12 July 2026

Reader,

No More Book "Reviews"

Well, yes and no.

As I've been working through my own "strategic planning" for Waywords at its anniversary, and while I've often enough lamented my own struggles with work flow, I've recognized that some projects I've been placing so much time in simply didn't "fit."

And that was Book Reviews.

My longer reviews, whether simply written or in short or long-form videos, were a real time-consumer, and I was producing three each week. And while they attracted some attention on social media, I simply could track no real impact on my viewership, subscriptions, or anything else, which came from them. And so, largely as a choice of workload, I let them go at the end of 2025.

But that wasn't the reason--not the real or important one--I think.

The fact is, book reviewers online (better and worse ones and mostly the latter) are more than plentiful, and what I was doing was 1) not anything aligned with their work, because 2) I didn't really believe in their work. That is, gushing about 5-star books every day (and thus advancing sales) is not what Waywords is about.

On the other hand, I am reading voraciously still, both in academic research and in popular and classic and global books across multiple genre. Doing something with those books make sense (more than, for instance, a Storygraph review and record-keeping).

Waywords has always been about reading and writing and language and yes, how we make meaning. More recently, I have come to identify and define my own practice in doing so, one which has emerged over my 35 classroom years and nearly 60 as a reader: frictional.

So what did star ratings have to do with that?

I have no business trying to emulate the popular culture #booktok and #bookstagram trends and tendencies. And I don't want to. What I can provide--and this makes far more sense to me in light of my own reading--are approaches to reveal meaning, grounded strategies for those who take the book on, ones rarely to never offered in schools or reviews.

Significantly, I already anticipate that this will be a primary criticism of my upcoming publications: that I offer little in the way of "method" or specific lists of strategies, handy practical applications. And that problem isn't one of my obstinance but of the dynamic and contextual demands of frictional reading itself. (More on this difficult topic another time!)

And so, "Reviews" become the Waywords Book Ledger. That is, a series of social and web posts that offer my more traditional 3-word assessments of the reading itself and then a frictional posture or framing: an attitude or perspective or question readers might use to best navigate the uniqueness of the book, to discover more from the reading.

Certainly, these are limited applications of a much larger idea, but collectively and across time, I think these will work to further establish the frictional work of Waywords, to cultivate a readerly strategy which is too seldom practiced.

Let me know what you think! I'll likely post 2-3 a week (moving back and forth through my current backlog) to see what emerges.

Here's the first, on Raymond Antrobus's mesmerizing poetry on language and deaf awareness:

Literary Nomads: Packing Lists

One of the joys of preparing this season was discovering an entire genre of literature I scarce understood or made note of: the vast collection of journals and travel diaries produced during the 19th century, especially by intrepid women bound to travel on their own terms.

The past two episodes offer healthy excerpts from four of them: Isabella Bird, Dorothy Wordsworth (sister of poet William), Jamaican Mary Seacole, and lady of the Japanese Heian Court, Sei Shōnagon and her Pillow Book from ~1002 CE.

What each reveals is a skeptical eye towards false performances, a preparedness to adapt to and find use in the most difficult circumstances, to speak earnestly about the realities of travel and the production of culture. While The Pillow Book is mostly limited to courtly drama and manners, we find this same careful perception in Shōnagon trained on everyone around her.

Also, the mini-adventures or experiments continue, short exercises to try which exemplify our travel thinking, whether we're on the road or not. They're downloadable from the Show Notes and on the website under the buttons "Skeptical Pilgrim Challenges."

​​​Journey 7​

Episodes ahead:

• 7:05 (7/17) Authorial Footprints: Marquez & Aracataca
• 7.06 (7/24) Mapping Dreams: Calvino's Invisible Cities
• 7.07 (7/31) Ghost in the Garden, Pt. 1: Dark Montgomery
• 7.08 (8/7) Ghost in the Garden, Pt. 2: Dark Montgomery Readings

The Listener Survey for Journey 6 is open for one more week! Take a few minutes. Do the survey. Get stuff.

Calendar: July is for Peace

...and slow leisure

• July 12: Malala Day
• July 14: International Non-Binary Peoples Day
• July 14: Bastille Day
• July 17: World Emoji Day
• July 18: Nelson Mandela Day
• July 20: International Chess Day (You know what to do!)
• July 22: US National Hammock Day (U kno wut 2 do)
• July 25: US National Wine & Cheese Day (YKW2D)
• July 30: Paperback Book Day

Chapter 5: Settler Uprising

Blackhawk makes an effective case for revising our American Revolution history by framing its roots in that Native Inland Sea, where fluid and coalescing borders "invited" trade and settlers, contrary to the British Crown's intentions. While many of our "founding fathers" built wealth in illegal land speculation, immigrant settlers demanded part of the "spoils."

All resisted England in doing so, and this motivation may be found in our nation's original documents.​
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​Well, that is, until the race-thinking and economics of a bankrupt fledgling country changed everything.

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Book Recommendation

IRL by Tommy Pico (2016)

Pico's first book of poetry (and the first of his tetralogy) is a riveting rant of outrage and academics, NDN (Indian) defiance and queer resistance.

Written as a near-single work across its 98 pages, it barely pauses for breath as his Teebs protagonist navigates Brooklyn's mass transit, club scene, drug culture, queer communities, and the paradoxical language through all of it.

Seemingly a too-honest immersion from its beginning pages, readers soon find themselves turned about by the sudden juxtapositions of new topics and the growing malapropisms. Finally, we don't want it do end.

"The End of Reading is Here" (or not)

by Rose Horowitch

You may have seen this article sweeping across social media: once again, the hype and horror of "illiteracy" provokes teachers and conservative voices to cry out, "The world is ending."

I will only say just now that so much of that hyperbolic forecast is nonsense---but also that there are some very real challenges ahead, and we would do well to think through our responses to them and not run about looking for falling skies.

I'll have more to write on this next time, but here is the full article to read in preparation in case it got pay-walled for you:

Thank you again for the Waywords birthday well-wishes! As I move into years 6-10, it's gratifying to see what this intuitive choice has begun to form!

Have ideas, questions, thoughts, or just a project of your own you'd like to share?

Steve

What's Still Ahead?

• How I Read
• Excerpts from Frictional Reading
• Reflection: Muses or Misconceptions

​​​ ​​​​ ​Podcasts​ ​Fiction & Verse​ ​Education​ Copyright (C) 2026 Waywords Studio LLC. All rights reserved. Thank you for being part of our growing community!

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