Books I am reading in 2026
I don't seem to have the time to learn the things I want to learn. this is a perpetual problem, and mostly self inflicted.
if i were a rich man, as the saying goes, i'd have made it to (mythical) (traditional) (gayfriendly) (antizionist) yeshiva by now, completed a second undergraduate degree or equivalent in "doing stuff with computers," have made my way through the entire Endnotes back catalog and the major highlights of the value-critique strand of marxism, have learned multiple dialects of Hebrew & Aramaic & moved on to Classical Arabic, and have a working understanding of midcentury gay literary fiction.
as is likely evident from this litany...while there are material barriers to my studies (working full time, the onslaught of fascism across the globe, "having a life," "and satisfying relationships and obligations therein"), the main barrier to My Goals is in fact what motivates study in the first place: The delicious feeling that knowledge deep and wide enough to really understand something is forever just out of reach.
To prevent myself from constantly moving the goalposts, I thought a nice way to start off the new year would be to record down the books and longform pieces I read this year. It's been very nice to be able to look back at 3+ years' worth of growth and interesting thoughts I'd mostly forgotten I'd had in the first place since I've started this site. Hopefully a concrete list of stuff I've read this year helps give me a similar feeling.
Nebraska - George Whitmore
Was put onto Whitmore by a recent review of his work by Dale Peck in the Baffler. Actually found three of his books, two used (!) in the local gay bookstore in Philly, priced atrociously but that's another conversation. Published in 1987, deals primarily with the life of a (gay) child and his (gay) uncle in economically-depressed 1950s middle America. I found the prose incredibly beautiful and painfully clear. I am not well read in literature. I am especially not well read in gay literature, something I would like to change. I am guessing that literature is capable of expressing ideas which theory and nonfiction more generally struggles as a genre to convey. My first foray has vindicated that hunch, though also reminded me that literature is often the more painful for those truths. I wonder if Imogen Binnie had Nebraska in mind when writing and titling Nevada. They are very different books which nevertheless focus on painful encounters between (gay men and trans women respectively) under conditions hostile to their mutual understanding of one another. I am looking forward to the other books of his I picked up.
On Regarding the Pain of Others - Susan Sontag
Originally picked up because I have been struggling, personally and in particular, with what to do with images of and journalism reporting on genocide and the violent kidnappings and proliferation of prison camps these past several years. It feels wrong to look. It feels wrong to turn away. Sontag is writing in a very different time (2003). Though written barely 20 years ago, images are simply recieved differently now. AI image generation has added a level of distrust to any image; images which "look real" are no longer naiively assumed to be documentary, to be representing a moment which "really happened." And war photography is now also the purview of individual soldiers and individual people under siege with smartphones and internet connections, not professional Western photojournalists. Images of Gaza have been credited with turning global opinion against the Israeli occupation, whereas Sontag is writing in a moment in which war images are being used to drum up support for and display American military prowess. It is a hard read, and good work, but my moment is different, and somewhat shockingly so at times.
Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth
Lol. Had to knock a classic off the list. It's like comically exactly what I expected Philip Roth to be -- and somewhat less "good" for it. I think I simply live in a post- Philip Roth world, and it's hard to understand his innovation as such when it is more the backdrop to american jewish literary and comedy tropes as I know them. It makes a good excuse to link this favorite essay by Mark Rudd, who grew up in Newark a half-generation later than Philip Roth but took a somewhat different path in life. I'll give Roth his due--- he knows his misogyny. Clearly a bit too well.
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) - Gerald Jay Sussman, Hal Abelson
Another classic. I do stuff with computers (professionally) but I don't have a degree in that. I am trying, painfully and around my other obligations, to fill in the holes in my understanding of what it is I do all day. SICP is very well regarded and I thought it would be a good place to start in terms of trying to formalize and structure that learning. I am still in the beginning chapters but very much enjoying what I have read thus far. It's....very MIT. A nice benefit is becoming more familiar with lisps; a major 2025 change for me was beginning to use emacs, and getting more familiar with schemes and lisps and racket is both practically helpful in terms of making tweaks to my config and conceptually helpful in understanding why emacs being written in (a) lisp makes it what it is.
Fellow Travellers - Thomas Mallon
Before the hospital. Husband and I watched the 2023 miniseries after finding it via Google search (??). The miniseries is INCREDIBLE. A tour through the latter half of 20th century white american gay life. Follows our lovers, two state dept employees, from the start of the lavender/red scare through the decades and subsequent changes in american gay political life up to the mid-AIDs years (..87..?). Full with fuck-you period costuming and a truly incredible performance with fantastic chemistry by the lead actors. Why is nobody talking about this????? Why is nobody talking about this!!
So! it's because the author of the book it was based on (it also got turned into an Opera? Brokeback Mountain got turned into an Opera? What the actual fuck was wrong with the NYC gays circa 2007?) is a gay republican. The enjoyment of the miniseries requires you of course to politely gloss over the characters' war crimes, which have conveniently been left off-screen. But they've added a Black character and storyline, they've added a dyke character and storyline, storme delarverie is a side character, it's all very 2023. The book is pure 2007 gay republican, like the OG-kind-they-do-not-make-them-like-this-anymore. Novel solely takes place in 1940s/50s then blazes forward to the 1990s to the "newly free Estonia" so that one character can die after a life of celibacy. He does not even die of AIDs. This is because he was Catholic, and long suffering, and celibate, and decided to give up on gay life at ~26 because his lover married a woman. Which is definitely poetic and not stupid. Then the character that doesn't die goes off cruising Estonian men who throw themselves at his (very handsome, everyone was alwasy saying this to him and every page reminds you of it) smug free American feet.
Oh, and dykes don't exist in this one. Like........the one singular woman's view on "homosexuality" you get is the one female character opining that she "doesn't approve, but then she doesn't really think any woman does." Mr. Mallon this is TWO THOUSAND SEVEN you live in NEW YORK CITY surely you have MET A LESBIAN
It's horrendous. Go watch the miniseries. Pass on the novel, for your liver's sake!
The Wizard of Earthsea - Ursula K. LeGuin
Thank GD at some point my husband had loaded this onto my ereader for his own enjoyment & it was there in my time of need. Husband and sibling spent most of my ICU stay reading this aloud to me lovingly and healingly. I do not think Ursula had discovered women by the time of writing this one. Very good! I started reading the next book in the series but it was very dark and involved leaving people to die in dark prisons from lack of medical care. A bit on the nose for an ICU visit. Will have to revisit the rest of the series at a later date.
Women - Mihail Sebastian
Bad. For Two Thousand Years (also by Sebastian) is one of my absolute favorite novels. It is a fascinating documentation of a crossection of Jewish life in 1930s Romania and the intellectual rise of Romanian fascism. It also expresses clearly and horridly how it feels to fear leaving the house and feel the world caving in due to organized bigotry against you as a young person.
So I picked up this book. It's bad. It's like if Philip Roth weren't funny. No charm. About some doctor fucking women. Who cares!
Vivian's Ghost - Hal Schrieve
A friend politely shoved this on me a year or more back and I let it languish until needing a graphic novel. It is strange to realize you are a part of a Generation. I am fairly confident I am the exact age as the author. It is weird seeing suicidal '10s teenage internet culture in print illustration form. It is a good book. But if you are tumblr socialized and of my generation, or knew someone who was, this is also an eerie and at times difficult read.
The Confessions of Danny Slocum - George Whitmore
Week of the disappointing novels by authors whose other books I love. Nebraska (see above) is truly stunning. This just kinda sucks. I like just do not care about ur therapy dude (same boredom with Portnoys Complaint!). I have a second edition which has a author's postface which warmed me up a ton. This was Whitmore's first novel; Nebraska is such an unimaginable step up, I can forgive a man for having a shit first novel. Danny was also published 1980, on the far side of an absolutely gaping chasm concerning writing about gay men's sex and psychology. It's hard to fault the novel for not knowing what's coming, something Whitmore also comments on in his postface.
Darryl - Jackie Ess
The great Oregonian novel. A reread. Just as smart and funny as the first time through. Um. You should read this book
Revolutionary Suicide - Huey P. Newton
Picked it up a while back and finally finished it. LOTS to say but not really easily summarizable so i'll just say: my favorite part is how much this dude loves Plato's allegory of the cave. He is constantly trying to get his dudes into plato's allegory of the cave. #1 plato's allegory of the cave enthusiast over here. If I had taught myself to read by supposedly just reading plato's republic repeatedly over the course of a year I would also probably have come out kinda nuts for that shit i guess. rest in power.
Unexpectedly
I got extremely ill with septic shock, and have been stuck in the hospital/on bedrest for the tail end of Jan/early Feb. I kept saying to myself "surely i have been sicker than this." Until we took me to the hospital, and gays and girls -- I have assuredly and profoundly Never Been Sicker. Just thinking about opening up a laptop gave me the Scaries for the first 2+ weeks so I mostly read physical books. Word to the wise: make sure in addition to telling your husband to pack your ereader for the ER trip you have literally anything other than arcane academic judaica loaded on that thing. It's kind of like you just can't read The Talmud's Red Fence: Menstrual Impurity And Difference In Babylonian Judaism And Its Sasanian Context on two painkillers while they pull your guts out through your nose. (Small intestine bile is a pristinely beautiful dark emerald green, by the by.)
In order of reading: