The Great Gatsby

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Started on: Feb 20, 2026

Finished on: Feb 21, 2026 (180 pages long)

It has been quite a while since I originally read this book in school and this felt like a book that I should return to at some point. There's quite a bit that I haven't remembered from my past reading of this book, but that doesn't feel like a bad thing. I devoured it in two days, diving back into the story and thinking hard about what it's like to want something so bad. The important thing to me is that there is no character without flaw. Every character has something going on. The complexities of the lives of everyone around Nick and the way that they all cling to past things. Some eventually move, some don't. Gatsby certainly didn't and it caused his downfall. There's more to it that I see now, the regret and longing that I didn't understand more than a decade ago. It was worth revisiting, just for those small new moments that felt sharper and more poignant to me now as a more settled adult (although who am I kidding, I'm anything but settled. I too am longing for and holding onto parts of my past.).

Digital Minimalism

by Cal Newport

Started on: Feb 13, 2026

Finished on: Feb 20, 2026 (284 pages long)

So I was mainly reading this book as I already thought that I had turned around to having a little more digital minmalism in my life. I had already done some of the suggestions within the book and I was also interested to see Newport's suggestions compared to what felt right for me as he is self-described as not really online at all. So that was part of the interest of reading the book for me. But I found that there was a lot that I didn't agree with him on just because I already knew what the online world had done differently since the point of this book being published and now. It was also that I have lived a very different life and the ways that the internet is embedded into my life aren't as bad as Newport says, but they're also not great either. So there's some advice that I would scale back. There's also some assumptions around connections across the world that I think need a little bit more insight from those that live online rather than just people that moved people they knew in person to relationships that they maintained over the internet because they moved. There's a lot of nuance in this and while I liked this book, there's just a lot of things missing from how I would go about processing the internet in our current day and age.

The Raven Scholar

by Antonia Hodgson

Started on: Feb 1, 2026

Finished on: Feb 16, 2026 (648 pages long)

I'd seen this book shown around on the internet and although it was advertised as a kind of Dark Academia, it just looked like a really good high fantasy book. I really liked some of the world building and how everything was done, but I kind of wish that it was longer to dive into what happened afterwards a little more in depth. I don't know, it was an interesting thing of I got a lot of details around some basic parts of life in the world, but what I was really looking for was more about the pantheon of gods and how their involvement (or not) played into other things in the world. AA couple good twists and turns amongst it. Looking forward to when the next book comes out.

The War of Art

by Steven Pressfield

Started on: Feb 10, 2026

Finished on: Feb 12, 2026 (165 pages long)

This book has been lingering around for my to-read list for quite a while as something that might get me to stand up and do the writing that I want to do. And I'm not going to say that it's going to fix me, but it has inspired me. I always do the thing scared, but there's something about using that fear as part of what guides me and keeps me going that I hadn't really considered. The work will be hard and the work will be tough, but we will get there. We will make the things that we are meant to make. And we will get there no matter what it takes.

Keep Going

by Austin Kleon

Started on: Feb 7, 2026

Finished on: Feb 8, 2026 (201 pages long)

There a lot of words that I could say here, but I'm still in the process of figuring out how to exist here and how I want to work going forward. I want to write more and I want to do more, but it's been tough to find the right way to do it. It's been tough to find the right way to keep going with it all. Maybe I'll find it soon.

How To Steal Like An Artist

by Austin Kleon

Started on: Feb 6, 2026

Finished on: Feb 7, 2026 (141 pages long)

This is not my first time reading this book, nor will it be my last. The first time I read it was in a college class on creative writing and the place of habit and play within the practice of writing. I learned more about what I wanted to take from other people from that class. Now I'm returning to the book as someone that is stealing all the time from other people out there in the world. And what I've learned is that I need to lean into the constellation of people that I've been looking up to a little bit more, look a little bit deeper, and to just keep digging into all the ideas that are out there.

A Brief History of Black Holes

by Becky Smethurst

Started on: Jan 22, 2026

Finished on: Feb 6, 2026 (264 pages long)

I've always been fascinated by space and I've been trying to learn more about space recently. So this was one of my first stops along looking at cool pictures of space. The story-telling within this is helpful for someone that isn't as well versed with the ways of space and the science therein. But I enjoyed connecting the constellation of people and ideas that came together to give us our modern concept of black holes.

This Is How You Lose The Time War

by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Started on: Jan 26, 2026

Finished on: Jan 31, 2026 (198 pages long)

This is not the first time I've read this book. I love this book. It's such a fun look into the depths of two opposites of a battle and how those opposites aren't as opposite as they first appear. Red and Blue are fascinating characters that explore the different parts of what it means to be a person, to experience things, to love in a world that only wants them to be tools. And ultimately how at the end, you must betray that which was 'important' in order to focus on what is actually important. It is a love story in letters told back and forth through time, messages left in bones, in seeds, in fire across time and space. And it grabs my mind and sinks it into the swamp of conflicted emotions that stew around both these characters as they figure out who they actually are and what they want to do.

The Veldt and There Will Come Soft Rains

by Ray Bradbury

Started on: Jan 27, 2026

Finished on: Jan 27, 2026 (~12 pages long total)

I've been listening to and watching a lot of videos about our future and how technology has helped and hurt us. One of those video essays mentioned both of these short stories. Ultimately, it's one of those things that I've continued to go back to over and over again. These stories are a pair in my heart. One showing the direction people-changing effect, the other showing that the technology may persist without us, but it will never replace our presences in our homes and lives. Of course, the technology advancing is also part of what destroys all of us in the end, but we were still people there. These stories came out in 1950, but the stories feel more and more like they should have come out this year. I want to keep analyzing the way that Bradbury looks at our future and our technology. This is especially interesting as some of the pieces that I'm looking at are 75 years old. So much has changed, but this author really saw our future coming.

The Enchanted Greenhouse

by Sarah Beth Durst

Started on: Jan 6, 2026

Finished on: Jan 17, 2026 (375 pages long)

Sometimes you just need something quiet and soft in your life. This is one of those reads for me. It wasn't the most exciting read, but I like the quiet calm of the world that Durst has created. I liked the dramatics of the first book. This one doesn't have as much going on with a much smaller cast, but still some interesting stakes. It's not a loud romance, but a quiet one. Still strongly felt, but not as in your face as some other romances. It wasn't my favorite read, but it is far from the worst.

The Last Unicorn

by Peter S. Beagle

Started on: Nov 15, 2025

Finished on: Jan 4, 2026 (297 pages long)

I have a very long personal history with The Last Unicorn, but in particular, the movie from the 80s. I would check it out all the time from the Library as a kid. Like it was an everytime I went to the library kind of ordeal. I will say that nothing has changed. I will come back to this book again and again, I think. There's something beautiful about seeing something so beautiful have such an impact on the world around it and how that impact is reflected back onto it at the end. The Last Unicorn changed me in ways that I could never quite explain. And I have never stopped looking for the unicorns in all the most unlikely places and in the spray of the ocean waves.