July was a pretty good month for acquiring books, but not so great for reading them. As has been pointed out by people more eloquent than myself, collecting and reading are two separate pursuits, and the best we can hope for is that the rate of both stays roughly in sync.

Acquisitions

39. Arthur Sze, Noh Anothai, Wendy Call, Oyku Tekten, Kola Tubosun (editors), Best Literary Translations 2026 (Deep Vellum) [2026.07.01]
40. Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems [2026.07.01]
41. Henry Farrell, Abraham Newman, Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy [2026.07.01]
42. John Ralston Saul, Voltaire’s Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West [2026.07.01]
43. Colleen Alles, Luminescence in Season (Meadowlark Press) [2026.07.09]
44. Eric Greinke, One Candle [2026.07.09]
45. Ivan Turgenev (Avril Pyman, translator), Fathers and Children [2026.07.10]
46. Hugh Howey, Wool [2026.07.27]
47. Jorge Luis Borges, Poems of the Night [2026.07.27]

Reading

Books

28. Catherine Liu, Virtue Hoarders: The Case Against the Professional Managerial Class [2026.07.02]
29. Laura Robson, Human Capital [2026.07.12]
30. Matt Dinniman, Dungeon Crawler Carl [2026.07.21]
31. Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs [2026.07.30]

Short Prose

49. Kameron Hurley, “Bone Fete” (Patreon post) [2026.07.02]
50. Tobias Buckell, “The Elephant’s Song” (Patreon post) [2026.07.02]