Five Foot Something and A Half: The Conclusion—Poetry, Most Evocative, & Honorable Mentions

A final look at what I read in 2025 and a few books you'll be glad to read in 2026 in three flash essays.

Jan 14, 2026

In this conclusion of my favorite reads from 2025 and a few I think you’ll be glad to include in your TBR for 2026, I offer two genre selections and a host of honorable mentions for your consideration.

If you’ve keeping along from the beginning, then you’ve read my recommendations for Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction, and Horror here, and my recs for Non-Fiction, Literary Translation, and Craft Books here. If you haven’t, don’t worry, these didn’t need to be read an any order (they’re only numbered to help me keep track).

Either way, this is the final essay in the series, and I think it should be the briefest, though I admit, I’m not sure I can actually pull that off.

To it then…

7. Poetry

Letters to Guns by Brendan Constantine

Brendan Constatine’s poetry collection, Letters to Guns (Red Hen Press, 2009), is the perfect addition in anyone’s home library poetry collection.

But the title? And Constantine lives in Los Angeles. Aaron, don’t you like guns?

Look, I wouldn’t say I’m a gun nut, or even an enthusiast—some might, but I wouldn’t. I am, however, a hunter, sportsman, Marine rifleman, and I like to shoot beer cans at the river, so I understand why you might think so. You might think this collection feels abrasive to my delicate sensibilities. But you’d be dead ass wrong.

I heard Constantine read from this collection last year and was blown away, no pun intended. It’s true, I think he is a master performer (it runs in his family), but the poems he read from this collection could have been delivered by a rock and I would have been impressed.

You can check out some of his performances here. I’ll accept your thanks in advance.

I can imagine how some might take the “rock” comment in the wrong way. But again, they’d be wrong. I’m not being dismissive. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. He is, as I’ve said, a master performer, it’s just that he also seems to have mastered connecting with me through his poetry, and Letters to Guns connects, my friends. It connects.

I enjoyed this collection very much. Its foray into such a—how should we say—impassioned subject by means of genuine interest and poetics refuses to allow the earnest reader from digging his or her heels in into any particular position. Readers experience many perspectives through Constantine’s experimentations in form, which I think were quite disarming and anything but ironic. I found the entire collection, from the first page to its last, exciting and fun, and he invites us all into a conversation of sorts by way of epistolary, which my readers know I cherish above all other forms of writing.

This collection is the love child of both art and craft, and Letters to Guns is its name.

Add this to your library and enjoy. And be gracious with your time and ammunition if you own firearms. Take someone who has never been around them to a range for the day, or hunting, or shooting beer cans at the river, and start a conversation.

8. Most Evocative

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

Twice just ain’t enough for this novel, and if you’re sick of seeing people talk about Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove (Simon & Schuster, 1985) or reading its praise, well, that’s just too dang bad. It is more than canon. It was one of three holy books in my late grandmother’s house, and arguably, her favorite novel.

After floods ruined her home, some years ago, most of her library was destroyed. A few survived and are with various members of the family, and I have several books from her too, but this is the only one that she actually gave to me, and it gets tossed out the window in a fire before the kids do…

That’s the beat up, spine-taped, dog-earned, tattered-cornered, paperback copy, not the hardcover you see behind it there.

That is a joke (if you’re with the CPS and some disgruntled reader reports me), but just barely. Still, it’s also an accurate, dare I say essential, component to our family emergency evacuation plan. There’s nothing to get worked up about Mr. CPS Man. That’s only accurate because this copy rests on my desk on the way to the kids’ rooms. I’m no monster, but there just no sense wasting time by running back into a fire to save it when I am running right by it to save the kids in the first place. See? Makes complete sense when you think about it.

Everyone knows what the novel is about, so I won’t waste your time sharing that information, and if the evac plan described above doesn’t give you an idea of how important this novel is to me, then there’s probably no way I can explain it to you. However, maybe a few anecdotes will help.

I’ve carried my grandmother’s copy of this book all over the world. It has deployed with me. It has climbed Mt. Suribachi and stared over the black sands of Iwo Jim with me. And it has sailed in the Pacific Ocean with me.

I even named the little yacht I spent my twilight tour as a live-aboard after the novel, SV Lonesome Dove. She was one bourbon away from being named the SV Augustus McCrae, but I’m glad she wasn’t because now you can say you know the only man, dead or alive, that actually lived in Lonesome Dove.

So, you see, I love this novel, and it’s not an exaggeration to say it helped shape me into the man I am today. If you haven’t read it yet, please, Please, PLEASE make this year the year you do! I cannot imagine you’ll regret it. Then go watch the film adaptation and listen to the soundtrack. Both are wonderful too.

9. Honorable mentions

We’re into the quick now, aren’t we? I struggled not to include these next few titles in my other genre-ish selections.

And who’s up first to approach the firing line? Our ol’ pal, Ernest Hemmingway.

Now, I’ve heard he wasn’t the nicest fellow. That’s what I heard anyway. I don’t know. I mean, I wasn’t there, you see. That’s just what I heard. But all gossip aside; his writing is wonderful. The Ernest Hemmingway: Four Novels (Barnes & Nobel, 2007) compilation includes some of the most read and studied literature of our time, but it’s For Whom the Bell Tolls that connected with me the most. It’s haunting and tragic and funny and interesting, full of action and romance and fire-pit humor, and it drags me into the company of characters not unlike McMurtry does in Lonesome Dove or our next author on the high seas. It’s a fast paced read and worth a few nights around your own fire pit.

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Herman Melville could easily find himself in deep water with nearly any category I’ve listed and then be added as an honorable mention anyway.

And that list would be straight. But to be honest, the real reason it’s only an honorable mention is because it was my fourth read of this classic (I think), and I’ve listened to it, and watched a ton of adaptations, and I felt bad keeping out the others. I also have it on good intelligence that the leviathan has thick skin (great chapter on whale skin, btw), and he can take it.

It has, arguably, the most famous opening line in any story ever written, but I also think if we put up some of the best chapters in literature—say top 10—Moby Dick would hold several spots on that extremely short list.

Albert Camus’ Nobel Prize winning work, The Myth of Sisyphus (Vintage Books, 1983), has been on my mind a lot of late. Some of that has to do with Michael Jerome Plunkett’s debut novel and reimagining of Camus’ classic, Zone Rouge, which just so happens to be my lit-fic selection, and some of it has to do with my own life. With how my commitment to writing and storytelling has changed me.

Camus is a Ca-MUST! Read him, and don’t forget Plunkett. His is a perfect companion read, for obvious reasons, and I really think you will get something out of experiencing them back-to-back.

I’ve been listening to Neil McRoberts’ thoughts on horror literature for a few years now through his podcast, Talking Scared, and he really has become one of the most respected and celebrated social voices on literature (horror in particular), but don’t let the S-word scare you. He also has a PhD in the stuff. You should listen to him wherever it is that you listen to podcasts. But about his novella, Good Boy (Wild Hunt Books, 2025).

It’s fun, expeditious, eerie, and it’s a killer story with a killer cover, and inspired by one very real, super awesome, pen-pal for our dog, Bear, horror community fave, Ted (who is also on the cover).

This is a perfect, roll-in-your-back-pocket-and-take-to-the-beach book, or slip-in-your-bag-for-a-long-public-commute, or even a bring-along-camping-and-read-to-everyone-around-the-fire sort of book. Just don’t forget the milk bones for your four-legged member of your family.

Civilians:Poems (LSU Press, 2025) is another poetry collection I thoroughly enjoyed. I met Jehanne Debrow at one of my Vermont College of Fine Arts residencies in 2025 and I count her reading and Q&A as one of the best there. Her collection is one of the best I’ve read in recent months too.

Civilians is actually the final volume in a trilogy about being a modern mil-spouse. Dubrow explores the experiences of those who love and live with—oft-without—others who defend their country through uniformed service. As a lifer in the Corps, and mil-spouse myself, this one hit on so many levels. Semper Fidelis.

Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History (Scribner, 2010) is popular and growing in popularity as word of its optioning for film continues to spread. I’ll be interested to see what happens there, but as for S. C. Gwynne’s book, I list it in the back of my debut novel for interested readers to explore because I think it is a damned good book.

It has faced some controversy, though I should say it wasn’t so significant that I even knew about it until scrolling down quite a few entries on an internet search. Still, below is what I say about it in my novel.

While only a brief section of this book discusses the Sand Creek Massacre directly, the entire text offers broader understanding and much needed context of the various political and cultural forces reshaping the North American landscape in every imaginable way and all of its inhabitants, early and late to arrive. It should be noted that the Comanche Nation passed a resolution denouncing the entirety of Gwynne’s book with Comanche Nation Resolution No. 143-2024 for a “…purposefully eschewed use of Comanche sources in writing [Gwynne’s] book, and as a result of his over-reliance on ethnocentric sources, the book repeats many inaccuracies and stereotypes concerning the Comanche People.” So, what follows is my opinion, though I believe it is widely shared by academics, historians, and casual readers alike. Empire of the Summer Moon is comprehensive, exhaustive, nuanced, and arguably, one of the most objective historical accounts I’ve ever read. Gwynne doles out praise and criticisms of every participant involved in equal measure, and though often unpleasant to consider, both are valid and necessary.

Read it and let me know what you think.

Well, that’s it. You have my favorite reads from 2025 by genre-ish, a complete list of my reads listed below, and a few bonus recs for you to carry into the rest of the reading year in 2026. I hope they make some find their way into your reading life and you let me know which ones they are.

Should you have thoughts or questions about any of my recs or the other titles I read last year, please don’t hesitate to drop a comment and start a conversation. I would love to talk about it all.

Back to it on this end. Cover art for my debut is done and we’re moving into the final stages of book design before it gets sent to the printer for proofs.

Happy writing and reading and reading and reading…

Semper Fidelis.

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