Bryce Sears

I read that Haushofer recently and it’s aces.

Happy birthday!

Yes! Same. I hope this goes without saying, but if you’re ever in the Bay Area hit me up.

I’m a little bummed not to be in Baltimore with the friends I met last year in LA. The silver lining is I love my routine. Still.

The cover of a book: Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner.

Book mail. Such a wonderful critical voice at the heart of Comyns’s work and I’ve heard great things about this book: Avril Horner’s biography of her.

Still need to get a copy, but I’m really excited about this one.

"In lieu of flowers, the family and Zipporah Films kindly request that you support your local PBS affiliate or independent bookstore in Frederick Wiseman’s memory."

If I were still in Austin! Sounds fun.

Elena Knows is aces. It’s the other one of hers I’ve read.

It’s terrific. I should have mentioned that your writing about it convinced me to try it. Looking forward to some others by her that Charco has put out.

Incidentally, people who have to use laundromats are spending a lot of money for clean clothes. $6 per wash plus ~$4 per dry at this place in N. Cal.

Cover of “A Crack in the Wall” by Claudia Piñeiro. Rows of washing machines in the background.

Text from p. 187 of “A Crack in the Wall.”

Enjoying this book that has me in the head of a guy who has helped his coworkers commit a murder. Tr. by Miranda France.

Great list! I loved Great Fear on the Mountain.

A hand holding a copy of Lispector’s Near to the Wild Heart in front of a leaf-covered sidewalk.

My getting revaccinated might have to wait in line at Walgreens reading. As things turned out the line was too short to read much.

“It’s true that the world was failing at its one task - of remaining a world. Pieces were breaking off. Seasons had become postmodern.”

Thinking about this interesting if maybe not helpful way of describing climate change. From Shelia Heti’s Pure Colour.

People weaving in and out of traffic lanes, cutting people off at warp speed, etc. should know the rest of us can tell they’re having a panic attack.

“It is more difficult to labour with educated men, with cultivated minds and moreover predisposed to skepticism, than with the uneducated.”

Letter from a 19th c. evangelical quoted in Hofstadter’s Anti-intellectualism in American Life

It was a wee thing. My mom’s husband killed it with a hoe, I’m told.

A baby rattle snake on a cement porch with the corner of a door visible above and a shadow of the photographer visible below.

My mom found a baby rattle snake on her porch last night at her house in Georgetown, TX. Always good to corner venomous creatures for a photo sesh.

The US cover of Joy Williams’s The Pelican Child.

Joy Williams’s signature with a long slashing “J” and “y.”

I picked this up a while back from @ebbooksellers.bsky.social and was surprised to find my preorder had come in as a signed copy. It’s an excellent collection. Also, I like the way the “J” and “y” cut in Joy Williams’s signature.

Super restless voice. It’s stuck with me now for weeks.

One of my favorite recent reads.

I raved about it here not long ago and some of our mutuals might have put it in your timeline? In any case, one of my favorite recent reads, maybe an all-time favorite.

Holiday Catalog 2025 Holiday Catalog 2025

After a year’s hiatus, I’m very excited to unveil this years winter holiday catalog. Chock-full of favorites & curiosities — an assemblage that we hope is representative of our small store. If you like, please share!

simplebooklet.com/holiday-cata...

Of the Lovers | Issue 33 By Addison Zeller — "They are first seen, despite the general darkness, close to the window, from which they draw back prudently, it is to be supposed, in a slow lateral glide along the surface of the...

A couple of brash and velvety ones up in the latest (really stacked) issue of @yourimpossiblevoice.com — hope you’ll check them out (there’s two links, see)
yourimpossiblevoice.com/point-of-com...
yourimpossiblevoice.com/of-the-lovers/

BOOK REVIEW“They—all of us—are way behind, stuck in the old, familiar, small ways of thinking and unable to grasp the vast changes going on around us. ”**"How the Sea Might Speak: On Eva Meijer’s 'Sea Now'"**by Rebecca Hussey. Image: Book cover, drawing of cow on top of rock on water.

“SEA NOW is one of several novels that ask how humans live in an apocalypse that isn’t impending but has actually arrived.” Read Rebecca Hussey on Eva Meijer’s SEA NOW (tr. Anne Thompson Melo): buff.ly/ZtpAsrS
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Love is my favorite of these, but I enjoyed them all, and feel like a person could start anywhere with them. Her Edvard Munch non-fiction might be next on my Ørstavik list.

Books arranged to show their covers. Love, Stay With Me, The Pastor, and Ti Amo by Ørstavik. Artful Sentences by Tufte. Thus Were Their Faces by Ocampo, Great Fear on the Mountain by Ramuz, Daydreamers by Alvin Lu, Gurdjieff: A Beginner’s Guide by Friedman, Cowboy Apocalypse by Wagner, Night of the Living Rez by Talty, The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze by Saroyan.

I haven’t posted in a while what I’ve been reading. Here are books I’ve read or (finally) finished in recent months. One story here is that I fell in love with Hanne Ørstavik.