I don’t remember when I first heard about Quiet — maybe therapy, maybe work training, maybe somewhere in between — but it ended up on my reading list ages ago. Then one day I was wandering my local Barnes & Noble and saw it sitting on a shelf. I took it as a sign and bought it immediately… where it then sat untouched on my own shelf for months.
As a sequel to Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone, this book works surprisingly well. Ernest’s narration is exactly what I hoped it would be — witty, self-aware, and just as charmingly meta as before. If anything, Stevenson doubles down on the meta elements this time, making it very clear that Ernest is not just our narrator but actively writing the book we’re reading. I actually enjoyed the tongue-in-cheek commentary about sequels and audience expectations; it’s a clever way of signaling that while this has the same flavor as the first novel, it isn’t trying to duplicate it beat for beat.
Narrative (2nd edition) by Paul Cobley is a bit of a different beast for me — because, at the end of the day, it is a textbook. This is one of the titles recommended by BookTuber Benjamin McEvoy in his “How to Get an Oxford English Education for Free” video, specifically the first book he listed in the English Literature Criticism category. And reading it, you can absolutely tell: this is a book designed to be paired with lectures, discussion, and a professor guiding you through the denser bits.
I have to admit: I didn’t complete all the poetry exercises in this book. I started with good intentions, but quickly realized I’m more interested — at least for now — in understanding how poetry works than in writing my own. And honestly, that’s okay. The exercises will be there if (or when) I circle back. What mattered most to me was learning how “good” poetry is constructed and how best to read it, especially out loud.
Holy. Freaking. Crap. What an amazing book. Anxious People is easily one of my favorite reads of the year. It’s funny, heartfelt, thoughtful, and deeply human — everything I could possibly want from a novel.
When I first read Nineteen Eighty-Four two years ago, I gave it just two stars. This time, it hit much harder — and I ended up at a solid four. I think I was more focused this time around, more engaged with Orwell’s world and its place in modern literature. Maybe I just wasn’t ready for it before, but rereading it after Brave New World gave me a new appreciation for its lasting impact.
Longitude by Dava Sobel is a short, satisfying, and surprisingly engaging read about one of history’s most fascinating scientific challenges: how to measure longitude at sea. Sobel tells the story of the eighteenth-century clockmakers, astronomers, and explorers who tried to solve this problem — a problem that cost lives, ships, and fortunes before it was finally cracked.
Even though I first read Brave New World in college — more than twenty years ago — I didn’t remember much going into it this time. I’m sure I liked it back then, but reading it now felt more impactful, perhaps because of the world we live in today. What struck me most was that, while Huxley’s vision remains fascinating, I don’t actually see our world heading in quite the same direction.
Few books feel like an experience the way House of Leaves does. From the moment I opened it, I knew I wasn’t reading a typical novel. Mark Z. Danielewski’s cult classic is part found footage horror story, part academic study, and part psychological spiral. It’s a novel told through multiple layers of narration — Zampanò, an aging blind scholar dissecting a mysterious film called The Navidson Record; Johnny Truant, a tattoo-shop worker who discovers Zampanò’s manuscript after his death; and a set of unnamed editors who compile it all. Each voice blurs fact and fiction, sanity and obsession, until the book itself becomes a kind of labyrinth.
Ring of Fire is one of my new favorite Star Trek novels. Set within an arguably uneven season of Strange New Worlds, this is the story the show’s fans deserve. David Mack delivers a gripping, character-driven, and emotionally charged adventure that perfectly captures the heart of this crew and the spirt of Star Trek.
