It means summer's are unproductive!
06.03.2026 22:06
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It means summer's are unproductive!
Book covers (from top left, clockwise): Saints by Tim MacGabhann, Ivy + Bean Bound to Be Bad, In Love by Alfred Hayes, Capitalists Must Starve by Park Seolyeon, The Fifth Head of Cerebus by Gene Wolfe, James by Perceval Everett, Minecraft The Island by Max Brooks, Spit by David Brennan
How it went in February
Two wolves meme in black and white. White wolf on the left, black wolf on the right
This is memoir.
Think of how awful you'd feel if you had hundreds.
Sounds even more exciting than I thought! 😂
That's really exciting!
When it's Friday night and the feeling's right.
Very cool
"If ecstasy means we are taken over by something, we become an occupied country, the audience to an intensity we are only the proscenium for."
Jack Gilbert, The Great Fires: Poems, 1982–1992, page 112
Covers for 8 books I read last month. The Storygraph logo in the bottom right corner.
How it went in January.
She was as beautiful as if set aflame. Her eyes slanted up at him, even her eyes were aflame. She pushed back her hair.
I'm reading In A Lonely Place and it's just amazing how Dorothy B. Hughes' prose can suddenly lift off into pure poetry as soon as the rational stops being useful then come back down again in an instant. Such a well written novel.
I keep returning to a question about closeness after isolation—what small groups give us, what they demand, and how they shape who we become.
New essay up: A Question About Closeness After Isolation
adrian-astur-alvarez.ghost.io/a-question-a...
Impossible to explain to non-writers how a very personal rejection letter from a top tier magazine editor is really good news.
Gooey chocolate and a crispy outside
Oh man I just tried one. Pretty pretty pretty... pretty good. 😁
I'm always down for that!
15 chocolate chip cookies cooling on racks
I tried my hand at a Levain copycat recipe. It's hard to go wrong with any chocolate chip cookies but I like how these turned out.
4 books stacked on one another. From the top down: Tie Ning My Sister's Red Shirt - Poems for the Millennium volume four - Burning Down the House Charles Baxter - Te Complete Poetry & Prose of William Blake Edited by David V Erdman
How it's going so far in January.
I'm floored. I mean when we left this is where I thought we might be headed but I had no idea things would get this bad this fast. Stay safe. Even the worm will turn.
This is unbelievable. Things have gotten so out of control.
That's a fascinating idea. I love it. Listening is so vital and makes up such an important part of our work and yet I think I've taken it for granted.
What is your most personal theory of writing?
adrian-astur-alvarez.ghost.io/why-is-this-...
I keep thinking about Eephus, the way it crafted atmosphere so beautifully out of loss in the negative spaces between dialogue & plot. It's like how men tend to sit side by side when they talk, the characters aren't allowed to spell out their emotions, just have them. It's so baseball. boxd.it/KzLW
The realm of all writing is the past. Writing is a practice that takes place in an unfolding present. Writing is a mediated form of touch. Everything that is touched turns to time. Writing about exteriors is always, at the same time, about the interior. Everything is lost as it is set down. The lost is ever present. The present presses through the forgotten and is as tangible, and as uncertain. History, the discipline, at its best, makes careful accommodations with the lost, and, with proper hesitancy, weighs and shapes the found to tell and explain the known. Fiction is the invented that can be true but cannot prove it. Only the reader can do that.
Wow. I guess I need to see The Mastermind!
Board gaming stats (mostly 18xx titles)
...and the last activity I track every year: board games. Like 2024, Streetcar Suburb dominated. I played in quite a few tournaments. Otherwise, it was the usual mix of 18xx titles and some others bc of my son, who is finally old enough to be interested.
282 films logged and 200 reviewed. I didn't hit 365 movies this year but I maintained Peter Cushing as my most watched actor so all is well. letterboxd.com/Bazinfan/yea...
Time for all the end of the year stats. Do we like these? Are they useful? I don't know but here's what I read in 2025. Favs: my first Gerald Murnane, everything by Diane Seuss, American Pastoral, and Salka Valka.
Some kind of maki concoction involving Rice Krispies. It wasn't great.
Eating sushi in Spain is wild. This roll came with Rice Krispies for some reason.
Thanks Kelly. He was truly tireless when it came to helping others.
He recorded a lot of his songs and posted them to his YouTube channel (including a very cute anniversary song with my mom). I always loved this one. youtu.be/D85MTd9OMxo?...