Books I am reading in 2026
I don't seem to have the time to learn the things I want to learn. this is a perpetual problem, and mostly self inflicted.
if i were a rich man, as the saying goes, i'd have made it to (mythical) (traditional) (gayfriendly) (antizionist) yeshiva by now, completed a second undergraduate degree or equivalent in "doing stuff with computers," have made my way through the entire Endnotes back catalog and the major highlights of the value-critique strand of marxism, have learned multiple dialects of Hebrew & Aramaic & moved on to Classical Arabic, and have a working understanding of midcentury gay literary fiction.
as is likely evident from this litany...while there are material barriers to my studies (working full time, the onslaught of fascism across the globe, "having a life," "and satisfying relationships and obligations therein"), the main barrier is in fact what motivates study in the first place: The delicious feeling that knowledge deep and wide enough to really understand something is forever just out of reach.
Since once my aramaic is up to just-enough-to-be-dangerous levels I'll immediately begin lambasting myself for not having started on Arabic, I thought a nice way to start off the new year would be to record down the books and longform pieces I read this year. It's been nice blogging over the course of several years, despite my incredible inconsistence, to be able to look back at 3+ years' worth of growth and interesting thoughts I'd mostly forgotten I'd had in the first place.
Nebraska - George Whitmore
Was put onto Whitmore by a recent review of his work by Dale Peck in the Baffler. Actually found three of his books, two used (!) in the local gay bookstore in Philly, priced atrociously but that's another conversation. Published in 1987, deals primarily with the life of a (gay) child and his (gay) uncle in economically-depressed 1950s middle America. I found the prose incredibly beautiful and painfully clear. I am not well read in literature. I am especially not well read in gay literature, something I would like to change I am guessing that literature is capable of expressing ideas which theory and nonfiction more generally struggles as a genre to convey. My first foray has vindicated that hunch, though also reminded me that literature is often the more painful for those truths. I wonder if Imogen Binnie had Nebraska in mind when writing and titling Nevada. They are very different books which nevertheless focus on painful encounters between (gay men and trans women respectively) under conditions hostile to their mutual understanding of one another. I am looking forward to the other books of his I picked up.
On Regarding the Pain of Others - Susan Sontag
Originally picked up because I have been struggling, personally and in particular, with what to do with images of and journalism reporting on genocide and the violent kidnappings and proliferation of prison camps these past several years. It feels wrong to look. It feels wrong to turn away. Sontag is writing in a very different time (2003). Though written barely 20 years ago, images are simply recieved differently now. AI image generation has added a level of distrust to any image; images which "look real" are no longer naiively assumed to be documentary, to be representing a moment which "really happened." And war photography is now also the purview of individual soldiers and individual people under siege with smartphones and internet connections, not professional Western photojournalists. Images of Gaza have been credited with turning global opinion against the Israeli occupation, whereas Sontag is writing in a moment in which war images are being used to drum up support for and display American military prowess. It is a hard read, and good work, but my moment is different, and somewhat shockingly so at times.
Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth
Lol. Had to knock a classic off the list. It's like comically exactly what I expected Philip Roth to be -- and somewhat less "good" for it. I think I simply live in a post- Philip Roth world, and it's hard to understand his innovation as such when it is more the backdrop to american jewish literary and comedy tropes as I know them. It makes a good excuse to link this favorite essay by Mark Rudd, who grew up in Newark a half-generation later than Philip Roth but took a somewhat different path in life.
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) - Gerald Jay Sussman, Hal Abelson
Another classic. I do stuff with computers but I don't have a degree in that. I am trying, painfully and around my other obligations, to fill in the holes in my understanding of what it is I do all day. SICP is very well regarded and I thought it would be a good place to start in terms of trying to formalize and structure that learning. I am still in the beginning chapters but very much enjoying what I have read thus far. It's....very MIT. A nice benefit is becoming more familiar with lisps; a major 2025 change for me was beginning to use emacs, and getting more familiar with schemes and lisps and racket is both practically helpful in terms of making tweaks to my config and conceptually helpful in understanding why emacs being written in (a) lisp makes it what it is.