Monthly Archives: May 2024

It seems impossible that Beckett didn’t read this slender, strange text, but I have no idea if he actually did (a brief internet search only reveals that other people have compared the two). It’s a semi-comic, semi-melancholic story of two men who are trying to go up a mountain, told mostly through dialogue, and itContinueContinue reading “The 210th Day, Natsume Sōseki”

I read this book awhile ago when the author came to speak at Cornell, and enjoyed it so much that I made my book club read it, and therefore reread it myself last week. What I think is so cool about it is that it combines three related genres — the coming of age story,ContinueContinue reading “Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion, Bushra Rehman”

I may be somewhat biased, because Raul is my colleague and I like him a lot, but I enjoyed this novel so much. It’s the story of a guy named Hugo who lives in Miami and works as a spiritualist without really believing in what he practices, and who is being eaten away by debt,ContinueContinue reading “A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens, Raul Palma”

Some time ago, I read The Marzipan Pig with my 6yo, and absolutely LOVED it. I read it over and over, and read passages out loud to my partner, and when I posted about my love for it on facebook, and my intention to track down all of his other books,* people mentioned that heContinueContinue reading “Her Name was Lola, Russell Hoban”

I discovered the existence of this book when, before class, I was hastily googling to find the page number in Maus where Spiegelman mentions his daughter’s birth in a footnote. I found it, but I also found something entirely unexpected: her book! I glanced through some reviews that reassured me that this was not justContinueContinue reading “I’m Supposed to Protect You From All This, Nadja Spiegelman”