January 2026's Burgoine and Pearl-Rule reviews

Author 'Nathan Burgoine posted this simple, direct method of not getting paralyzed by the prospect of having to write reviews. The Three-Sentence Review is, as he notes, very helpful and also simple to achieve. I get completely unmanned at the idea of saying something trenchant about each book I read, when there often just isn't that much to say...now I can use this structure to say what I think is the most important idea I took away from the read and not try to dig for more.

Think about using it yourselves!

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Evenings and Weekends by Oisín McKenna

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: For fans of Sally Rooney and Torrey Peters, a taut and profoundly moving debut that follows a cast of intricately linked characters during a heatwave in London as simmering tensions and secrets come to a head over one life-changing weekend.

London, 2019. It’s the hottest June on record, and a whale is stuck in the Thames River. In the streets of the city, four old acquaintances want more from life than they’ve been given. On the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, their paths will intersect at a party that will change their lives forever…

Maggie, a once-hopeful artist turned waitress, is pregnant and preparing to move back to her hometown with her boyfriend and father-to-be Ed, leaving the city she loves and the life she imagined for herself.

Ed, coasting through life as a barely competent bike courier, is ready for a new start with Maggie and their baby, if only to finally leave behind his secret past of hooking up with strange men in train station bathrooms—and his secret past with Maggie’s best friend, Phil.

Phil, who sleepwalks through his office job and lives for the weekends, is on the brink of achieving his first real relationship with his roommate Keith. The two live in an illegal warehouse commune with other quirky creatives and idealists—the site of the party to end all parties.

As the temperature continues to climb, Maggie, Ed, and Phil will have to confront their shared pasts, current desires, and limits of their future lives together before the weekend is over.

Strikingly heartfelt, sexually charged, and disarmingly comic, Oisín McKenna’s addictive, page-turning debut is a mesmerizing dive into the soul of a city and a critical look at the political, emotional, and financial hurdles facing young adults trying to build lives there and often living for their evenings and weekends.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: A young person's book. Quite steamy. Heatwaves, horniness, the eternal matter of Youth: Discover the city, discover the needs-being-met rapture, look for sateity in satiation, find yourself...and others...in giving grace.

Absolute favorite quality? No one in this story is malicious, only young and needing Life, so sometimes careless and then contrite. I'm just too old, too much over it to fall in more than like.

Mariner Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) asks $10.99 for an ebook. If you're needing something to rev up the libidinous energies, or you're eager to immerse yourself in The Twenties, here you go.

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Grown Ups by Marie Aubert (tr. Rosie Hedger)

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Exhilarating, funny, and unexpectedly devastating, Grown Ups is for anyone who has ever felt the fear of being overtaken by a sibling, who feels almost—but not quite—grown up, and who's struggled to navigate a new future for themselves.

Ida is a forty-year-old architect, single and starting to panic. She's navigating Tinder and contemplating freezing her eggs, terrified that time has passed her by, silently, without her ever realising it.

All she sees are other people's children, everywhere.

Now stuck in the idyllic Norwegian countryside for a gathering to mark her mother's sixty-fifth birthday, Ida is regressing. She's fighting with her younger sister, Marthe, and flirting with her sister's husband. But when some supposedly wonderful news from Marthe heightens tensions further, Ida is forced to mark out new milestones of her own.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: It's sharp, pointed, honest and not a little discomfiting:

I hadn’t believed it, not really. My friends have all overtaken me, each and every one of them, but now Marthe too, somewhere inside I had always believed that nothing would come of it, that things wouldn’t ever change, that Marthe would always be there in need of consolation, that she wouldn’t ever overtake me. She can’t overtake me.

Ida's forty, single, in the part of life where nearly everyone asks themselves "Is this it? if it is, am I okay with that?" Ida, like so many unhappy people, answers no. That leads her to behave reprehensibly, to exact a revenge (for Life Being Unfair) on the people she resents. Spoiler: they deserve it. A mordantly amusing midlife crisis novel that's too bleak to be a real comedy.

Pushkin Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) needs you to fork over $9.99 for an ebook. Pretty grim, but the right mood....

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Amphibian by Tyler Wetherall

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Sissy is used to being on the outside. The new girl in her West Country school, she recently arrived with her troubled mother, prone to letting Sissy fend for herself.

But from the day Sissy fights a boy in front of Tegan, she's no longer alone. Bonded by violence, they grow so close they feel like one wrapped around each other in bed at sleepovers, sending photographs to men they meet online, and scaring each other with reports of the girls being snatched at night in their town.

Over the course of the school year, they find themselves on the threshold of girlhood, with threats gathering thick and fast around them. And as their make-believe worlds bleed into their daily lives, Sissy feels herself transforming into something strange and terrifying.

With deft notes of magical realism and a constant psychological acuity, Amphibian is a tender, haunting coming-of-age debut, about desire, precocity and the intensity of early friendships that have the power to upend our lives.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Tegan and Sissy, seemingly not similar people, discover that adolescent enmeshing bond of intimate Otherness that enlivens a lot of adolescents' maturation. Using amphibian-ness as a metaphor for adolescence is a great idea. When it begins to become literal I rather lost interest.

I remain unsure if it *did* become literal or if I simply did not understand the last ~15% of the book. Thus my rating, and my lack of enthusiasm for the story. Endings endure in memory; make sure they flow even if they're off kilter. See Mrs. Caliban for a master class.

Ig Publishing (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) says "$18.95 please" no matter what edition you choose.

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The Dissenters by Youssef Rakha

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A transgressive novel by an acclaimed writer that spans seventy years of Egyptian history

Certain as I’ve never been of anything in the world that you have a right or a duty to know, that you absolutely must know, I sail through the mouth of that river into the sea of her life.

Amna, Nimo, Mouna―these are all names for a single Egyptian woman whose life has mirrored that of her country. After her death in 2015, her son, Nour, ascends to the attic of their house where he glimpses her in a series of ever more immersive visions: Amna as a young woman forced into an arranged marriage in the 1950s, a coquettish student of French known to her confidants as Nimo, a self-made divorcee and a lover, a “pious mama” donning her hijab, and, finally, a feminist activist during the Arab Spring. Charged and renewed by these visions of a woman he has always known as Mouna, Nour begins a series of fevered letters to his sister―who has been estranged from Mouna and from Egypt for many years―in an attempt to reconcile what both siblings know about this mercurial woman, their country, and the possibility for true revolution after so much has failed.

Hallucinatory, erotic, and stylish, The Dissenters is a transcendent portrait of a woman and an era that explodes our ideas of faith, gender roles, freedom, and political agency.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: "A truth-seeker, a lover, a revolutionary-I could never be any of those things if I didn't understand that I was an Egyptian woman's son. Only by finding out how the story of her life is the history of this country could I know who I am."

I wanted to be more impressed than I was by this first written-in-English novel from an Egyptian literary light. It's a bit more self-important than I thought was justified. It intrigued me most when Nour, the son, began to blur his identity in with his mother's. I did not eagerly seek the next chance to read the story, but would dutifully record notes of praise after each sitting. Odd.

Graywolf Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) tells you the bill is $9.99 for an ebook.

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The Cartographer of Absences: A Novel by Mia Couto (tr. David Brookshaw)

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: An atmospheric novel about a father and son in the waning days of colonial Mozambique by the winner of the 2025 PEN/Nabokov Award

Diogo Santiago is a celebrated Mozambican poet and intellectual, a well-known professor at the university in his country’s capital. In 2019, on the eve of a cyclone that will devastate the East African coast, he returns to his hometown of Beira to receive a tribute from his fellow citizens. As he travels across Mozambique, his mind returns to the past—to his own upbringing, and to the history of his country when it was still a Portuguese colony.

Diogo’s father, himself a poet and a journalist, observed a terrible massacre committed during the waning days of the Estado Novo and was persecuted by the PIDE, the Portuguese secret police. Diogo’s reflections on his father’s life are interspersed with found documents—letters, stories, entries in the journal kept by the PIDE agent who oversaw the case. As Cyclone Idai approaches Beira, threatening to wipe away the physical traces of the world in which he grew up, Diogo is forced to confront the impermanence of his own memories, too.

A haunting novel of historical witness, The Cartographer of Absences is one of Mia Couto’s finest works. Drawing on the author’s own life in colonial Mozambique, this book is a significant new entry in the world literature canon.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Absolutely wonderful tale of destruction—natural, political, emotional; violence—committed or merely engendered; losses resulting from them and their immense power to clarify, to reify purpose from inescapable action.

Knowledge of colonial Portuguese rule and its structures of oppression will help you connect the story's branches to the narrative trunk. It is unfamiliar territory to most in the US, likely the Anglophone world but the rewards are great for investing the effort. I can't offer more stars because the writing felt more obscurantist than atmospheric a bit too often.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) asks you to deposit $14.99 into their coffers for an ebook. Do it, sez I.

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Ghosted: A History of Ghost Hunting, and Why We Keep Looking by Alice Vernon

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: A social, historical and scientific exploration of ghost-hunting, and why our fascination with the paranormal is as timeless as the ghosts we hope to find.

The history of ghosts is ancient, but the history of active ghost-hunting is relatively recent, and investigations into the paranormal have developed hand-in-spirit-hand with scientific discoveries, from radio waves to smartphone apps. Now, more than ever, we want to find our own ghosts. Is it to help process grief? Become influencers? Or ease our fears of death?

Ghosted follows the journey of paranormal investigations from the Victorian era to the modern day, examining how our fascination with ghost hunting has changed alongside technology and culture. Where we once gathered around tables, observing and recording every movement of the medium, we now take electronic equipment and app-laden phones around haunted locations to catch ghosts digitally. Where theatres and concert halls held sold-out performances by conjurers recreating the tricks of fraudulent mediums, we now delight in picking apart and exposing the evidence presented on reality television programmes.

In this book, Alice Vernon embarks on a journey to encounter a ghost, travelling to some of the UK's most haunted locations and encouraging readers to interrogate their own scepticism and belief. Ghosted examines what we are looking for, why we are looking for it, and why have we never given up the ghost.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I don't believe in ghosts as they're presented in popular culture, but am *fascinated* by the why of belief in them; it's incredibly pervasive in most all cultures. I'd hoped Author Vernon would delve into this deeply, but it is more of a survey of some Western cultures' afterlife fantasies with surface-level correlative data presented by a fellow skeptic.

If a deep dive is what you were seeking, this is not that but it was a solidly written read. Just not the one I sought, or thought based on the synopsis it would be.

Bloomsbury Sigma (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) requests $19.00 for a paperback edition. I'm not sure I myownself would spend that.

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Mega Milk: Essays on Family, Fluidity, Whiteness, and Cows by Megan Milks

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A sparkling, funny, and often wrenching portrait-in-essays on the dairy industry, queer intimacy, family, fluidity, whiteness, and cows.

For decades, Megan Milks has wondered what it means to share a last name with the classic white American beverage. Now, Milks takes on their namesake subject in all its dimensions, venturing into the worlds of small dairies, bovine genetics, and manure while also turning their eye on their family and themself. The resulting essays connect the dots between human lactation, Big Dairy, being queer and lonely, climate change, transmasculinity, the bull semen industry, the milky roots of white supremacy, and the best practices for giving and receiving a hug. With Mega Milk, Megan Milks confirms their place as one of our most exciting queer thinkers and writers.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Milk, some form of it, is our first ever nourishment, and forms our first bonds with caregivers. In that case, what does having it as one's actual name portend, require, cause to occur?

Megan Milks takes her name to its apotheosis by exploring milk the first food of life, milk the metaphor of fluidity and change, milk the industrial product extracted from living beings through her deeply personal lens of Destiny In A Name. Enjoyable; well-made; not terribly profound to my readerly sensitivities. Would gift to any trans person I know.

The Feminist Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) charges $17.95 for all admissions to the read.

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No Rest for the Wicked by Rachel Louise Adams

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: With an expert hand, Rachel Louise Adams’s debut No Rest for the Wicked reads like an edge of your seat, heart-pounding scary movie.

In one Halloween obsessed Midwestern town, everyone’s on red alert after a local politician goes missing. Little do they know it’s only the beginning.

It’s been close to twenty years since forensic pathologist Dolores Hawthorne left her hometown of Little Horton, Wisconsin. The town is famous for its Halloween celebrations, but also its history of violent deaths linked to the holiday. To Dolores, it’s the place she fled, family, bad memories, and all. Until the FBI calls to tell her that her father—the former mayor turned US Senator—is missing under mysterious circumstances.

Some people count to ten to wake up from a nightmare. Dolores always counts the bones of her head sphenoid, frontal, lacrimal. But no matter how many times she counts them, it doesn’t change the fact that her father is missing, that his final words of warning to her were to trust no one, and that now, the rest of her family is giving Dolores a chilling welcome. With Halloween fast approaching, Dolores must face the past she left behind before it’s too late.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Steady ramping up of the pace is well used in this story of facing up to your past, to your blind spots, and your investments in relationships. I wasn't invested in the story, I think because it's about one thing but presented as a cuter, less compelling thing in the synopsis.

My expectations were set incorrectly so take that into account when I say my attention wasn't particularly compelled. A debut novel that shows promise like this one is more worthy of your taking a chance on it than a failed read by someone more established.

Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) requires $14.99 for legal access to the ebook.

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This space is dedicated to Nancy Pearl's Rule of 50, or "the Pearl Rule" as I've always called it. After realizing five times in December 2021 alone that I'd already Pearl-Ruled a book I picked up on a whim, I realized how close my Half-heimer's is getting to the full-on article. Hence my decision to track my Pearls!

As she says:

People frequently ask me how many pages they should give a book before they give up on it. In response to that question, I came up with my “rule of fifty,” which is based on the shortness of time and the immensity of the world of books. If you’re fifty years of age or younger, give a book fifty pages before you decide to commit to reading it or give it up. If you’re over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100—the result is the number of pages you should read before making your decision to stay with it or quit.

So this space will be each month's listing of Pearl-Ruled books. Earlier Pearl-Rule posts will be linked below the current month's crop.

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Joyride: A Memoir by Susan Orlean

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: “The story of my life is the story of my stories,” writes Susan Orlean in this memoir. Joyride is a ride through Orlean’s life and career, where every day is an opportunity for discovery and every moment holds the potential for wonder. Throughout her storied career, her curiosity draws her to explore the most ordinary and extraordinary of places, from going deep inside the head of a regular ten-year-old boy for a legendary profile (“The American Man Age Ten”) to reporting on a woman who owns twenty-seven tigers, from capturing the routine magic of Saturday night to climbing Mt. Fuji.

Not only does Orlean’s account of a writing life offer a trove of indispensable gleanings for writers, it’s also an essential and practical guide to embracing any creative path. She takes us through her process of dreaming up ideas, managing deadlines, connecting with sources, chasing every possible lead, confronting writer’s block and self-doubt, and crafting the perfect lede—a Susan specialty.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I noped out at 51%:

I could recall how much fun we'd had when we first fell in love in Portland, and how often we had enjoyed each other, and what a life we'd made—how we had, in a sense, grown up together, became adults together. But those memories were now scorched, indecipherable, as foreign as a language I once spoke fluently but no longer understood. After we signed our divorce agreement, I never saw {him} again for the rest of his life.

That, laddies and gentlewomen, is the sound of the hatchet being buried...in his corpse. I found myself unwilling to keep reading her life story because it felt to me as though we were going to do this kind of thing again and again.

Avid Reader Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) thinks you'll enjoy the read $16.99-worth for the ebook. Borrow it from the library.

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The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink by Thom Hartmann

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: From bestselling progressive talk show host Thom Hartmann comes an urgent autopsy of American democracy, showing how plutocrats, political cowardice, and systemic rot built the perfect runway for Trump's authoritarian ascent.

The Last American President rips open America's wounded democracy to expose a terrifying Donald Trump isn't an anomaly—he's the inevitable product of a system engineered to fail. This searing investigation reveals how a man forged by childhood trauma, pathological narcissism, and calculated cruelty didn't hijack democracy—he was handed the keys by those who should have been its guardians.

Hartmann uncovers the unholy alliance between Trump's damaged psyche and America's rotted institutions. From Fred Trump's brutal parenting to Roy Cohn's lessons in shamelessness, from a Republican Party that traded principles for power to billionaire donors who treated democracy as a profit center, this book exposes the assembly line that manufactured an authoritarian.

But this is about more than Trump's past—it's about America's future. As climate catastrophe accelerates and fascism spreads globally, Hartmann reveals the nightmare a second Trump term that doesn't just end American democracy but also triggers irreversible planetary damage. Through meticulous research and unflinching analysis, he shows how political cowardice and corporate greed created the perfect storm that could extinguish humanity's last chance at survival.

This isn't just political commentary—it's a last-minute alarm sounding before the point of no return.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: At 40% I was reading about Giuliani's deceptively edited videos of the Georgia election workers from 2020, and realized, "I am just rehearsing my nuclear-grade hatred of this cabal of rotten-souled kakistocrats," and called the time of death for this read. I was not learning new-to-me facts; the analysis was wanting fresh insights; I was paying attention as it happened, so this was not the read for me.

Younger or less fully engaged readers might not know the facts presented here, so will derive more from reading the book. It is unabashedly tendentious, which I fully approve of and support. Gifting to your freshly jarred into alertness family members is an excellent idea...it has a message and delivers it. Hard.

Berrett-Koehler Publishers (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) charges $24.95 no matter which edition you buy. Helping someone catch up to the existential threat to the US is worth it in my eyes.