Category Archives: Uncategorized

I was pleasantly surprised to see this on the NYTimes Best Books of the Year (it’s not often that indie presses get that kind of attention), and since I had a copy already, I thought, why not? And it was indeed a very enjoyable read; somehow both light and tautly, deliciously suspenseful. It’s set onContinueContinue reading “Eastbound, Maylis de Kerangal, tr. Jessica Moore”

When I first put this on my graphic novels syllabus in 2017, it was because I was interested in testing the limits of the form — is this really a graphic novel, or is it an illustrated book? Also, what kind of book is it? The sheer weirdness of it makes it fun to assign,ContinueContinue reading “Thunder & Lightning, Lauren Redniss”

I was so happy to have the opportunity to re-read this, and to read it much more carefully and thoughtfully than I did the first time. The first time I read it, I think I thought it was sort of cool and weird, but I also didn’t really get it. Like, it was clearly aboutContinueContinue reading “BTTM FDRS, Ezra Claytan Daniels & Ben Passmore”

I’ve been hearing friends praise Fosse for awhile, so when he won the Nobel I was like OK FINE, I’LL READ HIM. I wasn’t quite willing to tackle Septology, but discovered this 45-page option and thought, well, I can devote a morning to this. Joke’s on me, it took me a month to read. There’sContinueContinue reading “Aliss at the Fire, Jon Fosse, tr. Damion Searls”

I don’t actually know Lydia Kiesling personally (I follow her on twitter), but I sort of feel like I do. I’m a little creeped out sometimes by the resemblances between us. When her first book, Golden State, came out, several people recommended it to me, saying that it almost sounded like I had written it.ContinueContinue reading “Mobility, Lydia Kiesling”

I honestly thought that I had first read this in grad school, around the time when I was first being introduced to the idea of uneven development and clashing belief systems (ie, an ostensibly “obsolete” or “primitive” belief that resurfaces, or persists, in a “modern” context) and to the translatability of tropes from westerns intoContinueContinue reading “The Undertaking of Lily Chen, Danica Novgorodoff”

I taught this book in my graphic novels class in 2017, but Past Me did not do Present Me the favor of making any kind of notes about what I did with it in class back then, other than a detailed description of the fascinating ways the text charts time, so that’s probably something IContinueContinue reading “Chicken with Plums, Marjane Satrapi”

This took me a long time to read, for some reason, because it’s quite short, and I was mostly riveted when I did read it, I guess because while the tone is somehow quite familiar (coolly analytical), the kinds of family dynamics described are quite alien to me — having parents, whom you live with,ContinueContinue reading “A Feather on the Breath of God, Sigrid Nunez”

It was fun to teach this again, and a pleasure to re-read it. It’s interesting to me that my students hardly complain about how difficult it is, though it is really quite difficult! Not only because it’s fascinatingly elliptical, but also because it’s so dense with literary references. I found this very annoying the firstContinueContinue reading “Fun Home, Alison Bechdel”

It was such a treat to re-read these, and especially, to read them one after another, to notice the kinds of things they do, and do differently. In particular, I was fascinated by the difference in narrative voice — Small Things Like These is written in the third-person (“Down in the yard, Bill Furlong, theContinueContinue reading “Foster, Small Things Like These, Claire Keegan”