A Geography of Reading

"It is by reading novels, stories, and myths that we come to understand the world in which we live." -Orhan Pamuk

The Books I’m Carrying into 2026

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New Year, new me, right? Except that reading is the fundamental way I relate to the world, so it’s always books, and in 2026 I’m working on unknotting some of the same obsessions as last year (and the year before, and, let’s be honest, always). Three books opened something for me in the past few weeks that I think will take me deeper and more meaningfully into understanding and living the life I want to live: One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad, Skeleton Crew by Stephen King, and The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation by Chögyam Trungpa. Let me tell you how this eclectic mix of books is helping me see (and how they might help you, too).

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

I hadn’t thought about this book at all until I was at a National Book Awards watch party and I saw El Akkad’s gorgeous acceptance speech. My shelves are too full of the non-fiction books I am interested in but that often feel like blocks for me to overcome. But this book was so very worth buying and pushing to the top of the pile.

“Whose nonexistence is necessary to the self-conception of this place, and how uncontrollable is the rage whenever that nonexistence is violated?” – One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

The book is about Gaza, yes, and it is about everything. At the same time it is very simply about the fact that we are not living in the world we say we are living in. The book is beautifully human as he describes his family’s migration (something I always relate to), how colonialism positions the occupied as the aggressor, the delusions of capitalism, and the possibility of walking away.

I’ve been grappling with a lot of things in the past decade that this book helped clarify. From the unbearable pain and beauty that opened up inside me when I was pregnant and could see clearly (for a few years at least) that every single person I encountered was human to the day I looked at my face in the mirror of a house whose mortgage was being paid by the Saudi government to my dawning realization that the Democratic Party is more interested in gaining and retaining power than in helping its constituents (don’t get me started on the GOP).

This book can and should radicalize you.

“Every small act of resistance trains the muscle used to do it… One builds the muscle by walking away from the most minor things—trivial consumables, the cultural work of monsters, the myriad material fruits grown on stolen ground—and realizes in the doing of these things that there is a wide spectrum of negative resistance.” – One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

It is the book I most want to press into the hands of anyone I think will read it. It’s a fast read and it’s worth reading over and over and over until you see what it is you can do to change.

“What are you willing to give up to alleviate someone else’s suffering?” – One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

“Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut” in Skeleton Crew

Following a National Book Award-winning book about genocide with a Stephen King book might seem anathema, but Stephen King was an important part of my reading journey when I was a teen seeking to understand the darkness of the world. I don’t read a lot of Stephen King these days, but I’m still proud of how widely I read. More importantly, I found something new (or maybe so old I just forgot) in this book this week when my son asked me to read him what I’ve described as my favorite short story.

I first told him about “Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut” because I wanted him to see beyond the bounds of the world as it’s presented. I thought he’d be fascinated by the idea of looking for new and interesting ways to get somewhere in less distance. What I didn’t realize until actually re-reading the story this week for the first time in probably three decades, is how much more I love about this story.

First, King does an excellent job of capturing the speech and cultural patterns of two old men jawing on a porch in rural Maine as they reminisce about the first Mrs. Todd, before she disappeared in her little “go-devil.” There is love in these descriptions for a particular way of life and in how closely he observed them to render them so well.

“Fold the map and see how many miles it is then, Homer.” – Ophelia Todd in “Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut,” Skeleton Crew

Second, I still loved the way this story bends expectations of reality. How it pushes little by little into another view of the world entirely, one where you can get from Castle Lake to Bangor in fewer miles via car than as the crow flies. I’d forgotten about what happens on the dark roads, but the supernatural touches are beautifully gentle enough to put the full energy of the story on possibility.

“There was somethin wild that crep into her face, Dave—something wild and something free” – Homer in “Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut,” Skeleton Crew

Third, I had forgotten the way Homer describes Mrs. Todd. There is awe in the way her former handyman sees her that both appreciates the real wildness of her and isn’t possessive of her. I’m not sure how my teenage self read these words, but as a middle-aged woman, the idea that someone can be so extremely beautiful for being free to be just who she is (and that appreciation not being about the viewer at all) is astounding and welcome.

I haven’t read him “Nona” yet, my other favorite story from the book, and I’m saving my own re-read to discover it with him. Who knows what treasures I’ll find.

The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation

I’ve been Buddhist-curious ever since my first non-western art history course as an undergrad. The professor showed us a scroll of hungry ghosts and described their constant striving and I knew I’d stumbled on something that explained more than I’d every been able to unravel. For Christmas this year my husband gave me The Myth of Freedom and I’ve been slowly chewing it over. It seems, after reading more about the six realms, that the human realm is more likely my major preoccupation these days than the gaki zōshi, but I’m appreciating this new lens to see the world through.

“If we can accept our imperfections as they are, quite ordinarily, then we can use them as part of the path.” – The Myth of Freedom

Primarily, I’m interested in the idea of sitting with what isn’t working rather than going around. There are a lot of things that aren’t working right now—personally as I try to figure out how to life a life that feels intentional and also feeds my family and globally as we all grapple with what kind of world we want to make. But I’m hoping to see it clearly and move forward into a better way, even if it’s just one step at a time. If there’s something you’re reading that’s bringing you comfort or spurring you to action, please inspire me by sharing it in the comments.

“Just as it has always been possible to look away, it is always possible to stop looking away.” – One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

If any of these books piqued your interest, order One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, Skeleton Crew, or The Myth of Freedom from Bookshop.org. If you use that link to purchase anything, you’re keeping indie bookstores in business and I receive a commission.

Senses, Memory, and the Sandwich Generation in Steph Catudal’s Radicle

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Cover of Radicle featuring dendritic branchingI’ve been sitting on a review copy of Steph Catudal’s Radicle, or When the World Lived Inside Us for ages. I think I was afraid of reading the book, which explores motherhood and losing a parent, because of what it would open for me. I was right about the feelings. I was wrong to wait to read it, because the sensory detail and her gentle attention to the experience of being human make this book worth returning to again and again.

The Exquisite Beauty, Pain, and Hope of Watching a Child Grow

Parenting, especially in our modern isolation, is an on-all-the-time kind of thing. Which means it’s hard to slow down and see what’s happening as you go. Various apps send me snapshots of what we did on this day so many years ago, but I don’t slow down often enough to exist in and remember the moments as and when they are. Catudal perfectly captures this and the heartbreak of bringing a being that is perfect into an imperfect world in “The Starting Line.”

I thought I’d always remember
how precious it is
to breathe, to walk,
to wake with eyes wide open
but here I am now, unable to recall
the sweet desperation
reckoning with impermanence
can bring.
– from “The Starting Line” by Steph Catudal from Radicle

Later in the poem, Catudal brings us tight into one of these moments with a simple image that captures everything:

And then she reaches for the monarch
perched on milkweed,
her small hand yearning to hold
the brittleness of life.
– from “The Starting Line” by Steph Catudal from Radicle

Throughout the book, Catudal’s language is clean and clear with just the right amount of detail. She lets us see what is happening and feel alongside her as she parents her child and herself.

The Lessons We Don’t Want to Impart

In “New Moon,” Catudal writes of what we pass on to our children:

I give you my love and
I give you this anger,
embers of an untamed inheritance.

How will it forge you?
– from “New Moon” by Steph Catudal from Radicle

It’s a gorgeous testament to that thing so many of us experience when we become parents despite not being fully forged ourselves (because we are human), the feeling of trying to heal for ourselves and more so for our children, for whom we want better, only and always. I thought of these words while stroking my 10-year-old’s forehead this morning. He still wants to be near me (when I let him), and that’s everything. And I see the ways I wish already that I could have been different for him.

What of my stuntedness will you carry?
What of my brokenness will break you, too?
– from “New Moon” by Steph Catudal from Radicle

Letting Our Elders Go

One of the quandaries of the sandwich generation is parenting yourself and your children while also offering care for your elders. While I am no longer the primary caretaker for my mother, and haven’t been for a long time, I still wrestle with how I am needed where and how much I can give to those who need me (including myself) at any time.

In Radicle, Catudal is very expressly present with her father at the end of his life. In “It’s Beautiful, It Hurts,” she writes of being “too young to know / how to comfort a giant / stripped bare.” This reveals so poignantly the ways that we are always the children of our parents. How difficult it is to shift the roles, even when it becomes necessary.

The poem that broke me, though, was “Some Things Are Not Meant to Be Fixed” as Catudal writes of falling through a board on a tree house, her father scooping her up, and all the feelings they both carried forever after. The poem captures in a few spare lines one moment that encapsulates a whole relationship, and it left me asking what it is I remember. I have not lost a parent, if I’m lucky that may be decades away, but I’ve been having to prepare to lose one for the last 35 years.

Catudal opened a door for me this morning, asking me to check in with my own memory. Which got me writing again, for the first time in weeks. And I am grateful.

If you want to check in with your own exquisite joy or pain, order Radicle, or When the World Lived Inside Us from Bookshop.org. If you use that link to purchase anything, you’re keeping indie bookstores in business and I receive a commission.

2025 National Book Awards

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Tonight I watched the National Book Awards at my local independent bookstore, Ravenna Third Place Books, and it filled my soul in so many ways that I wanted to share some highlights with you while still on this high.

We can and must lift each other up

Roxane Gay received a lifetime achievement award. She spoke of the work she did in 2012 to assess how many writers of color and women were reviewed by the New York Times in one year, nearly 90% of the writers were white.

She spoke also of doing all the work she can to uplift other writers, and avoiding a scarcity mindset. She called out the publishers in the room, reminding them of their power to change the way the industry operates and who it represents.

Her speech was filled with her characteristically incisive wit and she ended by saying, “You have the power to create the change that the publishing industry so desperately needs. And you will be remembered for how you use that power. Or how you don’t.”

Writing is a sacrament that makes us smarter

George Saunders spoke about early days when he was stealing writing time from work and about writing on the bus. I’ve done both. And he talked about how this close work made him smarter. And realizing that, he found writing to be a sacrament, because “The person we happen to be in this moment through habit is not the limit of who we might become.”

“[Revising] is the process of not being sure, it’s staying open to the truths that the prose is anxious to show us…bullies, autocrats, zealots…they know, they always know. They are completely sure. But we artists…have an advantage over autocrats because when we’re in that not knowing state we’re open to finding out how things actually are.”

There is power in being who we are


When Gabriela Cabezón Cámara got up to give her speech to accept the award for literature in translation, she did it in Spanish, “Because I know the fascists don’t like it.” And my heart swelled. Something I’ve been trying to recapture lately is the multilingual self that used to feel like all of me. I was the only one in the room who laughed at her joke before it was translated, but I felt so full knowing that I could follow what she was saying and that that made me part of a larger world.

We must use the voice we have


Omar El Akkad said over and over “it’s difficult to think in celebratory terms” about spending two years watching children be torn apart from shrapnel, knowing our tax dollars are doing it, and watching people be snatched off the streets by masked agents of the state for insisting that Palestinians are human beings.

But he stressed, “We have an obligation to stand in opposition to any force, including those enacted by our own governments that, if left unchecked, would happily decimate every principle of free expression and connection that we come here to celebrate.”

Being in community

Rabih Alameddine spoke, in what was easily the funniest speech of the night, of the myth of the writer as a solitary being. “Writers as arts libertarians. Well, as you probably know, libertarians are like house cats. They consider themselves fiercely independent while relying on a system they don’t understand or appreciate…” and then he went on to describe all the connections that make writers not libertarians at all. I felt seen.


Last time I watched the National Book Awards was a few years ago. I was by myself on a writing residency at Centrum and it felt so professional to tune in. Tonight, though, I was surrounded by people cheering for their favorite authors. Even better, our laughter echoed together. And when a person I knew, Stesha Brandon, got up on the awards stage to present the award for literature in translation, the people at the bookstore ran to the screen and took selfies. I hadn’t remembered that Stesha was going to be there, but it was a wonderful moment that made the world feel small in the best of ways.

Sometimes things seem dark right now. They are. But we are not alone, even with our books. And we have work to do (together).

Arriving at Asimov’s Foundation Through the Back Door

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When I was in high school, there was a certain type of person who read Isaac Asimov. I can picture one in particular: male, white, bowl cut, spent a lot of time smoking bowls on the industrial-sized trampoline in his back yard. Nice enough dude, but I didn’t fit the profile, so I didn’t read the books (to be fair, I was pretty deeply immersed in my Stephen Kings and Holocaust memoirs). I’m happy to say I’m less inhibited about reading books that aren’t “mine” these days, but this does mean I missed out on some really foundational books, like Asimov’s Foundation. In fact, I’m not even sure I really thought about the book until I started watching the series on Apple TV.

Illustration featuring stars of the Apple TV series Foundation: Hari Seldon, Gaal Dornick, Salvor Hardin, Demerzel, and Brother DayWhat drew me to the series (beyond my husband’s recommendation) was how beautiful it is (and not just because they cast Lee Pace). The on-screen world is painterly (in one season expressly so as “Dusk” Cleon is actually painting the murals in his palace). What kept me there is the fascinating characters (especially Gaal Dornick and Salvor Hardin) and political machinations that made the world feel real and urgent. I kept thinking, “There must be so much more of this in the books! I must read the books!” I found the second two in a local Little Free Library, but it took me ages to actually order the first. What a surprise it was to finally read about this world I thought I knew.

There will be spoilers ahead, if you can spoil a 75-year-old book and a series that debuted four years ago. There may also be misinformation as I’m going off my poor memory here. But I won’t say too much, because, as always, I most want you to get excited enough about this story to experience it for yourself.

Characters make a story

As I said, I was all in on Gaal Dornick as a character. Watching her float face up in the seas of her water-logged world. Seeing her absolute need for knowledge, a quest so intense it pulls her apart from her family, culture, and planet forever. Witnessing her stumble and triumph and stumble again as she comes into her own power.

Gaal was only one of the many characters we got to invest in in the series: Hari Seldon (the psychohistorian), Emperor Cleon (presented in the three forms of his cloned self-Dawn, Day, and Dusk), Demerzel (the woman who seems to make the Empire run), and Salvor Hardin (warden of Terminus and Gaal’s daughter). Each of these characters has an interesting backstory and a way of being in the narrative that drives the story forward. For example, Gaal is present as the Foundation is exiled from Trantor (the seat of Empire), her daughter is an integral part of the Foundation’s existence on Terminus, and Gaal becomes an important catalyst for the second Foundation.

Creating continuity across galaxies and lifetimes

cover of Foundation showing Hari Seldon in a wheelchair inside a capsuleThe book is different. Not only is Gaal not a woman (almost no characters of consequence are), the character is incidental to the plot. In fact, most of the characters are incidental. As I was reading Foundation, I realized that part of what I’d loved about the series was the way the characters provided a touchstone for me as we hopped across planets and leapt forward in time over and over again. We lost a few of my favorites along the way, but there were always others I could lean on, knowing how their sympathies did and did not square with mine.

Without this continuity, I felt thrust into story line after story line without really knowing how to get my bearings. Whereas the series creates an entire history, this lack of continuity in the book provided me with outlines of what each stage of history was and could be, but I found it a lot harder to get inside (or to care).

Political evolutions

There’s also a stark difference between the series and the book in that we continue to experience the Empire in the series. That adds to the continuity of the story, but it also adds weight and context to what the Foundation is playing against. We didn’t have to see the whole history of Empire to imagine why it might decline (though we get touches in flashback). And when we flash forward, there’s context in what’s happened politically (and what’s about to happen) because we are grounded in both worlds. In the book, Empire (seemingly) ceases to exist over generations.

Also, the book feels much more jumpy. It wasn’t until near the end that I could pinpoint why (besides missing the characters), but I finally realized that each new crisis really sets a stage for Asimov to discuss a political system. When one of the characters calls the other a demagogue, it clicked—I felt like I was inside an Ayn Rand novel. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been deeply immersed in Rand’s work at various times in my life, and I’ve never been sorry I read it, but her work feels instructional, not narrative. The characters are often cardboard cutouts meant to push us forward to a conclusion Rand wants us to make.

I stopped reading Rand when I realized how little room there was for me in the books. One of the things I love about a book is bouncing myself off the ideas in conversation and coming away with my own thoughts. With Rand I could only agree or disagree. There wasn’t enough there for more.

I don’t think it’s an accident that Asimov and Rand share Russian lineage and a general time period. Their work both reads like they so forcefully need for us to believe something so we can change the world together. For me, though, I think the best way to change the world is to engage with the people around us, find out what they want changed about the world, and build a collective vision of what could be better.

I don’t know if I’ll read more Foundation books. I probably will just to see. I’m also off the series a bit after the most recent season. But believe me when I tell you that the first two seasons are gorgeous. Better yet, watch them for yourself!

If you want to read Asimov for yourself, order Foundation from Bookshop.org. If you use that link to purchase anything, you’re keeping indie bookstores in business and I receive a commission.

Considering Voice in I Am Cleopatra and Cyborg Fever

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Who gets to talk, when, and for whom is a conversation I can’t get enough of. For me this is one of the crucial elements of feminism (besides, you know, equal rights and control over one’s own body). It’s a conversation we don’t have enough in literature, though I’m glad we’re having it more often than we used to. And it’s something I started thinking deeply about this past week as I was finishing up reading I Am Cleopatra by Natasha Solomons and Cyborg Fever by Laurie Sheck.

Feminist Retellings of History in I Am Cleopatra

I Am Cleopatra starts strong, with the title character addressing us directly, “I want you to see me as I am. You can dislike me, love me or abhor me, but know me first. I was born a girl and a goddess. A future queen, if I should live that long.” It’s a compelling beginning for a character we’ve most often known through the men she loved or bedded (or both), and we certainly get to know Cleopatra more intimately than ever before.

The character Solomons portrays is intelligent and strategic. She’s also young and afraid. I enjoyed getting inside her motivations as her father courts the favor of the Romans, she marries her brother to become queen, she’s betrayed by that brother, and Caesar enters her life. She’s also human: menstruating and virginal when she first meets Caesar, having popped out of the laundry bag she was smuggled into her own palace inside. We see her acknowledge her own fears and work to overcome them in the name of her people. It’s a beguiling portrayal, even if (and maybe because) she is less the seductress than we’ve previously seen her be.

Through Cleopatra we get to know Charmian, the girl who has been her slave since they were both born. There is a class distinction here as Charmian is never a narrator in the story, though this Cleopatra does see the plight of the common people around her more than we might expect. That in and of itself is a nice change, though I wouldn’t say this queen is fully “woke.”

The other character who gets to narrate her own plight is Servilia, lover of Caesar (in Rome) and mother of Brutus. Servilia counsels the young princess on her first visit to Rome and then disappears from the book for awhile as Caesar mires himself in Egypt and Egyptian politics. We meet her again and in earnest when Caesar brings Cleopatra to Rome.

The absence of Servilia from much of the middle of the book is a flaw as I see it, because Servilia has a rich perspective of her own, and I was enjoying learning about Rome through her eyes. It’s also the crux of what makes me think about feminism and voice in this book. I love that (for once) this story is told in the voices of the women. I did not love that the action then revolves entirely around the men (especially Caesar). I understand why the book is structured this way, it follows the action and HIStory as we know it, but I wanted to stretch into something new, something that might have passed the Bechdel Test (and I wondered how far from history an author would have to venture to make that happen).

Myriad Voices in Cyborg Fever

In sharp contrast, Cyborg Fever by Laurie Sheck is a hybrid text that took me all kinds of places I never thought I would go. The voices in this book include Erwin (the narrator), a nun and a cyborg that talk to him, and Deadpool (who talks to the cyborg). Don’t let the ridiculous sound of that last sentence fool you, this book is intelligent and funny and I’m still pondering its meanings and ramifications.

“Maybe meaning lies in the not-understanding, in the ways things shut us out. All the ways that we remain unknowing.” – Laurie Sheck, Cyborg Fever

I’m not going to lie, sometimes I got lost as Erwin’s musings covered entropy, Borges, orphan planets, Tesla, Einstein, the discovery of black holes, a nun who cannot attach to an infant, Professor Xavier (of the X-Men), musings on loneliness, the chemical roots of empathy, engineering humans for war, Laika, and so, so much more. There were hundreds of historical tidbits and tangents I wanted to track down, fact check, or follow. Sheck weaves them together artfully into a tantalizing exploration of what it means to be human and what comes next. But, as far as I can tell, she’s providing as many questions as answers (which makes the book far more interesting to read).

“To be knowledgeable is to know you cannot know.” – Laurie Sheck, Cyborg Fever

I was particularly excited to read this book in this moment as I’ve been working with AI in my day job. It’s been instructive to see how information is collated, where errors get introduced into a system, and how much it seems like the engines prefer to be wrong than to admit not knowing. To me that is the fatal flaw, where growth stops, because the machines cannot then be curious. This limitation makes me wonder about the people who designed the systems, what their limits are.

“A map is a set of agreed-upon errors.” – Laurie Sheck, Cyborg Fever

It was also interesting to ponder algorithms and how Erwin is getting introduced to his information. I spend a lot of time editing guides related to search engine optimization, so I get to see behind at least one of the curtains of how decisions are made for us online. It’s something I think a lot about as my son learns to navigate around the walled garden we’ve tried to create for him online.

“I didn’t realize algorithms can lead you from one topic to another without your suspecting you’re being lead—you just think you’re making choices.” – Laurie Sheck, Cyborg Fever

As much as this book introduced me to all kinds of wonderful and fascinating ideas, it really hit home for me with the Deadpool appearance. Not because I’m a Marvel superfan, but because I live with one; and nothing beats telling your 10-year-old at the breakfast table that the deep book you’ve been reading actually featured the star of the movie he had everyone watch last week (Once Upon a Deadpool—highly recommend if you are not a super hero fan but need something to watch with someone who is, because it works on many levels, like this book). The book also connected to Alien Earth (highly recommend this because no one does layered storytelling on TV like Noah Hawley) with the idea that “new kinds of bodies lead to new thoughts” and I was left wondering how close we are to a future of company towns in space and people who give their whole lives (and in some cases bodies) over to corporations. Shudder.

Although reading while exhausted was either the best way to encounter this story or the worst (definitely not in between), I appreciated how many voices came through and what a broad expanse of inquiry Sheck presented. It’s a book I will read again.

If you want to hear the voices of either of these books for yourself, I Am Cleopatra comes out on October 21 (but you can pre-order it now) and Cyborg Fever is available now from Bookshop.org. If you use those links to purchase, you’re keeping indie bookstores in business and I receive a commission.