Best Books I Read in 2025
- The Books of Earthsea (2018; orig. 1968–2001) by Ursula K. Le Guin, illus. Charles Vess
Synopsis: A young boy becomes a wizard. A young girl becomes a priestess. Then they become other things. Life becomes death; death becomes life. Dragons become human; humans become dragons. Love becomes electric; morning becomes eclectic.
So, my take on A Wizard of Earthsea was essentially, “Great book, it’s a shame I read lesser versions first so this didn’t really do much for me.” And that’s probably where I would’ve left it, assuming the rest of the series would be more of the same. But my mom got so into this series that she sent me the omnibus, and I try to prioritize books I’m given, so after only a year I finally started reading it (look, I was going through some stuff.) And I was kind of astounded by how good The Tombs of Atuan was. And then just kept being astounded for 4 more books.
Perhaps the highest compliment I can give this series, especially given the genre, is that every book is necessary, and every book is different. Le Guin is so intentional about her writing, so curious about her world, that every story is based on needing to discover something new about Earthsea, and each novel is both self-contained and builds on the previous one. Even in Tales, which could have just been a collection of short stories and still been good, every story is necessary to developing the themes and worldbuilding that lead to the final story, and then the final book. In recent memory the only thing I can think of that comes close is N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy (though admittedly I don’t read that many series, maybe there are a bunch of genius writers doing this kind of precise, resonant worldbuilding, but I kind of doubt it.)
And as for my problem with Wizard well, unfortunately no one seems to have been ripping off the latter books in the series, and that’s a shame because Le Guin introduces us to protagonists and viewpoints and ways of telling stories that are rare in fantasy (and again, Jemisin deserves a shoutout here (and I’m not gonna fight about whether Broken Earth is sci-fi or fantasy, it’s functionally sci-fi but aesthetically fantasy, that is simply true and you must accept it.)) Tenar especially is a protagonist unlike any I’ve read in fantasy before, in both Tombs and Tehanu.
These books aren’t flawless (Most glaringly, “Aha, but see I have made the white people into barbarians that are…still replicating recognizable racist tropes about people of color” is maybe not the gotcha Le Guin thinks it is and feels pretty thoughtless), but overall I’m just thoroughly impressed by them.
I will say some of the added material here feels unnecessary, I didn’t read the two early stories because why would I want a less-refined version of such a well-refined thing, and I skimmed through the talk and didn’t see anything in there that you couldn’t get from just being a good reader (and some of it she does say explicitly in a couple of her forewords anyway.) But “The Daughter of Odren” is a good story in its own right, unconnected to the larger narrative, and “Firelight” is a poignant farewell.
Anyway, I’m going to be recommending these books to literally every single person I meet for the rest of my life. They’re. So. Good. - Conversations, Vol. 2 (1986) by Jorge Luis Borges and Osvaldo Ferrari, trans. Tom Boll
Synopsis: Conversations between Borges and Ferrari about writing, politics, religion, basically anything.
Borges is one of those people that can speak authoritatively on any topic…and then it becomes very clear which topics he actually knows and cares about, because on the one’s he doesn’t he will constantly, though authoritatively, contradict himself.
That and the kind of fawning fanishness of his interlocutor give the whole thing big podcast vibes in the worst possible sense, but there’s still enough of interest in there for fans of Borges (and especially if they know more about Argentinian, Spanish, and French literature than I do) that it can be a fun read, if you skim.
I did really appreciate this bit at the end, when he’s talking about the symbols that recur in his work:
FERRARI. No, I think that it has to do with your desire to be faithful to all those symbols that have seemed essential or permanent to you.
BORGES. Well, I’ve written about that recently, as a matter of fact, and I listed them and I wondered why I’ve chosen those particular ones. And then I came to the conclusion that I’ve been chosen by them. Because I wouldn’t have any trouble, for example, doing without labyrinths and talking about cathedrals or mosques; doing without tigers and talking about panthers or jaguars; doing without mirrors and talking, well, about echoes, which are like auditory mirrors. Yet, I feel that if I worked like that, the reader would spot immediately that I’d lightly disguised myself (both laugh), and I would be exposed, that is, if I said ‘the leopard’, the reader would think about a tiger; if I said ‘cathedrals’, the reader would think about labyrinths, because the reader already knows my habits. And perhaps expects them, and perhaps…well, they’re resigned to them, and they’re resigned to such an extent that if I don’t repeat those symbols, I disappoint them in some way.
p.s. I did in fact order volume 1 of this series but received volume 2 by mistake. And on the one hand I have very easy access to the people who could fix that mistake but on the other hand I have to work with them, so… - Hyperion (1989) & Fall of Hyperion (1990) by Dan Simmons
Synopsis: The Time Tombs are opening and 6 pilgrims must journey to them to face the Shrike which is somehow also related to the Hegemony being invaded by the Ousters and who knows what the TechnoCore is up to and if your eyes have glazed over just know that I get it but you should give it a chance anyway.
Book 1:
It’s a good thing I was given this book because otherwise I probably would’ve stopped reading after my eyes glazed over during the prologue. Simmons does that thing sci-fi/fantasy authors so love to do, which is to fit as many neologisms and proper nouns into the first 3 pages as possible, just to make sure you know you’re reading genre fiction. I’m not an idiot, I can use context clues to figure out most of it and the rest I can assume will make sense later, but you’re asking the reader to do quite a lot of distracting cognitive processing at a time when you should be immersing them in the book. Personally I find it unwelcoming and a bit cringe.
But, as I say, I was given this book, so I soldiered on, spurred by obligation. And glad I am that I did, because it’s actually quite good. Beneath its trappings of pulpy golden-age sci-fi lies a richly-layered narrative, a mystery spooled out piece by tantalizing piece by each narrator with a hand deft at varying voice and style to match, until finally you reach the end and see the tapestry laid out before you, looking quite different than you expected, at least for me. Though it turns out it’s so large that parts of it extend beyond the horizons of this one novel, which only makes me that much more anxious to begin the next one. For all the distraction at the start, I’m certainly immersed now.
p.s. Sol Weintraub’s story is one of the saddest things I have ever read, and I just read through all of Saga (to date). That best and yet too rare thing, a sci-fi story whose sci-fi machinations are core to its emotional impact. “It was her last or her first smile.” Oof.
p.p.s. Feel like I should’ve read a primer on John Keats before reading this. I think the only poem of his I’ve read is the one where he’s reaching out his hand to you from beyond the grave, which certainly is relevant (and does get explicitly referenced at some point.)
p.p.p.s. The farcaster mansion is SO. COOL. Like I get that by the end of the book I should be disgusted by it and sure, I am, ideologically, but it’s SUCH A COOL IDEA. Easily the coolest sci-fi idea in the book.
p.p.p.p.s. “Time debt” is a terrible name for what it’s describing and definitely didn’t help with the onboarding at the beginning.
Book 2:
As sequels go, I would put this on the level of Jemisin’s latter Broken Earth entries, a comparison I absolutely do not make lightly. Like her, Simmons does much of his worldbuilding through the lens of the characters, meaning we’re often getting bits and pieces rather than a comprehensive view. As with Jemisin, while some of those pieces start to form a recognizable frame by the end of the first book, it’s not until book 2 that many of our questions are finally answered and the picture starts to fill in.
And what a picture it is. More politically, socially, and indeed spiritually imaginative than much of the sci-fi I’ve read, willing to engage in a degree of mysticism and implication but set atop a sturdy, detailed frame. That climactic chapter, as Simmons goes through a litany (also a tool Jemisin uses to great effect in The Stone Sky) of the consequences of Gladtsone’s final act, is so well-considered, so methodical in tracing all the implications, you truly feel how monumentally paradigm-shifting this event is.
And there are more amazing passages in here. When a character is hanging on the Tree of Pain, the number of ways Simmons finds to describe indescribable pain, when I don’t think I could even find one. Or when Sol mistakes Brawne for Rachel—”‘It’s all alright, Brawne,’ he said softly, sheltering her, his eyes bright with the tears of disappointment he would not let fall. ‘It’s all alright. You’re back.'”—Simmons continues to save his most tearjerking writing for poor Sol. And every conversation with Ummon is a delight (incidentally, is this where Control got its speech patterns for The Board? I’ve seen the “option1/option2/option3” speech style elsewhere both before and after Control but I think this is the earliest instance of it I’m aware of, and I would not at all be surprised if Sam Lake et al had read Simmons.)
Simmons’s pulpiness does still rear its head on occasion but it’s mostly fun when it does (mostly; in that aforementioned litany, the references to Hebron and Qom-Riyadh are particularly cartoonish in an unfun way (and even if they were fun—not the time!)), and overall he’s definitely expanding his tonal register here.
I’ve been holding my reading of the third book hostage for reasons we don’t need to go into but I’ll probably start it next week whether that situation has been resolved or not because I simply cannot wait.
p.s. I found someone on Reddit saying you should read the second two books first because the first two books are “too dry” and might put you off the series, and I just have to say if you think these books are dry then I’m legitimately concerned you might be a danger to society. (Also, having now read and been thoroughly disappointed by the 2nd two books, I can pretty definitively say that if I’d started with those I never would’ve read these.) - I Cheerfully Refuse (2024) by Leif Enger
Synopsis: Rainy and Lark’s small-town life is up-ended when troubled drifter rolls into town. Also society has pretty much collapsed but that’s hardly relevant.
I have mixed feelings about the climax but overall the story is compelling and I like Rainy most of the time without feeling like I have to like him all the time, and I’m just really fascinated by the idea of this sort cozy post-apocalypse. Like at the start of the novel it felt like “News from Lake Wobegon” except society had collapsed, and yeah, I guess the people living those kinds of lives would probably try to find ways to keep living those kinds of lives as best they could. Even after tragedy strikes and the story gets a little darker there are still moments like that, and I thought I would be annoyed by it but I wasn’t.
I also appreciate that while Rainy has a fairly middle-of-the-road perspective Enger does put that in tension with other points of view (e.g: “An indignant researcher shouted This is just my job and Harriet said You took the job. She said that choice made this one certain. She said This is what happens.” And then from Rainy: “But I couldn’t despise Burke; I could’ve been Burke. That’s what I believe. Maybe I still could. What scares me is the notion we are all one rotten moment, one crushed hope or hollow stomach from stuffing someone blameless in a cage.”)
As is starting to become traditional, I’m going to take issue with one of the blurbs, which refers to the novel as “frighteningly prophetic,” a thing you can’t say about a novel just after it’s been written because there hasn’t been time for anything to happen that would make it prophetic. Even a year after it came out there’s nothing that makes this prophetic. If I write “A comet will strike the earth tomorrow morning, killing millions” it doesn’t make it frighteningly prophetic just because I’m saying something about the future and it would be bad if it came true. That’s not how any normal person uses that phrase.
Also, “The sweetest apocalyptic novel yet…Nobody describes profound joy or ‘blazing love’ with such infectious abandon as Enger.” How have you not read This Is How You Lose the Time War yet, The Washington Post’s Ron Charles? You should really get on that. - The Ice House (2019) by Tim Clare
Synopsis: A deathless girl who’s died a thousand times concocts a plan to overthrow a tyrant, no matter what it takes. Years later and a world away, an old woman returns to the estate where, as a young girl, she first learned of the other side.
Everything I loved about The Honours and so much more. Once again Clare’s worldbuilding does not handhold the reader or drown them in expository lore dumps, but lets us see it all through the eyes of our two perspective characters (and we see so much more of it now that I can’t help wondering how much of this he had in his head when writing the first book—looking forward to rereading and seeing what I can spot). Once again his descriptions give us evocative details without distracting from the (even-more-than-last-time) propulsive narrative. The use of the parallel but chronologically reversed storylines creates a perfect balance—as Hagar’s storyline digs more into her backstory and reveals more about her plan, Delphine’s pushes us forward into more action and suspense.
And, unfortunately, I once again have a caveat, and that’s Alice. She seems to only exist on an occasional basis, and even then is sometimes just floating nebulously somewhere near the action. There were multiple times when I could picture where everyone was in a scene except Alice. Take, for example, when they’re launching the boat. We’re told “Butler stood at the stern,” and “Delphine stood on the foredeck,” and “Martha flew a short way ahead,” and for each we get a couple sentences of description. Where’s Alice? Well, we know her “hair was wet with condensation.” And that’s it. That’s all we get.
Not only are there are scenes in this book where I don’t even know if she’s there or not, most of the time I have no idea what she’s feeling or thinking about any of this. Given how invested Delphine is in her, we the reader should be equally invested, but it’s pretty much impossible to be with how little we’re given. We see more of Martha and Martha can literally turn invisible.
It’s certainly not enough to ruin the book, but it is incredibly frustrating.
Still, though, brilliant sequel. Hope to read more.
p.s. There’s a lot of cool fantasy stuff in here, but the theodic kata (aka theological debate as martial art) is easily my favorite.
p.p.s. Getting Hagar’s story in reverse really is such a great choice, letting us see her at her most vulnerable and sympathetic only after we’ve had to reckon with the full(ish) knowledge of what she’s actually trying to accomplish.
p.p.p.s. And that cliffhanger reveal at the end that’s the best kind of cliffhanger reveal which is to say it’s not really a reveal it’s just reminding us of information we already had. - Modern Poetry: Poems (2024) by Diane Seuss
Synopsis: Poems about poetry.
Unlike like the calm consistency of form in frank: sonnets, here Seuss is restless, poking and prodding and questioning everything, even poetry itself, both explicitly (“Lately / I’ve wondered about poetry’s / efficacy.”) and through a stylistic flexing against the bounds of the poem.
There’s the playing with form on a meta level: “Ballad,” “Ballad from the Soundhole of an Unstrung Guitar,” “Ballad in Sestets,” and then, maybe as a joke or maybe out of frustration, “Another Ballad.” Or the 28-lined, unrhymed “Villanelle” (not unlike Brautigan’s 13-lined, unrhymed “Sonnet”).
Then there are times when she repeats images or ideas with several variations, almost as if rebelling against the obligation to choose one. E.g.: “He’s dead! my sister said. Hit me in the gut with her flute. / Her flute case. Her rented flute. He’s dead!”
It’s a collection that’s thorny, difficult, uncomfortable and uncomforting. A sadness you can’t be saved from, you just have to sit with it. - The Pale King (2011) by David Foster Wallace
Synopsis: What if IRS employees had superpowers. (And there’s like intimate portraits of humanity that are both humorous and poignant and prose that basks in the joy of language, you know, the usual.) (But also now an underlying tension that will be discussed after the original review.)
It’s weird, because I thought after reading Infinite Jest that that was pretty much my farewell to the vibrant, joyful David Foster Wallace I’d come to love. I’d read Oblivion, his other posthumously published fiction, and so naturally I assumed The Pale King would be more like that, detached, paranoid, depressed. I put off reading this for a whole year because I was going through some health stuff and wasn’t sure if I could take this on top of that.
So what’s weird is the combination of emotions I got from reading this: the relief at discovering the Wallace of this book (which is to say the author not the character claiming to be the author) to be just as playful with language, just as free with his synthesis of the absurd and the mundane, just as deeply devoted to finding the humanity in his characters; and then the bittersweet realization that this, then, is goodbye, and in the most visceral possible way, reading his last, incomplete work. I’ve never felt so sad about a book being this funny.
And it is very funny, despite, or maybe even especially because, the story, about a bunch of people working for the IRS, is seemingly so platonically boring that you might not realize at first just how weird these people are even as it’s laid out in front of you.
It is, of course, incomplete, and I think that’s largely why it doesn’t quite hit the same emotional highs as Infinite Jest, despite being, arguably, way less confusing. And every time you hit something that seems off you think, “Well, was that his choice, or the editor’s?” Which isn’t a great feeling to have pervading a novel. And there’s an almost precognitive analysis of boredom and modernity and the role of government in civic life that is frustratingly underdeveloped given how relevant it is.
But there are some truly great chapters in here (the first Stycek chapter, Fogle’s monologue, the Drinion/Rand conversation), and while it obviously doesn’t all come together, it only leaves you wanting more. In some ways, maybe that was the best way to end this journey.
…
Except I can’t just end it there. Recently, someone I deeply care about read my review of Infinite Jest and in the conversation that followed mentioned that she was hesitant to read his work because of his treatment of women. I said I didn’t know specifics but that while I’m sure he had problems you could see him working through those problems in his writing, and at least he wasn’t as unabashedly sexist as someone like Hemingway. And then she said he beat his girlfriends.
I didn’t know that. Why didn’t I know that.
The obvious answer is I didn’t know that because I didn’t want to know that. I mean, it’s on his Wikipedia page. I have definitely spent time on that page. Did I avoid scrolling down that far? Did I just skim past the “Personal Life” section? Or worse, did I read it, dismiss it, and forget it?
Well, now I’ve read it (and the sources; never cite Wikipedia, kids.) The writer Mary Karr has alleged several instances of violence, threats, and emotional abuse. Some of these were confirmed by his biographer; others, she claims, the biographer saw proof of but left out. She also alleges that Wallace was violent towards other girlfriends, as well as students that he slept with (which also, you know, in itself, bad, the sleeping with students).
So. I don’t know what to do with that. Obviously I’m going to be a little less vociferous in my recommendations now—I’d always assumed that antipathy towards him had more to do with some of his very vocal, very toxic male fans, and I’d hoped to be a gentle, non-toxic counterbalance to that, but now it seems I’m just whitewashing the toxicity of the author himself and putting someone I love in the uncomfortable position of having to educate me about something she couldn’t choose not to know. Of having to decide to feel safe around me.
It’s definitely another layer to how I feel about the books (e.g. a friend mentioned DFW in passing and I didn’t jump at the chance to talk about him the way I normally would), but it also can’t fundamentally change how I feel about them, at least not yet. I mean, I’ve pointed out elements of some of his work that I thought were sexist, it’s not like I completely had blinders on. Unlike with Cosby or CK, I don’t recall anything in his work that’s attempting to launder his abuse as material or absolve him vicariously through a character committing the same acts and being forgiven for them (though I fully admit I may be forgetting something.) (Ok well come to think of it there is a character in a position of authority at a school who sleeps with a student…but she’s not forgiven for it, I don’t think?) I still think his work is filled with empathy and love and pain and loss and humor and all the things I want from art. He’s not the first artist whose work I love who I then found out has done horrible things, and I’m sure he won’t be the last. I can’t say how that’s going to affect my interaction with his work going forward (I haven’t interacted with any of Cosby or CK’s work since, so), but it hasn’t retroactively ruined those experiences for me.
But what really gets me is how I’ve seen so much of myself in his work. In him. And yet even at my most self-hating I can’t see myself being capable of the kind of abuse he’s alleged (and in part proven) to have committed. I don’t say this with pride or smugness or sanctity, just certainty. And with all the ways I’ve failed in relationships I feel like that’s a very low bar to clear. So it’s hard to square how much I relate to him with this alien violence. I know that’s a little silly and self-centered, but it is. Of all the artists whose abuse I’ve had to reckon with, this feels the most personal. Which is obviously my problem, world’s smallest violin, etc. I’m sure it felt more personal for the women who cared for him, for the students who admired him. I’m sure it’s almost quotidian for the women who have had problematic male artists enthusiastically recommended to them their whole lives and had to navigate the minefield of their own trauma and safety and also, in some cases, genuine interest in the art. If they can handle that—if she can handle that—then I can handle this. But it sure sucks. All of it.
I’m trying to resist the urge to try to come to some kind of profound conclusion here. This isn’t, shouldn’t be, something I try to solve all in one go. We get to live with the art forever; we have to live with the artist too. - Saga Volumes 1–12 (2012–2025) by Brian K. Vaughn & Fiona Staples
Synopsis: A story of star-crossed lovers on the run from both sides of galaxy-consuming war, and the various people they meet along the way.
So I’ve made my reviews of these books their own post (here) for length reasons, but I don’t actually say much in those reviews, so I thought I’d include a thread I wrote on Bluesky in response to people saying Lying Cat is their favorite character and should have her own series:
Let’s start with the most generous read, just to get it out of the way, which is that people don’t actually mean this literally, and “x character should have a solo series” is just a hyperbolic way of expressing appreciation for that character.
Just as we understand “Lying Cat is just the best” doesn’t mean they have rigorously studied and ranked every fictional character and empirically (or even subjectively) determined that Lying Cat is categorically superior, so too it’s plausible that no one *actually* wants a Lying Cat solo series.
But let’s assume for the sake of argument that some of these are earnest. What’s the problem? They like a character, they want to see more of that character. Well, I also like Lying Cat. She’s an interesting plot device, a good source of humor, and that scene with Sophie in Vol. 3 is really sweet.
But the context for a character like Lying Cat is so important. Yes, she’s a fun character—in someone else’s story. Good protagonists *act*; Lying Cat *reacts*. What are her wants and needs, what would she be doing at any given time without input from other characters? What would her story even be?
More generally, there’s a lot of “the only character(s) I care about are <lists only side characters>, I’d rather the story was just about them.” And again, I get it, I love Izabel, I love Ghüs, I don’t really get the people who miss The Brand but to each their own.
I also like lemonade. A lot of people like lemonade. Some people like it ’cause it’s sweet. Some people like it’s lemony. But I put it to you that the sweet people would not want to drink a glass of just water and sugar, and the lemony people would not want to drink a glass of pure lemon juice.
The sidekicks are unburdened by having to be sites of conflict and growth, and so compared to the protagonists, flawed as they are usually obligated to be, they’re easy to love. But without the protagonists to play off of you’d get sick of them, unless they adopt the role of protagonist themselves, at which point they’d be fundamentally different characters. Remember the 4th and 5th (did they make a 6th one? I don’t care enough to look it up) Pirates of the Caribbean movies? Exactly.
That’s not to say it can’t be done—Harley Quinn (2019) is explicitly subverting this exact dynamic and it’s great. But if you’re a big fan of “Joker’s sidekick, Harley Quinn,” you might not like “fuck being Joker’s sidekick, I’m Harley Quinn.”
It’s natural to say, “I like this thing, give me more,” but sometimes we need to practice moderation and balance, lest we get sick of that which we used to love. And if you actually don’t care about the protagonists of the story you should probably just stop reading.
But also you not caring about them might be because the story is poorly written, but it also might just be you don’t care about them. If you’re going to suggest it’s a flaw in the story then you’ll need more evidence to back that up. - Starting Point 1979-1996 (1996) by Hayao Miyazaki, trans. Beth Cary & Frederik L. Schodt
Synopsis: A collection of Miyazaki’s writings, talks, and interviews from the middle period of his career (from just before the founding of Ghibli to just before his first retirement).
I’ve been watching as much of Miyazaki’s work as I can find, in chronological order, and this book really added some depth and perspective to that. Plus it’s just interesting to trace someone’s career in this way—although the title implies this only covers 17 years, that’s just in terms of when the pieces were published; in terms of the works he talks about it’s actually covering the first 30 years of his career. Seeing how his thinking shifts or stays the same over that time, how he develops both as an artist and as a public figure, is really intriguing.
Also there are times when he’s dropping bars, like when an odious interviewer says “in today’s world, people are always loudly demanding that their work hours be reduced, or that even public schools have both Saturday and Sunday off every week. I sensed that perhaps you were trying to send us a different message [in Porco Rosso, because of the factory scene].” Miyazaki: “No, there was no particular message…But I do hate it when people go around saying that people should sacrifice themselves for the sake of a corporation. Working hard for a corporation and working hard for the sake of one’s own profession are totally different things in my view.”
Or when criticizing the work of Dave Fleischer: “Both those who make cartoon films and those who love them tend to have a certain immaturity to them, and they tend to go easy on each other. But I’d like to see effort put into filmmaking sufficient to withstand the bare-knuckled criticism that I’m providing here. Cartoons have certain weaknesses that we normally don’t notice, and a type of laxity arises precisely because the films are treated as mere cartoons. When discussing films, I therefore believe we should expose both problems—the weaknesses of animation and the laxity in discussing them—to the full light of day.”
I was at first disappointed that it only briefly touched on Princess Mononoke and doesn’t get close to Spirited Away (I mean, I knew it wouldn’t because of the timeline), but it turns out there’s a sequel covering the latter half of his career, so I’m looking forward to that.
p.s. For a man whose whole career is putting images in sequential order he sure thinks in non-sequiturs a lot. More than half the time I have no idea how he got onto what he’s talking about but he often prefaces these seemingly random thoughts with things like, “What I mean to say is” or “naturally it follows that” or whatever that makes it seem like these are obviously connected to the previous thought when I can’t see how they possibly could be.
p.p.s. Relatedly, he seems like on the one hand an ideal interview subject because he’ll talk at length about pretty much anything with very little prompting, but on the other hand maybe the most frustrating interview subject in the world because the one thing he won’t talk about it is whatever question you just asked him.
p.p.p.s. Throughout the book he displays the kind of gentle sexism you’d kind of expect from a man of his age and cultural background, and for the most part it’s forgivable or at least ignorable, but there’s one moment that’s just real grody.
Honorable Mentions
Certain of Eventual Failure 