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 my website isn't live yet, but it will be soon ... as soon as I figure out how to do that.
You're going to want to keep an eye out for upcoming newsletter because there is a lot going on this spring: parties, classes, read-alongs, publications. And I take requests! If you have a book you'd like to tackle along with other readers and a knowledgeable instructor, let me know. Maybe this is your Infinite Jest year, now that this novel has turned thirty? Just reply to this email with your request (or anything else you'd like to share).
Articles
I read a ton more than I remember to share here, but I'm trying to get better about it. I have a New System, so we'll see how long it lasts. (The system is linked notes in Obsidian because I am unstoppably nerdy.)
First, this article on Kamel Daoud plausibly stealing the story of a woman who was a patient of his psychiatrist wife is wild. The book won the Prix Goncourt in France; I have it on my to-be-read shelf. It's at The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/feb/17/did-a-prize-winning-novelist-steal-a-woman-life-story-kamel-daoud
If you, like me, have ever been a smoker of cigarettes, and if you, like me, quit ages ago but still think about it, then you, like me, will feel very strongly, in a positive way, about this essay in The Point by John Phipps: https://thepointmag.com/examined-life/quitting/
Books
I see that I spent the short month of February reading books that I wanted to read for a purpose, not so much for funsies. I think all reading is fun, so it's not really a problem.
One of my meditation instructors mentioned that she was reading Tenzin Palmo, a Buddhist nun, so I borrowed both the biography about her and her book The Heroic Heart from the library. I sailed through the bio; it was good. I took more time with The Heroic Heart as it's a commentary on the 37 Practices of Bodhisattvas, written in the fourteenth century by Togmay Zangpo. Tenzin Palmo is very good at making medieval Tibetan instructions relevant to twenty-first century practice, if you're into that.
The Future of the Novel by Simon Okotie is a book I picked up on a whim, and it was a short but challenging read. I'm not sure I totally agreed with all of his arguments, but I couldn't articulate precisely why. I'm not a vibes-based person, so this book may get a re-read and more consideration to figure out what I'm thinking.
The 33 1/3 title on k. d. lang's breakout album Ingenue was for a project I'm working on. This was short and well-written, like all the 33 1/3 titles that I've encountered have been, but interestingly I didn't learn all that much that was new to me. I found myself thinking more, "Oh, I remember that!" rather than being surprised by some insider info or details of the writing or recording process. The author did include more memoir than the typical 33 1/3 book, which was both appropriate and appreciated.
I hadn't read Henry Miller's The Air-Conditioned Nightmare in decades, but I wanted to give it another go for two reasons. First, I thought it might feed into an essay I'm planning to write, and it did, but not in the way I expected, which is my favorite way for these research phases to pan out. As Hannibal absolutely did not say on The A-Team, "I love it when a plan comes together, falls apart, goes in a new direction, and then comes together in a different place." fake puffs on candy cigar (I still can't believe that's the same guy who was in Breakfast at Tiffany's.) Henry Miller in general, and this book in particular, is not for everyone. His politics are far left, yet he is a man of his time, as they say, and not up to speed on modern expectations for things like the treatment of women or acceptable language around race. The reader might allow a bit of leeway given that he died forty years ago, but it can be cringe-inducing. All that said, this is the book of essays he published after returning to the United States after spending a decade in France and Greece. He is unhappy about being chased out of Europe by World War II and crabby about American conformity. He finds spots of delight in American weirdos. I remain a reader of Henry Miller.
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KHG’s latest translations, Memoirs of a French Courtesan Volume 1: Rebellion, Volume 2: Spectacle, and Volume 3: Luck, and Volume 4: Payback are available now.
