A year is never done...

some reading recommendations

Keeping this simple and utilitarian…

My top “five” books of the year

Small Things Like These - Claire Keegan

A darkly rendered narrative exercise in ethics without being preachy or tendentious.

My Life as a Spy - Katherine Verdery

A bizarre hall-of-mirrors memoir about a researcher’s interactions (surveilling the surveillers) with Romania’s communist era Securitate police force. “The acquisition of a double—of a new identity—will prove to be a central feature of what it’s like to be under surveillance” — what she also calls “the simultaneity of surveillance and disappearance.”

The Tiger - John Vaillant

Riveting, beautiful animal and human-animal scenes, with easily the best non-fiction climax I’ve ever read. “These animals have been known to climb trees to swat at helicopters and run headlong into gunfire.”

In the Distance - Hernan Díaz

Cormac meets Murakami meets Beckett meets the mythos of the American frontier. “No matter how hard he scanned the horizon, all he could see were rippling mirages and the phosphorescent specks his exhausted eyes made pop in and out of the emptiness. He pictured himself out there, running, insect-like, in the distance. Even if he ever managed to escape and somehow outdistance his pursuers, how would he make it all by himself through the vast barren expanse?”

Solenoid  - Mircea Cărtărescu (translated by Sean Cotter)

Hilariously serious and beautiful phantasmagoria. “I have read thousands of books but never found one that was a landscape as opposed to a map.”

and a sixth, because I can’t help it:

First Love and Other Tales  -Ivan Turgenev (translated by David Magarshack)

I read the short story “The Singers” at least six times this year, including three times aloud to waylaid friends. The description of a song reaches such a pitch at one point that I get choked up just thinking about it.

Reading plan, 2024

I plan to read a dozen books in Spanish and a dozen books of poems. The rest will take care of itself as it always does, chasing one title after another.

I write so much for work, where I’m squished into particular styles (daily or investigative news, with a shake of Arizona Luminaria house style along with my occasional essays for other outlets) which is fine and good and fun and useful, but I’m also worried about forgetting how to write outside of those modes. My hope is that reading more in another language and in another genre will help keep me fresh.

Books already on my list

A Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann. (A friend of mine recently balked at people casually dropping that they are rereading a book, when, even if we have already read a book before, each and all reading experiences are different, new, and original — every read is a first read — which is why I’m not saying that this will be a reread. I do, I recognize, succumb to keeping score: counting miles, time, books read, words written, et cetera. Which is why I shouldn’t ever own a smart watch and why I can’t help a parenthetical that is not quite saying that this will be a reread even if it would be or, in fact, maybe is. I do count the number of books I read every year, but in such a impulsively needy way that I don’t even share the tally with others.)

The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll - Álvaro Mutis

Prophet Song - Paul Lynch (starting on this imminently)

Immigration books

Four I’m particularly excited for: Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here, by Jon Blitzer; Until I Find You, by Rachel Nolan; and A Map of Future Ruins, by Lauren Markham. And one I’m reading now, The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, by Petra Molnar.

A book for your list?

My second book, The Case for Open Borders, is out in just over one-freaking month. I’d be honored if you gave it a read in 2024.