This Year is an excellent lightly illustrated collection of annotations, lyrics, and miscellany for fans of The Mountain Goats, by John Darnielle. Released 2nd Dec 2025 from Macmillan on their Farrar, Straus and Giroux imprint, it's 560 pages and is available in hardcover and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links throughout. The pen and ink incidental art by John Keogh is spare and moody and suits the writing very well.
This is a free flowing book, and as the author suggests in his short but interesting introduction, it's entirely left up to the reader how to approach and consume the content. Read it cover to cover, skip around, day-by-day, or a mix of methods, it's left up to the reader.
Each of the 365 entries contains lyrics/snippets/poetry and thoughts. This is, at the end of the day, a look inside a very very creative man's creative processes and his creative mind. It's a very interesting and engaging read, and will provide worthwhile takeaways for -any- creatively inclined person, even more so for fans of the Goats.
Five stars. It would be an excellent choice for public or home library acquisition, for gift giving, or a niche challenge/buddy read.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
No comments:
Post a Comment