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,…
Blackout, Sarah Hepola, and Addiction Memoir
Sarah Hepola’s memoir Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget is probably the best memoir I read in 2016. It’s not only exceptionally well-written, it’s brutally self-honest and open…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Nabokov’s ‘Lolita’ and the Inspiration of Aspiration
Full disclosure: A) Lolita is one of my favorite books of all time B) This is a re-read -I have know read Lolita 2.6 times (I started and for some…
Milan Kundera’s “Identity”: Sure, Maybe Not As Good As “Unbearable Lightness”, But Much Shorter!
Kundera’s seminal novel “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” was my favorite book out of last year’s readings and is easily in my top 10 books of all time. “Identity” is…