West with the Night
I hadn't heard of Beryl Markham until a few weeks ago, when her name showed up in an article in conjunction with Hemingway, who was apparently a fan. Her memoir,…
Purple Hibiscus
Purple Hibiscus is a novel in three parts, a very common and standard thing with regard to form and execution. It is a story of adolescence and a trouble family,…
Heart of Darkness: Another Hike up the Literary Canon
Another piece of the canon that I’m just now getting to. Still not sure how I made it through my English undergrad without reading this. I guess professors are just…
Relatability, Misery Porn, and Denis Johnson’s “The Laughing Monsters”
Denis Johnson’s latest novel is dark. This is not uncharted territory for the man, but the bleakness here is obliterating. There is a detached and passive depression in the…
Reading Log: Sonny Liston was a Friend of Mine
Well, now I’m all out of Thom Jones books. Sonny Liston was a Friend of Mine is the last of Jones’s three published works. He’s got a couple loose stories…
Reading Log: Thom Jones’s Cold Snap
Cold Snap is Jones’s second collection of stories, a follow-up to his acclaimed debut The Pugilist at Rest. Cold Snap borrows some of the characters from his earlier collection, and…
Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart
A high school class I was covering for a few days was reading this. I took a look at it after playing them a chapter of the audiobook. The voice…