Category: reading
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Charts and graphs for my 2025 reading
I forgot to add this to my favorites post last night, so for your entertainment, charts of my reading over the last decade:
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My favorite reads of 2025
In no particular order, my favorite reads of the year: Sleep Decades by Israel A. Bonilla The History of Sound by Ben Shattuck The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton Made to Explode: Poems by Sandra Beasley The Wounded Angel: Fiction and the Religious Imagination by Paul Lakeland For Love of the Broken Body: A…
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Beautiful sentences: Roberto Bolaño
Veo el perfil de Neruda y el mío, pero en realidad me engaño, es sólo un árbol, veo un árbol, la silueta múltiple y monstruosa de la hojarasca, como un mar que se seca, un dibujo que sugiere dos perfiles y que en realidad es una tumba al aire libre partida por la espada de…
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Today’s Saint Picture: Elisha
Today’s saint picture is of the prophet Elisha. While the old-style designation would be to call him “Saint Elisha,” the title “Saint” for Old Testament figures always feels kind of off to me, but looking at the commemorations for the day, I couldn’t pass up on Elisha since one of his trademark stories was having…
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2025 Tournament of Books: James vs. Martyr! (again)
OK, there’s not much point rehashing what I said the last time these two faced off. I still think James is the better book. My judgment on the judgment This is a vote by all the judges, and since last year I did a handy little table, I figured I’d repeat that again this year. I…
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2025 Tournament of Books: The Extinction of Irena Rey vs. James
This would have been my finals matchup had the judging gone my way. Instead, these two books face off in the zombie round. James, as I’ve said every time it comes up, is the best book of 2024, the one that people will be reading decades in the future. The Extinction of Irena Rey, as good…
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2025 Tournament of Books: Martyr! vs. Margo’s Got Money Troubles
The zombie round always throws weird little twists into the mix. Last year, my picks to face off in the finals were eliminated before they got to the finals but re-emerged as zombies. This year, one was eliminated in an upset, but will face my other pick for the finals in tomorrow’s round, meaning today…
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2025 Tournament of Books: The Extinction of Irena Rey vs. Margo’s Got Money Troubles/The Wedding People
The official match-up this round is an easy choice for me. I found the formal experimentation of Margo’s Got Money Troubles to be intrusive and irritating while the formal experimentation of The Extinction of Irena Rey seemed delightful to me. It seems an easy choice to advance The Extinction of Irena Rey. Meanwhile in a parallel universe If…
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2025 Tournament of Books: James vs. Martyr!
I kind of feel like there is only one book that comes close to meeting James in terms of excellence and lasting impact out of the books of 2024, and that’s Martyr! but at the same time, I also feel like this it’s mostly because of the promise that Martyr! shows for Akbar’s oeuvre going forward, so for…