Emma Straub’s Other People We Married
Emma Straub is best known for her novels, but I came to her by way of this short story collection, as is my preference with new-to-me authors that I’ve discovered…
On the Edge (Edward St. Aubyn)
Edward St. Aubyn’s 1998 novel rather recently got its U.S. release. I bought this book in Powell’s last year and just now got around to it. I have not read…
NonBinary Review, publication, and a great deal on a lit mag
Issue 8 of NonBinary Review, which features my story "AlterMist" and draws its theme from Sun Tzu's The Art of War, just came out in Kindle Edition. If you are…
Gateway to Paradise Revisited, and Further Notes
I recently had a conversation with someone more familiar with this book than myself, and it brought up a few things that I didn’t really address -or that I addressed…
Matthew Vollmer’s Gateway to Paradise
This is the third book of Vollmer’s I’ve read, the most recent, and the one I’d be least likely to recommend. I loved “Inscriptions for Headstones” -it was a fantastically…
Reading Log: ‘Barrelhouse 13: Comedy’ or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Ephemeral
I have a hard time with pop culture. Specifically, I have a hard time with intellectually rigorous examination of pop culture, because it always seems like too much thought is…
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: 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…
A River Runs Through It and USFS 1919
I read these two novellas back-to-back, in an anthology that also featured the wonderfully named short story “Logging and Pimping and ‘Your Pal, Jim’”. A River Runs Through It is…
Reading Log: Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley
At 58, John Steinbeck drove across America for a little over three months in a camper pickup with his elderly French poodle, Charley. The dog was not only a companion,…