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…
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…
2015 Final Count: 130
It was a very good year for reading. In total, I read 130 novel-length volumes this year, including some heavies like “Infinite Jest” and an 800-page biography of Alan Turing.…
Hesse’s “Siddharta”
This one wasn’t for me. Hesse’s popularity as a countercultural icon in America seemed to have led to this book becoming the subject of Zeitgeist-fixation, but in spite of very…
Women’s World Cup (of Literature)
Three Percent is a pretty solid podcast that focuses on the world of literature in translation (only 3% of books purchased in the US are works in translation). They are…
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…
Reading Log: Herta Müller’s ‘Nadirs’ and the Value of Juxtaposition in Bleakness
This is a very well-written book. In a series of short stories that bookend a much longer novella, the author presents her oppressive life as a young girl in a…
Reading Log: Murakami’s ‘South of the Border, West of the Sun’ and Me Bitching About Nice Things Because They are Too “On the Nose”
Murakami writes great characters. His prose is solid, and the excerpt I read from ‘Kafka on the Shore’ in The Paris Review was great -both funny and unsettling. Neither of…
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…
Reading Log: Gabriel García Márquez’s Of Love and Other Demons
Márquez himself needs no introduction, but his short novel Of Love and Other Demons had completely escaped my radar. My experience with Spanish-language magic realism had been limited to short…