Neil Gaiman’s Smoke and Mirrors: a semi-cantankerous review
I was really disappointed by this book. Granted, I read it immediately following The Pugilist at Rest, and I feel like anything I read next would have seemed a bit…
Milan Kundera’s Testaments Betrayed
This was probably the most intellectually challenging book I’ve read all year. Translated from the French, it's a massive essay on a broad range of topics including but not limited…
Thom Jones’s The Pugilist at Rest
This is my favorite book of the year, bar none. A few authors have left me disturbed after reading (Carver, Tobias Wolfe, John Darnielle) but Thom Jones literally brought tears…
Sherman Alexie’s “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven”
I love short story collections. Whenever possible, I try to read a story (or a collection) by any given author before I take on one of their novels. The unique…
Moby-Dick: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Canon
I’ve been hearing the advice to “toss out the canon” given to readers more and more of late (most recently in Austin Kleon’s email newsletter). While I agree that there…