Want to dig a bit deeper, stretch a bit wider, discover unique insights in your reading? So do I! That's why we literary nomads explore beyond the comfortable beach read. Subscribe for podcasts and video, fiction and poetry, essays and online courses, unexpected freebies, and ways to lever your literacy into activism! For students of all ages, educators of all kinds, and just plain out litterateurs!
On Divestment and Re-Investment in the Meaningful
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22 Feb 2026 Shifting Resources and Slowing DownReader, Ditching AudibleI know my consumerism is directly related to my politics. It's easy to neglect this, inconvenient to remember. Even so, I have carefully examined companies that actively contribute to agendas and ideologies which work against my own ambition for our communities: ecologically, educationally, and in human rights. Apps get deleted, investments get re-arranged (or pension fund investments lobbied), insurances and credit cards shifted, streamers unsubscribed, banks withdrawn. Money is re-routed. No, my choices alone do nothing; but I'm not alone. So when Audible sent me an email reminding me that my annual renewal was coming up, I was surprised. I had thought it was part of my terminated Prime subscription, but no. Yes, I listen to audiobooks frequently (which reminds me that I should offer some ideas on how I manage my reading soon); mostly I listen to books which are simpler plot-centered reads or heavier non-fiction which I can read along with the accelerated voice speed (somehow this keeps me focused though pauses are frequent). And yes, Amazon for a dozen reasons before even this current decade of politics has demonstrated to me its unsustainable and cruel economic model. It's one reason why my recommendations to buy books are always the indie-bookstore-centered Bookshop. And I can find a lot of substitutes to feeding the Bezos machine:
So this leaves audiobooks and Audible. Libby works for this, too, and I also have an Everand account (formerly Scribd). But my new go-to choice is Libro.fm, kind of the Bookshop of audiobooks, because it supports independent stores. An extra $20/year over Audible is a small price for that work, and the only thing I lose are "Audible Exclusives" which is the company's mean-spirited way to corral writers into another manipulative deal. I'm not playing. Am I completely divested from the Bezos model? No, but I keep scaling back. My book is being sold there, and I can report only that my share in those sales is slightly (very slightly) better than his. But I don't promote it there, favoring the choices above: they offer writers more, though I know I find more random buyers on Amazon than elsewhere. I can only say that we must do the best we can, and the good news is that other choices get easier and easier to find. I've offered a few. If you've got favorites of yours, let me know! Spotify is on my list, as well, but until it is, here is my playlist:
Literary Nomads: Wandering Stars: Tommy Orange and the Sovereign CenterHow to talk about a recent novel without spoilers? Orange's 2024 prequel/sequel to his award-winning There There is its own marvel, wrapped as it is around the events of the first. Most reviews of the book describe it as a story of addiction, and it is, but so much more happening here, and so I worked to make the episode more of an introduction to its structure and symbolism, of Orange's "loop" compared to Erdrich's "torus," of our failing when applying our Western-centric biases and binaries to his concepts of time, space, and historical trauma. Perhaps most important, I describe Gerald Vizenor's concept of "survivance," of indigenous identity which not merely survives, but evolves and expands, rejects our labels of extinction and sympathy and victimhood, and writes back its own stories. (Gotta read more of Vizenor!) What does it really mean, after all, when we further objectify those whose trauma we authored? Episodes ahead:
Have a question or comment about what we're talking about? Use that mailbag and let me know!
Calendar: March Promises No Winter ReliefRead something cool for National Reading Month, something you have been looking forward to, something else unexpected!
Concrete Poetry? Really?
Early Book ReviewDon't Let Me Be Lonely by Claudia Rankine (2024) So many reasons to read Rankine--and I continue to discover powerful writers like her who somehow have eluded my decades of more traditional literary paths. This book of mostly prose poetry and reflections (and essays?) from 2004 has been re-issued. New technologies, new imagery, but doubling-down on the paradoxical simultaneity of community and isolation. "'Some Medicines Can Change The Effect Of This Medicine. Check With Your Doctor Or Pharmacist Before Taking Any Other Medicines.' The woman on the television screen is smiling. I cannot help but think her results are not typical." "One waits to recognize the other, to see the other as one sees the self. Levinas writes, . . . the first fact of existence is neither being in itself nor being for itself but being for the other, in other words, that human existence is a creature.'" "Why, with such a nice smile, are you trying to weep?" The book is the first of her "American Lyric" trilogy, and I've already put the others--Citizen (2014) and Just Us (2020)--on my TBR.
Michael Silverblatt, late book podcaster, and some of his best episodesI discovered Silverblatt's podcast Bookworm far too late, just a couple of years before health reasons forced him to step away from it. By then, he had done over 30 years of author interviews, and not just "book promos" like so many do: Silverblatt was a lover, a devourer, of books. He waxed with Tobias Wolff and Joan Didion on craft, on message, on the creative impulse. If you missed as many episodes of his as I have, I know where you can find them all. If you just want to try out a few of his best to see what he was all about, LitHub just offered their favorite five.
Is Literary Fiction dead? Middle-brow?Here is a decent reflection on the current state of publishing and what we consider contemporary "classics" which mark the "sophistication" of literary fiction. Jeremy Rosen's new work, Genre Bending: The Plasticity of Form in Contemporary Literary Fiction offers us a nuanced but not buttoned-down approach to understanding the issue. I'm grateful, here, to not be so torn by the debate. Like Rosen, Waywords (and Literary Nomads) values work which produces thoughtful meaning-making, regardless of its origin or ambition. (After all, another Star Trek podcast episode coming up!) The trouble may be, as ever, that the gulf between what we readers believe and what the publishing industry markets yawns wide as ever. (Oh, and The Chronicle requires a subscription to read. I think I have one here . . . oh, yes, here ya go:)
The next newsletter will be a special on the AWP (Association of Writing and Writing Programs) conference which will have ended just the day before. I'll probably write a few daily reflections on what I'm meeting there! Steve What's Still Ahead?
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Waywords Studio
Want to dig a bit deeper, stretch a bit wider, discover unique insights in your reading? So do I! That's why we literary nomads explore beyond the comfortable beach read. Subscribe for podcasts and video, fiction and poetry, essays and online courses, unexpected freebies, and ways to lever your literacy into activism! For students of all ages, educators of all kinds, and just plain out litterateurs!