Category Archives: Uncategorized

Another short one, but better than nothing, maybe? There’s a lot of debate these days about the difference between essay, auto-theory, various experimental modes, etc — I would put these squarely in the essay category, in the best version of the form: a text that draws on personal experience (and some literary readings) to meditateContinueContinue reading “On Not Knowing: How to Love and Other Essays, Emily Ogden”

A taut, quick, quasi thriller. You kind of know what’s coming, yet you’re continuously surprised. The narrator is in many ways cliché (a jealous husband pursuing an affair with a younger woman), and yet somehow compelling. A lot of reviewers on goodreads are like UGH this is why I don’t read books by MEN andContinueContinue reading “The Woman from Uruguay, by Pedro Mairal, tr. Jenny Croft”

I was jokingly thinking to myself that the only way you could get me to read history like this is to illustrate it, but actually, this was still a bit of a slog. And maybe that’s because the story isn’t told in as engaging a way as it could be. Humbolt’s story is pretty incredible,ContinueContinue reading “The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, Andrea Wulf, Lillian Melcher”

I don’t write often about academic monographs on here, because the audience is much smaller, but this is truly one of the most exciting and brilliant scholarly works that I’ve read in awhile, so I really feel obligated to spread the word. Cohen uses the idea of “the Indies” — the seemingly odd pairing ofContinueContinue reading “The Global Indies, Ashley Cohen”

So many short story collections these days get described as “genre-defying” and “surreal”, and honestly, it doesn’t make me want to read them, but this one was long-listed for the Booker International Prize, which I’m generally more interested in (and this year’s list was especially good), and then I learned that the author translates RussianContinueContinue reading “Cursed Bunny, Bora Chung, tr. Anton Hur”

The kernel of this book is that the author taught fiction writing in a prison in the UK for three years and one of her students, after being released, came to a celebration of the program and murdered two of the teachers (the Fishmongers’ Hall attack). I wanted to read it, in part,* because IContinueContinue reading “Aftermath, Preti Taneja”

This is a quick, fun read. What makes it work is the voice, and the very delicate balance of both irony — you’re invited to identify with the character but also distanced from her — and outrageousness (how seriously are we meant to take all this?). Which is to say, there’s room, I think, forContinueContinue reading “Vladimir, Julia May Jonas”

You really can’t go wrong with a book of poetry published by Haymarket Books. They’re just all phenomenal, I’m serious. These are sharp, funny, beautiful. Danez Smith has an excellent introduction where he does a far better job than I can, explaining what makes these poems so brilliant, and so vital. As he notes, there’sContinueContinue reading “Black Queer Hoe, Britteney Black Rose Kapri”

I told myself before that the brief little blurbs that I write when I share my book thoughts on fb were fine for a blog post, but then each blog post ended up becoming longer and more involved, and so I quickly started feeling like those blurbs weren’t good enough, which if course led toContinueContinue reading “Dreams of a Common Language, Adrienne Rich”

This is a real stunner. Yes, I know, surprise, Nobel-Prize-winning author writes terrific books, but still: this one grabbed me and held me in its thrall. I didn’t read it quickly — I’ve actually been working my way through it over the last three months — but I nonetheless read it rapaciously, with absolute absorption.ContinueContinue reading “Admiring Silence, Abdulrazak Gurnah”