Happy Eve!

Spillage

From all of us working retail today, we wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, etc. We will try very hard not to judge you for planning things so very badly and forgetting dear Aunt Phoebe who never didn’t have you snug in her heart of hearts, you ungrateful whelp.

Another day met with the requisite skepticism

If Nicki Minaj was a book all the pages would be blank

My reading list for understanding America 2025 edition

Now more than ever. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Expanded Edition, @libraryofamerica.bsky.social

Flop flop flop. Spent a FORTUNE promoting this new iteration of Dumb & Dumber. Turns out? Nobody gives a single shit about the hardest workin’ widow in show business and the Chief Idiot Officer of CBS. NOBODY watched The Skydance Hunting Wives. DE-lighted!

First NOG of the season. Rum yum.

Herewith my favorite biographies, memoirs, and letters from major publishers this year — and no, I haven’t finished any of the three giant books of letters.

Someone asked so, okay, THIS is as close as I get to magic mostly. If you haven’t you should and if you have you ought to again. The great Robertson Davies about whom no one has asked me in a decade. This is his justly famous Depford Trilogy.

Front yard in winter.

Chatting with a dear friend this morning and was reminded of just how absolutely shit Fantasy titles are

“No! I will not hide in the fruit cellar! Ha! You think I'm fruity, huh? I'm staying right here. This is my room and no one will drag me out of it…”

It’s the Persimmon Princess a.k.a. that tart ol’ winter fruit.

For breakfast yesterday and today, delicious cranberry bread (and a Kay Ryan poem) from my dear friend and regular reading attendee Olivia Libby Hill. Thanks again!

Thanks to the buttons and advice provided by dear Elizabeth A. Whited Liebendorfer my pants did indeed not fall off at last night’s Holiday Reading.

Bouquet of cheer from my reading last night, a gift from my coworker Elliott.

Tomorrow is the day! Saturday, December 6th at 6PM PST (8PM Central, 9PM EST) I will be reading A Christmas Memory at the bookstore for the 18th year! I will also be going LIVE on my Facebook profile if you want to join us from far away.

Made me fish and chips

I was surprised at how much I genuinely admired last year’s Brightly Shining, translated by Caroline Waight. I’ve read ALOT of Christmas stories, as you might imagine. Now from Grove and translator Diane Oatley comes Winter Stories, by the same, Ingvild Rishøi. So good

World AIDS Day. Remembering Peter, Jimmy, Carl, so many others, famous and not. Remembering all that was lost because of bigotry, indifference, neglect, homophobia, racism, and fear. Never forget. Say their names.

“Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean, where’s it going to end?” — Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Rest in peace, poet. #tomstoppard #rip #restinpeace

A gift I got myself and through which I’ve been cruising like a queen hawt for tea, The Diaries of Mr Lucas: Notes from a Lost Gay Life, by Hugo Greenhalgh, from Atlantic Books. Fascinating story of a life lived largely before liberation, in search of love, and Guardsmen at two in the morning.

He has achieved pie. Sweet potato. (Also already made greens, gravy, stuffing.) Nothing but turkey breast (and legs for me) and mashed potatoes to do tomorrow.

You know what? People always had shit taste, most of ‘em; read bad books, loved bad music, ate bad food. Please stop moaning about The Decline of the Bloody West. Your grandma read garbage too. Read better books.

Got a poster in the lobby. A Christmas Memory. Remember? 18th year. Hope to see YOU there. Saturday, December 6th at 6pm

He rolled his big, beautiful, Bette Davis eyes, drawled some idiotic dialogue in an accent that was never not thick as spätzle, and was just gay as a Christmas goose in chop frills. Köstlichkeit! I will miss the campy, doe-eyed anarchy of Udo Kier. Ruhe in Frieden, meine Königin. #rip #udokier

‘Cause nothin’ says we down with all the androgynous K-pop cuties, brah, like a 62 year old man in bibs and with a thick book.

Why do I (so far) remain committed to Solvej Balle’s septology? The protagonist, stuck perhaps forever in an endlessly repeating November 18th is or was a used book dealer. There’s that. The Calculation of Volume from New Directions, translated by Sophie Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell.

“Umm Hassan is dead.” Good start right there. Epic novel of the Palestinian exile in Lebanon. Gate of the Sun, by Elias Khoury (1948 - 2024,) translated by Humphrey Davies for Archipelago Books

Couldn’t think who the passive protagonist of Szalay’s Booker winning Flesh reminded me of… Chance the gardener from Being There, maybe? Then it hit me. Pete Davidson’s Chad from SNL.

Oh, Jonathan where are you? Why are you not here yet?!

Ordered myself the hardcover. Bless Gordon S. Wood

December 6th at 6pm. 18th year reading Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory aloud at the bookstore (also live on Facebook)

From New Vessel Press, translated from the Russian by Lisa C. Hayden, My Dreadful Body, by Azerbaijani novelist Egana Djabbarova. “According to my mother’s strict orders, the big, bushy black eyebrows in the oval mirror were not to be plucked.” Delightful. (Comes out April 7, 2026.)

“Who, or why, or which, or what is the Akond of Swat?” Was there ever a likelier time for nonsense? And so to dear Lear we turn.

If you can read a chapter heading like “Horrible Death of Beaudrot and Swiss Soldiers,” or Chapter XXI, “Is Sentimental, but Short,” from The Newcomes and not want to keep reading, then we will never understand each other, my friend.

I like her books at least as much as her Dad’s. How unlikely is that?! True though. She’s that good. @susancheever.bsky.social

It is a constant source of continuous amazement to me that I should live to see in 2025 the entirety of the NYT opinion page staffed by a DAR ladies garden club circa 1951.

There’s another winner from yesterday who makes me very, very happy. Australian Helen Garner has won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, specifically for her How to End a Story: Collected Diaries, 1978-1998. She’s the first diarist to win.

Falling forward falling back

Consider the humble Medjool date. I only mention because if you grew up where and when I did you probably only saw dates in that round tin at Christmas or in a bread. I am just amazed at how far on the downslope I had to travel before I had the sense to try things I didn’t like when I was four.

Reading Harper Lee’s juvenilia I learned her favorite book was Pickett’s History of Alabama. I’m game. Ordered a copy.

Lunch with Lettrrs #johnupdike

Liver and onions (my fave) with fresh green beans and rice and I roasted a stupid bunch of red and gold beets (along with heads of garlic and parsnips and carrots for later) and then finished the beets in a pan with butter, herbs, and some of the roasted garlic. And now tv with the beloved husband.

Dude. Harper Lee — in a damned ballgown?! Way to not represent.

Kathy Burke, A Mind of My Own, on audio book, read by the author? Perfect

Yeah, Daphne Du Maurier spooky stories! Perfect October reading from @scribnerbooks.bsky.social