Ecce Sigum

Immanentize the Empathy

Author: John Winkelman

November 2025 Books and Reading Notes

John Winkelman

November is ostensibly the Month of Writing, and to be fair I did more writing this month than in all of the past year including last November. However life, as usual, had its way, so the amount of time and energy I had available for writing dwindled away to nothing. Unfortunately so did my time for reading, though I did manage to finish two books.

Acquisitions

Book I acquired in the month of November 2025.
Book I acquired in the month of November 2025.
  1. David Steffen, Chelle Parker, Hal Y. Zhang (editors), The Long List Anthology, volume 9 (Diabolical Plots, L.L.C.) [2025.11.12]
  2. Ivan Turgenev (Charles and Natasha Hepburn, translators), A Sportsman’s Notebook [2025.11.15] – I ordered this book from Books & Mortar back in May of this year, and then promptly forgot about it when life suddenly went sideways. Turns out the book had been on back-order with the publisher for months. I had recently ordered another book from Books & Mortar, and on a whim stopped in to see if it had arrived yet. The clerk said it hadn’t but this one from six months ago had suddenly appeared. And the best part was I had already paid for it!
  3. Todd Goddard, Devouring Time: Jim Harrison, a Writer’s Life [2025.11.20] – purchased from Books & Mortar. I had no idea this book was even in the works until about the end of September, and since then I have been awaiting it eagerly. And here it is.

Reading List

Books I read in the month of November 2025.
Books I read in the month of November 2025.

Books

  1. Efraín Kristal, Invisible Work: Borges and Translation [2025.11.26] – I will straight-up say I loved this book! Kristal discusses Borges’ approach to translation – his own translations, translations of his works, and translation as a subject in his fiction and nonfiction. I came out the other side of Invisible Work feeling compelled to re-learn Russian so I could finally read some of the books I picked up in Saint Petersburg back in 1994.
  2. Barbara Saunier, There is Room in a Horse for the Whole Boy [2025.11.28] – One of my recent acquisitions from the Grand River Poetry Collective. The poetry within is excellent, and – perhaps because like the author I too grew up on a farm – made me feel a sense of nostalgia.

Short Prose

  1. Kameron Hurley, “The Safe House” [2025.11.02]

Weekly Round-up, October 25, 2025

John Winkelman
Red Maple leaves, just turning their fall colors, in the morning sun, against a clear blue sky.

The pressures of work were somewhat lighter this week, which gave me time to catch up on several things which had been neglected. Like sleep. And cooking food for meals. And cleaning my house.

I also found time to transfer the last of my websites from the old host to Dreamhost, where maintenance is much easier than anywhere I had previously hosted this blog and SifuLee.com. I like only having to click a single button to upgrade PHP.

With the transfer complete I am taking the opportunity to change, update, and/or improve things, as both sites have been around in various forms for over twenty years. This will be an ongoing chore.

Reading

I am having a lot of fun reading through my back issues of New Edge Sword & Sorcery and DreamForge. Exactly the type of fix I need right now.

Writing

In preparation for the Month of Writing (formerly NaNoWriMo), I decided to dust off one of my old Weekly Writing Prompts from January 2024. This one had “Undead” and “Addiction” as the subjects, “Ship” as the setting, and “Magic Realism” as the genre.

No problem, right? Two years ago, I was able to knock out a story a two a day for a month, needing only a few minutes to come up with an idea which combined all four prompt points.

Apparently I am out of practice. After staring at the prompt for a week I came up with (tentatively) an idea which I will work on this weekend and next week. It involves a bit of Dante, a bit of Greek mythology, and a place somewhat, but not entirely like, New Orleans.

That’s a lot of work for a short story I haven’t even started writing yet.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Empire, Espionage
Setting: Urban
Genre: Steampunk

Listening

Chris de Burgh, “Don’t Pay the Ferryman,” from his 1982 album The Getaway. While I was planning out the short story discussed above, this song, which I have not heard in at least 30 years, popped into my head.

Interesting Links