Weekly Digest 049

The Weekly Digest is a weekly (no shit?) update that captures highlights from the week that was. At the end of each week, I share a collection of thoughts, recommendations, and links. Like everything else I write, it's awesome, but it may be too long for email so make sure you click through.

Substack Summer Update

Reviews are coming. Yes, before summer’s over.

If you are an author with a completed work you’d like reviewed, you can find out how I manage Review Requests here. If you’ve already sent me an ARC of your work (or if I bought it myself), you are already on “the List.”

On Being the Shepherd

Last Saturday I drove 4ish hours down to Boston1 for a friend’s surprise 40th birthday. I told no one I was coming, so it got to be a little bonus surprise for my other friends as well. The drive to and from is the only time I’ve been alone for an extended period in I don’t know how long. I finished 3 Willy Vlautin novels on the trip, via audiobook. I haven’t read a page of anything since.

I mentioned that Mrs. Reads went out of town a few weeks ago to see a friend. That friend passed earlier this week from cancer. Death is a strange spectre; lurking behind and underneath every moment of every life until it’s suddenly all that’s left. How do you deal with the looming presence of mortality while trying to put together PowerPoint slides or get your 3-year old to put on his pants? How do you look into the eyes of a companion you’ve had for 12 years, knowing that yeah, that’s another heartbreak on the horizon, and then go try to do three sets of eight-to-ten reps of whatever-the-fuck?

The least frightening thing about death is that it’ll eventually come for me; the most frightening thing is that it might come for everyone else first.

Death is never far from my thoughts.2 Some of us are just born like that. Some people feel born under the light of their god, or in communion with the spiritual beyond, or possessing some extra-sensory perceptions. Some of us just feel marked with no more rhyme, reason, or explanation than any of the rest of it. I wear a Hades pendant around my neck. I never gave much thought to it, it just fit. I don’t know, maybe I just spend too much time adjusting my eyes to the darkness because I’m scared of the lights going out.

Bonus Reviews will return. I said they’d be back this week but, you know, life.

The Horse by Willy Vlautin

• A fucking masterpiece. The ending felt a little ‘Deus ex Machina,’ but after so many gut punches and an absolute rollercoaster of highs and lows, it felt like the right way to go out. Apparently this is Vlautin’s most biographical novel and, yeah, it felt like there was some really beating heart underneath this story. Can’t recommend it enough.

The Night Always Comes by Willy Vlautin

• “Fuck, that’s depressing.” — Me, to myself, alone in the car when the audiobook finished. This book really hits two key points: Hell is other people, and other people are our only chance at salvation. A heartbreaker in the best sense of the word.

Northline by Willy Vlautin

• I shit you not: the ghost of Paul Newman is a character in this novel and it fucking works. One thing Vlautin does not do is romanticize the mistakes of youth. Mistakes follow you, haunt you, and live on and inside you. You’ll be shocked to hear this is another sad one.

• Cubatooth by Alexander Sorondo

  • Funny story I haven’t told anyone yet, including Alex: I pre-ordered this the day it became available. The next day, Alex sent me a very nice email and included an ARC of Cubatooth. I thought about cancelling my pre-order but decided against it. The next day, Alex had a issue with Kindle and accidentally released the book early AND cancelled all the pre-orders. Alex - I owe you a beer.3

I finished Daredevil as a comfort watch, about one episode a night just to give me something to do besides stare at my hands. Dark for a Marvel show, but that’s probably what makes it the best of the bunch.

Mrs. Reads and I watched The Devil Wears Prada 2 last Friday. I don’t remember much about the first one except a monologue about the color blue. 2 Devil 2 Prada is not a good movie, but Blunt, Streep, Hathaway and especially Tucci are charming as ever. The plot is nonsensical and they abandon an anti-consumerist message about 25% of the way through the film. There’s also an unnecessary and uninspired love interest. For people who know or care about fashion and celebrity there are some cameos of people I didn’t recognize, but otherwise it’s mostly shots of New York and Milan and Anne Hathaway being neurotic.

Something a little different this week, because I’ve been reading so slowly. Here is a sampling of my open tabs (just from Substack!) that I have queued up to read:

“You have tabs that have been open four months?!”
Habibi, I got tabs that have been open years.

On Reading

According to Goodreads I have read 28 books so far this year. But Goodreads also says I’m currently reading 7 books, with a range of completion from 4% to 80%. Goodreads is also owned by Amazon. The point is: you can’t trust Goodreads.

The more I try to apply structure to my reading, the more my mind rebels against it. Not exactly great news if your niche is supposed to be reviewing certain books with certain regularity. Oops.

I turn 40 tomorrow. If you’re Catholic, 8/15 is a ‘holy day of obligation’, so you’re supposed to go to mass on my birthday. You know, like Jesus. Kind of disheartening to think I’ve outlived JC by a solid 7 years and there have been exactly zero crusades in my name.

I’m doing nothing for my birthday, which somehow feels more gauche than throwing yourself a huge party. Surviving 365 consecutive days in this living nightmare of a world warrants at least a little celebration. We’re driving to Maine, so maybe I’ll treat myself to a fourth Vlautin novel…

Anyways.

🍻+🤙 (+ 🎂),

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