Hello Readers,

Early in January on BlueSky it occurred to me that if I had more time for such things, I might be able to organize some kind of “25% in 2025 Pledge” that encourages readers to shift some of their book buying/borrowing habits from big 5 publishers to small and independent publishers, by asking them to commit to making sure 25% percent of the books they buy/borrow come from such presses. The 25% came from the symmetry with 2025 rather than a rigorous analysis of book sales. It also seems like an easier ask or an easier nudge than 50% or higher.

I’m still thinking about it, about what resources I could bring together to make it easier for people to hit their goal, about how I might better articulate why that shift would be important, about putting together a real vision of what our publishing ecosystem could look like, and what role consumer choice might play in that. Maybe there is something here that I could still manage. (Beehiive does have a webpage function.)

There is this interesting (well, it would be interesting if the stakes weren’t so high) groundswell around small acts of activism, around focusing on what you have the energy and aptitude to accomplish and on more local, more constructive goals. Rather than trying to save the world, we’re making one little corner of it better with the hope that enough better little corners add up to a better world. When I think about recommending books, I often look for books that do more than one thing; they fit what the reader is looking for and someone buying them would support a small press, or an author from a marginalized community, or a debut author, or would in general help make the book ecosystem more diverse. Maybe there’s a current of both-ness in the broader struggle. You create a mutual aid network that mitigates the approaching harm and you make new friends. You help get a law or policy passed at the local level and you become something of an expert on the issue. You help de-centralize publishing and you get some great fucking books.

You start buying/borrowing more small/indie press books, those presses grow in resources and stature, the concentrated power of the big 5 is scraped away and the forces that platformed, legitimized, and provided revenue for fascists are diminished. A little corner of the world is made better. It may be just a dream, but it is a good dream.

Josh

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YESTERDAY

Tentacle by Rita Indiana

This book…it’s…it’s a lot. I had forgotten just how much “a lot” it is until I started re-reading it for the BlueSky Book Club I’m running. (This coming Thursday over on PSB’s BlueSky, if you’d like to participate.) It opens aggressively and doesn’t really tone it down much. The a-lot-ness of it makes it difficult to write about in a format like this. (At least for me at this moment.) Listing some of the themes (art, ecology, gender, religion, prophecy, piracy, chronology, subtle & overt power structures, the “chosen one”…) does something, but doesn’t really communicate how those threads become a fabric. I could also list the content warnings which include depictions of sexual assault, misogyny, & homophobia (All of which I think are justified by the text but, still, a lot.), which might help communicate the a-lotness, but doesn’t do as much as to communicate the value.

But I think what’s most interesting to me about the book on this read, is it’s presentation of time. Time isn’t linear, of course, but it also isn’t really a circle either. It’s more like a palimpsest, or a series of overlays. The distinctions between past, present, and future that we prefer don’t remain distinct. Or maybe we are always surrounded by voices of the past, present, and future and sometimes we can hear those voices talking at the same time. I actually don’t know if Indiana even develops a coherent theory of time, but, even still, this image is one of the best descriptions of the timescale of reading a book I’ve ever read.

Because what time are you in when you are reading a book?

Buy Tentacle from Porter Square Books.

Buy Tentacle from Bookshop.org

TODAY

A Sleepless Night by Micaela Chirif, translated by Jordan Landsman, illustrated by Joaquin Camp

Huh. You know, what, I can write about kids books too. I mean, I’m reading a lot of them now. (Or I’m reading a few of them many many many times.) And there are more kids books in translation and from small presses coming out than there have been in past. There are plenty of booksellers, librarians, and critics, with real expertise in books written for young readers but a newsletter like this one is also avenue for building that kind of expertise myself, so, here we go.

There is so much to look at in this weird little story of a family and their neighbors coping with a baby who will just not stop crying. There are birds! A royal court! Dancing vegetables! Of course, none of these things work. Luckily, grandma arrives to save the day!

And though this is something of a spoiler, I can say that if you have been listening to a baby cry for some amount of time, and especially if that time can be measured in hours, there is no sweeter sound in the world, than said baby finally ripping an absolutely window shaking fart.

Buy A Sleepless Night from Porter Square Books 

Buy A Sleepless Night from Bookshop.org

TOMORROW

North Sun: Or, the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther by Ethan Rutherford

Yes, this probably should have been in last month’s issue with Moby-Dick & Melvill, but I hadn’t decided if I was going to feature this yet and I really want to make sure you all preordered Worthy of the Event. (I’ll forgive you if you haven’t yet.)

North Sun is intoxicating. It is still. It is quiet. It is subtle. The plot (as far as I’ve gotten) is; a captain discovers he is unfit for dry land and is given an offer he can’t refuse by one of the most powerful whaling families around. He does not refuse and sailing, whaling, and searching ensues.

I can’t quite put my finger on exactly what it is hooking me. The structure, though a little atypical in that is told in relatively short (often less than a page) episodes, isn’t particularly radical. The style, though not the “spare” style that so often sets my teeth on edge, isn’t nearly as bombastic or maximalist as many other books I read. (Including the aforementioned Moby-Dick and Melvill.) It’s plot (at time of writing) is about as close to “Man sets out on a journey with other men and encounters what cannot be expected” as you can get. The pace is, like whaling itself it seems, halting with long stretches of not a whole lot, followed by short intense bursts of holy fuck. (And these bursts do not always align with them actually getting a whale!) Again, given how much I love books where nothing happens at all, that pace itself isn’t particularly notable.

And yet, here we are. I care about the characters. I want to know what happens. I am entranced by the prose. I want to peer in the bubbling weirdness. In some ways, it is my job to figure out why I like specific books so I can communicate what makes them distinct from every other book, but even after doing this for twenty years, I still encounter books I can’t pin down. Maybe I’ll figure out what I’m getting from North Sun when I finish it or maybe it will be just one of those books that connects with me because it connects with me; a mystery of the book and a mystery of the reader. And that’s cool too.

Preorder North Sun from Porter Square Books

Preorder North Sun from Bookshop.org

FOREVER

Double Trio: Tej Bet, So Notice, Nerve Church by Nathaniel Mackey

In a different world, I am certain I would be a huge Nathaniel Mackey fan. From what I’ve read of Double Trio (the only Mackey I’ve read anything of) and from what I’ve read and heard of Mackey, his work is the literary equivalent of weird jazz. And I loves me some weird jazz.

But no one ever sent me an ARC. (For some reason New Directions never sends me anything.) There was never a damaged copy of anything in the staff room. No one ever put a copy of one of his books in my hand and said “You have to read this.”

Then Double Trio came out. I was aware of Mackey and a three volume poem (yes, singular) structured, at least in part, on a John Coltrane song, is going to catch my eye whether I’d heard of the author or not. I knew it wasn’t something I was going to get to and it was big and (even with my staff discount) relatively expensive, so it sat around at the store. I picked it up now and then but never could justify it.

And then I was having a shitty day and I bought it to make me feel better. And it did. I spend a lot of time thinking about the significance of the book as an object, about the work a book can do because of its physical presence in your life. I assume it’s possible to get that same jolt of serotonin from an ebook appearing in your library as you do holding a physical book that now belongs to you, that you can carry, that you can look at, but I doubt it happens all that often and it certainly doesn’t happen for me.

Perhaps this was one of those moments both-ness I talked about in the intro, though a very unintentional one. I supported an independent press, a Black author, and experimental poetry, and I gave myself a little treat that brightened my day. Now, I’m not about to argue that we can “just a little treat” ourselves out of this shit, but I’m also not about to argue that we should subject our own joy to austerity while we face this shit. If I can’t get myself some experimental poetry to brighten my day every now and then I don’t want to be part of your revolution.