Quick Lit: Short and Sweet Reviews January 2026

January is already flying by, which feels rude but also kind of on brand. This is my Quick Lit roundup for the month — short, sweet impressions of what I’ve been reading lately, including grumpy bookstore fiction, human-skeptical short stories, wise-auntie stuff, and one brand-new, slightly unhinged novel I picked up on a whim.

January reading, for me, is almost always about capacity rather than ambition — finding books that fit the shape of the days instead of forcing momentum where there isn’t any.

Service by John Tottenham

A grumpy writer suffers daily having to deal with, ugh, books, in an ugh, bookstore, where ugh, readers, ugh, want to talk to him, ugh. Then other successful writers come in to the bookstore in this hip Los Angeles neighborhood, and triple ugh. Life is insufferable, and reading about this particular instance of it is pretty funny but also, ugh, a little cringe.

Fav annotation

How did it come to this? It is what happens when somebody nearing the end of their prime, who is unfit for daily toil, and has a morbid horror of anything involving effort, is forced, through a harsh diminishing of circumstances, to earn an honest living. It’s a long story, too sad to be told, and I am not inclined to tell it. Life is plotless. Plots are for graveyards.

The Atavists by Lydia Millet

An atavist is someone (or something) that reverts to earlier, more primitive traits, biologically, psychologically, or socially, a kind of regression where instincts resurface and old patterns break through the veneer of modern life (I looked it up!). Its the idea that civilization is thin and the animal, ancestral self is never that far away.

Charles Finch wrote that “now that David Foster Wallace is gone, I think Lydia Millet is the American writer with the funniest, wisest grasp on how we fool ourselves” and i am 100% here for that. I can tell that will have to dive in to her memoir from 2024 right after I finish this. I isually have to be in a particular sort of place in my life to read memoir, but that may not apply here.

The first story opens with a woman hate-consuming the instagram feed of a man she knows who uses his feed to humble brag of his genius and cool dad manliness:

The preening was unbearable. Yet Trudy checked the account compulsively, indignant every time. Caught in a cycle of presentation and condemnation like bad reality TV. Contempt was natural—defensive, probably, and a form of catharsis. But she wasn’t uplifted by her daily practice of revulsion. If anything, she was debased by it. Still, she returned.

Girl Warrior: On Coming of Age by Joy Harjo

If you don’t have a wise auntie or matriarch in your life who gives you advice you sorely need, but want one, or even if you do have one but are open to having another, allow me to introduce Joy Harjo, the 23rd poet laureate of the United States.

Annotation

I was reminded once by the Old Ones that when the waters are stirred up in a pond, stream, or river, you cannot see anything at all. When you are disturbed and cannot find rest within your mind, then stop stirring the waters. Thank the earth for her embrace, for holding you up. Feel your rootedness. Imagine the way the earth smells after a rain. Breathe in blue-sky clarity. Breathe out muddy confusion. Let your thoughts float. Do not follow them. The waters will grow still and clear. When the waters are still and clear you can see into the situation with a more comprehensive point of view. You can see farther, deeper. As water’s nature is to flow, it will all pass, all of it.

Then go read the poem that opens this book here.

The Hitch by Sara Levine

This just came out yesterday and I swooped it up. I heard about it somewhere in a book club reads roundup, as a Roxane Gay pick (just learning she has a book club). The book is about a woman whose nephew, while in her care, becomes inhabited by the soul of a dead corgi? This is the kind of zany read ive been attracted to lately to keep my wits delighted in weird times. At purchase i learned the book was also published by Roxane Gay Books, her imprint with Grove Atlantic, which piqued my interest… i did investigate whether the book club only exists to support books that she puts out on her imprint, and that answer is thankfully no.

No annotations yet but I’ll follow up as I get into it.

Thats my this month social report! Tell me about yours in the comments!

This post is part of the Quick Lit book blog link-up put on by Modern Mrs. Darcy.