Category Archives: Uncategorized

Every year, Top 10 lists start coming out in early December and I feel a. indignant that there’s still a whole month of the year left, how can these declarations be made now?!* and b. resigned to the fact that I actually don’t have the time right now to read all of the things IContinueContinue reading “Top 10 Books of 2023 that I Haven’t Read Yet”

I actually read this almost two months ago, and was so impressed with it that I wanted to take the time to write a more thoughtful and extensive post about it — and look where that got me. Back to the ol’ slap-dash it is! Just kidding. Sort of. I felt a renewed sense ofContinueContinue reading “Terrace Story, Hilary Leichter”

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”