The Wingback Workshop

Review: Ambivalence, Brian Dillon

Ambivalence: An Education, by Brian Dillon September 2026, New York Review Books Dear Brian Dillon, I hope this email masquerading as a book review, or vice versa, finds you well. Let’s start with the awkwardness of the conventional “Dear” as an opening to an email. Not every email needs

August 2026 Reading Roundup - and News! And a Milestone!

In France, everybody vacations in August. When they all come back to work and school in September, it's called "la rentrée." I totally slacked last month on the newsletter front, and I realized when I got two newsletters from other writers who also slacked last month.

July 2026 Reading Roundup

The graphic generated by The Storygraph this month is different because in the view I usually use, it only showed two books. Glitches happen. Moving on! I like Jenny Lawson's essays; she's funny. So I picked up her latest, How to Be Okay When Nothing Is

Paid-members only

Sawdust 10

Paid-members only

Sawdust 9

Paid-members only

Sawdust 8

June 2026 Reading Roundup (and some newsletter news)

I read a lot of books from the to-be-read pile for once. I'll try not to dislocate my shoulder while patting myself on the back for this. But first, newsletter news! If you're a subscriber, you know that the Sawdust newsletter hits your email

Paid-members only

Sawdust 7

Paid-members only

Sawdust 6

Paid-members only

Sawdust 5

Paid-members only

Sawdust 4

Paid-members only

Sawdust 3

Paid-members only

Sawdust 2

Paid-members only

Sawdust 1

May 2026 Reading Roundup

I'll admit that rounding up my reading this month is more of a struggle than usual. I read good books! I liked them! But I'm also very aware that I have a book proposal that needs major changes, and they are not the easy kind. It

Two New Book Reviews

I have two reviews of wildly different book reviews published this month. One is an academic work about Kubrick films, and the other is an international best-selling novel about going to museums. But they both involve ekphrasis, which is an excellent word meaning "writing about art." Strangelove

What I'm Paying to Read These Days

I think you have all figured out by now that I read a lot. I read a lot of books, a lot of academic journals, a lot of newsletters, a lot of literary journals. When I was a kid, I was a devoted reader of the backs of cereal boxes.

Reading Roundup April 2026

Happy May Day, everyone! I hope you're out there making a difference today. Not everyone is built for marching in streets with large crowds, myself included, so it can be challenging to know how to make a difference beyond voting, which only happens twice a year at most.

Bringing Back Sawdust

Last year, I tried an experiment on the Wingback Workshop that I called Sawdust. The idea was that these were short diary-like entries for my literary day. I talked about the projects I was working on, like finishing the translation and publication of Memoirs of a French Courtesan, and

Scams! Diaries! Book Promotion!: Stuff to Read

I promised that I would share things I read in March that weren't books and that I thought you all would like. So it's not absolutely everything; there were things about technology and things about academic theory that you probably don't care so much

Reading Roundup March 2026

Loyal readers, you will certainly notice that I did not finish many books this month. I have reasons. The first reason is that I DNFed (that's "did not finish," in case you are not someone who follows a racing sport) The Museum of Innocence by Orhan

Mogador Party in Portland!

To quote the Timbers Army, "There's a party in Portland!" Come see performers Given Davis and Tingles Van Pelt read from all four volumes of Mogador's Memoirs at Two Rivers Books in Portland, Oregon March 25, 6:30 p.m. I, your humble translator

What I Read in February 2026

Oh, hello. I didn't see you there. That's because I was busy spending my morning hand-coding my website in HTML. With a little bit of CSS. You read that right. I'm a coder now. A coder circa 2003. The human-powered version of

What I read in January 2026

I can't believe I forgot to do the one post I for sure do every month! You may have noticed, January was a very intense year. Before I get to the books I read, let's do other fun news. First, I had an essay in the

Happy (Belated) Publication Day to Payback!

Memoirs of a French Courtesan Volume 4: Payback was officially published yesterday! The series is complete! 🥳 If you like to wait until a series is finished to get all the books at once, now is your time. As per usual, I forgot to throw a party for release day, but