📽️📚 MY 2025 WRAPPED IN BOOKS + FILM📚📽️
Read nearly 100 more books this year than I did in 2024. First encounters with Antunes, Sebald, and Calvino were splendid.
My slimmest number of films watched in years; normally it's quadruple this number. But it was still rich.
A new Kore-eda, Kurosawa, Hamaguchi, and Pawlikowski premiering at Cannes is excting enough, but a new Zvyagintsev and Na Hong-jin, after so many years of radio silence, is sending me over the moon.
2026 Reading (33-65/?)
Been a long time since I've last updated my reading...
Best: NEAR TO THE WILD HEART (duh) + ICE + DEATH AND THE KING'S HORSEMAN + ULTRA HEAVEN
Best (ultra degen mode): CAPTIVE PRINCE (I,II,III)
Worst (also degen mode): YATAMOMO+ NO GOD IN EDEN
#Top5FirstViews | March 2026
1. THE SECRET AGENT (Kleber Mendonça Filho, 2025)
2. IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT (Jafar Panahi, 2025)
3. THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (Curtiz & Keighley, 1938)
4. BUGONIA (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2025)
5. 28 YEARS LATER: THE BONE TEMPLE (Nia DaCosta, 2025)
His magnificently devastating novel MIDNIGHT IS NOT IN EVERYONE'S REACH, my first of his, was my favorite read last year. Incredibly singular, it reads like nothing else out there. He became an instant favorite, and I'm eager to read more. RIP.
The great Portuguese writer António Lobo Antunes GCSE has passed away at the age of 83.
Antunes died in Lisbon, the city where he was born, the site of his psychiatric practice, and the setting for many of his 30+ works.
Portugal has declared a national day of mourning.
2026 Reading (29-32/?)
A strange assortment, from the very good to the very bad. Saunders proved a disappointment, while Țîbuleac's caustic mother-son story was surprisingly touching. Elsewhere, finding good, not-cringe, unproblematic BL is the most difficult thing in the world.
Shit, news of both Robert Duvall and Frederick Wiseman on the same day? What long, extraordinarily rich lives. Cinematic polyphemes whose art both galvanized and rewrote what it meant to be an artist, and what it meant to give audience to their craft.
2026 Reading (25-28/?)
THE MORNING STAR has become my favorite read of the year so far. NEFANDO truly disturbed me—but to what end? MOON OF THE CRUSTED SNOW was a bit too simple, ordinary, despite its fresh framework. TRANSIT was solid; pretty much always dig nature poetry.
2026 Reading (6-24/?)
Everything I've read since my last, overdue update. A jumble of many genres + forms.
Flewelling, Douglas, LaValle, Kampa, O'Connor, and of course Bolaño among the best. BL picks remain shaky at best. Desperately wanted Kim S. Robinson to click for me—alas.
50s: The Lord of the Rings
60s: The Apple in the Dark
70s: Invisible Cities
80s: Satantango
90s: Jazz
00s: 2666
10s: Midnight Is Not in Everyone's Reach
20s: Septology
#Top5FirstViews | January 2026
1. RESURRECTION (Bi Gan, 2025)
2. CITY ON FIRE (Ringo Lam, 1987)
3. MACBETH (Nikolay Serebryakov, 1992)
4. HAMLET (Natalya Orlova, 1992)
5. THE LONG WALK (Francis Lawrence, 2025)