Reads 2026

2026

Favorites so far:

Comics

J. Marshall Smith, Testament. Bulgilhan press, 2025. A robot takes care of an aging colony of humans on a distant planet. Great art and touching.

Michael Sanlavaille. Banana Sioule Vol 1: Helena. Magnetic Press, 2025

Fiction

Joe Abercrombie, The Devils, Tor 2025. Loved this. Made me laugh out loud multiple times. Kind of a inglorious bastards or dirty dozen but for swords and sorcery.

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West. Vintage, 2010. Epic, brutal, and absolutely gorgeous writing. Blew the scalp right off my skull.

Percival Everett, James, Knopf Doubleday, 2024. Great Yarn. Retelling of the Huck Finn adventure from Jim’s perspective.

Pierce Brown. Red Rising. Random House, 2014. YA Class warfare. Mashup of Hunger Games and Enders Game. Really fun

Non-Fiction

Steven Pressfield, The War of Art. 2011 I’ve had this recommended to me a few different times and finally sat down to read it. Very good and inspiring. Glad I read it

Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird, Vintage Books 2019 (1994). Funny with lots of good thoughts for the writer/artist’s way of life.

Poetry

Malcolm Guite, Galahad and the Grail, Rabbit Room Press, 2026. Listened to the audio book and really loved it. It was actually a joy to listen to.

Anne Sexton, Live or Die, 1966. Heavy stuff.

• Don Delillo, White Noise. Penguin Classics 2016 (original 1985) [22]. Post moderinist classic. Picked this up after seeing some random influencer say it was the best book they ever read. I do not agree but it was good. Absurd and kind of funny take on american consumerism from the 80s that holds up really well today.
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 100 Years of Solitude, Harper Perennial Modern Classics 2006 (original 1965) [21]. Strange book. It’s the story of the rise and fall of a small village in Colombia from a crazy families’ pov. Probably too many Aureliano’s and Jose Arcadio’s for my feeble brain. I think a second reading is warranted to truly appreciate this book because I didn’t know what I was reading half the time but it all came together in a great and tragic way. It has stuck with me now for a couple weeks and I can see why a lot of people love it.
• Malcolm Guite, Galahad and the Grail, Rabbit Room Press, 2026. [20] Listened to the audio book and really loved it. It was actually a joy to listen to. A lot of repetitive rhymes but it was really good. Looking forward to the next one.
• Anne Sexton, Live or Die, 1966 -kindle edition [19]. Heavy stuff. Her poem on suicide (Wanting to Die) is so sad oy…
• Henry James, The Turn of the Screw, 1898 – Penguin Books 1994 [18]. Wandering the stacks at the library and picked this up. OG ghost story novella. the language was a bit impermeable. Did not love it. Mercifully short.
• Joe Abercrombie, The Devils, Tor 2025 [17]. Loved this. Made me laugh out loud multiple times. Kind of a inglorious bastards or dirty dozen but for swords and sorcery.
• James S.A. Corey, The Faith of Beasts, Orbit 2026 [16]. Book 2 of the Captives War trilogy. I liked the first one. It’s a bit odd but a great concept. Book two is better.
• Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird, Vintage Books 2019 (orig. 1994) [15]. The best advice the book gives is on the book jacket but the rest is good too. Funny with lots of good thoughts for the writer/artist’s way of life.
• Yoshida Kenko, Essays in Idleness and Hojoki [14]. Essays and almost tweet length Pensées by two different 15 century Japanese monks. Some great words of wisdom interspersed with a TON of minutiae about feudal japanese court.
• Steven Pressfield, The War of Art. 2011 [13]. Ive had this recommended to me a few different times and finally sat down to read it. Very good and inspiring. Glad I read it.
• Pierce Brown, Golden Son. Red Rising Saga #2. Del Ray, 2015 [12]. Super fun. continues the story and remains a really good action SF story. Yeah the main character is a bit OP but it’s still really fun. Perfect follow up to Steinbeck and McCarthy. Looking forward to book #3.
• Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West. Vintage, 2010 [11]. good lord what a book. This one is really sticking with me. Epic, brutal, and absolutely gorgeous writing. Recommend reading this on paper over audiobooks so you can reread the passages a few times. Some of them blew the scalp right off my skull.
• John Steinbeck, East of Eden. Penguin Classic, 2002 (originally, 1953) [10]. My first Steinbeck and I am close to saying I loved this. There are some amazing characters in this but the main characters are all extremely odd. But some of the writing in this is absolutely smashing and I did love the themes of this 100%. Timshel.
• Claire Keegan, So Late in the Day: Stories of Men and Women. Grove Press, 2023 [9]. this was available in Libby so I grabbed it. Have read other Keegan books and enjoyed them. But man, “stories” is technically true – there were only 2 total – felt like maybe I was missing some pages. They were both very good.
• James Tynion IV, The Deviant. Image, 2024 [8]. Trade paper back, collects #1-4. Great start to a dark serial-killer story.
• J. Marshall Smith, Testament. Bulgilhan press, 2025 [7]. A robot takes care of an aging colony of humans on a distant planet. great art and touching. looking for more by Smith.
• Atushi Kaneko, Search and Destroy, Vol 1. Fantagraphics, 2024 [6]. Retelling of Dororo – picked it up at SPX last year. pretty drawings.
• Percival Everett, James, Knopf Doubleday, 2024 [5]. Great Yarn. Retelling of the Huck Finn adventure from Jim’s perspective. Probably my favorite book I’ve read in a while.
• Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See, Scribner, 2015 [4]. Really good WWII story about sight and radio waves.
• George Saunders. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. Random House, 2021 [3]. Strange book I grabbed from the library because I was looking for a book and it was available. It’s a short story writing class where we read a short story from a classic russian author and then spend 50 pages dissecting it from a writers perspective. A little tedious but I ended up really liking the stories and *some* of the analysis. I appreciated it all though. I may try to read more stories from these old classic guys Tolstoy, Chekov et al.
• Michael Sanlavaille. Banana Sioule Vol 1: Helena. Magnetic Press, 2025 [2]. Decent start of a series. YA level. Im a fan of this artist so I will probably pick up the second volume when it comes out.
• Pierce Brown. Red Rising. Random House, 2014 [1]. YA Class warfare. Mashup of Hunger Games and Enders Game. Really fun