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

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

Damn….read more poetry!

• 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