Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
David Foster Wallace is best known for Infinite Jest, but secondarily for his magazine and nonfiction writing. This collection of short stories is neither but is certainly worth the read, especially…
Lorrie Moore’s Birds of America
Lorrie Moore is good at writing short stories. This surprises no one, I assume. I had read one or two of her stories in anthologies, but never took the time…
Coin Locker Babies by Ryū Murakami
Ryū Murakami’s novel Coin Locker Babies was published in 1980, a fact that surprised me when I learned it just a few moments ago. It is certainly not timestamped -I…
A Book of Uncommon Prayer
Reading Log favorite Matthew Vollmer edited this particular anthology, an artifact that began as a personal writing project and expanded to include the work of many writers. Everything in here…
Dostoyevsky, The Gambler, and all the Big Important Russian Novels
I still have not read any of the Russian behemoths, but my experiences with the novellas of Tolstoy and now Dostoyevsky are making that a rather untenable position. The Gambler…
Flooded Announcment
I recently came across an editor and writer who is in the process of putting together an anthology that I find particularly interesting. Flooded will deal specifically with brain injury…
Susan Sontag’s Alice in a Bed
Alice in Bed is a wonderful concept play, a fantastic idea written deftly. A fantastic off-jumping from the real biographical details of Henry and William James’ sister, the play is…
Mother Night -yes, more Vonnegut…
Mother Night is one of Vonnegut’s minor novels, but still a strong entry. With my goal of reading all of his novels, (as well as Palm Sunday and Man Without…
Mary Gaitskill’s Bad Behavior
Mary Gaitskill’s debut story collection is definitely one of the best collections I’ve read this year. It’s a wide range of stories -male and female protagonists, 1st and 3rd person…
The Shipping News
-If you have not yet read The Shipping News and you wish to remain ignorant of key plot points, stop reading. You’ve been warned.- I had read Close Range (Proulx’s…