New Year's 2026: Stuff I Saw On My Walk That a Normal Person Probably Wouldn’t Take a Picture Of

I had to postpone my traditional New Year’s Day walk for the best possible reason: New Year’s D&D with friends! So I took my New Year's Day walk today, Jan. 2. 

On this walk I like to go down some streets I’ve never walked down before, thinking of this quote from Ursula Le Guin's introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness:

In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we’re done with it, we may find—if it’s a good novel—that we’re a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little, as if by having met a new face, crossed a street we never crossed before. But it’s very hard to say just what we learned, how we were changed.

While I was on the walk I hatched the idea for a photo essay called “Stuff I Saw On My Walk That a Normal Person Probably Wouldn’t Take a Picture Of.” Here it is without further elaboration!

A Quasi-Scrooge Enjoys Holiday Horror 2025

 

I donʻt hate Christmas. I really donʻt. But I wouldnʻt say I love it, either.

For several years, Iʻve been watching holiday horror movies. Does this make me a "quasi-Scrooge" as I referred to myself a few years ago?

Iʻm all for peace on Earth and goodwill toward humanity (at least more than the people who run the world these days). But I find myself ambivalent this time of year. And since horror is a genre that allows me to deal with the fact that life isnʻt all puppy dogs and rainbows, it makes sense to me that one way to face my ambivalence about the holidays is to watch movies about homicidal Santas and eldritch elves. 

Holiday Review of Reviews 2025

 

Dear reader, I haven't been posting book reviews here on the blog as much as I would like the last few months. I've still been writing some reviews over on Goodreads, but I haven't even been keeping up over there. It has been a busy few months, and the energy for blogging has often been elusive.

I could keep castigating myself, or I could just post the reviews! 

After I post this, I have two more reviews to finish of Death's End by Cixin Liu and Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King. I may also return to a holiday tradition from my past: reading Tolkien's Lord of the Rings! I may even read A Christmas Carol, which I've been thinking about the last few years in line with my tradition of watching holiday horror movies.

Anyway, here are my reviews of The Reformatory by Tananarive Due, Books of Blood, Vol. 3 by Clive Barker, The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin, Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler, Speculative Whiteness by Jordan S. Carroll, The Witching Hour by Anne Rice, An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, The Fall of Gilead (graphic novel inspired by Stephen King's Dark Tower), and The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden.

Happy Holidays to you and all sentient beings! May all beings be jolly!

Random Thoughts, Part 28: Super Sized and Super Random

 

Dear reader, I have been remiss. I have not posted in my Random Thoughts series in almost seven months. I have been doing a lot of random thinking since then. And I have collected even more random funny images. So without further ado, enjoy this Super Sized and Super Random collection of my Random Thoughts!

Utopias, Dystopias, and Somewheres In Between: Utopia, The Blazing World, We, The Hunger Games, Divergent, and More

 

I've been reading more dystopian stuff than usual lately, not just in the news, but because I'm currently teaching a class on Utopias and Dystopias. I'm also teaching my Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy class, and depending on who you ask, Plato's Republic is a utopia, dystopia, or both.

What's the point of utopias and dystopias? Utopias seem, well, utopian and unobtainable. And boring, but I think the "boring" label is more a result of lack of imagination than anything inherent to utopias. I think we'd still have plenty to keep us busy if everyone's basic needs were met--we could finally go about figuring out what this whole human experience is supposed to be. But I digress.

Dystopias are either never going to happen, or depending on where and when you look, have been or are already happening. Especially as I write this on Indigenous Peoples Day, I'm reminded of a comment from Indigenous creator Dale Deforest at a panel at Worldcon in August that a lot of Native Americans have been living in various states of dystopia for hundreds of years and still today (I'm hoping for a swift and effective response to a typhoon in Alaska that has affected mostly Indigenous people).

But I think the "could it happen?" question is the wrong question, or at least not the most interesting question to ask. (Not that this stopped me from asking this last week when I showed my students an episode of The Handmaid's Tale). Sure, dystopias might remind us that things could get worse, and utopias might remind us that we could do better, but I think they do something even deeper.

As Mary Midgley said in her essay "Practical Utopianism," utopias and dystopias show us possibilities, often quite exaggerated, of where we could go, roadmaps of roads we may never travel, all to change our sense of the terrain. And I'd like to think this type of story can also expand our sense of possibility as what Ursula Le Guin called "realists of a larger reality."

Exploring the terrain of dystopias and utopias helps us to explore what we think about ourselves, our societies, and more, to find the many utopias, dystopias, and somewheres in between.

Toward that end, here are my reviews of some of the terrain of utopias and dystopias that I've been exploring lately: Utopia by Thomas More, The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish, We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, The Hunger Games by Susanne Collins, Divergent by Veronica Roth, and Authority by Jeff VanderMeer.

If you are ever stuck in a dystopia or an ambiguous utopia, dear reader, may the odds be ever in your favor!

Birthday Reflections 2025: Death, Love, and Birthdays

 

In my birthday blog posts, I always mention that birthdays are both a good reason to celebrate life as well as a reminder of our mortality. Birthdays eventually lead to a deathday for us all. None of us are here forever. 

Since my previous birthday, this fact has become even more exigent for me. Last October I lost two friends within two days of one another. One acquaintance died a few months ago. We lost my wife's aunt as well. I lost another friend just last week. 

I miss them all deeply. I’m no stranger to grief. I’ve written a lot about losing my mom 25 years ago. That grief is with me every day and always will be. 

Still, this year I can’t help but think that the friends I lost in the last year were close to my age. And my mom was only two years older than I am now when she died. Every year, my age provides less and less insulation from the realization that none of us are here forever, and I am no exception. 

2025 Hugo Novels, Part 2, belatedly: Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Someone You Can Built a Nest In by John Wiswell, and The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett

 

I meant to post this in July, after posting Part 1, but my summer plans overtook me. So here I am posting Part 2 after both my full Hugo ballot, a post on my Worldcon talks, and my report on Worldcon. Oh, well.

Here are my reviews of Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Someone You Can Built a Nest In by John Wiswell, and The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett. The last of these won this year's Hugo for Best Novel, which didn't bother me as I enjoyed the book, but it did somewhat surprise me: I found it enjoyable, but ultimately not as innovative or interesting as the others.

Anyway, I was getting close to the Hugo voting deadline when I wrote my original reviews on Goodreads, so I've expanded them just a bit here.