Oh boy more book reviews! Now we’re going to talk about some books in the first half of 2026. As of writing this, I’ve read 39 books, 15 of which are fiction and 24 are nonfiction, and I abandoned one (fiction) book. I clearly have some fiction catching up to do.
Fiction
My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, Britt-Marie Was Here, and Anxious People by Fredrik Backman: Yes, I read three books by the same author in one quarter, but it was worth doing. I enjoyed all three, although the first one has a special charm that comes with having a young child as the narrator and used stories told by her grandmother to explore the world within the story, despite the story taking place in the real world. The second one stars Britt-Marie, a character in the first book who isn’t particularly friendly at first (from the POV of a young child to be fair) but is so relatable in her own book. The third one was for book club, and it had nothing to do with the first two books, but if you like stories where everyone is stuck in a room you’ll like this one.
Colored Television by Danzy Senna: I read this for book club, and this is one of those books where I had to check if the author was white before seeing if I could laugh. I did love this book. The family is living in her rich friend’s house while said rich friend is in Australia working on his TV show. Meanwhile they finally feel like they’ve made it in the world of the rich, all they’ve ever wanted. She keeps lying to her husband about her progress on her book when she’s meeting up with a TV producer while her husband is learning Japanese to hopefully show his true art in Japan, but the book makes you think he’s learning Japanese for a (nonexistent) love interest. The parents aren’t the greatest parents and then we find out that the woman isn’t even a good friend to the friend who lent them his house. This book is an Everyone Sucks Here situation, and I love that because I understand everyone’s imperfect perspective.
The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker: This was a book club selection, but I was out of town for it, so I read the book on a flight instead. I’m glad I did because I loved it. Julia is twelve when the world learns that the planet has started to rotate on its axis more slowly, making the days longer. The thing I find fascinating about this story is how realistic the reactions are. The people keep trying to live by the length of the sun day at first because why change things up, right? But once the sun days become several hours longer this becomes impractical so the world shifts back to 24-hour days and of course some people keep trying to live by sun days and they’re seen as the crazy ones and eventually shunned by society. That’s definitely a thing that would happen, no sarcasm. Meanwhile Julia is still twelve and doing middle school girl things while the world is ending, like how we’ve all kept living our lives over the past however long that the world around us has continuously sucked. Honestly, I love it all for that taste of reality.
The Heated Rivalry series, specifically Game Changer (#1), Heated Rivalry (#2), Role Model (#5), and The Long Game (#6): So what to say about the gay hockey series turned TV show? Of the ones I read, I definitely like the first book the least of these four. Bro, you’ve known each other for a month, offering to pay off their student loans is way too much, and the secret relationship felt controlling at times. I do like the main ship of the series, although I wish the books explored more about being queer and Russian, even outside of Russia. Ilya definitely isn’t the only one. Besides that, these books are good one-sitting books for when I want to turn the rest of my brain off, and I’ll come back to books three and four sometime.
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller: I read this book because my boyfriend gave me his copy before moving and he really liked it. It took me awhile to say I like it, though. Everyone in this book is self-serving and they’re all losing their minds (some literally) due to the war, but the people and their shenanigans are interesting.
Brigands & Breadknives by Travis Baldree: This is the Legends & Lattes sequel. I really wanted to like this book as much as I liked L&L. The author acknowledges the fear they had in releasing this book because–fair warning in case you expect another super cozy story–it is not quite as cozy, and I found that disappointing because I was expecting that flavor of cozy and… did not get it. It’s not a bad book (although I remain suspicious of the ending), but it wasn’t the book I really was in a specific mood for at the time.
Bad Monkey by Carl Hiaasen: I read this for book club and my primary reaction was “What the fuck did I just read?” The answer is “peak Florida Man”. It’s one of those detective stories where someone who shouldn’t be on the case does for whatever reason, and all the tangents of the story are the point. I didn’t love this book, to be clear. I’m still not sure if I like it. It was one pile of WTF on top of another (vacuuming someone’s ass? cutting off an arm? the monkey? WTF?) and that plus the characters kept me interested. Side note, are restaurants in south Florida really that unclean?
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole: I got halfway through for book club and could not make myself finish it. Look, I don’t require my characters to be likable or a good moral member of society but dear Arceus, I should find myself rooting for you a little bit, and this story gave me zero reasons to root for this manchild who thought he was intellectually better than everyone else but also wasn’t fully well. He never left his bubble of New Orleans (except for that one bus ride to Baton Rouge which was the absolute worst), he hardly had friends, and his mom (who he still lived with) was his worst enabler even after telling him to get a job. Good grief. We compared this to Catch-22 during book club, and I think the reason I liked that book and not this one was because I found the characters and motivations interesting, where I had no interest here. At least I’ll never have to hear about the guy’s damn valve again.
Fabulous Bodies by Chuck Tingle: I read this entire book in one sitting after getting it signed by the man himself. It’s definitely a slasher horror story but it’s so camp that it’s more accessible to folks who aren’t very into horror. I did find some of the action hard to follow, although I generally find a lot of physical fighting action hard to follow since I’m not a very visual reader.
Nonfiction
Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It by Cory Doctorow (and while we’re here, Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We’ll Win Them Back by Rebecca Giblin and Doctorow): I loved both of these books, but the first one stands out more to me. I wish the second one had more examples of how small artists get screwed over by the big man and how they adapted instead of big business tales, but I understand why. Both of these books made me mad not because of how they were written but because of all the examples that they used to show how big companies can just take over the small companies and users and screw them over, and then literally no one wins except those big companies, and that’s how we end up where we are now. Go read these and be mad.
Bullshit Jobs: A Theory by David Graeber: I once said that any job I couldn’t explain to my parents (who have worked trades and retail) is a bullshit job, but this book talks about the extreme bullshit jobs. The person who processes a once a month report. The receptionist who’s there so someone else feels important. These are the jobs that actually make the people who have them feel bad because they’re expected to be ready to work but sometimes can’t do much else. Since this book was written about twenty years ago, I wonder how the current job cutting is affecting these bullshit jobs.
Languishing: How to Feel Alive Again in a World That Wears Us Down by Corey Keyes: Okay, I didn’t like this one. So why is it here? Because oh boy do I have opinions. The idea is that there’s a state between being mentally well and mentally unwell, which I can buy. After all, not all people with mental illness consider themselves to be unhappy overall, and being happy has no bearing on your mental health. I’ve felt the languishing mindset a lot, especially with the need to be On(TM) and productive and consuming all the time. There are fewer ways for our minds to wander and just be. But… the so-called solutions are the same things you’ll hear literally everywhere. Go outside more. Talk to someone. Eat healthier. Things that everyone ever will tell you, whether it’s another self-help book or your bestie or your professional in the field. One of the top Goodreads reviews says “I languished through this” and honestly, same. One more thing, he mentions suicide attempts out of nowhere when he talks about his own mental health and they really do come out of nowhere. I don’t remember the chapters since I listened to the book.
Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language by Adam Aleksic: I was hoping this book would be a technical version of Because Internet (which I adore), where the book investigates how the tech algorithms shape the way we talk, but it wasn’t. (Side note, someone please write that book; with the rise of generative AI being trained on human work and then being trained on its own AI slop I wonder how that will affect the way we write and speak.) but this book just uses the same few Tiktok examples over and over. I’ll be happy to never hear skibidi toilet again.
Unbearable: Five Women and the Perils of Pregnancy in America: This book was hard to listen to. Not because it was the bad–quite the opposite. It was also terrifying knowing that these stories are real and can happen to anyone. You could be pregnant in a rural area or not have your pain taken seriously because you’re a woman of color and yes that still happens. I winced at some of the tales told on that last part, so be warned. While this book does deliver on the premise, some of the ideas aren’t fully fleshed out and sometimes the book jumps around, and well, I’ve read enough on this topic in recent years to compare this book to others.
After Purity: Race, Sex, and Religion in White Christian America: Everyone loves some good purity culture. (I’m being sarcastic in case that isn’t clear.) I was also raised in the era of True Love Waits and the notion of “If you kiss someone, you’ve kissed everyone they’ve ever been with”, and the discussion in this book hit hard. My mind flashed back to my evangelicalism, where you were taught to hate yourself because you’re a sinner and God loves you (as if that makes it okay), especially if you’re a woman. I wish there was more discussion about queer people (including, and maybe especially, ace people) experiencing purity culture, but otherwise I love this book.
What Debt Demands: Family, Betrayal, and Precarity in a Broken System by Kristin Collier: Imagine discovering you had hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt upon applying for your first credit card and having no idea why because you didn’t apply for those loans. That happened to the author but it gets worse–her mother did it. This book takes you through the author’s ten-year journey to get these loans discharged while exploring her family relationships and how debt creeps into every area of life. The collectors learn your schedule and know exactly when to call. You start making excuses to get away from people in your life to take those calls so your friends don’t know it’s a collector calling. No space is truly safe.
Jane Austen’s Bookshelf by Rebecca Romney: I read a signed dead tree copy of this book! Fun story about this book, one of my friends got me this signed copy when the author did a local book event a year ago, and it sat on my side table for a year because so many other books came up. Then the same friend asked me about it in May when he stayed over and I had to admit that no, I hadn’t started reading it yet (eep), but it would be next. I loved this book.
A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments by David Foster Wallace: There, I read a David Foster Wallace book. Now I never have to read another one. He had some interesting insights but maybe I just don’t care about tennis or television or the state fair enough. Maybe I just want my writing to get to the point. I don’t know, but I can add Infinite Jest to the Won’t Read list.
A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy by Tia Levings: Continuing my adventures in the Christian patriarchy, this book has picked up a lot of attention. What scares me about this book is the many warning signs the author pointed out, even early on. She and her husband were warned during their marriage counseling that they weren’t compatible, and they got married anyway. Her parents and other friends she had talked to previously were concerned as the marriage went on and her husband got into the cult-like flavor of Christianity. That doesn’t excuse the abuse that happened, but it does show how that lifestyle disguises abuse in the name of faith (which, if you’re a person of faith, you may not want to abandon) and how hard it is to get out of that life.