Reading Log: April Recap
April was a great month for reading. I knocked out thirteen titles, all very diverse (graphic novels, male and female authors, works in translation, nonfiction, anthologies, etc.). Beyond the ones…
Reading Log: ‘Maus I & II’
Art Spiegelman's two-part graphic novel blends humor and pathos in such a natural way that the reader doesn’t even notice the transitions. Although I’ve read excerpts, I’d somehow managed to…
Reading Log: Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Crossing’
Heavy book. I read the last 90 or so pages in a single sitting and after putting it down I felt like I was walking around in a fog, disassociated…
Reading Log: March
I did much better this month, but I had to really buckle down toward the end. I read a couple back issues of literary journals, some work in translation, a…
Reading Log: John Gardner’s Grendel
Grendel is the first full-length John Gardner novel I’ve read. I’m blown away. Go buy this book and read it now. Gardner gives voice to the Other (here the oldest…
Reading Log: Denis Johnson’s Nobody Move
This was a fun one. One of the most frequent complaints about literary fiction is that “nothing happens”. Fair enough. It’s a trope that the best writers either transcend or…
Reading Log: Raymond Carver’s A New Path to the Waterfall
When Raymond Carver was diagnosed with terminal Stage IV lung cancer, he kept on being Raymond Carver. He kept writing and he kept reading, finding some comfort or meaning in…
Books for Christmas
Books make good presents. These are what I got this year (Man in the Gray Flannel Suit and The French Lieutenant's Woman are first editions). Thanks!
Reading Log: The Unbearable Lightness of Being -Milan Kundera
Franco-Czech novelist Milan Kundera is a man of ideas. His essay Testaments Betrayed (an essay in 9 parts, weighing in at 280 pages) is the most conceptually dense piece of…
Podcasts Revisited: Honorable Mentions and Updates
These are all podcasts that were either too problematic for me to recommend unreservedly or that I hadn’t listened to long enough to come to a particular opinion. In no…