Herta Müller’s “The Passport” -Kicking Off “50 in 16”
Herta Müller’s novel “The Passport” is my first entry in my big reading project the year (reading fifty novel-length works by women in 2016). I had read her short story…
Reading on Your Phone, #Longreads, and Attention Spans
I rely on my phone more than I want to. I’m aware of my tendencies in this regard -I didn’t even get a smartphone until the beginning of 2015. And…
Why I’m keeping a Writing Log
I’ve started to keep a journal of my writing. More specifically, I’ve dedicated a paragraph-long section of my daily journal to writing about my writing, detailing the progress I’m making…
Carver’s “Ultramarine” and Narrative in Poetry
This was my favorite collection of poetry read in 2015. Carver’s poetry reads very easily for me, especially compared to a lot of other contemporary stuff. His poems have such…
Tobias Wolff’s “This Boy’s Life” and Why I Was Wrong About Memoir
Tobias Wolff’s book is one of those literary memoirs that helped define the genre. His recollections of a troubled boyhood often reflect poorly on the child he was, but are…
Colum McCann’s “Everything in This Country Must”
Colum McCann’s prose has some of the “Old Testament on LSD” lyricism of Cormac McCarthy, but mellowed by a much more linear and human narrative. “Everything in This Country…
Reading Goals For 2016
2015 was a bad year for reading women. Out of the 130 books I read, only 12 of them were written by female authors. The reasons for this are numerous…
Best Of 2015
Best Novel: “Grendel”. Gardner’s seminal work is beautiful and semantically dense. Honorable mention: ”Infinite Jest” Best Short Story collection: “Jesus’ Son”. Denis Johnson’s best work, in my opinion. Honorable…
2015 Final Count: 130
It was a very good year for reading. In total, I read 130 novel-length volumes this year, including some heavies like “Infinite Jest” and an 800-page biography of Alan Turing.…
“Quack This Way” and the merits of prescriptive linguistics
This book is really more a transcribed conversation than anything else, but it is absolutely worth your time. In it, David Foster Wallace and Bryan Garner (of Garner’s Usage Dictionary…