CLICK ON BOOK COVER TO PURCHASE
422 BOOKS
THIS PAGE = 4 BOOKS
Before the Page = 418 Books
Before the Page = 418 Books
CLICK AUTHORS NAME TO BE WHISKED TO THEIR WEBSITE
Top 2026
This is my order, yours may; likely will be, different!
Books Read in 2026
- You Will Not Kill Our Imagination - Saeed Teebi
- Letters to Kafka - Christine Estima
- Animal Farm - George Orwell
- Just Watch Me - Lior Torenberg
BLUE = MEMOIR OR BIOGRAPHICAL
BLACK = FICTION
DARK RED = EDUCATIONAL + Historical Fiction
PURPLE = ESSAY OR STORIES
ORANGE = POETRY
BLACK = FICTION
DARK RED = EDUCATIONAL + Historical Fiction
PURPLE = ESSAY OR STORIES
ORANGE = POETRY
42
|
|
|
|
When survival becomes content, who gets to decide what’s too far?
How did the book make me feel/think?
This is a riotous read. A propulsive page-turner.
I’m streaming.
My rank: 550,000.
Got to get movement.
Who’s joining my stream? Three newcomers.
Rank: 549,997.
I’m rolling.
I turn another page.
In Just Watch Me, Dell’s life is in flux—family illness, job loss, and a shoebox for an apartment.
Survival framed as entertainment. Morality reduced to metrics.
1: Do something to entertain us
2: We want to feel your pain
3: I live in Vancouver
A voyeuristic fever dream
Eat heat, as in peppers. Eat emotion, as in family drama.
There’s laughter on nearly every page. A likable protagonist who antagonizes just enough to make you want to scream—or hug her.
A stalker. A supporter.
1: $2 donated.
2: I’ll donate if you come close to death.
3: I live in Vancouver.
4: I am the moral compass.
Torenberg asks the question cleanly and without flinching: How much pain is too much? And how far would you go to raise money for someone you love when grief itself refuses to move on? How much can a person endure before the mind retreats into denial?
This shouldn’t be a light read—and yet it is—until it isn’t.
4: I believed in you. You let me down.
Oh, c’mon. Get over yourself.
We’re all part of the problem now, watching a world pulse like a fever dream—confident in our judgment, certain of our virtue, and always ready to click away.
WRITTEN: 14 January 2026
Lior Torenberg: Thank you for the lovely review! 💕
How did the book make me feel/think?
This is a riotous read. A propulsive page-turner.
I’m streaming.
My rank: 550,000.
Got to get movement.
Who’s joining my stream? Three newcomers.
Rank: 549,997.
I’m rolling.
I turn another page.
In Just Watch Me, Dell’s life is in flux—family illness, job loss, and a shoebox for an apartment.
Survival framed as entertainment. Morality reduced to metrics.
1: Do something to entertain us
2: We want to feel your pain
3: I live in Vancouver
A voyeuristic fever dream
Eat heat, as in peppers. Eat emotion, as in family drama.
There’s laughter on nearly every page. A likable protagonist who antagonizes just enough to make you want to scream—or hug her.
A stalker. A supporter.
1: $2 donated.
2: I’ll donate if you come close to death.
3: I live in Vancouver.
4: I am the moral compass.
Torenberg asks the question cleanly and without flinching: How much pain is too much? And how far would you go to raise money for someone you love when grief itself refuses to move on? How much can a person endure before the mind retreats into denial?
This shouldn’t be a light read—and yet it is—until it isn’t.
4: I believed in you. You let me down.
Oh, c’mon. Get over yourself.
We’re all part of the problem now, watching a world pulse like a fever dream—confident in our judgment, certain of our virtue, and always ready to click away.
WRITTEN: 14 January 2026
Lior Torenberg: Thank you for the lovely review! 💕
Another Set of Animals
How did the book make me feel/think?
Present.
Upsetting—how a book written 80 years ago can read as if it lives inside a parallel universe of all times. A story voiced again and again throughout humanity’s terror, still falling on ears too tired, too distracted, or too invested to listen.
The animals became an Orwellian device.
Not a metaphor to be decoded, but a chorus we keep hearing and forgetting.
A warning.
A mirror.
Stop. Listen. It’s not too late.
Is humanity destined to undo itself? If this story was born of another century, why does it still recognize us so easily? When words soften what is being taken, when fear is sold as care, when obedience is mistaken for virtue—haven’t we been here before? Were the commandments ever meant to last, or were they always fragile things, pencil-written, waiting for stronger hands to erase and revise them? Do we only notice what we’ve become after the language has already changed?
And are not all disruptions born of faith?
If you enjoy allegorical satire, Animal Farm remains a rebellious read.
Spoiler alert: Boxer’s demise gutted me. Not because it surprised me—but because it felt so familiar. The faithful are always promised rest. They are always carried away.
Maybe, in another 80 years, we will finally clear our ears.
Or maybe the satire will simply move on to another set of animals.
And still—I can’t help but wonder why, with all the names he could have chosen, Eric chose “George.”
WRITTEN: 7 January 2026
How did the book make me feel/think?
Present.
Upsetting—how a book written 80 years ago can read as if it lives inside a parallel universe of all times. A story voiced again and again throughout humanity’s terror, still falling on ears too tired, too distracted, or too invested to listen.
The animals became an Orwellian device.
Not a metaphor to be decoded, but a chorus we keep hearing and forgetting.
A warning.
A mirror.
Stop. Listen. It’s not too late.
Is humanity destined to undo itself? If this story was born of another century, why does it still recognize us so easily? When words soften what is being taken, when fear is sold as care, when obedience is mistaken for virtue—haven’t we been here before? Were the commandments ever meant to last, or were they always fragile things, pencil-written, waiting for stronger hands to erase and revise them? Do we only notice what we’ve become after the language has already changed?
And are not all disruptions born of faith?
If you enjoy allegorical satire, Animal Farm remains a rebellious read.
Spoiler alert: Boxer’s demise gutted me. Not because it surprised me—but because it felt so familiar. The faithful are always promised rest. They are always carried away.
Maybe, in another 80 years, we will finally clear our ears.
Or maybe the satire will simply move on to another set of animals.
And still—I can’t help but wonder why, with all the names he could have chosen, Eric chose “George.”
WRITTEN: 7 January 2026
This is a book to be lived inside.
How did the book make me feel/think?
“Christine Estima doesn’t just write beautifully—she places the reader inside the prose and gives them a part to play.”
— Lindsay Wincherauk
Letters to Kafka might be the most beautifully written book I’ve read. Every page dances to life.
Christine Estima’s phraseology is intoxicatingly vibrant, each page standing on its own—visual, alive, and immersive. Her mastery places readers dead smack in the middle of the prose, giving them a role in the experience, something that becomes genuinely hard to put down.
At its heart, Letters to Kafka is an unrequited love story—about friendship, devotion, and the quiet damage done as feminism collides with a world struggling to adjust to shifting roles. The love here is unconditional. Kafka is reintroduced not as the symbol many reduce him to, but as a living presence—human, intimate, and reimagined.
Estima’s writing is profoundly visual. It feels dream-shaped, textured, and luminous, as if each page has already passed through the subconscious before reaching the reader. The result is prose that doesn’t just describe—it unfolds.
My own writing was once compared to Kafka’s. I took it as a compliment, though I assumed it meant I was a little unhinged. After Letters to Kafka, that comparison feels clarified. The brilliance isn’t madness—it’s exposure. Estima’s work makes that unmistakably clear.
This is a book to be lived inside.
Written: 4 January 2026
How did the book make me feel/think?
“Christine Estima doesn’t just write beautifully—she places the reader inside the prose and gives them a part to play.”
— Lindsay Wincherauk
Letters to Kafka might be the most beautifully written book I’ve read. Every page dances to life.
Christine Estima’s phraseology is intoxicatingly vibrant, each page standing on its own—visual, alive, and immersive. Her mastery places readers dead smack in the middle of the prose, giving them a role in the experience, something that becomes genuinely hard to put down.
At its heart, Letters to Kafka is an unrequited love story—about friendship, devotion, and the quiet damage done as feminism collides with a world struggling to adjust to shifting roles. The love here is unconditional. Kafka is reintroduced not as the symbol many reduce him to, but as a living presence—human, intimate, and reimagined.
Estima’s writing is profoundly visual. It feels dream-shaped, textured, and luminous, as if each page has already passed through the subconscious before reaching the reader. The result is prose that doesn’t just describe—it unfolds.
My own writing was once compared to Kafka’s. I took it as a compliment, though I assumed it meant I was a little unhinged. After Letters to Kafka, that comparison feels clarified. The brilliance isn’t madness—it’s exposure. Estima’s work makes that unmistakably clear.
This is a book to be lived inside.
Written: 4 January 2026
When Silence Is the First Violence
How did the book make me feel/think?
I read a page. I cry.
I read another page. I cry again.
I see myself in these pages — not in circumstance, never in scale, but in erasure.
I was born to an unwed mother, in a place of shame, where silence was the condition for being allowed to exist at all. Before my birth, the erasure had already begun.
I understand displacement. I understand the need to belong.
But how do you belong when no one is willing to say you exist?
My friends are conditioned. My life is heavy. They lack the bandwidth, and so I am dismissed — gifted the solitude of creativity, born of pain, born of being an outsider.
There are protests in our streets: Free Palestine.
Some ask why they don’t protest where they’re from — as if suffering should be kept out of sight — not understanding the complicity in suggesting people struggling to be seen return to an active genocide, simply because it took a few extra minutes to get to the store.
Saeed Teebi’s writing does not allow that silence.
This book is courageous.
It is an appeal for humanity.
We must not be erased.
We must never revert to lying.
This is an essential read.
Written: 2 January 2026
How did the book make me feel/think?
I read a page. I cry.
I read another page. I cry again.
I see myself in these pages — not in circumstance, never in scale, but in erasure.
I was born to an unwed mother, in a place of shame, where silence was the condition for being allowed to exist at all. Before my birth, the erasure had already begun.
I understand displacement. I understand the need to belong.
But how do you belong when no one is willing to say you exist?
My friends are conditioned. My life is heavy. They lack the bandwidth, and so I am dismissed — gifted the solitude of creativity, born of pain, born of being an outsider.
There are protests in our streets: Free Palestine.
Some ask why they don’t protest where they’re from — as if suffering should be kept out of sight — not understanding the complicity in suggesting people struggling to be seen return to an active genocide, simply because it took a few extra minutes to get to the store.
Saeed Teebi’s writing does not allow that silence.
This book is courageous.
It is an appeal for humanity.
We must not be erased.
We must never revert to lying.
This is an essential read.
Written: 2 January 2026
Batch 42 Reviews
| 42._book_thoughts_-_batch_42.pdf |
