Reading List: Q2 2025

Keeping with the “1,000 True Fans” theme, anything I can do to help deserving authors receive more exposure and small bumps in sales volumes is worth transcribing some notes.

My first full quarter as an NYC commuter had interesting impacts on my reading consumption - I’m reading more on the train and less at night, and not at all on airplanes. Beach days and Phish summer tour will pick up the pace for Q3.

I should also try to lessen my use of parenthetical comments.

Inspirations this quarter: Getting read for “prog rock camp.” Late 1970s Talking Heads, King Crimson and Frank Zappa. Yes bassist and founder Chris Squire, who passed away from acute myeloid leukemia exactly 10 years ago and left a huge 8x12 speaker cabinet sized hole in our musical hearts.

Chris Squire memorial plaque in the Soho neighborhood of London.

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14. “When The Moon Hits Your Eye,” John Scalzi, fiction, finished April 9.
    Pre-ordered because I am a Scalzi fanboy.
    I think Scalzi could invent narrative around almost any topic; as he says in the acknowledgements to “Moon” it completes a trilogy of books outside of his main sequence All of them deal with preposterous but preposterously well done ideas, and “Moon” completes the hat trick with the usual Scalzi grace, humor, and basic decent humanity. The topic is one of those “what if” writing prompts: The moon has turned to cheese, science can’t explain it, and everyone assumes the Earth is dead. The succession of deeply personal experiences is perfect: It’s a work of fiction but it’s about people and their desire to exist and be seen (and heard).

15. “Leaving Candyland,” Robin Slick, fiction, finished April 14.
    Mom of a fellow prog rock camper who hits close to home.
    This one really resonated with me, not just for the gently aging hippie. It’s about those who can’t part with collections of things that were important at time., facing the fact that nobody else wants them (not even on eBay, as I’ve discovered). That you’re only as content as your least happy (adult) kid, and that you never stop worrying or planning. I’m hoping there are some sequels coming out of this, and while the surprise twist is not buried too deeply it’s pleasant and fun. A very solid read for current times (as my knees ache).

16. “Waiting On The Moon,” Peter Wolf, music/biography, finished April 30.
    Long-time fan of the J Geils band.
    A series of stories, essays and rumination on art, music, Boston and New York and loyalties. I had no idea Peter Wolf was married to Faye Dunaway (during her disaster movie career arc), and while I knew of his WBCN “Woofa Goofa” overnight persona, he dives deeply into the delta of blues, blues musicians and the Boston club scene. Very few pages are spent on the acrimony that ejected Wolf from the J Geils Band, or the latter’s pop success while Wolf literally lived the blues.

17. “Careless People,” Sarah Wynn-Williams, non-fiction, finished May 12.

    Prompted by a piece in Doctorow’s Pluralistic newsletter.
    I found myself oscillating between “I’ve seen that behavior in other companies,” “Short sighted strategy gets complicated quickly” and “This is end stage capitalism on stage.” I’m still really conflicted by it, and the attempts by Facebook to censure the book promoted it up my reading list. Doctorow’s full analysis and sentiment are better than anything I’d add here.

18. “Four Billionaires and a Parking Lot Attendant,” Christopher Ullman, business, finished May 26.
    Seen on my boss’s bookshelf.
    Frequently I find these business and life management books artificial and vague because they assume a context that few of us will have (managing a company, sitting atop an asset base, commanding an array capital equipment) and try to deduce lessons that are more broadly applicable. Ullman’s book goes in the opposite direction, generalizing specific behaviors or attitudes from his billionaire cohort (and long-time service staff member) into life lessons. As such, it’s a fast read (compared to most of the genre that are visual sleep aids) and full of incrementally useful ideas.

19. “When We Were Real,” Daryl Gregory, sci-fi, finished June 3.
    Locus Award nomination.
    Thelma and Louise go on a Matrix adventure with a Zoolander subplot. It is fairly close to that convolution of satirical look at the influencer culture, the Generative AI existential crisis and wondering if we’re all really in a simulation (and if so, why are some relationships and body parts still so broken?) It’s not a deus-ex-machina plot as much as an exploration of old friendships, trust, and how everyday people can push to be remarkable, outside the camera eye.

20. “Three Days in New York City,” Robin Slick, fiction, finished June 5.
    Next in the Slick canon.
    While obliquely billed as “erotic fiction” it’s more of a midlife identity crisis wrapped in naughty emails. Slick puts her characters on the emotional rollercoaster at Coney Island and lets them sort it out in Midtown. As a newly minted NYC commuter, I found her context for food, shopping and egregious tourist behaviors captured my daily zeitgeist (modulo the Billions-flavored sex scenes) perfectly.

21. “Exit Stage Left: The Curious After Life of Pop Stars,” Nick Duerden, music, finished June 23.
    Another bibliographic reference from David Hepworth.
    Gack. I’m not sure what made me slog through the book: it’s full of references to bands with heydeys in the UK. This compendium of stories is as repetitive as the three-chord songs about their composers: artist got kicked out of band, ran out of ideas, drugs/booze/creative failure with label led to ruin. I recognized about a quarter of the pop stars and bands, but the tropes of after life didn’t really resonate.