Jacob Siefring

Here is a list of not everything I read this year, but some of the highlights.

The Weather Fifteen Years Ago / Wolf Haas, Trans. Thomas Hansen and Stefanie Giraldi

An inventive book, constructed around the conceit of a (fictional) interview with the author Wolf Haas and a (fictional) interviewer, discussing the (fictional) book The Weather Fifteen Years Ago. The English translation was published about 20 years ago already; I tracked it down a few years ago after I saw M. A. Orthofer’s positive remarks about it, but only got to it this year.

The Black Pool: A Memoir of Forgetting (2025) / Tim MacGabhann

The praise for this one set me to thinking that it would be worth my time and money, and it absolutely was. A brutal but often laugh-out-loud funny memoir of addiction to drugs and alcohol.

Things In Nature Merely Grow (2025) / Yiyun Li

To hear of the author’s staggering loss of her two sons, both to suicide, several years apart, was what led me to thinking that I would like to read this. How does one come to terms with such an unfathomable darkness? My reading left me uneasy about the ways that a writer—a memoirist, to be certain—is willing to reveal the life details of their family members, living or dead.

The Cursed Hermit / Kris Bertin and Alexander Forbes

The second installment in the Hobstown Mysteries series of graphic novels from Nova Scotia writer/artist duo Bertin and Forbes. Remarkable work, gloriously louche at times and funny too. The third and latest volume, recently released, awaits me soon.

Dr Chizhevsky’s Chandelier: The Decline of the USSR and Other Heresies of the Twentieth Century (2025) / Daniel Elkind

I seem to have temporarily misplaced my copy of this collection of interrelated stories, but that is no indication of my lack of enjoyment: I am simply disorganized. Elkind narrates the history of the twentieth century with a light hand and ironic flourishes, offering oblique perspectives on half-familiar material. I look forward to locating my copy again and resuming my reading.

Various books by Ronald Johnson, including ARK / Valley of the Many Splendored Grasses / Book of the Green Man.

Ronald Johnson was one of the greatest American poets of the twentieth century, and I sense that I will be reading ARK, his magnum opus, for years to come. It contains Johnson’s extraordinary reflections on optics, spirituality, nature.

Closer You Are: The Story Of Robert Pollard And Guided By Voices / Matthew Cutter

As an “authorized biography” of Robert Pollard, this is well worth the price of admission. Since my teenage years growing up near Dayton, Ohio—since 1996, to be precise—Guided by Voices has been a part of my life and I was astonished at many of the details in here. I really ought to write something about Guided by Voices to work some things out for myself, insofar as the music is an unresolved (perhaps unresolvable?) obsession.

The Black Mountain Book (Croton Press, 1970) / Fielding Dawson

A wonderful memoir of Dawson’s time at Black Mountain College (near Asheville, NC) from 1949–53. Quite a wonderful book which evokes for me bittersweet memories of brief times of communal living, whether band camp, a visit to Warren Wilson College near Asheville, a carpentry school in Vermont, nature camp at Glen Helen in Yellow Springs, etc.

Some Instructions To My Wife: Concerning The Upkeep Of The House And Marriage, And To My Son And Daughter Concerning The Conduct Of Their Childhood / Stanley Crawford

I have fond memories of reading this last winter while donating blood at the local church last January or February. Of the books of Stanley Crawford that I have looked at it, I think this may be his most entertaining and possibly his best. I could not abide the repetitive, cloying style of Log of the SS Mrs. Unguentine, which I began but did not finish. (It seems to be one of his most beloved books.) This year I also tracked down copies of Crawford’s books on his life as a garlic farmer in New Mexico (there are several of these, including Mayordomo). But as I was saying, this book was uproariously funny and sublime, the conceit an extended series of riffs on a patriarch’s foresightedness and controlling nature with respect to ensuring the safety and well-being of his household, marriage, and children. The books that Knopf put out in the mid-1970s were carefully and tastefully designed, and this is no exception.

Paris 1919 By John Cale (2025) / Mark Doyle (Bloomsbury, 33 ⅓ Series)

I really admire those who can competently write music criticism, and Mark Doyle most certainly can. I’m not sure I could, but perhaps I should try my amateur hand. Also in the 33 ⅓ series: I enjoyed reading The Moon and Antarctica, a full appraisal of the Modest Mouse album that I first encountered when a guy with dreadlocks gave me a burned copy of it in Washington, DC in 2002.

Backbeats: A History Of Rock And Roll In Fifteen Drummers / John Lingan (2025)

Lingan is a deft writer and this is as entertaining a book as any that could be written about the importance of the percussion tracks featuring in much of the music we know and love from the last 80 years.

Music, Sound, & Sensation / Fritz Winckel (Dover Books)

I found this in a vintage edition at the used bookshop that I frequent, and even though it is a slim little book, it is more in-depth and thorough than a handful of other books I have read about sound and acoustics. The catalog of Dover Books remains a great marvel.

Bill Anthony’s Greatest Hits / Jargon Society

Hilarious, mischievous drawings in a naive style that tipped me into fits of laughter.

The Photographs Of Lyle Bongé and The Sleep of Reason by Lyle Bongé / Jargon Society

Extraordinary photography from Bongé’s corner of the world (Biloxi, Mississippi and New Orleans). We should resist the temptation to call it surreal.

The Right to Oblivion: Privacy and the Good Life (2024) / Lowry Pressly

I borrowed a copy of this from the library, attracted by the title and the promises it seemed to extend. (I for one would like to recede into oblivion, a life of privacy, oh yes, the good kind.) Ultimately the argument it seemed to make was too fine or academic for me. After reading about a third of the book I put it down, confident that the book itself was superfluous to understanding or achieving the private life I would seek.