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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”

This is great, in that it’s about a feisty group of 50+ year old women and their friendships, love lives, and struggles with their kids and jobs, but it’s also tough to read, because… it’s tough to be a 50+ year old woman dealing with trash men, be they lovers or employers or deadbeat kids.ContinueContinue reading “Moms, Yeong-shin Ma, tr. Janet Hong”

I generally try to know as little as possible about a movie before I go to see it, but one look at the poster for The Northman had me pretty confident that I was certainly not going to watch it, so I gleefully read Glen Weldon’s review and chuckled, especially, at this bit: “Like Hamlet,ContinueContinue reading “The Northman”

Not predictions, because I’m terrible at them (as my attempts last year will show), just some quick thoughts because I did once again scramble to try to see many of the Oscar-nominated movies before the ceremony this year. Though I haven’t seen what I’m fairly confident is the best movie of all the ones nominated,ContinueContinue reading “Oscars 2022 roundup”

Much like their more well-known graphic novel, This One Summer, Skim is an unflinching look at the realities of being a teenager; an open acknowledgment of just how cruel and nasty a lot of it is. But melancholy though it is, there’s also a wonderful sense of tenderness and even nostalgia. I hated being aContinueContinue reading “Skim, Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki”

This was actually exactly what I expected it to be. The kind of fragmentary, essayistic effort to understand — in both an intellectual but also a very affective way — a person from the past, that melds with meditations on the self, excavations of illicit memories and ancestral trauma. But the French version, so, aContinueContinue reading “Exposition, Nathalie Léger, tr. Amanda de Marco”