💙📚 How is it I’ve lived in Phoenix for four years and am just now learning about the annual VNSA used book sale? It’s far and away the largest used book sale I’ve ever attended. 600,000 books for sale at ridiculously low prices, and the proceeds go to well-deserved charities.
I haven’t bought a bag of books like this in years. Total cost? $14.00. The best part for me was seeing so many people with pull-along wagons and suitcases and big shopping bags full of books. Books! This warmed my heart. I’ve signed up as a volunteer to help this worthy organization.
If you’re a reader in the greater Phoenix area, mark your calendars: February 13 and 14, 2027 are the dates for next year’s sale. You will not want to miss this.
Finished reading: The Best American Essays 2025 by Jia Tolentino (editor) 📚
Continuing my essay kick with the latest “Best American” collection. A few missed the mark for me, but most were pretty good, and a few were extraordinary. ★★★☆☆
Published in 1982, Stephen King (as Richard Bachman) envisioned a 2025 America that feels eerily familiar. I won’t spoil the ending, but it’s a scary example of King’s uncanny ability to predict future events. ★★★★☆
A meticulously researched history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Ultimately, the book is a tale of tragedy and woe for both sides of a pointless war. ★★★★☆
Another masterpiece from Claire Keegan, the master of the emotionally-charged short novel. The language is economical, yet lyrical. And moving. I did not want this one to end. ★★★★★
Set in a near-future NYC, we follow Vera, an exceptionally gifted yet anxious child, through a dystopian landscape of far-right extremism, absentee parenting, cultural diversity, and hilarious yet ominous technology. ★★★★☆
A warning that the corruption of power, the awful propensity for human barbarity, and the refusal to address legitimate grievances can lead to catastrophic consequences. This old classic offers modern day lessons. ★★★★☆
How is anyone ever to shut the eyes of their dead child? How is it possible to find two pennies and rest them there, in the eye sockets, to hold down the lids? How can anyone do this? It is not right. It cannot be.
A heart-breaking memoir about losing two sons to suicide. There’s often little you can say to parent who’s lost a child. But sometimes the words from a fellow sufferer can get through. This book was one of those. ★★★★★
Yes, it’s about bullet journaling, but also how daily reflection can help you make time for those important but not necessarily urgent things in your life. ★★★☆☆
I’m wanting to read more short stories and what better source than this mammoth treasure of short fiction from the New Yorker Magazine’s first hundred years? Some terrific stories here. ★★★★☆
A collection of witty commentaries, short stories, poems, and essays, all originally published in The New Yorker, and each an ode to what I’m sure White would agree is the greatest city on earth. ★★★★★
I’ve read four Stegner novels, saving this one, his Pulitzer, for the last. I thought Crossing to Safety was his best, and Big Rock Candy Mountain absolutely gutted me. Still, this one will stick with me for a long time. ★★★★☆
Finished reading: On Boxing by Joyce Carol Oates 📚
Joyce Carol Oates might be the least likely person ever to write a book about boxing. And yet she did. Like me, she developed a lifelong appreciation for the sport, ultimately growing to love it, by watching fights with her father as a child. But it’s clear that she feels a natural disquiet with her own fascination with the sport, and the essays in this book circle and dance around that central premise: why, in our modern, civilized society, is boxing still a thing? ★★★☆☆
What a treasure. I’ve read most of these essays before, but never so deeply or with such illumination. Emerson’s wisdom is simple to understand, yet difficult to practice in a world of popular opinion and distracted thinking. Trust in your own thoughts; be yourself; don’t try to impress or copy others; cherish your friends. Most of all: be present, here and now. ★★★★★
If you want to write, practice writing. Practice it for hours a day, not to come up with a story you can publish, but because you long to learn how to write well, because there is something that you alone can say.
— Ann Patchett, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage
The premise and setting had terrific potential, but one-dimensional characters, plot holes, and poor editing hobbled the story. It felt like a book written under the pressure of an unrealistic deadline. ★★★☆☆
