IMPORTANT UPDATE: The person who originally saw this broadcast and took the pictures of the TV is currently the Icelandic Ambassador to the US.

I just read this in a letter one of my 7x-great-grandmothers wrote while living on the Pennsylvania frontier in 1772: "I am here in a strange land, away from all my friends and acquaintances and I have never yet been in a place where it would have cost me less pain to die than here."

It was fine, I guess? Yeah, it was fine. Kinda hard to set reasonable expectations after reading Octavia Butler’s Parable novels earlier this year.

Peter Clines’s 14 worked so well as a slowburn Lovecraftian thriller that I didn’t mind—well, not much—that it lost its mojo in the last act when it kicked into high gear.

A whaling expedition through over-predated waters slowly transforms into a phantasmagoric journey in Ethan Rutherford’s magnificent NORTH SUN, OR THE VOYAGE OF THE WHALESHIP ESTHER.

Thrilled to see Zeroville, Fools Crow, and The Intuitionist on Dan's list. They all have their followings but often seem overlooked in the wider conversation.

congressman, can I tell your committee how a resurrection really feels

Franz Nicolay and others are currently testifying about Live Nation & Ticketmaster before Democratic lawmakers on C-SPAN3. The full hearing will also be available this URL when it's done. www.c-span.org/event/public...

The Man With One Red Shoe (1985)

I’ve read 46 of the books, so far, on The Guardians new 100 best novels published in English. The real joy in this list is reading through participants’ top 10 submissions. www.theguardian.com/books/ng-int...

I was back in NYC for work yesterday and had the chance to stop by The Strand before dinner.

My Heart Struck Sorrow is one of those rare stories that I swear the author could have written with me specifically in mind as the target audience. Never mind the fact that we have never met. (The title story is also great.)

I'm coordinating training on a new graphics system at work. Today, I asked my colleagues to put together graphics for one panel at an imagined literary convention.

Mass market paperbacks in every grocery store, drug store, and gas station.

BRIAR ROSE is Robert Coover’s short, dense retelling of Sleeping Beauty. A fairy feeds Beauty endless, grotesque dreams of foiled deliverance and violation while her latest would-be rescuer struggles through a thicket populated only by the bones of his predecessors. Funny, disturbing, and stunning.

Walked to lunch with my wife and grabbed Francis Spufford’s new novel from my favorite local. It was a lovely day.

Long shot, I realize, but anyone here read Dutch well enough that they could decipher something in old timey handwriting?

Unmentioned in this piece—and why would it be as it is a tangent at best—Twin Peaks co-creator and one-time Minnesota resident Mark Frost also wrote the terrifically entertaining thriller THE LIST OF 7 and its pretty good sequel, THE SIX MESSIAHS.

“His agility in growing and reassessing his own past — that’s an ideal way for a man to be, when the society is lacking for positive male role models."—Jeff Tweedy on Albini Great article.

I thought @philtinline.bsky.social's book was brilliant as well. He does a deep dive into how a ‘60s lefty satire became fuel for present-day, right-wing conspiracies. It’s a fascinating exploration of the intersection of satire and conspiracy and the ease of passage between fringe ideologies.

Amy Gamerman’s THE CRAZIES tells the story of a decade-long battle over the construction of a wind farm at the foot of central Montana’s Crazy Mountains. It is a complex account of how money shapes life and politics in a region where the affluent and indebted live side by side.

I stopped by a library to return a book today, and the little Friends of the Library shop had a couple Archipelago titles. Couldn’t help taking one home.

Robert Palmer covered Hüsker Dü? Life is a continuous banquet of surprises.

First Sugar show in 31 years. It felt good.

And tonight I’m seeing Sugar for the first time in 31 years.

I am aware of 19th & 20th c. laws limiting Chinese immigration, but this is the first time I remember reading about “special immigration inspectors” who traveled the countryside searching for violators. One such inspector arrested 28 people in Big Timber, MT, only to find they were all here legally.

Name your top 15 TV shows ever, gut instincts only— Simpsons What We Do in the Shadows Arrested Development Late Night w/ Conan Late Night w/ Letterman Buffy 30 Rock Garth Merenghi’s Darkplace Veep Carol Burnett Show Homicide Good Place Schitt’s Creek I’m Alan Partridge Freaks & Geeks

Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou’s marriage crumbles as luminaries of German stage and screen flee the Nazis’ consolidation of power. Howard A. Rodman’s DESTINY EXPRESS is a bleak but fascinating novel. His mastery of characterization, elapsing time, and shifting POV more than make up for the sads.

William Elliott Hazelgrove’s DEAD AIR is a short, enjoyable history of Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds broadcast. While at times repetitive, it offers interesting analyses of the broadcast’s significance in mass media and Welles’s career.

Sometimes a cool, overcast spring day that feels like early fall is the best spring day.

Richard Paul Russo’s science fiction novel SHIP OF FOOLS leans hard into cosmic horror and questions of faith. Despite some thin and creaky plotting, I found it a compelling read with surprising depth.

Richard Paul Russo pulls from a Nobel-canon deep cut in his 2002 sf novel SHIP OF FOOLS.

W. P. Wiles’s (@willwiles.bsky.social) THE LAST BLADE PRIEST has hallmarks of epic fantasy: quests, politics, gods, prophecies, unlikely fellowships, high-stakes conflicts, and fantastical creatures. Yet Wiles defies expectations at every turn. Just a wonderful novel. Highly recommended.

We are all big readers in this family.

I spent all day doing yard work before grocery shopping. Now, I have about 20 minutes of “me time” before making dinner.

My kingdom for a shoe rack that doesn’t avalanche every time we breathe near it.

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis knew how to start a novel.

Prairie School Freakout and Beet tend to get more love, but Lived to Tell has always been my favorite of Eleventh Dream Day's work from that era. I'd like to live inside its guitar tones someday.

This morning, I watched THE RUNNING MAN instead of running. The contrast between Richard Dawson‘s performance and everything else in this movie is striking—it is the only aspect of the film saving it from utter mediocrity.

I auditioned for Amazing Grace & Chuck and got a call back. Didn’t make the final cut. One of my classmates did though and wound up with one or two lines.

I returned from vacation to a lovely surprise. I already know that Howard A. Rodman’s The Great Eastern is delightful. Looking forward to Destiny Express—blurbed by none other than Thoman Pynchon.

One last good morning from the beach

Good morning

Good morning.

Picked up @bhousepress.bsky.social’s new reissue of Friedrich Torberg’s Vengeance Is Mine from my local

Rare bit of personal news: Elder Kid will attend Duke next year.

The Old Shop on Main Street is the best movie I will never watch again.

Last night, @mulaney.bsky.social gave a shout out to my colleague Howard Mortman on Colbert. Specifically, Howard's seating the chart for the Supreme Court oral argument in the tariff's case. www.youtube.com/watch?app=de...

I’ve heard @jeffreyford8.bsky.social recommend Alvaro Mutis’s Maqroll novellas a few times. I finally had to have my own copies…