Alexander: God, King, Man
Edmund Richardson
★★★☆☆A well researched biography of Alexander the Great that separates the real Alexander from the myth. Covers his life, campaign against Persia and brings together modern and historical evidence uncovered about his life.
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American Hagwon
Min Jin Lee
The King Must Die
A historically grounded story and retelling of Theseus from childhood to taking part in the bull rituals and sacrifice in Crete. Mary Renault fantastically paints us a picture of who a man like Theseus might have been like through his culture, faith, conquest and trials.
Recently Reviewed
Recent pick · 2026
Whistler
I haven't read all of Ann Patchett, but I was always impressed with The Dutch House and her essay collection These Precious Days. Whistler had an interesting premise about a woman named Daphne Fuller reconnecting with her former stepfather, Eddie, at the Met after having not seen him in over 40 years. The last time they saw each other she was nine. The book aims to bring a lot of weight to this temporally distant relationship and unpack a lot of unsaid and unexplored thoughts and new beginnings for Daphne, Eddie, and the other surrounding family members.
Ten 2026 Releases I'm Looking Forward To
Ten 2026 releases I'm most excited about from Min Jin Lee (the author of Pachinko) to Emily St. John Mandel (author of Station Eleven).
Recent pick · 2026
The Savage Detectives
This is the second book of Robert Bolaño's I've read, and he's definitely grown on me. The Savage Detectives is a book following poets in Mexico that are part of a movement called 'the Visceral Realist movement', in Spanish known as infrarrealismos. Like Bolaño's 2666, the book has an unusual structure, starting with a personal diary of Juan Garcia, a poet in Mexico; then a middle section following dated interviews across several decades concerning two other poets, Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima, and then finally ending with a continuation of Juan's diary. The structure, its length and its seeming meandering is an intentional style and choice to help exhibit the elusiveness of the two poets at the heart of the book, Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima. As I read this, I truly felt the essence of this book was about the performative nature of youth and their movements, in this case one about the poets and not about the poetry itself.
The Five-Star Shelf
Every book I gave the full five stars.
