Bri Is Real . . . I Promise

Some of you have approached me with suspicions that Bri is, in fact, a fictional being. Asking bold, pointed questions like "if she was real, why doesn't she post.....ever?" or "prove it" (not a question, I know). But dear readers, I assure you,

Light Summer Reads That Make You Feel Good About the World

. Kenneth Ishaguro's Never Let Me Go: Look on the bright side, at least you have a purpose... There is not much more, or better I could say than what the Illiterate already has. (If you haven't yet, you should read his post on this novel.) This

Unapologetic in Perfection

Never Let Me Go Author Kazuo Ishiguro Page Count 288 pages Date Completed September 30, 2026 Grade A+ I've spent the last 72 hours trying to muster up a funny spin on this one. Some clever one-liner to wrap it up in a pretty bow. A way to

Dark Matter - Where Recommendations Go to Die

Blake Crouch | Grade: B | Expectation: A+ | Participation Award: Negative Dark Matter Author Blake Crouch Page Count 398 pages Date Completed September 09, 2026 Grade B Every once in a while, okay, that's a lie, all too often, I find myself perplexed. Sometimes I'm perplexed by how

Large Print Text Only Made This Worse....but I'm Still Awesome

Britt-Marie Was Here Author Frederick Backman Page Count 490 pages Date Completed August 22, 2026 Grade C- Before I dive into this one, I want to take a moment to take a bow, because I have really outdone myself over the last month. Let me summarize the many ways in

How This Whole Mess Started

Award Winning Drivel in 2021. So... I was on sabbatical for a while. What happened was I was having this kind of weird thing where I was feeling lethargic, and like my limbs were just heavy. Almost like my walk was a kind of shamble. While at the same time

Rock Bottom

Sword Catcher Author Cassandra Clare Page Count 604 pages Date Completed August 15, 2026 Grade A- Sword Catcher — Cassandra Clare 604 pages I feel like maybe the way a drug addict feels when they hit rock bottom. Not the fun rock bottom where there’s still a little mystery about

Enter A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange Author Anthony Burgess Page Count 192 pages Date Completed March 16, 2026 Grade B- Alright. It’s been awhile. A long while. No, my near-zero readers, I have not been blasting through books like a cheetah chasing a pack of gimp zebras, too busy to pause and

God is Change . . .

Parable of the Sower Author Octavia E. Butler Page Count 329 pages Date Completed February 07, 2026 Grade A+ God is Change. And nothing more. That line alone is doing an absurd amount of work. I am not about to pretend I have any real insight into what God is

The Illiterate, Now Performing Solo (Not That Kind of Solo, Pervert)

Well, gather ‘round, literary goblins, because I bring sad tidings: the original book club, the literal inspiration for this blog, forged in the fires of pretentiousness and half-read novels, has perhaps gasped its last breath, it wheezed a bit, and then face-planted into the void. Yes, A Literary Adventure with

The Art of Almost Sticking the Landing

The Book of Doors Author Gareth Brown Page Count 400 pages Date Completed January 09, 2026 Grade B+ Look, I am not sure how long I have been blogging, but if you have followed along for any length of time, you are probably convinced I am nearly impossible to please.

The YA Formula: N + 1 + s'mores

Fourth Wing Author Rebecca Yarros Page Count 493 pages Date Completed December 29, 2025 Grade B+ Spoiler: Yes, I’ll be reading the next books…..take my gripes with that in mind, please, no hate mail or death threats. And so we begin . . . Well book lovers everywhere, I have completed

When A Book Defines the Term "Meh"

Yumi and the Nightmare Painter Author Brian Sanderson Page Count 362 pages Date Completed December 25, 2025 Grade B+ In a world already overflowing with mediocrity, this book somehow still manages to stand out by fully committing to the art of being aggressively meh. I have read Sanderson before. I

A Fatwa For the Wrong Reason

Readers, I read approximately 262,000 words to complete The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. Two hundred and sixty-two thousand words. Dear reader, I assure you I understood almost all of them (fine, maybe not all, but close enough). Yet when combined, those words meant absolutely nothing. This book was

A Pair By Papa

A Way You'll Never Be, The Snows of Kilimanjaro & Author Ego Death By many accounts, Ernest Hemingway was, if not the voice, he was one of the most important literary voices of a generation. The beating heart of the early twentieth century "Lost Generation." The

100 Pages of Solitude

Current Read: The Satanic Verses Chosen by my sadistic sister-in-law, this book is essentially a mass-casualty event for our family book club. One that will claim at least 10 souls, all condemned to drink the dreaded Four Horsemen shot. As of September 28th, by my latest count, 8–9 of

Vizzini said "Go back to the beginning" ... so I have

Typos free of charge. Coming here to write this post I noticed I have like 3 drafts from months ago that I lost track of and never got around to posting. I tend to take 5-6 big ideas, and start banging away at a post that is going to pull

Book Club #1 Returns: Flannery O’Connor and the Southern Gothic WTF-Fest

Well, we're back on Book Club #1 posts. After my last post, which may or may not have (definitely did) caused some light personal controversy. I’m here to talk about The Life You Save Might Be Your Own by Flannery O’Connor. What a fucking hoot this

The Baby is Dead, but Other Tragedies Feel More Real

Before we dive in, let me just say—whether you believe me or not—not all of this post is ripped from my personal diary. Sure, some of it is. But other parts are stitched together from what I imagine countless other parents are quietly grappling with. The Perfect Nanny

The Book That Killed My Will to Read

It was sometime in 2018 when my dear Auntie gifted me A Lady’s Guide to Marvels and Misadventure by Angela Bell. Tucked inside was a note that read something like (exactly like): “For the inner pubescent girl in you.” The more I reread that sentence, the more I wonder,

The Illiterate Expands the Empire (of Idiocy)

Somehow, against all odds and rational thought, this Illiterate (that's me) has taken things a step further and not only joined a second book club, but in a truly deranged act of ambition, actually created one. Why? No clue. Probably a cry for help. But let’s take

the singularity of babel

The accumulation of all knowledge and its eventual descent in meaninglessness.  Which is not the same as saying Life is Without Meaning. Because it abounds with meaning. You might even say we're infused with that very meaning, but not having the ability to ever put our grubby mortal

Waste Not (In Particular My Time....) by Alma Katsu

A while back, when the English Major first convinced the other two idiots to join this short story experiment, I (the resident Illiterate) went on a buying binge. Fueled by a rare moment of optimism, I thought, What the hell, I can read 365 short stories in a year. If

Pop Art – A Story That Made Me Cry (But Not in a Lame Way)

Shit, I am actually illiterate. That was my conclusion after the very first sentence: "My best friend when I was 12 was inflatable." Simple, right? Well, unfortunately, I read it as “infallible,” which—let’s just go ahead and admit—I also thought was spelled “infallable.” That really

Royal Jelly by Roald Dahl

(Another entry in the Journal of Literary Mediocrity) As I continue reflecting on my failures this year—not just in reading, but in life more broadly—there are the occasional glimmers of hope. For example, every now and then, I’m possessed by a burst of energy not only to