drools." Indeed, accusing someone else of performative reading is itself performative!

Anyway, I'm not letting it bother me. I just think it's odd. Like I said, trolls gonna troll. But this whole thing was quite the eye-opening experience. 

The main point, as always, is this: Read what you want, when you want, and where you want. Read and let read. And when in doubt, don't be a jerk. It's really not that tough to not be a jerk. 

Cool Machine, by Colson Whitehead: Yuppies and Gangsters vs. Ray Carney

Bold move by Mr. Whitehead to title this last novel in the Harlem Trilogy after HIMSELF. 😎

I kid, of course. “Cool machine” is a reference to Ray Carney, Whitehead’s protagonist through these three Harlem novels spanning three decades. 

But man, Colson Whitehead really is cool. The dedication for this novel, is “for New York Fuckin’ City” and there is no Acknowledgements section (conspicuous by its absence), as if Whitehead is saying, “You all should be thanking ME.” 😂

And thank him, I do. This third novel takes places in the 1980s in a city infested with two problems of differing weight, depending on who you ask: Yuppies and criminals.

New York is changing rapidly. At the top, money is flowing and new buildings are going up faster than a New York minute. At the bottom, drugs are everywhere, crime is rampant, and all the mayor seems worried about is a new "pooper scooper law" that requires dog owners to pick up after their pets. 

Ray Carney, furniture salesman and sometimes fence, and his associate Pepper, bodyguard and crook, get up to their usual schemes, but this time with a decidedly 1980s flavor. Shady art dealers, the mafia, a reemergent thief who once faked his own death, and even Jesse Owens's gold medal all figure prominently in Cool Machine. 

What you notice about this novel is not just the power of Whitehead’s storytelling, but also the meticulousness of his detail. From ads on the subway to headlines in the newspaper to real-life crooked politicians like Donald Manes, we slide so easily into 1980s NYC. What a time to be alive!

One note on Cool Machine: This is very much the third novel in a trilogy, and therefore, it is really helpful to have more than a fleeting memory of the first two novels. You'll be fine to understand what's happening plot-wise here, but Whitehead often references past events and characters. So the reading is richer the more you remember about the first two books. (Thank you, reading journal!) 

Cool Machine, like the first two novels, is essentially a triptych of three novellas. The first two here are breakneck pace, and then Whitehead slows down with the last one -- lingers and reminisces a little. But they're all great, and on the whole, this is my favorite of the Harlem Trilogy. Man, what'll this guy do next? 

Tenderness, by Rowan Beaird: "I’ve always been fascinated by cults"

Woohooo! One of my favorite novels of the year is out today! Rowan Beaird's sophomore effort Tenderness is a terrific summer read -- a wedding weekend novel wrapped in a cult novel with a slow-burn mystery to boot. 

It's summer 1976 and Shay is marrying her fiancé Andrew on a remote island off the coast of Virginia. Shay has recently "escaped" from the New York City chapter of the Synanon organization, and everyone on the island for the wedding (especially Andrew's rick blue-blood East Coast family) is wondering if she's really free and clear, or if the cult will try to mess up her wedding. 

Synanon was a real cult -- started as a alternate substance abuse treatment facility called Tender Loving Care, it soon grew more nefarious -- and Beaird weaves these real historical details into her novel. Just wait until you read about The Game. 😬

Back in June, I got to talk to Beaird over Zoom for a piece for the Chicago Review of Books. The interview's out today also! In addition to being a wonderful writer, Beaird is a generous literary citizen and a fantastic interviewee. Head over to CHIRB at the button below to check out the piece! 

 

Here's an excerpt:

Rowan Beaird’s sophomore novel, Tenderness, begins with an absolute banger of a first line: “Shay was no longer in the cult, but still, it made her wedding guests nervous that she was bringing them to an island.”

So right off the bat, the wedding guests aren’t the only ones who are nervous. We readers are too! Is the bride actually free of this cult? Is the cult going to interfere with the wedding? Where is this island and how does one leave, if one must? It all adds up to a biting sense of unease that engages us immediately: A master class in how to do a first line.

Should You Read Yesteryear? Here's Why I Did

In Haruki Murakami's novel Norwegian Wood, a character explains to another why he doesn't read contemporary fiction. Instead, he only reads books published at least 30 years ago, "If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking."

That, of course, is bullshit. 

It's a nice little bromide (BRO-mide lol) to sling around (mostly by beanie-wearing dudes 😂) to emphasize what a freethinker and discerning reader you are. But it doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

And so with that as preamble, I need to tell you that, yes, I read Yesteryear. Yesteryear IS the book everyone else is reading. A  lot of people love it. Many don't. But almost everyone has a very strong opinion.

I read it because I wanted to know what everyone else is thinking, not because I wanted to think what everyone else is thinking.

Look, we read for a lot of reasons. To be entertained, mainly. But also, to learn. To distract ourselves from the persisting horrors. Etc.

At least once (and often more) a shift at the bookstore this spring and summer, someone has come in asking for Yesteryear. They also often ask if I've read it. So, another reason to read is simply for cultural literacy. I wanted to part of the conversation. I wanted a right to an opinion.

My opinion: The novel's based on an interesting premise, but it is not a great novel. Deeply cynical and more than a little sad, it's purposefully designed to provoke. And I almost never like novels like that. 

But because I didn't like it, discussing (being part of the conversation!) with readers who did has been really fun. (It's also been fun to commiserate with other readers who didn't like it.😎)

Here's one example of a conversation: At the Chicago Review of Books, my friend and colleague Sara Cutaia and I discussed the novel in the second installment of Critics in Conversation. Sara is a sharp reader and fantastic writer, and we managed to disagree with civility. Check out the conversation here:

Whether you loved or hated Yesteryear, you'd have to agree, it's gotten people talking. And people talking about books is almost never a bad thing. As long as they can think about them in their own ways. 

Man Overboard!, by Kathleen Rooney: "Men really will do literally anything instead of going to therapy"

Let's start here: Kathleen Rooney is the author of one of my favorite pieces of writing this year: Her essay, "Why Criticism Continues to Matter: Book Reviews and Our Literary Community" at Chicago Review of Books (which she originally delivered as her opening remarks at an AWP panel) is astoundingly inspiring. I can't recommend reading it enough. Always remember, "Art is the transmission of the human spirit."

Now, Rooney is also the author of one of my favorite novels of the year, too! Man Overboard! is a funny, inventive fiction about a fellow examining his life whilst treading water in the Gulf of Mexico. 

You might be thinking, okay, is the sole plot of this novel really a guy who drunkenly fell (or jumped?) off a cruise ship and is forced to have a good long think? Is this really going to play for 200 pages? 

Yes. Yes it does. It plays magnificently. Man Overboard! is a voice-y, mischievous novel. And if brevity is the soul of wit, it's a very soulful one, as well. But as much as we're amused on a line-by-line basis, what's really going on here? 

Our man overboard is a dude named Kick Kilpatrick, a bro-tastic 33-year-old personal trainer, flirt, and former swimmer who also has a penchant for clowning. Literally. His great dream in life (you know, should he survive his current predicament) is to continue his education at clown college, but he's kept this as a secret from his family and friends, worried about their opinions. Kick has layers, multitudes. But his big thing is that he and older sister are still coming to terms with their mother leaving the family with no reason and no contact since Kick was 10. 

So as Kick floats, he ruminates about his life, sometimes stopping to have a chat with various senteinent sea creatures (or maybe that's just in his head) -- a dolphin, a sea horse, an octopus, etc. "No more distractions to be had," he thinks. "I have no choice but to be really present." 

But why this novel works so well and why I REALLY loved it is that we begin to see Kick as a stand-in for all men these days. The book's kind of a long and elaborate joke (because the best jokes are social commentary at their core) that all men need is 20 hours in the ocean by themselves to figure their shit out. But it's funny because it's true! Wouldn't we be better off in society as a whole if men were forced to do a little more self-examination? To interrogate themselves? To try to figure out why they are the way they are? To come to terms with past trauma? To get some clarity on why they do what they do?

Will Kick get that clarity? And even if does, will it be all for naught if he sinks quietly into the sea? Or will he be rescued, now armed with a whole new insight about his life and marching orders from himself to himself about changes he needs to make?

I read this so quickly, and you probably will too. Rooney is just so fun to read! Cannot recommend more highly. A perfect summer read. 

In Defense of Reading: A Few Thoughts on The Atlantic's Hit Piece

Apparently, the age of reading is over, or so screams The Atlantic's rage-baity August cover. The cover story itself is headlined thusly: "The End of Reading Is Here." Both of these headlines are, of course, purposefully provocative. The Atlantic knows what it's doing. They want to stir us up. They want to create a commotion. And a commotion they have created. 

Honestly, the piece is solid and I would encourage you to read it. The author, Rose Horowitch, cites all the statistics and studies we've seen before -- yes, fewer adults read for pleasure now than even 20 years ago. Yes, many kids these days have trouble extracting information from and summarizing complex texts. Yes, we're in age where it's easier to ask ChatGPT and get wildly inaccurate information than it is to read an article. So yes, there are definite cracks in the foundation of our literate society.

I went into the story with my hackles up because of the rage-baity headlines. And then about two-thirds of the way through reading the piece, I fired off this Note on Substack. I didn't want to still be mad at it, but I was. If the story is meant as a warning, good on you The Atlantic. But the tenor of the story actually does match the headlines: Reading IS over now and forever, it argues. And there's nothing we can do to stop the descent into dumbassery. 

Of course, that's absurd. Reading is not over. We are not at the end of reading. And in addition to rejecting the general premise, there are also several parts of the piece that hit my brain sideways. So below, I included some excerpts of the article that sore-thumbed me. As in stuck out. 

Sideshow Bob from The Simpsons famously recognized the irony of going on TV to decry it. I also think it's funny to give you short snippets of a nearly 10,000-word article purporting to herald the end of reading. But let's agree to move on and enjoy each other's company. What do you say?

---

The books that people do read are simpler than they used to be. New York Times best sellers today have sentences that are about one-third shorter than they were a century ago. Longer sentences aren’t inherently better. But their former ubiquity suggests an age when Americans had the inclination and ability to read serious works of literature.

This is kind of snooty paragraph, isn't it? Horowitch argues that in 1958, Doctor Zhivago, with its complex sentences and even more complex plot, was the bestselling book of the year. Last year, it was Sunrise on the Reaping, by Suzanne Collins, a book already part of an established series with simple sentences and a straightforward plot. Lots of teens and GenZers are reading not just this book, but tons of YA books. And apparently that's a harbinger for the end of reading? Wait, what? I thought the problem was teens AREN'T reading. Maybe it's just that tastes have shifted, as they naturally do. What if reading is just changing, not going away? 

---

Trump is our first postliterate president. It is difficult to imagine him being elected leader of a country where information is primarily spread through text.

Literally nothing about these sentences is true. Trump himself may be postliterate (or never was in the first place) but that doesn't mean the rest of us are. And this so-called postliteracy is only one of about 23,328 reasons Trump won (the second time). Were we also postliterate in 2016? 

---

Reading books is a workout for the attention span. The more you read, the easier it is to read, and the more you’re rewarded with new understanding. Eventually the process is more pleasurable than it is challenging.

Agreed on all counts here. But this is true for just about anything -- running, writing, developing any virtuous habit. Maybe the issue, then, isn't isolated to reading. Maybe the larger issue is teaching young people to find things they love and to convincing them of the value of continuing to do them. 

---

Writing is the way people figure out what they think, and how to convey those thoughts to someone who doesn’t already share them. Writing is hard because the writer is learning. If AI eliminates the challenge, it also eliminates the learning. Early studies have suggested that this is exactly what happens when people use AI to write. The process is easier. The product is often better than what someone could compose on their own.

BARF. The product of AI writing is often better? Maybe my head is firmly buried in the sand here, but let me just say definitively: No it's not. AI writing is not better. What AI does ISN'T actually writing, to be clear. Also, this paragraph makes it seem like AI is inevitable. AI is not inevitable. I liked this paragraph a lot, until those last two sentences. 

---

By some measures at least, books continue to thrive. Last year, print-book sales were higher than they were a decade ago. Barnes & Noble opened more than 60 new stores. Almost 400 independent bookstores sprung up in 2025. Substack has seen an explosion of subscriptions for long-form writing. Celebrities such as Dua Lipa and Reese Witherspoon have used their fame and influence to launch wildly successful book clubs. Audiobooks have become a billion-dollar industry.

"By some measures at least..." LOL! This whole paragraph, which is near the bottom of the story, is just the tip of the iceberg of evidence we could offer for reading and reading culture's popularity. But it feels like just a tossed-off way of "both sidesing" the argument she's so carefully crafted until this point. Also, independent bookstores don't "spring up" as if someone just waved a magic wand. Minor detail, I know, but word choice here is very important. 

---

The notion of a popular literary figure appearing on the cover of a print newsweekly read by millions of Americans is impossible to imagine today.

Taylor Jenkins Reid was on the cover of Time last May. 🙄

---

In the years since—I’m not quite sure when—the habit slipped. The change was subtle. I became busier. I started scrolling on my phone before bed instead of reading. My attention began to wander every few pages. What did it matter if I read less? No one was checking on my progress. And the books would always be there. I could pick them up later.”

Horowitch says she used to love reading, but now doesn't...or just doesn't do it as much. If I were Horowitch's editor, I would've deleted this paragraph with such extreme prejudice that the paragraphs around it would've quivered in fear. This paragraph, which appears near the end of the piece, makes it seem like the whole article is one long justification for why Horowitch herself has stopped reading. Anecdotal evidence is evidence, but not convincing evidence. 

---

So, in conclusion, are we squarely now in a "postliterate society," as the article claims? No. No we are not. Do we have some work to do? Yes. Yes we do. So let's do it. Let's read books!

5 Best Books of 2026...So Far

I've spent much of 2026 so far on backlist -- an unusual reading practice for me. But I have a milestone birthday coming up this year, and it's honestly messing me up a little -- it's made more acutely aware than ever that time isn't infinite. So I've tried to mix in books I've had on my shelves for a while -- The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver), A Visit From the Goon Squad (Jennifer Egan -- a reread), Telegraph Avenue (Michael Chabon), Office Girl (Joe Meno -- a reread), and many more. I highly recommend a good backlist binge. It's good for the soul.

And but so, here are my six favorite 2026 novels so far. 

Vigil, by George Saunders -- I mean, duh. Not coincidentally, this novel about coming to terms with mortality (among MANY other things) which I read in January was part of the inspiration for catching up on old books I'd missed before. 

How We See The Gray, by Rachel León -- There should be more novels about social workers. Social workers are superheroes! This fantastic novel set in Rockford, Illinois, interrogates the foster care system through the perspectives of several characters -- foster parents, social workers, parents, and children. A devastating novel also shouldn't be this funny and cool -- but it is. 

The Left and the Lucky, by Willy Vlautin -- A heartbreaking, beautiful story about everyday people just trying to make it in a world that doesn't want them to succeed. In just a matter of a few years and a few titles, Willy Vlautin has become one of my favorite writers. 

Brawler, by Lauren Groff -- I mean, duh (again). Of course, Groff's new story collection would be here. Groff's grocery list would be here. But Brawler is very, very good. 

So Old, So Young, by Grant Ginder -- Such a relatable look at friendship through the years. These characters fall in and out of touch, fight and reconcile, harbor grudges against each other, and develop rivalries with their friends’ new friends. Basically, life. 

Bonus Best Book:

Tenderness, by Rowan Beaird (out July 21) -- I have to include this wonderful cult/wedding weekend novel out in late July. I got to interview Rowan for a piece for the Chicago Review of Books that'll be out on the book's pub date, so stay tuned. In the meantime, hit that preorder now! You're definitely going to want to read this. 

Angel Down Won the Pulitzer: Let's Discuss

On May 4, when Marjorie Miller, Administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, announced, first, that Angel Down was one of the three finalist for Fiction, I got really excited and typed out a quick Slack message to my friend Michael. But I'd spoken too soon. Then, Miller announced: "And the Pulitzer Prize goes to...Angel Down." WHOAAA! Incredible. Did not see that one coming.

Admittedly, at that point, I hadn't read the novel yet, but it had long been on my list. Michael had read it and had been adamant that I should. He was blown away. So then I did read it, and I was also blown away.

At the Chicago Review of Books today, in a new feature we've titled "Critics in Conversation", Michael and I discuss this unlikeliest of unlikely Pulitzer wins, our experiences reading the novel, and what it could mean FOR THE VERY FUTURE OF LITERATURE. 😁

We had lots to say, so please head over to CHIRB to read the full post. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Whistler, by Ann Patchett: Are All Happy Families Happy In the Same Way?

One thing I've learned over the years from reading a lot novels is that if I ever lose touch with someone who I used to be close to and want to reconnect, I'll just go hang out in New York City for a while, ride the subway, go to a museum, maybe catch a ballgame at Yankee Stadium, and eventually I'll just randomly bump into that person again. 😁

This is of course tongue in cheek, but Ann Patchett's sweet new novel Whistler is the second novel I've read this year (The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is the other...and there are a TON more, Martyr! also comes to mind) in which a random reconnection in a city of 8.5 million people is the plot catalyst. Generally speaking, this bugs me. 

It bugged me a little bit here, but I'm not going to let my own silly hang ups prevent me from enjoying an Ann Patchett novel, for goodness sake. Ann Patchett has earned the right to do whatever she pleases. And the good news here is that even if you're not totally vibing with a Patchett plot, her prose is engaging and endearing enough to keep you reading. Some writers you just connect with. Ann Patchett is one of those writers for me, and I know this is a common refrain among readers. 

Anyway, so here's what happens: Daphne and her husband Jonathan are at the Met, when Jonathan notices a seemingly creepy old guy following them. He confronts the guy and learns he's Daphne's stepfather! Eddie and Daphne's mother were briefly married when Daphne was 9, and Daphne has all but forgotten about him -- it's been 44 years, after all. But the two did share a traumatic event -- a car accident, in which they were trapped overnight -- the accident being the on-the-surface reason Daphne's mother divorced Eddie. She couldn't trust him anymore. But of course there is much more to it. And so the novel chronicles the story of their reconnection while delving into the past.  

Another thing I've learned reading a lot of fiction: Happy characters usually make for boring novels. But dammit if Ann Patchett isn't a rule-breaker. This novel is full of jolly, well-adjusted characters without much friction between them. There is one big family secret, but it's revealed reasonably quickly and the fallout isn't huge. Indeed, throughout this novel, there's hardly any of the conflict or big blowouts you'd normally see in family dramas. 

What is Patchett up to here, then? At its core, this is a novel about the nature of memory and how perspective changes over time. It's about a second chance at family, when a second chance isn't something you even knew you needed. Also, there's a story about a horse named Whistler. It's related, trust me.

If you've read this far, you've probably gotten the sense that this isn't my favorite Patchett novel. I'm in the minority, I think -- so many other readers seem to have loved this book. But what do we say in situations like this? A mid-tier Patchett is still better than a top-tier novel from 90 percent of other writers. And that's a hill I'll die on. 

A Very Special and Extremely Dorky Bookish Anniversary

On June 2, my trusty reading journal turned 25 years old! This single Word document now consists of 1,745 single-spaced pages and (this is truly crazy) 1,221,968 words (basically two War and Peaces). 

Here's the story: Way back in 2001, before Goodreads or any other way to keep track of books on the Web, I started this Word document I titled "list." Every time I'd finish reading a book, I'd sit down and spend 20 minutes (or often longer) writing about it -- why I picked it up in the first place, what I thought of it, key plot points, etc. And even though much easier and more sophisticated ways to track reading became available over the years, I stuck with my tried-and-true (and so GenX) method. 

This single document has been with me through four cities, about a dozen apartments, half a dozen laptops (I used to back this thing up manually on a thumb drive -- now it's backed up in the cloud), and more life events than I could even list.  The first book I wrote about -- on June 2, 2001 -- was John Updike's Rabbit Run. The most recent one, last week, was Rachel Leon's debut How We See The Gray. And there are 1,281 books in between. 

I know that total, because I always include a "finished on" date on my reading journal when I write about the book. In about 2009 when I first joined Goodreads, I backfilled all the books I'd read before that point into my new Goodreads account. So Goodreads also now goes all the way back to June 2, 2001. Peak book nerd achieved! 

Why is this journal so important to me? Beyond the simple idea that I just enjoy doing it, one of the reasons I've kept it up for so long and so meticulously is that I'm terrified of forgetting what I've read -- that in some future, the time spent with past books will be forgotten, and therefore erased. What could be worse than simply forgetting about an old friend?

But also, I can't tell you how valuable the reading journal has been for me as I've moved through a bookish life. Sure, if a sequel comes out, I can easily go back and find out what happened in the first one (and what I thought). But it's also helped me immensely as I've written about books more frequently. Just as one example: If you've ever tried to make a book list, and not sound repetitive, you know it's not easy -- this journal has helped me drudge back up specific details about books I read literally decades ago. 

The day I started this journal, I wrote: "Hopefully I’ll be reading this list (with a few hundred pages) when I’m 60." Welp, younger me, it's a few THOUSAND pages, and the odd are pretty good that if I make it to 60, so will this. 

How We See The Gray, by Rachel León: A Big 'Ole Dose of Empathy

At last week's release party for Rachel León's debut novel, How We See The Gray, León's editor, Megan Stielstra, told the crowd that reading this book had literally made her a better person. What a compliment! And you know what? That's true for me too. 

They say reading novels inspires empathy -- that walking a mile, even a fictional one, in someone else's shoes helps you see the world differently and gives you a better understanding of someone else's struggles. It makes sense, but I don't know how you prove that's true. At the very least, what is unquestionably true is that reading a novel helps you learn about things you didn't know about before. And that's the first step toward empathy -- toward being a better person. 

How We See The Gray interrogates the fraught foster care system through the eyes of social workers, children, parents, and foster parents. Set in Rockford, Illinois over the course of a year (June 2018-June 2019), we follow these characters through pain, success, lies, heartbreak, elation, addiction, hilarity, peace, and just about everything in between.

The gray in the title could be a reference both to the moral murkiness of an overmatched and underfunded foster care system, but also, and more importantly, it's a nod to how we should see every person as nuanced, neither good nor bad. Of course, it's not always easy to square in our minds people who have done bad things but aren't bad people. The currency of our current moment is the hot take -- the loudest and angriest voices drown out more reasoned, measured thought. Nuance is an endangered species. But people deserve more than snap judgment. No one should be defined by their worst moment. 

As I approached the end of this engaging novel, this line just smacked my gobs: "We believe this world would be kinder if people's default response was curiosity, rather than judgment." RIGHT?! I MEAN, RIGHT?!

But this is a novel, and we read novels, yes to learn, but mostly to be entertained. And let me be clear about one thing: This novel is very entertaining. It's not even the least bit preachy. Even if at times it's hard to read because it's emotionally painful, it's still a whole lot of fun.

León is a skillful and deft writer, constructing the stories in multiple points-of-view into a cohesive whole. It never feels fractured or discontinuous, as narratives in this structure sometimes do. 

Finally, the disclaimer: I do know Rachel. She is a friend. Whenever you pick up a friend's piece of writing, there's always that niggling voice in the back of your brain that goes, "What if I don't like this? What'll I do?" But I can tell you with a clear conscience: I liked this quite a bit. I mean, I REALLY liked this. It feels different -- like something fresh and original and (probably because it's from a small press) unlike anything else out there right now. Very highly recommended! 

(One last really stupid note: I've been struggling this whole post not to make a "How We See The Fifty Shades of Gray" joke. But EL James went with the British spelling "grey" [I know, the character's name is Grey], so it wouldn't have worked anyway. 😎 ) 

Top 10 Most Anticipated Fall Books

Friends, we are going to have some work to do this fall. Luckily, it'll be a labor of love. 

The already-announced (and I'm sure there are more coming) autumn slate of books is, in a word, huge -- books with page counts matched in weight only by the stature of the authors who have written them. If you're like me, you're totally here for a season of doorstops! (Not every book on my list is long, but a good percentage of them are!) Here's my list of top 10 books I can't wait to read this fall. 

(Reminder: Preorders are massively important for authors and publishers, AND, when you preorder with the links below, I get a little kickback, which I can use to buy more books, which I can then tell you about. Everyone wins.)

The Disappearers, by Marlon James (Sept. 1, 640 pages) -- I couldn't find my way into James's latest fantasy series, and so I'm really excited for this, his first "non-fantasy" novel since the absolute masterpiece that was 2014's A Brief History of Seven Killings. The Disappearers (be careful, it's NOT The Disappears, and typing The Disappearers just looks like a mistake. But it's not. I've quintuple checked.), about "the murder of a gay man in 1980s Jamaica and its tragic consequences" sounds like it's in a similar vein as Seven Killings. And similar heft. Woohoo!

Under Story, by Chloe Benjamin (Sept. 1, 502 pages) -- This will be my first time reading Chloe Benjamin and I cannot wait! The early reviews for this novel, which sounds like a combination of Richard Powers's environmental fiction, Emily St. John Mandel's universe, and even maybe a little David Mitchell, are absolutely breathless and ecstatic. It's described as "a modern epic of science and soul." All in! 

Taipei Story, by R.F. Kuang (Sept. 8, 288 pages) -- It's a pretty big upset that of all the books on this list, a new R.F. Kuang novel is the SHORTEST one. 😂 The proficient Kuang returns with a novel about a woman searching for clues about her family history. This seems to lean more realism than fantasy, but with Kuang, there are sure to be surprises. 

Exit Party, by Emily St. John Mandel (Sept. 15, 320 pages) -- St. John Mandel for me is always a MUST read. Beginning in Los Angeles in 2031 after the US has collapsed (holy shit, that's only five years from now...but yeah, doesn't seem too far-fetched, does it?) and jumping through time and place (including a domed colony on the moon), this sounds like quintessential St. John Mandel. 

Hollywood Ending, by John Green (Sept. 22, 320 pages) -- Nobody has broken the internet (for good news, at least) for a long time, but John Green almost did when he announced this new novel. The man is beloved. And this new novel, about a pair of young actors maybe falling in love, sounds extremely lovable and charming, as well. 

American Hagwon, by Min Jin Lee (Sept. 29, 656 pages) -- Even the biggest bro reader you know read Pachinko. So a new novel from Lee, and even longer this time, is hugely exciting. A family saga set in near-modern times over three continents, the novel is about how small actions ripple into huge repercussions. 

Ply, by Hernan Diaz (Sept. 29, 464 pages) -- Diaz is a writer/magician. You read his work and go "Wow, how did he do that?" This is a speculative piece set in a distant future where humans are trying to reestablish how to connect with one another and coexist with nature. Promises to be wild. 

The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman, by Deesha Philyaw (Sept. 29, 432 pages) -- Oh man, this sounds so delightfully scandalous and fun. A woman marries a megachurch pastor 15 years her senior, and then on the eve of her greatest success, is rocked by a revelation of secrets from her past. This is Philyaw's debut novel after her award-winning and hugely loved collection of short stories, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies. 

Life Out of Order, by Audrey Niffenegger (Oct. 6, 544 pages) -- Okay, wow, what an absolutely wonderful surprise. Indeed, a gift. This is a sequel to the beloved novel The Time Traveler's Wife, which I still think about frequently (and every time I visit the Newberry Library). The story centers on Henry and Clare's daughter, Alba, who has the same "Chrono-Displacement Disorder" as her father. This novel, also, is the runaway winner for this year's best title. So many layers! 

The Brightness, by Chad Harbach (Oct. 27, 672 pages) -- My MOST anticipated book of this fall is the return, after 15 years, of The Art of Fielding author Harbach. This was an audible gasp situation when the owner of our bookstore texted me a photo of an ARC of this book from Winter Institute. The Brightness sounds like a "friendship-through-the-years" story, which, you know me: I freakin' love. 

The Left and the Lucky, by Willy Vlautin: "Faithful friends are hard to find."

I'm a relative newcomer to Willy Vlautin's novels. My first time reading him was his sixth novel, 2021's The Night Always Comes. But that was one of my favorite books of that year. And his new novel, The Left and the Lucky will undoubtedly wind up on this year's favorites-of-the-year list. 

I LOVED this book. 

Vlautin, like his fellow Pacific Northwest writers Jonathan Evison and Jess Walter, writes stories about plucky everyday people just trying to get by. In The Left and the Lucky, our everyday person is a divorced Portland house-painter named Eddie.

Eddie's next-door neighbor is a family with problems. Their mother, who is a stripper, and not a bad person but seems totally overmatched, has two kids, one an out-of-control teenager named Curtis and a mild-mannered second grader named Russell. Curtis absolutely terrorizes Russell -- he's cruel to him to the point Russell doesn't feel safe and hides out in his grandmother's bedroom or just wanders around rainy, dreary Portland.

When Eddie finds Russell hiding out in a grocery store, he starts to understand the scope of the problem next door. Eddie and Russell become fast, if unlikely, friends. A highlight of this story is how not just Eddie, but also Eddie's sidekick Houston, an alcoholic who Eddie also tries to help by keeping him employed and managing his money for him, relate to Russell. They treat him -- and talk to him -- as their equal. And the conversations are so heartwarming, often really funny, but so real. 

Eddie is almost preternaturally patient with Russell, with Houston, and with another painter named Cordarelle who Vlautin captures with hilarious accuracy. If you've ever worked in the building trades (and I have!), you know a Cordarelle -- a guy always bragging and talking about his glory days. 

Ultimately, The Left and the Lucky is the story of the everyday struggle just to make ends meet, to make life meaningful, to get out of your own way, and to be a good person in a shitty world full of shitty people. It's the story of how friendship can quite literally save you.

This Is Not About Running, by Mary Cain: Just Don't Do It (Support Nike, That Is)

In 2019, runner Mary Cain penned a shocking and revelatory piece in the NYT detailing her physical and mental abuse in the Nike Oregon Project under coach Alberto Salazar. She has expanded that piece and turned it into this book.

This Is Not About Running (out April 28) is now the third book about Salazar and the abusive culture at Nike in the 2010s. Runner Kara Goucher's book The Longest Race also details Salazar's abuse, pseudo-scientific coaching practices, and his penchant for coming up with "creative" ways for athletes to dope without getting caught. Win At All Costs by journalist Matt Hart is based on the US Anti-Doping Agency's investigation and report on Salazar, as well as interviews with some of his former athletes. They're both enraging reads -- not just regarding how such a shitty human could have been in charge of coaching athletes for so long, but also how Nike constantly defended him.

Mary Cain's book, though, is especially damning, because Mary was a teenager during her time with Salazar. The fastest 1,500m runner in the US at age 17, Mary moved cross country from her home in New York to train with Salazar in Portland. She was Salazar's next prodigy -- a can't-miss phenom who would smash world records.

But it didn't happen. And this book explains why. The book, written in present tense so, as Cain explains, you feel like you are right there with her as Salazar is calling her fat, as she cuts herself, as he thinks about suicide, is, in a word, shocking. 

Salazar became obsessed with an arbitrary weight target, which even starving herself, she couldn't hit. In running, confidence is just important as peak fitness, and Salazar (and his shady "sports psychologist" whom Mary had to see) absolutely destroyed her confidence. She got to the point where she couldn't get through a workout without breaking down in a fit of sobs because she was terrified Salazar would scream at her. He often did. Her teammates were mean to her and she had few friends. Salazar even made her stop talking to her parents, not wanting them to "meddle" in her training. Just all absolutely horrific. 

Salazar has since been banned for life from coaching for both doping and abuse, which is justice, but also real justice would be him rotting in jail. Just as infuriating as Salazar's abuse, though, is Cain's details of how Nike treated her after she quit the Oregon Project. As she says, it would've cost very little for a multi-billion dollar company to do the right thing. Instead, when she sued them, they fought her tooth and nail at every turn, trying to make themselves the victim, or blaming Cain as the actual victim. 

Don't read this if you don't want to be angry. Don't read this if you're a Nike apologist. But definitely read if you're a runner or anyone else interested in the very, very bad culture at Nike. 

I Am So Sorry, I Don't Know How to Read Poetry (But I Want to Learn!)

Happy National Poetry Month! I have a confession to make: I don't know how to read poetry. 

I'm only exaggerating a little. I mean, I know how to read poetry. What I don't know is how to understand poetry on the same level I understand prose. Or on the level seemingly every other avid reader does. Or on the level the poet intends. 

I've been a reader my entire life. I've hundreds of novels, memoirs, short story collections, history books, shit, even Dan Brown. I've barely read any poetry. 

Somehow I managed to graduate college with an English/Creative Writing degree having taken exactly ZERO poetry classes. The only time I can recall poetry coming up at all in my college classes was studying a few Shakespeare sonnets. Maybe there was something about John Donne in a Very Old Literature By White Guys class (probably not the actual name of the class) for a minute. But I definitely didn't study anything written in the last 300 years. 

But then so why has poetry eluded me for so long? 

I don't have a good answer. One reason that occurs to me is that my brain works very literally and I like clarity and resolution. Growing up, I loved to read, but I was really good at math and science, too. I was even a chemistry major in college for a few ill-fated semesters. It was the war of my youth: My left brain vs. my right brain...and ultimately my right brain won. But I feel like when I try to engage with poetry, my left brain sneaks over and whispers to my right brain: "Hey man, you're not going to understand this. It's too flowery. Too subjective. There's only barely a story. There are no easy answers." And my right brain, dressed in a linen suit and drinking mint tea, hasn't had the heart to tell my left brain to STFU.

One after another in rapid succession, metaphor, image, symbol, and simile, and even the structure of the poem -- itself imbued with meaning -- means you can't just fly through a poem and go on with your day. A poem requires a close read, and then another. And then probably many more. In this economy? Who's got time for that? 

This is a cop-out, of course. Of course, there is frequent poetic language in the novels and prose I love, too. But they're not so concentrated. You can catch one or two at a time and stop and think and then continue. And if you miss something it's maybe not the end of the world.

But honestly, another reason I haven't read a lot of poetry is because I haven't really tried very hard to learn, either. It's a negative feedback loop and I've been felled by inertia. I'm like a person who tried running for a month in their early 20s, decided they hated running, and hasn't tried again since. (If that sounds like an oddly specific example, well, I lived it. But about a decade ago, I DID try running again, and realized I loved it. And haven't stopped since. Hmm...do we have another possible parallel incoming?)

And so now I'm determined to try reading poems again. No better time than National Poetry Month to learn how to read poetry. To enjoy poetry. To love poetry? 

Look, I know you can't just tell yourself to love something. And then do it. But by putting in some time and equipping yourself with the right tools, I can at least maybe identify why it hasn't worked yet. 

I've also just picked up a book titled Don't Read Poetry: A Book About How to Read Poems, by Harvard professor Stephanie Burt. The book is supposedly "an accessible introduction to the seemingly daunting task of reading, understanding, enjoying, and learning from poems." The words "seemingly daunting task" are doing some seriously heavily lifting in that blurb. 

It does feel daunting. But having been a reader my whole life, I feel like I'm in a good spot to finally figure this out. 

And I have a good collection to start. Every year at AWP (that's the big annual conference for writers), I seem to collect poetry collections. It's always good to support small presses, which are, generally speaking, the purveyors of poetry. So each of the last four years I've come home with a fistful of poetry...that has just sat on my nightstand. 

Collected poetry collections in the photo above:

The Tradition, by Jericho Brown

A Fortune for Your Disaster, by Hanif Abdurraqib

The New Testament, by Jericho Brown

REPLICA, by Lisa Low

Calling a Wolf a Wolf, by Kaveh Akbar

A Map of My Want, by Faylita Hicks

Pilgrim Bell, by Kaveh Akbar

Pisces Urges, by Czaerra Galicinao Ucol

Karaoke at the End of the World, by Genevieve DeGuzman

1919, by Eve L. Ewing

Electric Arches, by Eve L. Ewing

So off we go on the Good Ship Poetry. If anyone has any advice for me, I'm all ears. 

If you're like me and want to learn more about poetry, my employer, StoryStudio Chicago, has several upcoming poetry events and workshops, both online and in person. Check 'em out here. 

Telegraph Avenue, by Michael Chabon: Sussing Out the Sublots Like Pynchon

Here in Chicago, an independent bookstore recently closed due in part to a sharp drop in sales when a new Barnes & Noble opened on the same block. People (me, included) were pissed. A big corporate conglomerate had pushed out another small business, accelerated the neighborhood's already out-of-control gentrification, and damaged the character of the neighborhood.

But other people were (and are) excited. The two-story store is located in a historic building and adds charm and economic oomph to the neighborhood, they say. Plus, the selection of books is much better. 

A similar battle rages in Michael Chabon's 2012 novel, Telegraph Avenue. Archy and Nat are long-time owners of Brokeland Records, a used vinyl shop in an iconic neighborhood in Oakland. But a rich retired football player wants to open a big-ass megastore complete with a similar record shop just down the street from theirs. If that happens, they're doomed. 

So this long novel is about Archy and Nat trying to figure out what's important to them. There are subplots galore -- their wives are partners in a midwifery business, Archy learns he has a 14-year-old son, Nat's son is in love with Archy's "new" son, Archy's 70s blaxploitation movie star father has reentered the picture and past deeds are coming to light. And more. 

The conflict between Team Brokeland Records and Team NFL Star is fertile ground for conflict, but Chabon doesn't spend much time there. Instead, he spends probably way too much time sussing out all the strands of subplot. It gets to be almost Pynchonian in the zany interconnections and off-the-wall characters and comedy. 

Also like Pynchon: Chabon is a maximalist normally, which I can hang with. I don't mind when a writer uses 100 words when two will do, if those 100 words are entertaining. But in this novel, more often than not, those 100 words drag a little. (The critic Ron Charles said something like it felt like Chabon was being paid by the word and had an impending mortgage balloon payment. 😅) It's a dense novel and it doesn't move quickly at all. 

Fun fact: I got an ARC of this novel at the 2012 Book Expo America show in NYC....and it's sat on my shelf ever since. Part of the reason it's sat for 14 years is because of some of the warnings from earlier reviews of its denseness. They weren't wrong. 

But I'm glad I finally read it. It occasionally reminded me how good Chabon is when he's on. And it's been a decade since his last novel (Moonglow) so even though I'm in agreement with most readers that this one doesn't stack up to some of his better novels -- most notably, The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (a masterpiece) -- it was still fun (at times) to jump back on the Chabon bandwagon.