Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Kayleigh Donaldson | Miscellaneous | January 7, 2026
Happy 2026! The world is crumbling but there will always be books. Too many books. How many do you plan to read this year? I’m aiming for a book a week rather than try to rush through as many as possible. You can check out my big literary resolution for 2026 here. As always, let us know what you’re reading or planning to in the comments.
The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova
What books are you reading right now?
— Kayleigh Donaldson (@ceilidhann.bsky.social) December 8, 2025 at 11:33 PM
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In 2005, The Historian was one of the most hotly-hyped literary debuts of 2005. Elizabeth Kostova’s dense historical novel reimagined the story of Vlad Țepeș and his fictional version Count Dracula as a near-academic gothic adventure novel, and readers loved it. At the time, it was the fastest-selling hardback debut novel in U.S. history. I read it and loved it. As a certified vampire nerd, I was eager to see what she came up with next. But I didn’t read it until last month. There’s maybe a reason for that.
Published five years after her debut, The Swan Thieves follows a similar style to Kostova’s first book. It’s a mystery full of epistolary chapters with a historical subplot that blends into the contemporary. This time, however, the focus isn’t on a familiar figure or cultural touchstone but a creation of Kostova’s imagination. Psychiatrist Andrew Marlowe is called upon to treat Robert Oliver, a painter who has been institutionalised after trying to attack a painting in the National Gallery of Art. Robert won’t speak about his life, motivations, or much of anything else. Through visiting with his ex-wife and delving into a hoard of letters Robert treasures, Andrew hopes to uncover the truth of both his crime and the artwork that seemingly drove him to ruin.
The hook here is appealing: madness through art. And it’s all readable enough, but it lacks the grounding qualities of The Historian. That story came with a built-in history and the lineage of Stoker’s work, but here, Kostova has formed a wholly original foundation and it’s a shaky one to build a 565-page novel upon. There simply isn’t enough story here. A character will hint at a revelation, then you’ll need to wait dozens of pages for something to happen, and those figures aren’t interesting enough to retain our intrigue. It doesn’t help that one of the main female characters in this story is basically an object of sexual obsession for both Andrew and Robert. Then again, both men seem oddly similar in voice and intent so maybe Kostova got confused during the writing process. I feel like this book was hit hard by the sophomore slump as well as the publisher’s need for another mega-hit. A lot of The Swan Thieves reads like a checklist for more of the same. It’s sad because you can sense the potential amid the endless words and repetition. Maybe more vampires would have helped.
Syncopation by Anna Zabo
So yes, this is a post on my blog about the TW paperbacks. They're working their way through the whole KDP approval thing. The covers look like this:
— Anna Zabo (@amergina.bsky.social) December 3, 2025 at 12:18 AM
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Who’s up for a rockstar romance? Ray is the gorgeous and sensitive leading man of Twisted Dreams, but after a fight with his drunk of a drummer, he’s got a reputation as a bad boy with anger issues. Now, he needs to clean up his act and get a new drummer. Step forward Zaviier, a former percussionist for a prestigious orchestra who’s looking for a change of pace after unceremoniously quitting his last job following a messy affair with the conductor. Joining the rock band headed by his high school crush is probably inadvisable.
I needed a quick and spicy romance for the liminal period in between Christmas and New Year, and past me must have predicted that because this title was on my tablet, a purchase I do not remember making (story of my life when it comes to e-books, to be honest. It’s a problem.) It hit the spot and understood the assignment: hot queer rockstar romance with kinky elements and lots of leather trousers. This one also had an aromantic lead, which I hadn’t read in a romance before. I can’t speak to the quality of the representation but I appreciated the depiction of someone who loves sex and craves companionship without it necessarily being defined by traditional concepts of love. These elements worked better for me than the subplot involving a cartoonishly evil manager whose motivations are quickly summed up in the book’s climax.
On the Calculation of Volume I by Solvej Balle
I finished the first book of On the Calculation of Volume in a rush and badly needed the next two. I thought, this seems like something the new bookstore down the street, Time and a Half Books, will have on the shelf. I was right. It’s a good shop. (And they have True Grit stacked on a table!)
— Levi Stahl (@levistahl.bsky.social) January 2, 2026 at 7:53 PM
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What would you do if you woke up one morning and found yourself in a time loop? Would you go mad? Embrace the endless cycle? Or try something nuts, in the vein of Bill Murray in Groundhog Day? For Tara Selter, it’s been the 18th of November for 122 days in a row. She went away for a work trip and found herself stuck on the same day, knowing exactly what will happen from the moment she awakens. But her time loop is not the dame as ones of pop culture past. She can move from her location. Her body changes. She has made her way back to her husband Thomas, who doesn’t know of the time loop and has to be told of it every “day.” But how long can one remain in this state?
Danish writer Solvej Balle’s multi-book exploration of this one day is ponderous, philosophical, and frustrating in a good way. She captures so acutely the minutiae of that one day, and all the things you notice when you’ve looked at everything else. Through Tara’s descriptions, you sense her growing mental anguish, her increasingly antagonized approach to what used to be a lovely little life. Or was it? This doubles as a study of marriage and how a seemingly content union can begin to splinter through no obvious fault of either spouse. What creates more estrangement than one person growing while the other cannot? I’m fascinated to see how far Balle can take this story, especially since this is a seven-part series. I’m locked in for more.
