Analog Days

by Damion Searls

Acclaimed translator Damion Searls's exuberant debut novella navigates the bittersweet tug-of-war between nostalgia and living life meaningfully in a world buzzing with constant connection and information overload.

Analog Days is a snapshot of a circle of friends living through the sorrows and joys of a particular inflection point in history. Amid the ever-present news cycles, watching the world shift around them, they fall back on film and friendship and art as the last bastions of meaning in their fragmented lives. Moving from coffee shops to bars, from New York City to San Francisco, Analog Days immerses us in the individual lives set adrift among the pivotal events of our recent history.

Genres: Fiction, Novels

105 pages, Paperback

Published October 21, 2025

Reviews

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nostalgic musings with a Nabokovian feel to it.

I received this book as part of my Coffee House Press subscription for Fall 2025.

[Grace Bellman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting writing style and concept. A sort of non-book book. I liked it but I didn't connect with it as much as I would have hoped.

[Michael Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This a smart little book, minimal but weighty.

[Alex O'Connor · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hoped for more, but it was enjoyable enough for what it was. I was particularly interested in the conceit of the book, only for that to be at best a marginal element... sort of strange. A lot about gun violence and trump which was.... you know. Not great. Feel a bit like I had the wool pulled over my eyes. But still, it was very readable and never preachy. Maybe I will like it better / connect better on a reread.

[Yuna · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2

A bit too plotless for me; more like analyses of media laced together in loose diary form with a dash of friendship, rather than a novella centering around a group of friends. I appreciate the atmosphere the author creates but all around, just too fragmented for my preferences for the novel(la).

[Christopher Louderback · Rating 4 out of 5]

This bullet-train novella made me want to watch the film Dead Man. Also, Richard Linklater should adapt this for the screen.

[Dawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Analog Days” is a taut novella that stages the summer of 2016 as a countdown to the then-unthinkable but fully legible catastrophe, using a circle of friends and their media-saturated days to make the approach of Trump’s election feel like slow-motion dread. It is less a linear story than a patterned exposure of how attention, friendship, and social harms get braided together: the internet is “a trillion decisions mainlined right into your gently beating heart.” Yet there is also a tender lingering over films, poems, and small weather of the everyday with a kind of analog attentiveness. In that sense the searching—across browser tabs, memories, streets, and shorelines—is the real protagonist, turning the book into a record of how looking closely might still resist, however slightly, the collective inaction it records.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A non-book book about so much and not, akin to classics by Sebald or Adler, both light in it’s compactness and heavy in an inflated state. With an attention to the United States in 2016, right before, well… it’s a great book for folks who like to focus on distractions.

[Herbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This got a blurb in the New Yorker but I couldn't buy it from a regular online bookseller. That felt good, to Add To Cart on Coffeehousepress.org.

It's a slim little novella with a handsome cover that got questions and compliments when I took it out and about.

It reminded me of the work of Claudia Rankine, pre-possessed, poetic, sometimes inscrutable or turning in mysterious ways. Yet, mostly narratively straightforward... except when it's not. You feel sure that an undertow of deep philosophical consideration pulls underneath the plot happenings.

It also reminded me of Murakami.

There was a micro trend on social media about revisiting 2016 that was happening while I read this. Funny. This book is set in 2016. And a lot of what it is about is about the very first slow revolutions toward the spiraling sinkhole of digital nonsense that we all swirl around in constantly in 2026. In 2016 the internet was innocent, and the world was more innocent. Trump was a candidate. This book is about slowing down that progression and putting it back in chronological time.

[Kelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Analog Days by Damion Searls captures the fragile tension between nostalgia and the overstimulation of modern life. Through the eyes of a close-knit circle of friends, Searls paints a poignant reflection on what it means to seek depth in an age defined by distraction.

The novella’s tone is intimate yet restless anchored in sharp observations about human connection, art, and memory. Each scene flows with quiet emotion, offering readers an experience that feels both immediate and timeless. Searls’s ability to blend intellect with atmosphere makes Analog Days a moving meditation on belonging and meaning in a digital world.

A quietly stunning debut that lingers long after the final page.

[Bobby Crane · Rating 3 out of 5]

maybe more like 2.5/5 idk?

incredibly pretentious and kind of without a perspective. a lot of it was well-written and thought provoking, but I think i've read too many of these hollow musings on the state of the world recently. books like this -- and latronico's 'perfection' for one -- are great time capsules, but I don't think they're really adding anything to the larger conversation around The Present Moment.

plus, it hit a bit too close to home with all the trump/climate change talk. living in reality + staying up-to-date with the news is bad enough, do I really need to read it all again like this?

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Exemplify a Mutability: On Analog Days by Damion Searls, 2/24/26

Let me
(put it
(this way))

Here today
(and gone
(tomorrow;
(vicissitude,
(a forced embrace
(that aims
(to pass
(for truth)))))))

The hum
(of summer
(swarms
(somewhere
(inside you))))

Triangulate
(to find the hive
(if honey’s
(what you’re after)))

Cease the search
(and and learn
(to live
(within
(your choices))))

The park,
(a lesser Olmsted)

First one
(hissed;
(the second
(rumbled)))

Belong with
(schist,
(and be as gneiss))

Say it
(in a psalm)

Smuggle salt,
(take notes
(on notes))

Can sleep
(replenish
(choosing))?

Much has been
(omitted;
(this remains))

[Quinn Roberts · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have been debating between giving this book 2 or 3 stars. The bones of it I really liked. Like the concept and what the author was going for I really resonated with but then when it got to actually sitting down and reading it I just found myself uninterested by so much of it. There were some pieces here and there that I enjoyed but most of it just felt like a chore to get through. I really wish I liked it more than I did

[Michael Boehm · Rating 2 out of 5]

Was hoping for more. Interesting premise. There is so much information floating around, a plethora of depressing news that it is easy to lose your footing. I think it could have been explored more but it did not resonate with me.

[D · Rating 2 out of 5]

Booooo. Really not for me. Didn’t realize the concept of this was disaffected narrator contends with 2016 american politics. not like there was anything interesting said about it either. thank god it was only 100 pages

[Aleksandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

on one hand: the book was bad
on the other hand: it was so bad that studying for my number theory exam was more interesting...

if pinterest and twitter merged into one and became a book, this would be it (derogatory)

[Nicole P · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Navid · Rating 1 out of 5]

Taking the self-obsessed and pretentious New Yorker stereotype to a never-seen-before low...

[Zelda Godsey-Kellogg · Rating 3 out of 5]

I will write a review after work

[Eric Boles · Rating 4 out of 5]

No seeking, just search, you feel me?

[Nick Raskin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I appreciated the concept and the prose, but I think the execution wasn’t quite right.

[Micah Davis Westcott]

DNF so fuckin boring

[Cassie Martino · Rating 2 out of 5]

yeah I didn’t ~get~ this one tbh. kinda pretentious, kinda wish it had been more about analog nostalgia than current-day internet overstimulation. bummer :(

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

2026.36: we all need more analog days; read this one on a boat—perfect; entering this on my phone—not so much.

[Carissa · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5 Honestly it was all over the place. I think I just prefer books with a center plot, so this was not enjoyable to read