Well, this posted early. Because I’m an airhead. So I’m just going to add to it as the rest of the month goes on. Whoops!
I took 8 days of my leisure reading time to watch Season Five of Stranger Things, and now I regret it. The show’s always been a tough watch for me–children in danger—but I got hooked in the first season and I stayed with it.
SPOILER!
They whiffed the ending. The validation went on too long and became boring. Yes, the Duffer Brothers can write cliffhangers, but they have no idea how to wrap anything up in a satisfying manner, so they gave us at least five endings, most of which were not satisfying at all. (I tell my students: don’t time jump at the end. Don’t give us how they grew up. Let us imagine that. Make us realize they’ll be all right. And if there’s a surprise, well then, set us up for it.) This show was set up for the “it’s all a long D&D campaign ending” which I’m glad they didn’t do, but everyone went back to normal too easily. I spent two days thinking about it, and in the end, decided that they didn’t stick the landing, and I’m not happy. I still think it was a good and ambitious show, but I feel like I wasted time better spent doing something else this year.
That something else is reading, and I was happy to get back to it.
The first book I finished in January was a rather dull romance novel that I’d been reading slowly just before bed. This was by design; I need sleep and staying up for “one more chapter” was, at that point, counterproductive. But as I looked at the book the morning I finished it to decide if I wanted to recommend it, I decided against it. Characters were great, but wow, nothing really memorable except a penguin wood carving that served as a McMuffin.
The second book I finished, which I blogged about a bit on my Patreon page in another context, was written by a British author for British readers. He assumed they knew a lot about World War I in great detail, and I’ll wager they did. Me, I’m struggling along, going…Did Lloyd George succeed Asquith as Prime Minister? When? and I thought Gallipoli came later in the war. I recognize the book’s structure. It’s a shocking (to some) and small (ish) story set against a horrible backdrop. If it had been a novel about the American Civil War, it would have worked for me, since I knew the details of the backdrop. As it was, it was an interesting read with no ending at all (but apparently shocking to the British reviewers). So I’m not recommending it, although I considered it. British readers, you might want to follow the link to see which book I’m vague-booking about.
Anyway, these are the things I liked in January.
January 2026
Belanger, Steve, “The Producer Who Hoodwinked Half of Hollywood,” The Hollywood Reporter, October 22, 2025. After Dean and I discovered that a once-trusted employee embezzled from us for years, I find myself quite attune to stories like this one. Most people believe that embezzlement is simple: someone takes cash from your bank account. Dean and I were always very careful with our accounts. We were embezzled through a quirk in the payroll system that allowed extra money to taken as non-taxable income in a paycheck. No getting into the bank accounts at all.
This particular case in this article focuses on embezzlement and fraud committed by a well respected producer. His method was equally sideways to the one above. From the article:
Ozer was accused of embezzling more than $200,000 from the production budget. He did this, the indictment said, by creating phony invoices from dummy companies and forging his accountant’s signature on backup documentation. Because Ozer had emailed some of these falsified documents, it was considered a federal crime under the Interstate Wire Fraud Statute.
Because this guy took a plea deal (a sweet one at that), he’s already in jail, even though his crimes were discovered only a few years ago. I can tell you that other cases (like ours) move very slowly. And recovery is hard. Most people don’t recover financially when they’ve been victimized like this. Dean and I are slowly coming out of it, but it’s been 2 years since we discovered exactly what was happening. (And there were other issues as well. [heavy sigh])
Cerná, Pavlína, “Are You Still A Runner If You Cannot Run?” Runner’s World, Fall, 2025. Great short essay on the doubts runners (and heck, writers too) have if they’re unable to do the thing that defines them. Cerná injured her leg and couldn’t run for a while, and got all tangled in her head. I know how that feels, because it happened to me in March. Timely and well written. (And oh, I love her “To be a man” comment.) (NOTE: I can’t spell her name properly because my Word Press program won’t allow me to put the proper first letter on it, so I had to default to a “c.”
Conklin, Melanie, “Chasing The Story with David Maraniss,” On Wisconsin, Summer 2025. I had no idea that legendary reporter David Maraniss failed to graduate from the University of Wisconsin. His high school sweetheart got pregnant. He married her and got a job at the local paper. (He’s ten years older than me, but I can attest to the fact that in Madison through the 1980s, you could get a job in the news based on writing ability alone.) He went on to an amazing career, chronicled here. (And yes, he’s still married to his high school sweetheart.) Great reading about a great reporter. There are too few of them these days…or rather, there aren’t enough outlets for them anymore.
Goodman, Carol, The Bones of the Story, William Morrow, 2025. The blurb calls this a locked room mystery, and I guess it’s that, but not really. I had a realization as I was reading along that I didn’t believe any of this, and then I chuckled. I’m known as an sf/f writer. Everything is unbelievable. But a group of people being murdered for old things…well, yeah, no. This is a cozy and cozy usually aren’t my thing, but with all the stuff going on in the world, I’m not having much success reading romance as my relaxation reading. So I went to this. I knew whodunnit and why right away, but the characters are marvelous and the story is compelling, so I kept reading. This is also (for those wondering) a good example of Dark Academia.
Goodman, Carol, Writers and Liars, William Morrow, 2025. Ignore the totally stupid log line (“They’ll Kill For Inspiration”) which has nothing to do with the book at all. This is a riff on Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, which is like catnip for writers. (I wrote one too, in the Spade/Paladin universe, Ten Little Fen, which we’re going to rebrand as soon as I get the time.) These writers are having a reunion on a Greek island and everything goes wrong from the start. The island itself, with its labyrinth is so completely cool that I want to see it someday. (It does not exist.) It makes the book, however, which is almost too cozy for me. (Cozies often have people acting in unbelievable ways for the sake of the mystery. And yeah, here too. But I don’t mind that much.) A fun and quick read.
McDonough, Michael, “Grandpa Jellybean and The Power of Perseverance,” Runner’s World, Fall 2025. A beautifully written essay about being a lifelong athlete and the people you inspire. Read about someone remarkable here. (And the writing is good too!)
Miller, Shannon,“Pro Bono Pros,” Las Vegas Weekly, October 23-29, 2025. I’m sure there are people like this all over the country, working with limited resources and fighting the good fight. But Shannon Miller at Last Vegas Weekly brought the struggle alive, so I’m sharing it with you folks.
Robbins, Dean, “Farewell to Paul’s Book Shop,” On Wisconsin, Summer 2025. Don’t hate me, Madisonians, but I hated Paul’s Book Shop. It was disorganized, smelled of mildew, and the staff bordered on rude. And yet when I saw this piece, that this State Street staple closed after sixty-some years, I felt a moment of sadness. It’s pretty amazing that a bookstore could be around that long, and with a single owner. Things change, sadly…
Robbins, Dean, “The Scholar and The Superstar,” On Wisconsin, Summer 2025. I’ve been reading about Bad Bunny’s tour now for a year in places like Billboard and various economic journals. His tour generated millions for Puerto Rico. He’s one of the biggest stars in the world, and he’s doing all kinds of cool things. But I didn’t realize until I read this that he asked UW professor Jorell Meléndez-Badillo to collaborate on a Puerto Rican history project tied to the album and the tour. Read this. It’s soooo cool.
Rodriguez, Gabriela, “Street Royalty,” Las Vegas Weekly, October 23-29, 2025. The value of reading as widely as possible from many different sources. I knew that there was a car show in Las Vegas in October, but I didn’t realize it was for lowriders…and I didn’t realize that lowriders are an art form all their own. This article focuses on the history, the community, the art, and the people behind it all. There’s even a podcast recommendation if you want to learn more after reading the article. I love finding pockets of culture I knew nothing about. I learned when I started writing the Smokey Dalton books thirty years ago that you can’t depend on the white corporate media to report things correctly. Back then, my research was showing me who the Black Panthers really were as opposed to what the media said when I was a little kid. This lowrider culture is another example just like that. Read this.
Schmitt, Preston, “Quantum Leaps in Education,” On Wisconsin, Summer 2025. I found this article so inspiring that I wrote an entire Patreon post about it. In short, this piece put the AI debate into context for me. AI isn’t going away, and the arts are dealing with theft on a grand scale. (For the record: I’m part of the Anthropic settlement. Yes, my works were stolen.) But AI is part of our future. Whether it will be a Segway or a smart phone remains to be seen, but it’s there. So see what a major university is doing about it.
Steinhoff, Jessica, “The Supermom Myth,” On Wisconsin, Summer 2025. A few years ago, Jessica Calarco went viral with this statement: “Other countries have social safety nets; the U.S. has women.” It seems like something random people might say on social media, but she brought the receipts. She has made a study of what women are doing that is stretching them much too thin. Steinhof explores Calarco’s research, her book, and her solutions in this interesting piece.
Zeitchik, Steven, “Emotional Support Cinema,” The Hollywood Reporter, November 5, 2025. I can’t find an online link (even a paywalled link) to this article anywhere online, yet it’s in my copy of the magazine. So I put it here for you to find. He’s talking about the ways that the current suggested crop of nominees this award season (and nothing had yet been nominated when he wrote this) reflect the nervousness of our times. Worth reading, if you can find it.
I came across a YouTube piece, which you may already know about, which says when embezzled filing a 1099 against the person (https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TmmI12d0g2M) allows for a tax write off.
Thanks, Ashley.
I watched the documentary about the making of the final season of Stranger Things on Netflix. It was interesting that this season the filming began before they had a locked story line. I can imagine with expensive sets to be built and locations to be scouted, as well as the marathon of filming duties they had, that the Duffer Brothers were under enormous pressure to get the script locked down.
I agree with your assessment of the ending, but i can see why it fell short and went on too long.
I get it, but really, the ending is the most important thing of all so that consumers want your next thing. I’ll be a lot less excited about the next project now. (Sigh)