Seven Empty Houses (Samanta Schweblin)
Schweblin, an Argentinian writer, has written the finest story I've yet read about someone experiencing dementia…
Read more →Home
Cuba Libre (Elmore Leonard)
Leonard made extensive use of research and a researcher named Gregg Sutter for many of his novels, and Cubra Libre seems to be one of the more exhaustively researched and well-penned (he never used a computer or word processor, and rarely a typewriter) books in his oeuvre. Leonard, who began as a writer of westerns, then turned to city crime books, is back in semi-familiar territory in this book with a cowboy protagonist (Tyler) running horses to Cuba. The plan...
Read more →The Hunted (Elmore Leonard)
An unfortunate bit of timing has our hero captured in a front page story standing amidst the rubble of a hotel bombing.
Read more →The River Between (Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o)
A wake-up book for the study of post-colonialism in Africa and a spark point for outrage by public intellectuals like Christopher Hitchens from what was made known to the world (female genital mutilation). It will challenge anyone’s worldview and where they sit on the moral relativist scale. The choice presented in this novel between the Christian missionaries and indigenous tribal rights is impossible. A young man of the Gikuyu tribe named Waiyaki is the focal point in Thiong’o’s novel. At...
Read more →Things Become Other Things (Craig Mod)
The walk and the environs are the stage settings for the people Mod encounters,
Read more →Speedboat (Renata Adler)
There is a vibrant quality running through the narrator's life that I would equate to a good noir detective novel that keeps the page-turning pace up, with the occasional weirdo wandering into the story (more than a few times)
Read more →Ralph Fiennes' Four Quartets
Fiennes' production in which the poem is the script, performed in a theatre with subtle changes of light, and accompanied by film interludes of the locations associated with the poem's four sections.
Read more →M31 (Stephen Wright)
UFO nutjobs find themselves in an extremely well-written novel.
Read more →Hitch-22 (Christopher Hitchens)
Christopher Hitchens reflects on his upbringing, the influences that shaped him, and the philosophical foundations of his worldview.
Read more →Quicksand (Junichiro Tanizaki)
Quicksand is a silkily nuanced novel of erotic gamesmanship and obsession.
Read more →The Kreutzer Sonata (Leo Tolstoy)
A novella that is the confession of Pozdnyshev, a man who recounts the tragic unraveling of his life and marriage. Very Russian fare.
Read more →The War Against Cliché (Martin Amis)
Essays on the intricacies of literature, focusing on the importance of originality, and the tremendous lack thereof.
Read more →The Wager (David Grann)
A tale of an unusual 18th century mutiny.
Read more →Josephine the Singer (Franz Kafka)
Narrated by fellow mouse, who reflects on Josephine's (a mouse) significance within their society.
Read more →The Guide (R.K. Narayan)
A young man falls for a dancer and in promoting her falls into debt, and
Read more →Malgudi Days (R.K. Narayan)
Short tales by R.K. Narayan taking place in the fictional town of Malgudi.
Read more →The Map and the Territory (Michel Houellebecq)
The contemporary art world comes face to face with one Michel Houellebecq.
Read more →Stanley and Me (Emilio D'Alassandro)
A biography penned by the director’s Man Friday, what we’d call today a personal assistant, I guess. Before taking on that job, Emilio D’Alessandro was a down and out taxi driver who just happened upon the famous director one day when Kubrick was tired of dealing with the regular crew of drivers he had. He asked D’Alessandro if he could be his driver full time. From then on, duties continually increased along with being close to the director, who had...
Read more →The Festival of Insignificance (Milan Kundera)
The trivial moments in life often hold greater meaning than grand events? Find out here.
Read more →Hunter of Stories (Eduardo Galeano)
Why not write the big story of the past by telling the little ones?
Read more →Open Veins of Latin America (Eduardo Galeano)
A brief description of your post
Read more →Trust (Hernan Diaz)
A tale that revolves around a wealthy financier, Benjamin Rask, and his enigmatic wife, Helen.
Read more →The Dog of the South (Charles Portis)
Ray Midge, a bean counter in Arkansas, is our leading man and narrator. One day, his wife leaves him for Guy Dupree, but what's worse is that she takes his car.
Read more →Clay (James Joyce)
Multi-levels of meaning and potential interpretation exist in this, one of Joyce's shortest stories.
Read more →Hail Mary (Andy Weir)
Hard sci-fi from the author of The Martian.
Read more →My Brilliant Friend (Elena Ferrante)
August book club selection
Read more →In the Heart of the Heart of the Country (William H. Gass)
A new and compelling discovery for me. The work is difficult to summarize or put into a genre, oddly.
Read more →The Devil and Sherlock Holmes (David Grann)
Essay collection by the author of Killers of the Flower Moon.
Read more →Ms Ice Sandwich (Mieko Kawakami)
A brief but oddly engaging novel narrated by a grammar school student.
Read more →Perfect Days
The film follows the routine life of Hirayama, who cleans public restrooms and during his breaks, relaxes by having a bite to eat on a park bench and taking photos of the sun shining through the leaves above. I have since learned that the word in Japanese for the appreciation of sunlight coming through a canopy of leaves overhead is komorebi (木漏れ日). I have a trove of photos like that, so it should have its own word. I also learned...
Read more →