A review of The Blood of Dawnwalker — the new vampire action RPG from the Witcher III creators — from a Gen X gamer who almost gave up on parrying.

A Books & Bakes review of Joan Didion's National Book Award memoir on grief and loss — and the memories it unexpectedly surfaced.

Books & Bakes 2026 wraps up with $2,180 raised for Cake4Kids, 20 books read, and an unexpected obsession with Matt Dinniman's Dungeon Crawler Carl series.

A Books & Bakes review of Niebuhr's The Irony of American History — and why its silence on slavery and race is a fundamental moral failure.

Is the new Flanagan Carrie adaptation unfaithful? A close reading of King's novel reveals Carrie's "ugliness" is more complicated than critics claim.

A Books & Bakes review of Marisa Kashino's Best Offer Wins — a darkly comic novel about one woman's unhinged quest to buy her dream home in the DC suburbs.

A Books & Bakes review of T.J. Martinson's Blood River Witch — an occult thriller set in rural Kentucky that triggered unexpected feelings about home.

A review of Viet Thanh Nguyen's memoir A Man of Two Faces — a gorgeously written story of refugee experience, racism, and the tension between empathy and experience

Books & Bakes Week One: Richard Stark's Parker novel The Hunter — spare prose, amoral anti-heroes, and why simple writing is harder than it looks.

The Supreme Court's rulings on trans athletes and birthright citizenship make today a hard day to argue against doomerism

A Books & Bakes preview of T.J. Martinson's Blood River Witch — a murder mystery set in the rural Western Kentucky that shaped me as a kid, plus why I don't see enough of that region in literature.

Terry Pratchett's Wyrd Sisters is a perfect into to his satirical world, while Viet Thanh Nguyen is a preeminent chronicler of the Vietnamese immigrant experience

In the January issue of Amazing Science Fiction Stories we find overoptimistic predictions of life spans alongside a stellar meditation on aging

Combining two things I love into a read-a-thon benefiting Cake4Kids

Revisiting Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series — and why a Kindle Scribe sent me back to physical books.

Arthur C. Clarke’s novel 2001: A Space Odyssey is basically a 1960s version of a YouTube “2001, the Movie, Explained!” video

The conversation over Barney Frank’s “hands on” nature is highlighting the gay Gen X tendency to minimize sexual bad behavior

Landyn Pan (they/them) is a transmasculine, non-binary fitness and nutrition coach whose mission is to help queer and trans people build strength, confidence, and long-term, positive relationships with their bodies through strength training.

Two gay white Southerners on their experience with race, class, religion, and privilege from the post-Civil Rights Act '70s to the politics of today. Plus Flannery O'Connor!

For decades, science fiction writers touted technology as the solution for human suffering while sowing the seeds of their own disappointment