reading update: april 2026
hey, kittens. as promised, here's what daddy's been reading.
Little Bosses Everywhere: How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America (Bridget Read, 2024; read by Nikki Massoud, 2025) - a really well-researched history of America's pyramid schemes, from lowly door-to-door salesmen to the modern powerhouses like Mary Kay. the book explores the predatory nature of these schemes, the manipulative tactics used by the people on top to squeeze fortunes out of their downlines, and the direct link between pyramid schemes at the far right. if you want to get mad about how much of American policy is shaped by shithead scammers, boy do I have a book for you!
Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression (Sandra Lee Bartky, 1990) - okay, so, HUGE milestone: this was the book in the #1 spot on my to-read list for YEARS, because I added it all the way back in 2017 when one of Bartky's essays, "Feminine Masochism," was assigned reading in one of my undergrad classes and hit me at a really important moment as I was realizing I didn't want to be a woman who habitually shaved or wore makeup. it's definitely a text that delves deeper into Big Philosophy than I can always keep up with, and that honestly makes me glad that I waited almost ten years to read the whole book. I think a real sign of maturity is knowing that's okay not to 100% understand everything an academic throws at you and just absorb what you can.
Blood of Hercules (Jasmine Mas, 2024) - Patreon pick. unfathomably bad. really and truly broke my brain for a while. the reveal of what the "blood of Hercules" actually refers to had me inconsolable.
Peach Pit: Sixteen Stories of Unsavory Women (ed. Molly Llewellyn and Kristel Buckley, 2023) - there are some gems in this collection, but on the whole I couldn't help wishing that more of these women were actual assholes. I hear "unsavory" and I'm like... man, I don't know, I just want a little more oomph. the majority of the protagonists are just lashing out after experiencing abuse, and I'm supposed to find that unsympathetic? a disabled girl uses masturbation to summon a hot lady devil to eat her out and vanquish anyone who's ableist to her, and I'm supposed to think that's wrong? come on.
The Mixed Marriage Project: A Memoir of Love, Race, and Family (Dorothy Roberts, 2026) - this was a really lovely read, following Roberts, a sociologist well known for writing on racism, as she delves into the work of her deceased parents' own sociological project interviewing interracial Black and white couples. Roberts herself is the daughter of a white man and a Black woman, and she often finds herself reexamining parts of her happy childhood through the lens of her parents' obsessive work. I want to be clear that this isn't a situation where Roberts is finding horrible skeletons that cast a sinister light over anything she thought she knew about her mother and father, but she does discover new things about them and develop a new appreciation for the way she was raised and the formation of her own identity of being "a Black girl with a white father." a big chunk of the book is given to recounting the interviews Roberts' parents conducted with interracial Chicago couples over half a century, interspersed with Roberts' contemporary commentary, and it makes for a fascinating historical document in addition to a moving family memoir.
Chainsaw Man Vol. 5 (Tatsuki Fujimoto, 2020; trans. Amanda Haley, 2021) - I will be so honest: I've been having a fun enough time with Chainsaw Man but didn't really understand the stranglehold that it's had on so many of my friends. this was the first one where I got it! there's a shark now!
Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture (Virginia Sole-Smith, 2023; read by the author) - listen, I'm gonna say it up front: big chunks of this book are going to be a reheat for you if you're familiar with, like, any fat liberation work at all prior to reading this. if you don't need to be convinced that being fat isn't a death sentence and that starving your kids to keep their weight down is bad, actually, there are probably going to be some chapters you can skip. but as someone who works with kids, and has a nephew growing up in a world full of body stigma, there were some great insights here, and I appreciate how Sole-Smith doesn't every shy away from the fact that there's no single, failure-proof way for adult caregivers to help kids navigate the barrage of fatphobia they'll inevitably encounter. it would ring false to act as if there was, and I really appreciated the honesty in examining the attempts that different parents have made from so many angles.
Beasts of Burden: Occupied Territory (Evan Dorkin, Sarah Dyer, Benjamin Dewey, and Nate Piekos, 2021) - listen. Beast of Burden started off as a really fun comic, with some good little self-contained spooky stories that I like a lot. it was also Very White in a really unexamined way from the jump, with a real tendency to affiliate The Other with danger and evil. early story arcs include a Native American werewolf in the vein of Twilight and evil lesbian witches worshiping Egyptian gods. this tendency never really decreased, and the plot also got to bloated and weighted under its own attempts to establish a compelling lore that was never really necessary. I'm a little sad to be caught up and done with BoB, but what I'll really miss is the potential that the series started out with, rather than what it ended up being.
Hench (Natalie Zina Walschots, 2020) - this was a reread to get ready for the release of the sequel, Villain, which is coming out ten days from when I post this. it's probably going to be a whiiiiiile before I can actually get to it, but I'm really looking forward to it! Hench was the first novel I've read in a long time that left me feeling like I'd read it too fast and still had more when I was done, because it's such an absolute blast from start to finish.
