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…
(Aborted) Reading Log: Gone Girl and Why I Need to Give Up on Reading Books That David Fincher Makes Into Movies.
I gave up eighty pages in and skimmed the rest for plot (I always try to make it at least 50 pages in good faith with any novel-length reading endeavor).…
Reading Log: Paul Harding’s Tinkers
Tinkers by Paul Harding Tinkers is a short book, but it was hard to get through. One might be tempted to call the prose purple if it weren’t…
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…
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…
2014 Book List and Best of 2014’s Reading
These are the books I’ve read this year. I’m afraid this list pulls the curtain aside; there are a few books you can see I’ve read but haven’t…
Neil Gaiman’s Smoke and Mirrors: a semi-cantankerous review
I was really disappointed by this book. Granted, I read it immediately following The Pugilist at Rest, and I feel like anything I read next would have seemed a bit…
Milan Kundera’s Testaments Betrayed
This was probably the most intellectually challenging book I’ve read all year. Translated from the French, it's a massive essay on a broad range of topics including but not limited…