Faulty machinery: “What book are you reading right now?”

The beer: Schilling Alexandr Czech-Style Pilsner
The record: 2–8
The headline: “It’s not complete! I must compete!” – Jay Reatard, “Waiting for Something”

The commentary: I’m a few days late with this former daily prompt but I needed a theme for the bye week. Remember that time I wet my finger and smoothed the caulk into the gap? What a mess—take regular AFC Championship appearances for granted at your own peril. Anyway, I am currently reading Shahan Mufti’s American Caliph: The True Story of a Muslim Mystic, a Hollywood Epic and the 1977 Siege of Washington, DC, recommended to me by the New York Times late in 2022.

Nonfiction has been kind to me this year: of the forty-one books I’ve completed so far, six earned five-star ratings from me on Goodreads, all of them nonfiction. American Caliph won’t join them—it’s good, but only four-stars good as I’m halfway through. Fucking timely though. (Another nonfiction that didn’t earn five was “Captain” Doug Chamberlain’s Bury Him: A Memoir of the Vietnam War. It and Marcel M. Du Plessis’s The Silent Symphony, in thoroughly documented fashion, dragged ass badly enough to slum with hilariously terrible Rhodium Pirates and goddamn Booker Prize shitstorm The God of Small Things. Shudder.) Mufti’s tale is all there in the subtitle—if less so than Sam Anderson’s Boom Town—and the tension is evident in the cover photo I cropped for the banner image. What a weird fucking country this is.

For four years I chronicled, “for some reason,” every book and short story I’d read since The Lord of the Rings in the spring of 2017. This served as an extension of my participation in what I labeled the Old Lady Book Club, out of my life since moving last summer except that I’m still on the email group. (I was set to return to discuss Ashley Audrain’s The Push were it not for a conflict. Ageism is real.) Sadly, RIP to Old Lady No. 1, who welcomed me with genuine “You’ll be our first man!” enthusiasm—I’m sure her grace and kindness are missed every day by those who loved her.

Part 1 (2017) | Part 2 (2018) | Part 3 (2019) | Part 4 (2020) | “Selected readings from the Old Lady Book Club”

Yonder Goodreads widget is an odd bird and doesn’t sort things the way I’d like—chronologically, hello?—so after a brief foray into book reviews (to which I also hope to return), I’m bringing back the year-end lists. How I do miss my pairings! But I’m done tracking down original titles and publication dates of collected essays and short stories. Enough. Critical remarks are avoided, rereads coopt the register mark and occasional book club selections (lately limited to my company’s sustainability-oriented group, though perhaps I’ll rejoin the Ladies one day) are noted in red to represent the spectre of doom.

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Lou Reed and Captain Ahab walk into a bar (2021)

Stephen King
The Institute (2019)

George Saunders
The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil (2005)

Mary South
You Will Never Be Forgotten (stories, 2020)

Nicole Flattery
Show Them a Good Time (stories, 2019)

Jim Bishop
The Day Lincoln Was Shot (1955)

George Saunders
In Persuasion Nation (stories, 2006)

Herman Melville
Moby-Dick (1851)

Lester Bangs
Main Lines, Blood Feasts and Bad Taste (essays, 2003)

Blake Crouch
Dark Matter (2016)

Ibram X. Kendi
How to Be an Antiracist (2019)

Stephen King
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2000)

Clifford D. Simak
Cosmic Engineers (1950)

George Saunders
The Braindead Megaphone (essays, 2007)

Jon Krakauer
Classic Krakauer: After the Fall, Mark Foo’s Last Ride and Other Essays From the Vault (essays, 2018)

Carlos Ruiz Zafón
The Shadow of the Wind (2001)

Michael Crichton
The Andromeda Strain (1969)

WM Akers
Westside (2019)

Jeff Benedict
The Dynasty (2020)

Stephen King
’Salem’s Lot (1975) Ⓡ
The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla (2003) Ⓡ
The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah (2004) Ⓡ

Ken McGoogan
Fatal Passage: The Story of John Rae, the Arctic Hero Time Forgot (2001)

Emma Cline
Daddy (stories, 2021)

Brenda Peynado
The Rock Eaters (stories, 2021)

Christopher Golden
The Pandora Room (2019)

Matt Haig
The Midnight Library (2020)

Henry David Thoreau
Civil Disobedience (1849)

Jon Krakauer
Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains (essays, 1990)

Stephen King
In the Tall Grass (2012)

Richard Russo
The Whore’s Child (stories, 2002)

Mariana Enríquez
The Dangers of Smoking in Bed (stories, 2009)

Jonas Jonasson
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (2009/2012 translation)

Omar Fink
Rhodium Pirates (2021)

Veronica Roth
Ark (2019)

David McCullough
The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge (1972)

Blake Crouch
Summer Frost (2019)

NK Jemisin
Emergency Skin (2019)

Amor Towles
You Have Arrived at Your Destination (2019)

Margaret Atwood
Oryx and Crake (2003)

Paul Tremblay
The Last Conversation (2019)

Andy Weir
Randomize (2019)

Karen Russell
Swamplandia! (2011)

Walter Mosley
The Awkward Black Man (stories, 2020)

Nathanael West
Miss Lonelyhearts (1933)

Pedro Mairal
The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra (2008/2013 translation)

Bob Woodward
Fear: Trump in the White House (2018)

Stephen King
Nightmares and Dreamscapes (stories, 1993)

Agatha Christie
The ABC Murders (1936)

Muriel Spark
Not to Disturb (1971)

Sam Anderson
Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding, Its Apocalyptic Weather, Its Purloined Basketball Team and the Dream of Becoming a World-Class Metropolis (2018)

Kurt Vonnegut (Jr.)
Slapstick (1976)

Bruce McCandless (III)
Wonders All Around: The Incredible True Story of Astronaut Bruce McCandless (II) and the First Untethered Flight in Space (2021)

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Mel Lyman and Rabo Karabekian walk into a bar (2022)

Andy Weir
Project Hail Mary (2021)

Damien Lewis
The Dog Who Could Fly: The Incredible True Story of a WWII Airman and the Four-Legged Hero Who Flew at His Side (2013)

Ulrich Boser
The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World’s Largest Unsolved Art Theft (2009)

Eric M. Bosarge
The Way of the Laser (stories, 2020)

Kurt Vonnegut (Jr.)
Bluebeard (1987)

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Brothers Karamazov (1880/1912 translation)

Elmore Leonard
Fifty-Two Pickup (1974)

Alma Katsu
The Hunger (2018)

Ryan H. Walsh
Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968 (2018)

Stephen King
Desperation (1996)

Said Sayrafiezadeh
American Estrangement (stories, 2021)

Richard Bachman (Stephen King)
The Regulators (1996)

Cormac McCarthy
All the Pretty Horses (1992)

Stephen King
Elevation (2018)

Ashley Audrain
The Push (2021) 👍

Paul Ilett
Exposé (2014)

Kurt Vonnegut (Jr.)
Jailbird (1979)

Josh Malerman
Goblin (2017)

Seth Wickersham
It’s Better to Be Feared: The New England Patriots Dynasty and the Pursuit of Greatness (2021)

Emily St. John Mandel
Station Eleven (2014)

Patricia Moyes
Dead Men Don’t Ski (1959)

Stephen King
The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower (2004) Ⓡ

Maurice Carlos Ruffin
The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You (stories, 2021)

Kate Chopin
The Awakening (stories, 1899)

Annie Proulx
Brokeback Mountain (1997)

S. Alexander O’Keefe
Phantom Money (2021)

Mark Halperin
Double Down: Game Change 2012 (2013)

Agatha Christie
Death on the Nile (1937)

Jeff Pearlman
Football for a Buck: The Crazy Rise and Crazier Demise of the USFL (2018)

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Sitting here waiting for something to happen—something other than this year’s bibliography—let’s ponder the error that is your 2023 New England Patriots season. Oh no! No! No!

■ Historically revered coach on his way out.
■ First-round quarterback rides the bench in year three.
■ Empty draft haul after empty draft haul.
■ Dumbfounded owner ejaculating platitudes.
■ “Nine and eight is still in play.”
■ Incomplete? Noncompetitive? Doomed.

Up next: Who knew it was possible to be out of contention so soon? Happy Thanksgiving!