Possibilities Are Endless
I’m a little late with it but happy 2026, friends. I’m not going to do a big year-end consumption retrospective, don’t worry. But I’m glad I started writing here this way in 2025. It’s so low stakes, driven entirely by my tastes and interests without having to inflate their meaning, make an argument, find some hook for why they merit anyone’s attention beyond my own. This is the internet of old: no algorithm or traffic concerns, just an introvert with a blog, throwing a bottle into The Sea of Online. Life experience tells me that at any moment I could, and one day likely will, receive a lovely email from someone I’ve never spoken to before in which they tell me something amazing about ハンターxハンター or recommend me an album that will blow my mind. It will be such a nice surprise, one of life’s great joys, in fact: sincere and gentle communication between strangers who have recognized something in one another. Possibilities are endless, even when that’s hard to see or believe.
Writing/Reading:
I spent most of December reading and rereading these books by Daniel Berrigan. These are not all that I have, but they are the ones I focused on while writing about his life and work. I’d wanted to do an essay on him for months, and I’m very grateful that Bookforum let me because, much like this blog, the piece has no justification for itself other than, hopefully, being valuable and worthwhile to some of the people who encounter it.
I was given a generous amount of space but still had to leave a lot out. I never found the right moment, for instance, to say that I think Berrigan was kept from being the writer he could have been by a lack of good editing. If he had formed a trusting relationship with an unstinting editor, or if he had become a more merciless editor of himself—though there is really no substitute for the regular involvement of a separate person, who can linger in your head even when they’re not actually involved—I believe he could have written something truly great. Maybe he didn’t want to be edited, and refused the wise edits he got. He wouldn’t be the first. But as is true for all life-changing/life-making relationships, we should not underestimate the role of luck.
Whatever the reason, I don’t think there is a single book among his dozens that I can point to as the best, no matter how much I wish there were. My own dear husband asked me which he should read and I just said “…..uh…..” I have never regretted reading a Berrigan book but that’s because I have committed myself to reading all of them. The more of them I read, the less I am able to regret reading them. (I’m not sure that makes sense but I think I’ve described my situation correctly.) In almost every book, there will be a moment more powerful than most people’s entire manuscripts. But it will be surrounded by a lot of redundancy and rhetorical clutter. Maybe all this is my way of saying he should be read for his ideas and insights more than his style, though sometimes these aspects harmonize. If you’re only going to read only one, I think The Raft is Not The Shore has to be it. Absurd Convictions, Modest Hopes is also good, as is America is Hard to Find. Jesus Christ is one of my favorites, and A Book of Parables might be the most personally significant. I’ll say more in three to ten years if my intention/hope comes to fruition.
As for all the other books I’ve read between now and when I last posted—well. I’ve been thinking a lot about book discourse, if that’s a useful term, meaning the type of commentary that might include but generally falls short of criticism—though maybe “falls short” sets up a misleading/unnecessary hierarchy. I often don’t want to come up with trenchant analysis of whatever I’ve read. I just want to enthusiastically babble about it like a reader, not really a critic. Hence, Reading Writers. But can you take the critic out of the reader when that reader is also a reviewer and a writer more broadly? And is it useful (for me, for anyone) to write casually about books on a blog or to post about them on social media? Or is this driven by old habits of online self-documentation that actually alienate me from my life and waste the time of anyone who bothers reading the little write-ups? I intend to write about this more formally, alongside my thoughts about where publishing and book coverage/marketing are right now. Does that sound awful? Hopefully it won’t be! I’ll probably just post here but maybe will send it out as a Meant For You.
Speaking of Reading Writers, we’ve released a bunch of episodes since I posted here last: Hanif Abdurraqib, Noah Kulwin, Clio Chang, me and Jo naming some of our favorite reads of the last year, and, thrillingly, the audio of our live event with Stephanie Wambugu. Our most recent episode features Brittany Newell and I love it. We started off talking about glory holes and it just got better from there.
Listening:
Here’s the 2025 playlist I made (FOR MYSELF; I make one every year with my most personally significant and adored songs) in case you’d like to listen. Criteria for inclusion has nothing to do with when the track was released and while I do put some care into the order, the experience for everyone other than me might be no different from shuffle.
You already know I love to spread the good news about 日本の音楽 (across genres, it’s great) and it dominates here, but there’s also a lot of Chinese, Thai, and Russian songs. And phonk, usually Russian-made, because like I said, I do this for myself and I refuse to deny that which gives pleasure. Phonk and phonk-adjacent songs (Candy Krush, Close Eyes, Funk Mi Camino) can be quite melancholy, with an undercurrent of yearning and loneliness that I find beautiful. Please note also that Funk Mi Camino’s art is freaking Feitan. Feitan!!!! What percentage of my soul is identical to an anime-watching Russian boy’s? Twenty at minimum. Final warning: Aries Spears has UK rap’s number but what can I say? I listen to that goofy shit—even if it’s not Dave or Cench. Chef my brekky, shake that jelly 😜
Newer discoveries I’m holding over for next time to give them their due with one exception: Mawatari Matsuko’s “さよなら Bye Bye.” I think this is sincerely one of the best songs I’ve ever heard. Within the first few bars of it, I thought, oh. It was that experience that I think belongs to music alone, where the sound makes you feel like you, or some part of you, transcends time. In the case of me and this song, that sensation can probably be explained by the intersection of a beautiful melody that’s new to me with production conventions that remind me of my childhood—i.e., paradoxically, a highly time-bound, time-based experience. (This video made me cry my face off. I had no idea she was sick.)
Watching:
Heated Rivalry was not my favorite gay show of 2025. That crown obviously goes to The Summer Hikaru Died. Kidding—it’s a tie between TSHD and KinnPorsche and keep Heated Rivalry far away from these treasures because I do not like Heated Rivalry. The way people have responded and continue to respond to this show, the most mid BL content ever made, which I forced myself to watch in case my first impression was unfounded, is astounding to me. There is nothing going on in this series, absolutely nothing: “The show wasn’t about the characters. It wasn’t about the chemistry, which felt average. It wasn’t about hockey. It wasn’t even about the sex scenes, which were not that long or involved.”
2025 was not a good year for the US or the people in it, not a good year for culture or anything else of which I’m aware. People miss having something sexy to watch and they miss having something to collectively obsess and rave about. Heated Rivalry gave them both, which is fine. But the way people continue to fixate on it and overstate its value is tiresome and embarrassing. In a few years this mania will look as stupid as it manifestly is, one exception being if the second season goes turbo and suddenly discovers anything resembling a plot. But will my sanity last that long? Regardless, I will not be watching.
Bad and middling cultural products can have huge impacts on our lives. I don’t think JJK is a great anime or manga—why are you booing me? I’m right!—yet it cured me of depression and bears much responsibility for setting me on the path to weebdom, which is an enduring source of joy. I’m sure Heated Rivalry is changing some viewer’s lives just like…I don’t know, Saved By The Bell surely did. But I’m not going to pretend it’s Twin Peaks: The Return or even SpongeBob SquarePants. And I am not going to click on a story about the actors, director, set designer, food service provider, content creators recording themselves watching it, etc., for as long as I live. But I am going to heavily judge everyone keeping this debased, slop-generating cottage industry going. Enough.