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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”

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”