Friday Reads — April 24th, 2026

It's Friday again, and time for Friday Reads!

This week, LibraryThing staff are reading:

Tim / @timspalding: The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu
Kate / @katemcangus: The Unknown by Riley Sager
Lucy / @knerd.knitter: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
Zeph / @ZephCraven: The Ending Writes Itself by Evelyn Clarke

What about all of you? What are you reading this Friday?

Delving again into one of Brian Kilmeade's short books on an historical event. This time it's "Sam Houston and the Alamo Avengers." These are a good change of pace from the giant Presidential biographies I usually read.

Via Kindle:
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Bk 2-, Ch 1-, p 175- / Haruki Murakami; translation Jay Rubin
Via the Kindle app:
The Age of Napoleon: The Story of Civilization, Volume XI Bk 3-, Ch XXII-, p 765- / Will & Ariel Durant
Hardcover remainder:
The Abyss Pt 2- p 158- / Marguerite Yourcenar; translation Grace Frick w/the author
Trade paperback:
SPQR: a history of ancient Rome Ch 8- p 300- / Mary Beard

Bedtime Reading:
Everyman hardcover:
The Romany Rye Ch XXVII- p 160- / George Borrow

Finished The Red and the Black on Sunday; spent a chunk of Monday & off & on later in the week sampling various TBR's to bump up to current reading. Settled on the Murakami -- very immersive stuff so far; sorry I got to him so late in life! -- but waiting in the wings have a recently downloaded John McPhee geology book, re-read of Thomas Browne's Religio Medici/Urne Burial via Kindle app, a possible re-read of a grumpy Saul Bellow novel from my Library of America stash & (at the low end), as a background to The Abyss -- Huizinga's The Waning of the Middle Ages via the Kindle app. Also Kristin Lavransdatter: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) still on bedtime hiatus. Physical book is so heavy I need a gym spotter to keep it from crushing my chest when I try to read it in bed.

Margarita, a Legend of the Fight for the Great River, which has got me learning some colonial history I never gave much thought to (and along the way, how to pronounce Natchitoches - that's some spelling crimes right there lol)

and Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach which is very cool and has had me hooked since I picked it up in the wee hours today.

I'm going to chime in, although I have hardly read anything this month. No, not true. I've read, but not books. It's been all online websites, researching for the National Poetry Month topics I've been covering daily on The Poetry Collective. (The State of the Thing says it's been a poem a day post for NPM, but that's not entirely accurate. However, I'm super glad we got the mention so poetry lovers can find us and come over to comment and discuss literature's apparent smallest loved genre.)

Anyway, I've been reading lots and lots about poetry subjects, themes, celebrations, techniques, and all things poetry-related, 24 days thus far. It's been a zillion rabbit holes, a zillion websites. It's been a blast. I do, though, look forward to the end of the month, back to just normal flitting around the web *and* holding a book to read once again.

>5 DebiCates: You may have already encountered it, but the LitHub site has a "One Great Poem to Read Today" feature (it's mid-page once you eliminate the barrage of pop-ups), e.g.:

One great poem to read today: Marie Howe’s “You Think This Happened Only Once and Long Ago.”

>6 featherbear: Thank you for sharing that. I'll go check out today's poem. In case you are interested (are you interested in poetry, a kindred spirit?) here's another I subscribe to, it comes to my email from Poets.org (the site of the Academy of American Poets, which covers the US and Canada). You can read each day's changing poem and subscribe as well at this page https://poets.org/poem-a-day Today's poem is Flyway by Maxine Scates.

>5 DebiCates: Another site I've overlooked:

Asian Review of Books: Poetry Reviews. The Asian Review site has been a mess for the past few weeks, but seems to have been straightened out & looks pretty good now.

>8 featherbear: OH, that's a good one to know. Thank you!! If you think of other poetry sites, please I hope you'll continue to share them. I see that you do a lot Internet Literature...monitoring, for lack of a better word. You must be a magnificent wealth of information.

As admin of The Poetry Collective, I try to keep certain topics alive and as repositories. One is simply "Poetry online resources" https://www.librarything.com/topic/376223 and I will go there soon to add a message that includes these links you've provided. At some point (when More Time magically appears), I'd like to provide an organized list of sites within that topic.

>9 DebiCates: Before I forget (& often do), & because I wasn't covering this on my book thread:

Yale Review featuring National Poetry Month -- before the month ends.

& the NYT is covering poetry month w/various articles:

Greg Cowles, Edward Vega and Laura Salaberry. NYT, 04/25/2026: Poetry Month Reading Recommendations. "It’s National Poetry Month! Greg Cowles, an editor at The New York Times Book Review, recommends some poetry books while writing poems with fridge magnets."

see also today's NYT book page: https://www.nytimes.com/section/books/review

OK, can we get back to weekend reads folks -- sorry for the digression.

late addition: since I finished Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach yesterday, I had a second (third?) Friday read - Little Men.

I did not like the book at all when I was a kid - we'll see how it goes this time!