mid yr freak out tag 2026

[00:00:03][music] Ooh. Hi. Hello. It's your boy Nate. I read books cuz reading is sexy. And if you're not reading, you're not sexy.

[00:00:16]Look at this. Look at this. It's my favorite tag of the year. The midyear freakout tag. Um, all right. First question. How has your reading year been so far? So far, we've got 62 books under our belt. That's That's fine. I think we're at pace. I always tell myself my reading goal is 52 books a year. That's [music] a book a week. And if you can manage that, that's more than enough.

[00:00:36]Honestly, I don't really care how many books I read this year. I used to care, but I' i've just been enjoying life. All right, let me enjoy life. Literature is my life, but I I've been doing other things and it's nice. What is the best book that you've read so far this year?

[00:00:52]This is translated from English. This is the Korean version, but it is devotional cinema by Nathaniel Dorski. I think just a seinal text in how film is spiritual.

[00:01:02]It's based off of a talk that Dorski gave and then just reformatted in the form of an essay. I think it's just everything I believe cinema to be, its power, its transcendence, and it's a text that I will definitely revisit.

[00:01:15]There's just something that comes off the page when I was reading this and is like a testament to film and how transformative art can be. Looking at things like this just makes me love art so much. Best sequel you've read. I don't do series. [laughter] It's a thing [clears throat] you buy into and I don't like to buy into things. Trends. New release you've not read yet but want to is The Director by Daniel Kelman. It's about a movie director that goes on many side quests. I think a portion of it is about the director's experience as a filmmaker in Nazi Germany. It reminds me a lot of Mel Brooks's The Producers, Springtime for Hitler, but also the life and career of maybe Lenny Rifen. For a book that combining film and books, I don't know why I haven't done it yet. It might be the last book that I buy in the year. I told myself only four books and I think this this might be it. most anticipated release of the second half of the year. We've got a few. I'm really excited for Taipei Story by RF Kuang.

[00:02:16]Sort of her first piece of litfic. I'm really excited to look at that. American Hogwan by Mi E. I loved Pachinko when it first came out. This one's this one's a biggie. Book of the summer, I think.

[00:02:27]Excited to do it. And yes, I am a Rachel Kusk fan. So, Life of M. Always interested to see what she's doing and what she's working with. What was the biggest disappointment of the year so far?

[00:02:41]Come one, come all to the Ishiguro hate train. I I thought I was really going to like this. All right. And thanks to everyone in my last video that came in talking about Ishiguro. Yeah, I don't know why he doesn't work for me. He's someone that should, but someone please come in and tell me why do you like Ishiguro? Why do you like him and not some other writer who's doing something much better with so much more meat and intensity? I just think his books are just a little too thin for me. All ironic to say given that he writes a lot. [laughter] So yeah, please please let me know. Someone had told me a pale view of hills might work for me better.

[00:03:19]I might make that as my last Ishiguro.

[00:03:22]But yeah, read the unconsoled. You know how I feel about this. I thought I was going to like it. U because it's something that should work for me. You know, I love dream logic. I love dream scenarios. And this what happens is it just gets too repetitive and I don't know why. I don't know why he does that.

[00:03:40]Repetition is fine in literature. It just has to do something right. It can't be doing the same thing over and over again. You have to use it in a way that layers either through character introspection or a change in plot, a pacing of plot or a reframing. But I think Ishiguro's use of repetition is just to make word count of some sort.

[00:04:00]But can someone explain to me why Ishiguro repeats things over and over again? [sighs and gasps] What is the biggest surprise of the year so far? Sisters in Yellow by Mako Kawakami. I'm a big Kawakami head. I love everything that she does on pointing fingers at issues in contemporary Japan. She's really good at it. What I loved about this is that it's marketed as a thriller, but it really isn't. I've noticed that there's this thing happening in Litfic where everything is mismarketed. It tries to draw you in with a certain edge, but it doesn't deliver that edge. And though I don't think this book delivered so much in its thriller aspect or thriller as a genre, I think there's something interesting happening with artists and wanting to write within genre. And here I think it works so well because I think the characters are really strong and offer so much more than say the usual genre piece with a thriller. When you think of a thriller, of course, it has to be action-packed and everything, but here it uses the refrain of thriller as a genre and really edging us towards character change, character choices.

[00:05:04]Those choices are very bold. Those choices thicken the plot and I think that's what's so entertaining about this book. Who's your new favorite author? I have to say Brian Dylan. I read a supposed a sentence a month or two back and I just really love his style in terms of how he forms essays and his love for literature. I think this book out by Fitz Caraldo just really showed me or drew me back into this love for language and love for literature. I feel like having read so much literary fiction, especially contemporary literary fiction, I'm so tired of the language that's being used. It's that MFA language. It's the Sally Rooneyification of dialogue that just sits so empty. It's so much more hollowed out than say Raymond Carver. It just doesn't do anything for me anymore.

[00:05:51]But Dylan reminded me that language can be playful. Language can be fun. There used to be so much craft in using language to elevate plot or character or movement. I miss that about reading.

[00:06:02][music] Dylan is has a fantastic voice on the very ways language can be fanciful. But also been reading a lot of Korean speculative fiction this year because I'm here in Soul. Teddy Bears Never Die and I have here Shift by Chan.

[00:06:18]I think you're going to be seeing more of her in the next few years. I think she's a very very interesting speculative fiction writer in which her stories and the language that she uses is very textural. She didn't study writing in university. She actually studied metal working. And I think her experience as a metal worker really shape literally shape how she writes and it just is so sensual and textural like you could almost feel it. There's that buzz. I'm always looking for that in new voices. Uh what are new voices providing for literature today and I think she's doing quite a bunch of good stuff but also like combining genres as well with like science fiction, horror and action.

[00:06:58]Her books are quite plotty and she has rich characters. They just have sort of like a movie like fluidity to them as well. You can imagine them as films and I think that's what I like most about her writing. Who is your fictional crush? It has to be the little weirdo brother in Amriita who can foresee parts of the future, can talk to ghosts and everything. By no means is this a very good book, but I think Banana just writes her male characters in this like really funny way. I think they're just also lovable social outcasts, but they have a sense of cool to them. And I just watched this Japanese film called Go, and the male lead in that just reminds me a lot of the brother in here. They're just so lovable, so cute. Just like, "Oh, you're so weird. Let me pinch your cheeks." Count on Banana Yoshimoto to write some some cute guys. Who's your new favorite fictional character?

[00:07:51]Controversial to say Lena Dunham from Famesick, a memoir. I honestly think Lena is a character before she is a person. You could totally tell that in Famesick. Just the ludicrous life that she's led, the opportunities that she's been given, but also with such horror, such brilliance, such awe, but incredibly funny, but also wholeheartedly sad. And I love this memoir so much. But it's her resilience and character that I think is just such a testament not just to life, but also just to the great modern woman. I just think she's such a lovable person. You have to be a very particular kind of person to like her and to stand her, but I don't know, she just reminds me of that like very very desperate friend that wants love and connection, but has been given a lot of hardships and sure plenty of successes, but she knows how to do it in a way that uh impresses you.

[00:08:45]You can't help but just be all ears and be there for her. And uh I think that's what I like most about Lena Dunham as a character because I think she's also someone that I want to try, not that I want to be her, but it's her successes that I aim after, but also her her sheer honesty that I also aim after. Um there's just this great levity [music] that she has of saying so much, maybe too much, but with so much grace with her sharp tongue and her humor. A book that made you cry. Very recently, Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yun Lee. By the time I finished this, I was sitting on my bed and I I was just crying Sunday morning really shifted something in me and shifted the light and everything.

[00:09:27]And it's a memoir about the loss of her two sons. Loss does something to you.

[00:09:31]It's a it's a little nudge, a little push to make you a little more sober and realize how precious life is and how much more living one needs to do and also how how much life is also around you. Just a very, very beautiful, beautiful memoir. What is a book that made you happy? David Sedaris, The Land and Its People. Recently, just listened to it as audio book. I'll talk about it more, but man, you can always count on David for sharing the funniest stories and having the funniest decides. And what I liked about this collection the most, uh, it's been a while for me. I haven't read a David Sedaris in a while, but this one, I think he's just at the top of his game. Every single story made me laugh. Maybe like one or two kind of made me like, "Oh, that's interesting."

[00:10:13]And they sort of work as like buffers in between the funnier stories. I think he managed to make me laugh, I think, in every single story. And that's that's hard. I don't think he's done that for me before. This just made me having the goofiest, dumbest smile walking through the streets, coming to and from work.

[00:10:30]Just listening to this put me in a very, very good mood. Love, David. What is the most beautiful book you have bought this year? I haven't bought many books and I don't think any of them are that pretty.

[00:10:41]But I will share the prettiest book that I've been gifted. It is Traveling Practice by Yusuke Dorishu. This is out by Hford Star. Hford Star just has the most beautiful books. But if you can see here, it's just this crane. The artwork is impressionistic in a way. And it just looks so good. Look at that. And also the end pages are this lime green there.

[00:11:05]I just think it does something so seamlessly between cover to the inside.

[00:11:10]There's a design language happening here, folks. They always feel so good in the hands. I'm super excited to do this.

[00:11:16]It won the Yukio Mishima Prize, [music] and I didn't know there was such a prize. So excited to do this. What books do you need to read by the end of the year? Here I have Sunset at Lion Rock by Matthew Wong Foreman. This is by 713 Books. I think they're doing incredibly cool stuff. It's a publisher made by writers for writers. I think it's bringing in really interesting books.

[00:11:39]Actually, The Morke keeper, also by the same publisher, was one of my favorite books of last year. I think because of how different it felt to everything that was being published at that time. I think I could always trust independent voices for bringing in just interesting things. Um, I'm always looking for that in literature. So, nobody in Eric's family talks about why photos of his uncle Mikey are on every table in every room. Years of silence together with relentless Buddhist upbringing has Eric convinced he is Mikey's reincarnation.

[00:12:07]Ooh, sounds wonderful. But yeah, set in Hong Kong and yeah, really excited to see what it does. Here it says it's navigating racial confusion, religious trauma, the meaning of friendship, and the struggle for self-discovery in a shifting c. Why can't Anna speak today?

[00:12:21]Oh my goodness. In a shifting culture on the eve of the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China.

[00:12:29]Crazy. Crazy. quazy. I'm all for that.

[00:12:32]And then the rest of the books that I need to read are just like NetGalley arcs. Here I have Kitten by Stacy U.

[00:12:37]Does anybody watch Stacy? Let me know. I hear she's a book creator. I think mostly on Tik Tok. Uh I don't really use Tik Tok like that, but if anyone watches Stacy, let me know. I have Switzy by Emma Klene. I'm giving Emma Klein another shot. I did not like her last book that much. I think she does something with feeling. Like I always feel very odd and strange in her books and I like that. Always curious to see what she's doing. And also the best American short stories edited [music] by Viet Tanwin. You might know him best from the sympathizers. Curious to see what he thinks are the sort of the best short stories and how he maneuvered these pieces around each other. And yeah, I think like looking at these anthologies, these short story anthologies is also a cool way to scope out what's interesting and what voices are being heard or being brought forth and what's happening literature these days. Another anthology that I really like is the push cart. There's a annual push cart prize and and the best short stories in America are selected and just gathered into this like hefty thing.

[00:13:34]Very happy that I have this as a net galley arc. I could just read it as an ebook. Any plans for the rest of your reading year ahead? Not anything really big, but I'm here for big books. Big books for the rest of the year. I'm not after a number of books this year. I just would like to read some longer stuff that has just been sitting on my shelf. Yeah, this year has been about reading off of my shelf, which has been nice. Here I have The Birthday Party by Lo Mvin. This has been same TBRs for like for the past 2 years. I just haven't done it yet, and I I think I might do it for a summer this year. Hold me accountable, folks, please. I also came into possession of Jonathan Franen's The Corrections. Yeah, I'm a Franen head. I always like what he's doing with his people, especially in family dramas. And I think he is a compelling writer. Would be nice to just like sit with characters and really live through them. And this book has been on my shelf for I want to say a decade. Oh my god. 16 years. 16 years. And uh I just need to do it. John Waters had Oh, look at that.

[00:14:46]Cute. It's a David Hawkney postcard.

[00:14:48]Love that from a friend. I didn't know I put that in there. This is The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Steed.

[00:14:54]Apparently a uh cult classic from Australia, but mostly picked this up because John Waters had uh named it as one of his favorite books. I think he's cookie and I love his cookie books and his cookie pics. So that should be really interesting. Oh my gosh, look at that. Love that bookmark. This is from Dogeared Alleycat and Badger. I don't think I've ever been to Badger.

[00:15:17]Interesting. I don't know if it's still there. If any of these are still there.

[00:15:20]I think doggeeared is still there. San Francisco folks, let me know.

[00:15:25]Oh my lord. I will say it's been a fruitful reading year. I just been reading a bunch of stuff. It's been nice. I uh tried to read everything.

[00:15:34]This looks excessive though, doesn't it?

[00:15:37]Anyway, what are your reading plans for the rest of year? Let me know. And yeah, this is a tag video, so literally just going to tag everybody. If you've made it to the end, please make this video yourself. It's one of my favorite tags to look at because it just gives a quick snapshot to someone's reading and review. And uh yeah, we I like that it's a little catchup, if you will. As always, be well, do good work, keep in touch.

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