brief book reviews

i enjoy reading books. here are all the books i've read since the end of january, i think, not counting the various books i'm in the middle of reading. note that the first four reviews here, or versions thereof, appear in the spring 2026 issue of beyond the last estate.

 

Flat Earth by Anika Jade Levy (Catapult, 2025): A short, moody novel about the NYC art scene, the shitty neoreactionary cultural wave from the past few years, and jealousy. I liked the melancholy tone and pace, its unexpected turns and reveals, and its relatable emphasis on what it feels like to have a more-talented-but-also-more-depressed best friend. Didn't as much enjoy how underdeveloped some of the characters and scenes felt, and how at least one chapter reads as a non sequitur personal essay very roughly reshaped to help hit pagecount, but overall enjoyed it and would have liked it to be longer. Felt like a European book (complimentary); reminded me of Helle Helle's This Should Be Written In the Past Tense, but with some more playful cultural commentary. feeling surprised how many reviews of this focus on the setting and critique the rightwingedness of the arts scene it itself critiques instead of the writing itself, but i guess that's what book reviews do now. not mine though. i like the writing. would recommend.

Paradise Logic by Sophie Kemp (Simon & Schuster, 2025): A fun, satirical, stylistically playful novel about a young woman trying to be the perfect girlfriend. Enjoyed the unabashed DFW-adjacent use of wordplay and intrasentential mixed registers, the often unpredictable, actually-funny jokes, and the ambitious scope of the story. Felt like some aspects of it were underdeveloped or else seemingly incompatible vestiges of previous drafts, like the zine-making thing, but overall enjoyed the balance of clarity and ambiguity and its confident subversion of action tropes, especially toward the end. Reminded me of fun gonzo 80s stuff like Tom Robbins but set in the modern day. refreshingly fun despite maybe also ultimately restricting itself in scope a little bit. would recommend.

 

Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash (FSG, 2026): this is a critically-acclaimed novel about a family of witty semi-losers dealing with, ultimately, an Epstein-Lite evil billionaire action/adventure plot. i enjoyed cash's story collection from a couple years ago, but there's basically nothing of the style or energy from those stories here. the vast majority of this book consists of snappy, witty dialogue, which generally feature a precocious teenager riffing on every cliched expression their tired adult interlocutor inevitably uses, with the narrative voice referencing the subverted cliche again just before the scene break. by the end of the book it felt like she got tired of writing these scenes and so the dialogues devolve to just full pages of quippy back-and-forth statements, no dialog tags, no movement, no blocking, no description: just a full page of dialogue, zinger after zinger. this 'funny,' formulaic dialogue (and thus the bulk of the book), plus the family structure/family dynamic/setting, reminded me of the adult-oriented cartoon sitcoms bob's burgers. after the first couple chapters i immediately mapped most of he characters to characters from the cartoon show – the precocious and troublemaking youngest sibling, the good-natured but bumbling father, the awkwardly weird and lovelorn other sibling, the former-artist mother who's tempted by the handsome and successful neighbor, etc – and this only further solidified as the plot progressed into tropey, self-aware action/adventure. the only real exception is the oldest sister, who, despite ostensibly being the main character, is impressively one-dimensional. thus i feel like the most succinct way to describe the book is that it reads like the novelisation of a feature-film-lengthed episode of bob's burgers. which isn't necessarily bad – it seems like a fine show (i've watched maybe 10 episodes) – but i don't really understand the motivation for writing a book version of it. something i did feel interested in was the out-of-time feeling of the setting. it's ostensibly present day, with allusions to various topics du jour (mostly conspiracy theories), but also requires a huge suspension of disbelief regarding the lack of actual present day life and culture. the setting sort of inherently feels like 1998 or 2004, a pre-phone, pre-social media, pre-digital-life world, since, in a way, the ensemble-cast, action/adventure sitcom-type story requires it to be so. this compounds in a number of little ways that constantly remind you of the artifice needed for the story to function – characters constantly attend various in-person meetups, they examine real physical bulletin boards, they never text each other or post on social media (or even mention social media), they attend family-friendly tech company work parties (which don't actually exist anymore), they know and talk to all their neighbors, and so on. as a parent in 2026 this world feels alien and unrelatable, and contains nothing of the intense (digitally-mediated) atomization of modern life. even some of the jokes/subplot points feel inexplicably lifted directly from 2004, such as one of the siblings getting groomed by an islamic terrorist via chatroom, and the catholic priest sex scandal references. there are a couple contemporary affectations that are, however, directly reactionary and referential to 2004: an obsession with smoking cigarettes (isn't smoking so cool?) and calling people retarded (there is, incredibly enough, an actual brain-damaged child who is consistently and directly referred as being retarded by almost every character in the book). as such it's a weirdly non-contemporary book, despite on paper being set in present day, but it's maybe this vintage-feeling sheen (and its crisp, quippy style) that makes it resonate with better-paid literary critics. to its credit, it is in many ways in in stark contrast to the larger trends in modern literary fiction: it isn't autofiction, it isn't a critique of the NYC writing scene, it isn't about intergenerational trauma, it isn't an exploration of an underrepresented identity, it isn't about polyamory or instagram or big tech corporation panopticons (even the big evil rich villain is quaintly rooted in a bygone era: actual shipping boats). but this also means it doesn't say anything about anything real, and it doesn't justify itself with anything exciting in terms of style, storytelling, or structure. other random thoughts: felt the couple one-off chapters from a tertiary character's point of view mostly unnecessary and imbalancing; it felt like the last third dragged on, with a lot of time spent tying up every thread into a neat little package; it felt like very few of the jokes were actually, viscerally funny, only ever 'clever;' every plot point more or less feels predictable, straight-forward, and safe; rarely was i gripped by an unexpected description, reverie, or reveal; one of the tertiary characters felt like he was from the simpsons instead of bob's burgers. wouldn't recommend. 

 

the school of night by Karl Ove Knausgaard (Penguin, 2026 translation): technically the 4th installment of his ongoing, 7-part Morning Star series, this one (of the four translated into English so far) is more or less a fully self-contained novel that works strikingly well on its own. it's 500 pages but full of snappy single-line paragraphs and dialogue, so it reads quick, and leverages enough suspense and horror to make it flow even quicker. i'm not necessarily a fan of this approach, and these kind of passages can be tiring and feel imbalanced; didn't like how at times feels like the airport bookstore-rack thriller schlock of yore mixed with the now-passé cancel-culture parts of Tár. felt often like the level of detail was needless filler and several bits of dialog were frustratingly contrived, but many of the scenes and images stood out to me as surprising, novel, and inventive. mostly enjoyed it because it's got all the knaussy hits: baked potatoes, coffee, 80s norwegian indie rock, essays on art, and endless rumination on death. also enjoyed the trademarked emphasis on art, literature, theology, and the compelling minutiae of life woven throughout; makes me wish he wrote more books like a time for everything and didn't try to court generic liteary critic praise so much. would have read/enjoyed it differently if i had been familiar with faustus before reading, maybe, but enjoyed it on the terms it sets for itself. maybe my 2nd or 3rd favorite of the 4 that have been translated so far.

 

DOE by conor hultman (cloak, 2025): a very large collection of found poetry about dead bodies. conor had asked me to read it and potentially blurb it, and felt vaguely interested during the first ~20 pages under the assumption there would be a narrative arc or recurring theme or variation in the imagery, but after learning that it primarily consists of real unidentified human remains cases (presumably from NamUs?) organized geographically, and not original poems necessarily, i felt unable to adequately appreciate it; the result feels to me more like a book-as-object, like something from inside the castle, which isn't a type of book i have much experience engaging with and so can't review or critique it in any meaningful way. looks cool, as a book, if you're into spooky-looking books.

 

the woman in the dunes by kobo abe (vintage, 1964 translation): picked this up for a buck at a library sale. never read abe before. this is a normal-lengthed novel about a man who gets lost in the sand dunes and winds up in a mysterious, inescapable village, living with the eponymous woman in the dunes. felt briefly hard to get into toward the beginning because you can kind of easily intuit the main plot points and ending from the outset, but the execution is still very compelling, strange, and full of stylistic play that surprised and excited me. enjoyed the random preoccupation with math/measurement as a plot-bearing affectation, and the slow, uneven exploration of gross sex scenes. the physical discomfort expressed so constantly (because of the sand) reminded me vaguely of hunger by knut hamsun; relatedly enjoyed the moments of stream-of-conscious, daydream/hallucination-like asides, which reminded me of nathaniel duggan's tweets (i sent him a picture of one such passage, and he remarked that he 'fucking loved [this] book,' so that makes sense). enjoyed the almost whimsical-feeling, kafkaesque ending. however, i also felt like some of the word choice stuck out as needlessly repetitive, and had a hard time caring about/visualizing some of the more action-oriented sequences, which i think are probably included more cynically to engage the average reader than to push the form of thrilling fiction. excited to read more by him. feels like i keep getting into a new widely-acclaimed, many-prize-winning, early 20th century japanese master every other year or so. would recommend.

 

my sister's blue eyes by jacques poulin (cormorant books, 2007 translation): readers of the no future tshirt blog will note that i have been slowly trying to read every book of poulin's that has been translated into english. frustratingly many have not yet been translated. anyway, this one is from his slightly later period (2002) and follows a youngish man with a younger sister who create a sort of found family with an aging writer who runs a bookstore. enjoyed the extended ruminations on aging and the blurring of memories, the discussions on writing and books, and the general way that poulin can describe the beauty of various cities and landscapes. felt surprised and slightly, curiously offput by the vaguely incestuous subplot – enjoyed imagining this as a subversive, transgressive novel that asks the question "what if i made a really cozy, endearing novel but also made the main character a total fucking creep in like five scenes?" enjoyed trying to sort out the connection with his other novels, their timelines, whether they are really supposed to be interconnected or just separate works that explore similar themes (and character names, occupations, and locations). overall felt slightly underdeveloped, maybe too short for its own good, despite poulin almost exclusively writing short novels – would have enjoyed more of various arcs, i think, and some more development of the backstory of each character. maybe my 2nd least-favorite poulin book, so far, just above volkswagon blues. wouldn't recommend over any of his other novels.

 

mister blue by jacques poulin (archipelago, 2012 translation): ok, this is the jaqcues poulin shit i like. i liked this one a lot. a slim novel about a lonely, aging writer who pines for a mysterious woman he suspects is living in a cave on the beach. enjoyed the ruminations on the act of writing, the discussions of hemingway, the nature writing, the food writing, and the unexpected emphasis on the narrator-author's sexual/gender identity, especially the dualism of masculine/feminine, and the mix of both expected and unexpected plot points revolving around this theme, which is also mirrored in the style of the text; felt like it contained an above-average number of beautiful, insightful passages. enjoyed, as always, the recurring motifs from the rest of his work: tennis, orange juice and hot chocolate, found family, the river, pet cats, books etc. pretty solid. would rank it high up there alongside is later work – struck me as considerably similar to his books from ~10+ years later, and more dissimilar from his books from ~3+ years before. would recommend.

 

translation is a love affair by jacques poulin (archipelago, 2009 translation): this one seems to be the last easily-accessible book of his (in english). feels like a good one to end my run on. a slight divergence from his usual fair, in that the narrator is a woman, but still riffs on a lot of the same preoccupations. this is a similarly short novel about a translator working with an elderly-ish author while living in a small chateau out in nature. however, there's a slight mystery/adventure/noir element. enjoyed the stuff i usually enjoy: the nature/city writing, the discussion of literature and writing as profession, the semi-inexplicable but good-natured interactions with random people. ending felt a bit too easy and unrealistic. overall mostly enjoyed, but wouldn't recommend over any other of his books. would be interested in making a power ranking of jacques poulin novels that no one else would be interested in reading; this one is better than my sister's blue eyes and volkswagon blues, and maybe not as good as my horse for a kingdom. 

painting time by Maylis de Kerangal (FSG, 2021): grabbed this because i read and mostly enjoyed her short novel that came out on Archipelago in 2024 (i think). this is a moderately-long-lengthed novel about a young french woman who enrolls in an intense, 6-month trompe-l'œil painting program and kind of falls in love with another student. the book is divided into three sections, corresponding to her attending school, then working odd jobs, then doing one particularly big job. enjoyed the emphasis on learning/mastering an art, in general, the extensively niche vocabulary throughout, and the interestingly new (to me) subject matter of trompe-l'œil. felt less interested in the increasingly long lyrical, essayistic passages about natural history, especially by the end, when it felt like the whole last third created a strange imbalance for the book, with its emphasis on one particular thing that didn't seem naturally motivated by the text itself, but i still found the topic interesting and engaging once i got into it. also didn't care for the reliance on long sentences with lots of commas for its stylistic effect throughout, but otherwise overall enjoyed the writing, tone, development, and confidence of the story and how it's told. seemed generally much higher-quality and smarter, well-researched writing than a lot of contemporary (american) literary fiction. would recommend.

 

go home, ricky! by gene kwak (the overlook press/abrams, 2021): met and hung out with gene at storyfort and really enjoyed his contributions to the panels he was on in particular. this is a moderately-lengthed novel about a semi-pro wrestler who gets injured in the first chapter and then goes on a series of slapstick misadventures, such as trying to locate his long-lost father. enjoyed reading the actual wrestling content, but this ended up being very minimal, with the bulk of the book consisting of the narrator's life post-injury: getting fat, going on road trips, being weird to people, and talking about nebraska. enjoyed several scenes for unexpectedly novel-feeling jokes, but didn't enjoy the majority of the jokes that just reference contemporary pop culture (already feeling slightly dated). overall felt strangely paced: most chapters early on start with a couple sentences set in the 'present', then the rest of the chapter consists of a related flashback, which makes the first half feel very expositional and choppy, but also felt some of the plot points felt weirdly imbalanced/rushed by the end – seemingly large and important events like cross-country roadtrips are tidied up in a chapter or two, for example. i did enjoy the unexpected moments of nature/descriptive writing and the exploration of identity, especially by way of secondary characters, and the general conceit of the book, despite the weird pacing. seemed overall fine. unsure i would recommend relative to other books i've read recently, but i like gene.

 

baby in the night by kevin sampsell (impeller press, 2026): bought this from kevin at storyfort. kevin is a legend in the small press world and i enjoyed hearing him read an excerpt from this during one of the reading events, and so his reading voice possibly colored my reading of the book. this is a novel told from the perspective of a 12 year old who remembers his entire life, and so the book details stuff from his life when he was 2-5, with an emphasis on a surreal, dreamlike motif of the baby exploring a fucked up downtown on his own at night, hanging out with homeless drug addicts and stuff. i like the melancholy, simple style and innocent-feeling insights borne out of this conceit. i very much enjoyed the 3-4 very explicitly comedic scenes and an unexpectedly long monologue in the middle. enjoyed the misc. scenes of the baby hanging out with another kid, tater – the way the baby's perspective is written in particular during these scenes. but i felt like there could have been more scenes of the baby going out and hanging with homeless people. i also felt like the ending sequence wrapped things up in a strange, rushed, disappointing way, sort of disconnected from the plot of the book up until that point, and frustratingly undercuts a lot of the story up until then. but overall liked it, and found it otherwise well-paced and inventive. would recommend as something different and ambitious.

 

vox by nicholson baker (vintage, 1992): picked this up used, since it's a vintage classic with the cool spine, and is by an author that several people have recommended to me before (lookin' at you crow). a short-ish novel consisting just of a prolonged dialogue between a man and a woman who connected via an ad for adult conversations over telephone. the cover/synopsis describes it as an erotic novel, but i found it, for the most part, extremely and intentionally un-sexy, until the last third, maybe, then enjoyed how unorthodixically sexy it did feel. enjoyed the structural conceit of the book being dialogue-only, especially when 'off-screen' actions/changes are alluded to. enjoyed the foreignness of the recent past revealed in the (at the time) hyper-modern, pop-culture emphasis of the setting and characters; enjoyed marveling at one character revealing he had never purchased music, for example, and only listened to the radio. felt like some passages dragged on and required more suspension of disbelief than i'd hoped, with some of the dialogue scanning more like gilmore girls-style, too-perfectly articulated and cloyingly charming. did enjoy how propulsive it felt despite there being no real conflict or character arc (much like sex itself, hmm). enjoyed the emphasis on masturbation vs. sex, both in the main dialogue and the embedded stories; feels somewhat prescient, from a cultural commentary perspective, in this way. also reminded me of sleepless in seattle, because of the time period and setting (and phone call conceit), and i futilely tried to look up if anyone has written about these two pieces of media in an essay, but the title of this novel made it all but impossible; i did see that baker published an essay about using the internet in 2008, in which he edits the sleepless in seattle wikipedia page. curious. enjoyed seeing that it was mostly panned when it came out, at least relative to his other books. briefly felt existential dread seeing some of the scenes unfold in a a way that feels like what i've been trying to do in some of my more recent stories, these long monologues where people end up talking about sex, which i should know isn't original, but i don't know. i feel both excited and concerned when i read older writing that does what i feel is something i'm working on, now. overall pretty good, would recommend. laughed at include a line saying something like "jerked off extensively while reading, would recommend", even though i didn't jerk off while reading it. listen. you need to believe me.

 

they by helle helle (new directions, 2026 translation): a short, fragment-based novel about a teenaged girl and her sick mother living in 1980s denmark. enjoyed the emphasis on daily minutia and the stylistic choice to prioritize on specific, unimportant-feeling details, even though after a while the unimportant details eventually feel more tedious than novel. enjoyed the way that things are always in the present tense, even actions described as having taken place in the past or future, and what felt (to me, maybe incorrectly) like a style-heavy affectation of removing sex from sex scenes – made me excited about trying to incorporate this idea, or the effect of it, even if it wasn't intended to read that way, into one of my own stories. felt like the intentionally vague descriptions/actions and lack of character-level detail, and the decision to only reference the main character as 'she,' made it slightly frustrating and confusing to read, but i fell into the rhythm more by the end. enjoyed the way the strange bullshit of small town life is explored, how people can have whole stories you only briefly catch a glimpse of. enjoyed the earnest, loving relationship between the two main characters. unsure i liked it more than the other book of hers i read. tentatively would recommend, if only for the fact that it feels 'experimental' in the way that it employs some strange narrative choices in a consistent manner; some experiments 'fail,' but they still have value, i feel, and while i wouldn't say these fail, they didn't fully work, either.

 

in my arms by zac porter (searing clarity, 2026): zac emailed me asking if he could send me his new book for potential review on the no future tshirt blog, partially because we have the same first name. i agreed, sending my book in exchange, to take the pressure off in case i ended up not reading or liking his book. but i did read it, and i mostly liked it, so here's the review. this is a novella, consisting of ~2-4(?) overlapping stories, set in west virginia, mostly about death, family, and nature. the main plot follows a teenager hunting/skinning a deer and attending a funeral with his gruff, reserved father, and then this story is sort of unpredictably interspersed with another story, or several stories, in italics, about someone hunting small animals, going on a trip up a holler, and going on a short, bleak trip with their father. some of the writing, especially toward the end, reminded me of jon fosse, with  repetition, deviant punctuation,\ and line breaks, and the thematic emphasis on childhood trauma, spirituality, and nature. the main story, about the deer, felt compelling, engaging, and uncomfortable, although i felt that sometimes the writing felt overly melodramatic and marked by a number of insights/aphorisms/similes that felt out of character for the narrator, indicating either a sort of squashed perspective (present and future – the charitable read, since there's no intratextual evidence of it) or a little self-indulgence, which broke some of the immersion for me. enjoyed the large number of semicolons. felt like the italicized story/stories were underdeveloped such that i wasn't sure who the narrator was in it/them – admittedly these felt ambiguous by design, but also it never really resolves enough, which imo lowered the stakes of the story/stories. overall a quick, earnest-feeling read with some strong imagery and interesting, ambitious writing. would recommend. nice.

 

submarines by mike andrelczyk (malarkey, forthcoming 2026): mike is my friend and we go way back writing poems together and talking about literature and just chatting online. he's one of my favorite poets of all time, incidentally. this is his first novel. it's about a broke loser working as a bellhop, living with his grandma in maryland, and doing a lot of risky sports betting and drugs. enjoyed how realistic/natural-feeling it is, with no big action/adventure sequences, but still a steady, natural-feeling narrative arc. enjoyed how there are a lot of playful, hilarious, and/or heartbreaking scenes that function well on their own, and mike lets them play out for as long as they require, in a way that reminds me of frederick barthelme's novels. really enjoyed a lot of the meditative, insightful observations and images that are, narratively, borne out of boredom and depression, but clearly channel mike's strong eye for poetic juxtaposition and tension. felt like the emphasis on vignettes vs chapters per se makes the pacing a little choppy sometimes, with moments that scan like some important set up for a later plot point not really resolving to anything specific; some of the sequences, especially the shorter ones,  feel too short or interchangeable. but i also think this is a key aspect of the story and the way it's told, the lack of artifice reflecting the lack of artifice in real life, and is a stylistic experiment that must be borne out for art to progress. i don't know what i'm saying. there are ants on my laptop. i blurbed it, saying, among other things, that it is "a bemused and meditative exploration of the inexorable march of time and all that life has to offer: love, family, riding your bike, sports gambling, tripping on shrooms, eating a burger, sex in the shower, loss, death, acceptance, and, of course, submarines." would recommend; buy this book.

 

doctor fischer of geneva, or, the bomb party by graham greene (penguin? 1980): read and enjoyed greene's the power and the glory a few years back. found this one at a used book store for cheap and picked it up. this is a short-ish novel about an older man who falls in love with a rich young woman whose father is a very rich asshole. felt like he 'gives away' plot points in a frustrating way – wouldn't even call one of the important deaths foreshadowed so much as 'frequently alluded to' – including the secondary title of the book giving away a large, potentially unexpected and delightful plot point. very strange book tonally – most of the dialogue feels like a movie from the 40s or 50s, but then some of the jokes and setting are weirdly modern; feels strange to read a stodgy-feeling european domestic drama with references to cassette tapes and credit cards. felt like the ending especially was a little too overdramatic, maybe rushed. but very much enjoyed a lot of the funny scenes and lines, and often felt surprised at how funny and strange they could be, despite the mediocrity of the rest of the book. not...bad...but i feel like i expected a little more from it, maybe. would recommend reading maybe the first half, i think, for the strange jokes and references to sex.

 

on numbers by isaac asimov (1977 edition): found this for a dollar at the local library sale. this is a collection of essays previously published in some sort of hobbiest math magazine in the 60s; this edition includes footnotes for things that became out of date after the essays were originally published. found it very readable with some endearing, human, albeit sometimes groan-worthy affectations throughout. enjoyed the essays about pure math the most, which include some new (to me) ways of (re)conceptualizing some key mathematical concepts, such as factorials and imaginary numbers. enjoyed the emphasis on historical contexts for most things, as well, most of which intrigued me for how unfamiliar i was with them in contrast with how he sort of takes knowledge of them for granted, in a way. didn't enjoy the last few essays as much, which were both more dated (more about geography/demographics) and less interestingly written, functioning more as collections of fun facts than educational (the last essay sort of devolves into page-lengthed tables of regional sizes and populations). felt good to think about basic-ish math a little bit, while reading. unsure i would recommend, though.

 

 

BONUS REVIEWS: CHAPBOOK EDITION

 

portal by md wheatley (self-released, 2026(?)): this is a single, moderately-lengthed poem about family and loss, printed on interestingly-sized paper. i heard md read it in its entirety at storyfort and cried. purchased a copy and read it at home and cried again. highly recommend.

 

St. Martin's by Robert Creeley (black sparrow press, 1973): lucas restivo gave this to me as a gift. i'd never read creeley before. poems plus experimental-feeling, black and white 'smeared' images. would be curious to learn how they were produced in 1973 – they seem like they were made by moving an image while it was scanned, or something. cool effect. the poems seem to have been written over a ten day period while on vacation in 1970, and mostly reflect on nature, sounds/observations, and introspection re relationships and the self. enjoyed the semi-overly formal (as in logic formalism) affectation, imagery, and concise insights. felt tempted to take pictures of various stanzas. would recommend.

 

the yellow wallpaper by charlotte perkins gilman (renard press, 2021): originally published in a magazine/newspaper in 1892, this is basically a short story (broken up into 'chapters') about an ill woman who slowly goes insane in a rented house while on holiday. enjoyed the writing and, despite it sort of being a 'horror' book, the pacing and imagery felt surprising, fun, and stimulating. enjoyed the post-script 'why i wrote this story' as well, which contextualized it and elevated the story and its historical importance, to me. felt fresh and fun at the line level, as well, despite being so old. would recommend. 

 

morning listening diary by phil elverum (pw elverum & sun, 2026): scans of an unfinished, hand-written and hand-illustrated daily listening diary done during peak covid lockdowns. the illustrations are by his daughter. enjoyed the illustrations and some of the diary entries, especially the stuff that isn't about music (ironically), but ultimately found the handwriting too difficult to read, especially once the kid starts doodling on top of/around the words, or at least the text wasn't worth the difficulty of parsing out the text. cute artifact, and mentions interesting music and daily life stuff, and feels interesting in terms of failure, unfulfilled project ideas, the tedium of monotony. but ultimately unsure i would recommend.

 

little joke poems from online by phil elverum (pw elverum & sun, 2026): tweets from ~2016–2021 formatted into 5-7-5 haiku. mostly funny. i think phil elverum is a funny guy, and i remember very much enjoying his 'fancy people adventures' comics that were online a long time ago, but which don't seem to be online anymore, maybe, in an easy-to-read format. anyway, enjoyed this fine enough. would recommend, i think. i like how it looks.

 

another day of insane thinking by julián martinez (late may press, 2025): i met julián at storyfort and very much enjoyed hanging out with him (we rode the bull at dirty, stinky, filthy-ass roddy's). he ran out of copies of this chapbook before i could get one, but he mailed me one after. this is a collection of love poems written for his (now) wife (who did the cover and illustrations). lots of poems about chicago and doing chicago stuff (they live in chicago), listening to music, commuting, and spending time together. enjoyed the open earnestness, comedy, and references to/riffs on other poems and poets. would recommend.

 

 flying high by cletus crow (new ritual press, 2026): a short collection of short, mostly funny poems. i published one of them in my chrismzine. enjoyed them all, i think. some i wish had more of a turn or punchline – they instead sort of project the gist of the joke from the very start – but others delighted me with unexpected clever turns. no structural cohesion in terms of overarching project or callbacks, but many of the poems explore a few of the same themes. a reasonable collection. think it'd be good to see cletus challenge himself with something larger, either at the poem level or collection level. would recommend. 

the man who planted trees by jean giono (chelsea green publishing, 1987):  a very short monograph of a story about an old man who plants like a million trees in the wilderness. originally published in vogue in the 50s, with a long-feeling write up by the editor/publisher afterward. reads like nonfiction but is apparently fiction. includes a number of very beautiful block prints. enjoyed the story and felt interested in reading more by giono. would recommend. if you or someone you know could recommend a good giono book, please contact me.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

brief book reviews

i don't have anything interesting to say about my reading and reviewing habits since october. i think i've been reading more, day-to-day, on average, but i have also been prioritizing writing and editing.

 

these first three reviews were previously published in beyond the last estate, which i note to explain my leaning into a more expressive, snarky style for the review of martyr!, as an homage to reviews you would find in old print publications. i appreciate gabe hart for running that magazine and publishing my reviews. you should also support him and the magazine.

 

if you or someone you know has an opinion on one or more of these books, please let me know. thank you. 

 

Female Loneliness Epidemic by Danielle Chelosky (Far West Press, 2025): a physically small book of fairly short stories, mostly about 20-something women navigating bad relationships in new york city. enjoyed the clear writing, lack of dramatic metaphor, its various settings (e.g. a dave & buster's, an art gallery, a suburban beach) and the brief moments of action set off by disquieted desperation. generally felt like every story could have gone on much longer (i imagine i would enjoy chelosky's novel, which i haven't read yet), as each more or less reads as an introduction to a larger, non-existent piece, spending lots of time establishing characters and setting but little time advancing a narrative arc, which negatively impacts the pacing, i felt, since so many of the characters and settings are more or less the same. but, on the other hand, since each story consistently does this, i came around to thinking of the collection as a series of paintings – sketches of a person in a time and a place feeling things – making it stand out as a cohesive, well-designed and curated collection. would recommend.

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar (Knopf, 2024): a mid-length novel about an iranian-american author/poet in recovery who unmotivatedly becomes vaguely interested in the idea of martyrdom. the book is anchored across two main interrelated plotlines: 1) the) protagonist going to an experimental art exhibit in new york city and 2) the story of the iranian passenger airline shot down by the US in 1988 (and some stuff about the iran-iraq war). kaveh is an award winning poet first and foremost, so as expected this book is filled with a number of performatively poetic similes and metaphors wrapped up in brutally insipid, action-oriented prose. the modern-day plot loosely strings together just enough quirky plot points to legally allow for the novel to be love story by the end and, most regrettably, a "switched identities" twist that made me just, like, so fucking mad. other lowlights (can it be a lowlight if it comprises like 20% of the text?) include long passages where characters monologue fun facts at each other in a literal blank white room, dreams in which lisa simpson, donald trump, and the protagonist's mother speak to each other in shitty aphorisms, and a bunch of in-fiction excerpts of the protagonist's shitty poetry manuscript which i think are clearly just used to pad out the length with some of akbar's otherwise unpublishable dross. the only interesting parts are the elements of historical fiction, but because the book is so slight we only get like two chapters per perspective, and the scene in which our protagonist drunkenly listens to sonic youth on his ipod is enough to obliterate whatever literary value they bring. wouldn't recommend.

The Kingdom by Yoel Noorali (Bookworks UK, 2025): a short collection of moderately-lengthed stories mostly about contemporary life, work, and writing. it includes a 3-part novella about working for the NHS, some personal essay-like stories about the author's father and a trip to see the "as slow as possible" john cage organ thing in germany, and a few stories about modern-day idiots doing interestingly funny things. i enjoyed how it's satirical but in a way that rarely feels mean-spirited or bitter – it mostly focuses on the absurdity of contemporary banalities and art (both fine art and literature) with no person or type of person strung up in effigy. enjoyed the silliness of the stories' conceits brought to their natural conclusions, and the unpretentious (albeit very british, so maybe a little pretentious) style. yoel asked me to blurb it, so i sent him various statements acknowledging it as funny, witty, farcical, and engaging enough for me to want the stories to continue on. would recommend.

The Parade by Ruchel Cusk (Picador, 2025): i read maybe the first thirty pages of her outline book and thought it vaguely sucked. but i like the cover design and synopsis of this book and know she's very acclaimed so i tried her again. this consists of three(? i'm not counting again. i think it's 3 or 4. let's assume 3) sections, all but one of which each consist of alternating, more or less unrelated narratives about different artists, each referred to only as G. the section that is just a single narrative references one of the other narratives from section one, and consists of some number of annoying, elderly arts-related people talking at a restaurant. the book is very emphatic on being about gender and capitalism, specifically about how women are treated differently from men, especially in art, and how capitalism is anti-love, in very concrete and direct terms. i thought this plainness in its thesis - where both the mysteriously omniscient "We" narrator(s) and characters in the book talk openly and in agreement about the patriarchy and capitalism being generically bad - coupled with the willowy pretentiousness of the writing itself, made it frequently read like an unimaginative essay more than a novel. structurally i found it uneven despite liking each individual chapter; i had a sense that it was originally just six separate, mostly unrelated short stories with similar preoccupations that were twisted up into a 3-part book and called a novel. i liked some of the stories' imagery and settings but felt like others were mostly uninteresting. unsure i would recommend, but have been tempted to recommend it to some people i know who don't read much, for reasons related to the plot/themes and not the writing/style, so maybe i would. i don't know. i just don't know anymore. i should actually finish reading outline, huh.

The Jimmy Trilogy (My Horse for a Kingdom, Jimmy, and The Heart of the Blue Whale) by Jacques Poulin (House of Anansi Press, 1979): the first three novels (although the first is probably only like 15k words total) by a seemingly celebrated (but up until last year unknown-to-me) french canadian author, published originally through the end of the 60s. they all, ultimately, by the end, feel interrelated and function well as a set. the first is a slightly noir-y, experimental, obfuscated story about a dark and depressed cuckold who gets roped into some unexpected political action. enjoyed it for its ending, strangeness, and setting, and something that i described as having a lot of 'authority' in the voice that felt fun and engaging. didn't super enjoy its kind of pretentious, elliptical structure and its metanarrative framing (recounting of events to a psychologist). the second novel was great, albeit kind of predictable and on-the-nose by the end, but told through the perspective of an autistic-seeming young child. i enjoyed its still more unique setting, nature and domestic writing, the stylistic quirks of the narrative voice, and the general movement of the plot, as the adults in his life slowly go kind of insane. the third novel was my favorite, seemingly about a reworking of the father figure from the second novel, who is recuperating from an experimental surgery. enjoyed it for its quiet, plaintive mood, its setting, and the unexpected turns in plot. like any good piece of fiction in translation, it spends a lot of time describing the scenery in and around specific places i have never been. have recommended this set of novels to others and would recommend it to you, here, now.

Volkswagon Blues by Jacques Poulin (originally published in 1984, translated in 1988): poulin's most popular book, which won various canadian awards, from the mid-80s. it's a short road novel about an older white canadian man and younger half-native-american canadian woman going on a trip in an old volkswagon van through quebec and into america, ultimately landing in california. felt vaguely let down after having read so many of his other novels in the past few months, since so much of its content – specific settings (including a specific apartment), preoccupations, imagery – are recycled from other works (and used again in later works). also felt disappointed in the hand-wavy way in which the plot is set into motion – the book requires a larger-than-expected suspension of disbelief to function. enjoyed the emphasis on examining the history of the two countries and the second-hand tourism you experience reading about the trip, especially when encountering the nostalgia-inducing, lost-to-time artifacts of life from this time period, such as being able to lodge at a YMCA, camp for free in random places, and see historical sites without extensive monetized infrastructure and barricades. felt like the story and characters were surprisingly progressive for the time period, effectively being an examination/condemnation of the conquest of the americas and a study in white guilt, which i enjoyed. also enjoyed the general arc of the story but felt like the ending was dumb and disappointing. nothing page to page really gripped me relative to his other work; my least favorite of all his novels so far – wouldn't recommend.

The Enlightenment of Katzuo Nakamatsu by Augusto Higa Oshiro (Archipelago Press, 2012): a brief, strange little novel about an old man who was the child of Japanese immigrants to Peru and who loses his job and slowly goes insane. enjoyed the novelty (to me) of the setting, its emphasis on non-american immigrant stories, various intense scenes (both unexpectedly funny and/or severely bleak), and haphazard narrative devices (e.g. a narrator character is revealed, purposelessly, about halfway through the book). enjoyed it overall – sometimes very much so – but felt like at other times it could drag interminably, with the 'going insane period' feeling very repetitive and protracted, especially with the constant use of long, 100-comma'd descriptive sentences; regretted not keeping a tally of how many times certain words were repeatedly used throughout, including 'phosphorescent' and 'abstract,' which were probably used 10+ times each. would be curious to read more by Oshiro. would hesitantly recommend, if only for the parts that felt unexpected and exciting.

The Living god by Sam Heaps (Sarka Press, 2025): i was generally unaware of sam's writing until they recently married one of my best friends, so i purchased, read, and enjoyed this book. it's a short novel about a woman who leaves a sex cult and has a miscarriage, told over a single day but composed mostly of flashbacks to her experiences meeting the cult leader and living in the cult compound, raising the cult leader's child. enjoyed the very dark, bleak, lightly-poetic style and various moments of the 'present-day' plotline, especially in the bar. didn't enjoy the kind of confusingly-written, dramatic-feeling sex scenes. enjoyed the narrative effect of the other main characters – the cult leader and the present-day partner – remaining distant and unknowable, emphasizing the internality and trauma of the narrator/protagonist. enjoyed the theme of people who leave cults still believing in the promises of the cult, or religious life in general, in different ways. overall enjoyed the unique setting, plot and confidence in its unresolved ending. would recommend.

Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth (Vintage, 1969): purchased a good-looking used copy on a whim, vaguely convinced philip roth was a writer like william gass, or something. a novel told via long, repetitive rant about the narrator's jewish upbringing and obsession with sex, punctuated by an, imo, incredibly overhyped a lamer-than-i-could-have-anticipated punchline ending. enjoyed the slow transformation/reveal of the narrator from a sort of goofy comedian-like figure into a real piece of shit asshole. enjoyed the aspects of including daily minutia from the past, and the candid, silly way he discusses sex. also enjoyed some of the more comedic moments (such as his father's descriptions of being constantly constipated and the section about learning how to whack off) but found myself feeling frequently bored shortly thereafter. probably due to being an influential book in some ways, it often felt like i was reading something by david sedaris or the guy from the heavyweight podcast, which added to my feelings of it growing tiresome or sort of having a single 'trick' it deploys over and over. also felt structurally imbalanced and repetitive, with certain topics or situations revisited sort of randomly throughout, which slowed the sense of propulsion through the text. i had considered dumping it halfway through but read online, randomly via a tweet, that the ending made it all worth it, so i pressed on. but, like i mentioned, i thought the ending was stupid and did little to save the book. would not recommend.

Naomi by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki: i had read one other novel by Tanizaki – The Key – in maybe 2018, and liked it a lot. joshua hebburn recommended tanizaki to me again recently and so i bought this one used. this novel feels sort of like turn of the century japanese take on Lolita, in that it's about a man who grooms and marries a 15 year old girl and obsesses over her youth and beauty. however, this one goes in strange and sort of unexpected places, with a big emphasis on the influence of the west on japan at this time, with the character of naomi in turn being obsessed with western actresses, cinema, social dancing, western clothes, etc. enjoyed the grimy, fucked up way the narrator describes naomi as a combination daughter/lover (more scenes spent giving her horseback rides than, like, having sex), the unexpectedly multi-layered cuckolding subplot, the emphasis on new culture and technology at the time (tanizaki, in my read, was very interested photography and film, which i find interesting), and the confidence of the ending. enjoyed the sort of obvious, on-the-nose symbolism re: the entrance of western culture into the post-edo period. also enjoyed the lolita-style effect/trick of making you feel sympathetic for a horrible person in his various schemes and self-pity. felt like some of the middle/last third dragged on at times, but thought the ending chapter reinvigorated my positive feelings for the book. would recommend. thank you, josh.

The Gate by Natsume Sōseki (NYRB 2012, originally published 1910): a mid-lengthed novel about an apathetic, asocial husband and wife duo trying their best to avoid engaging with the plot. never read soseki before, and apparently this is the third in a loose trilogy, but it has been one of my favorite reads in the past year. felt very impressed by the contemporary-feeling moments of comedy. felt intrigued by the wandering, slow reveal of various plot points, including, unexpectedly, some severely bleak and depressing moments. really enjoyed the strange approach to the characters and plot, wherein the main characters are consistently asocial, bored, lazy, and disinterested in most things outside of their deep love for one another, but in an endearing, non-satirical way. feels very innovative, even today. soseki is another one of those authors who i learn about after having read most of a book or two only to learn that wikipedia describes them as one of the most influential and groundbreaking writers from japan. would highly recommend; best book i've read in the past 12 months, maybe.

Eastbound by Mayles de Kerangal (Archipelago Press, 2023): a very short, vaguely thriller novella about a russian conscript on a transiberian train trying to defect with the help of an unmoored french woman. realized i was mostly reading it for the exciting, action-oriented nature of the plot, but also enjoyed it for its elevated style, including some brief, beautiful nature writing and wry commentary (early scene of protagonist looking out a window and thinking something like "there it is: his shitty country"). felt like the ending was mostly good, except for the dumb last line. unsure i would recommend. curious to read more by her.

The Beggar Student by Osamu Dazai (New Directions, 2024): new directions has been pumping out these new translations of random dazai stories and publishing them as short, stand-alone books. this one is comedically short, maybe like five thousand words total across 70 small pages – readable in a single sitting – and bears a lot of contemporary-feeling phrasing which strike me as likely due to the translation – including words like barf and doodley-squat. it's a brief story about a loser asshole who bumps into another loser asshole and they get lunch and complain to each other and insult one another and then hang out with another loser. enjoyed the constant, rapid shifts in mood and feeling among the characters, resulting in a sort of cartoonish silliness and comedic pacing. sent several pictures of some dialogue to nathaniel duggan, as they reminded me of his tweets. i especially like the needlessly mean-spirited repartees and the breaking of the fourth wall where the narrator/author shittalks himself to the reader, which i've enjoyed also in his the flowers of buffoonery, which i think is overall a much better and more interesting book, especially since this book's ending sucks – really lame, hugely disappointing. tough break for an otherwise fun little romp. i will probably end up collecting all these little new direction books though because why not. dazai is great, in general. would overall recommend if you can find it cheap.

 

brief book reviews

i have had a lot going on since december, when i last posted book reviews on this blog, and for a brief time didn't read very much, or write much, but then started trying to more actively read and write this summer, which was a good decision and resulted in me being very productive in both things. these are all the complete books i read since december 2024. i noted having started and either abandoning or pausing several others, which i don't review here, in my recent email newsletter. versions of a couple of these reviews also appeared in beyond the last estate. i also read several print literary magazines and possibly 500 board books/children's chapter books. but you don't care about those as much, do you? didn't think so.

 

 

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney (FSG, 2024): I enjoyed the emphasis on staccato half-thought sentences and general stylistic progress that Rooney brings here relative to her earlier books, but plot-wise this one is more or less indistinguishable from a Hallmark Channel rom-com. i felt like there was an above-average pandering emphasis on lit-chick romance by way of to the interiority of the narration, which allows us to marvel at a 22 autistic chess master virgin feeling like he's virtuously "protective" of his partner during most of their fuck sessions. mostly hated the polyamory b-plot with the brother, in which one woman with a physical disability and another woman with just some kind of general baseline stupidity merge Voltron-like into the perfect woman vis-a-vis throupledom. would recommend for the writing, wouldn't recommend for the horrible aftertaste the plot left me with.

The Valeries by Forrest Muelrath (Expat Press, 2024): an email-rant-as-slim-novel about blackmail, transness, adrenochrome sex party conspiracies, and synthesizers, among other things. enjoyed the Hannibal Lecter-esque of our narrator, the smouldering tragic ironies, the moments of digression into less plot-central memories (like about the painting in the office building), and the diaristic temporal structure. Ddidn't enjoy the pomo wrapper or some of the writing line by line, where it's hard to tell how much is because of the character's voice or the author's style. felt like more elements could have been fleshed out and beefed up to really let the reader into our interlocutors' intriguing histories, because the conceit is interesting and well-constructed. a rare case of a book that could have been longer and still be good/better. curious to see more by muelrath that isn't locked into such an extreme character.

A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes (1929): got this because crow recommended it, i think, but i associate it with sebastian castillo for some reason. a strangely paced, vaguely picaresque novel that follows a few children on a journey from jamaica to england by boat. i liked a lot of the phrasing and the general voice; it's from the end of that era where punctuation is all over the place, with lots of colons, semicolons, and dashes sort of intermingling and touching each other sensuously. structurally and stylistically i felt confused in a good way; it often reads alternately like a children-oriented adventure story and a work of great literary fiction; for a while i thought it was simply a children's book by a sort of outsider writer, or something. i greatly enjoyed the brief moments of extremely dark humor, the strange psychological analysis of the children, and the way he'll include interesting scenes that serve little 'purpose' for the greater plot. i didn't really care for what i imagine was some of the humor of the era, and felt frustrated and confused by some of the beginning chapters. felt like some of the passages dragged on. both enjoyed and didn't enjoy the ending – on one hand i liked the sort of profound and dark ending, but on the other hand i felt like it invests too much into emphasizing what felt like a sort of lesser plot point, thus making the whole arc feel imbalanced. would recommend.

Waiting for Godot by samuel becket (1952): i've previously read and enjoyed two of becket's novels and a portion of another, and had never read this despite its fame (i found it at the thrift store). a two-act, existentialist, vaguely absurd play about two old, destitute men waiting for godot. felt surprised and confused by the presence of pozzo and lucky, which made the play sort of different from what i had expected, i think. enjoyed a lot of the lines (e.g. "that's how it is on this bitch of an earth") primarily for their unexpected delivery. enjoyed the blocking and movement notation. enjoyed various other little aspects. feels like i will never be able to write anything as masterful. would recommend.

Woodswoman by anne labastille (penguin, 1976): purchased on a whim at a used book store. a memoir about a woman divorcing her husband and building/moving into a cabin on a remote lake in the adirondacks. enjoyed the vocabulary and nature writing, when it's there, but felt disappointed in how much of the book focuses on things other than just living in the woods, including a prolonged, romantic hike along a train track, a trip to washington dc, and extensive scenes of people visiting her and complimenting the cabin. didn't enjoy the many didactic, hamfistedly recreated conversations where people say that pollution is bad, especially in contrast with her prolonged love letter to snowmobiles. darkly enjoyed how much of her success could be attributed to people selflessly dedicating weeks of their time and use of their specialized tools and machinery for free. enjoyed various anecdotes about people dying or getting injured. felt frustrated by how little time she actually talks about living in and enjoying the wilderness compared to how much she talks about people and random historical fun facts. not sure i would recommend.

Perfection by vincenzo latronico (NYRB, 2025): originally published in italian in 2021, this is a short novel about two italian freelance graphic designers living in Berlin. it is mostly an empathetic critique of gentrifying eurohipsters, opening with a 4 page description of an immaculately inviting apartment rental (full of monstera plants & turntables) and ending with a similarly inviting bed and breakfast resort (natural wines, custom furniture), but the two protagonists are insecure, overworked, and embarrassed by their failure to enjoy having everything they want. i like the stylistic play of tense and aspect – early chapters are plotlessly in the imperfect (they would go here, they would do this) while the final chapter is in the future (they will do this, they will go here) – but didn't feel like it offered much beside the surface critique of cyclical hipsterdom, (already outdated) social media usage, and the role of gentrifying tech expats in hip cities. the characters are formless and vague by design – as stand ins for presumably any number of italian hipsters in berlin – but this makes it hard to root for them, or even hate them, which maybe is the point, although it ends up feeling as impersonal as the helvetica neau-tinged websites the protagonists make on their macbooks. as such it serves more of a svelte and hip, surface-level critique of something that doesn't really even matter enough to merit critique. 

All Fours by Miranda July (Penguin Randomhouse, 2024): I've read and enjoyed two of July's previous books and watched and enjoyed at least one of her movies before. this is a new autofictional novel about miranda july emotionally cheating on her husband (part 1) and then physically cheating on her husband (part 2) and then more or less dissolving her marriage to have a bunch of sloppy sex with people and cry to her husband when they dump her (part 3). i enjoyed aspects of july's eye for insightful, strange imagery, which i think are reflected in her films well, but found the story overall to be frustrating and uninteresting and the prose to be generically action-oriented and style-less. i had a hard time finding anything redeeming about the character of july and i don't really find her journey into perimenopausal lesbian sex particularly liberating. the character feels like a narcissistic, selfish black hole, which i think has the potential to be interesting, but you can tell the author supports and identifies as the character in such a way that there is no real takeaway or insightful commentary on this aspect of the plot, or really anything the book covers. the recurring panic flashbacks about a scary birthing story, in my read of it, reads as a manipulative motif to create a sense of empathy in the reader, and is hamfistedly breadcrumbed as a b-plot the entire book in a way that feels hopelessly "big press literary fiction". enjoyed the moments of gender-bending sex scene writing, e.g. when she describes masturbating as "jerking off", such that the end results reads almost identically to some bad erotica a 14 year old boy would write. enjoyed other random snippets of scenes or the occasional turn of phrase and, like i mentioned, intriguing physical imagery and description, like the spraypainted chair. disliked the imbalanced structure, with part 1 comprising half the whole book (slow, weariness-inducing), and part 4 only being like 5 pages (rushed, pointless-feeling). would not recommend.  

moth girl by calvin westra (expat press, 2025): have read and enjoyed westra's previous two novels. this one is told mostly via short paragraphs describing text message exchanges filled with patented westraesque references to strange circumstances/in-world-pop-culture via slow reveal (e.g. a breakfast skillet that can kill you, bird-operated fighting mech battles) and a john darnielle-style ominous horror subplot. enjoyed the narrative device of quoting and summarizing text messages, the humor of the characters, the setting (mostly in shittown colorado), the slow drip of the explanation of bewildering references, and the audacity of such a solid non-sequitur ending. quite liked the way the conversations via text message include a natural messiness for comedic effect - people talking past each other, getting confused, etc. felt like the first two sections got a little repetitive by the end, and i mostly enjoyed the metafictional third section for its narrative ambition/cleverness, but vaguely felt like it also sort of undermines/over-explains the intriguing narrative of the first two sections, and also frustratingly reframes the book as autofiction (albeit possibly not real autofiction) than something more progressive/experimental. felt like the typesetting included too much white space/large font, so the book is needlessly physically big, but i like the cover a lot. overall i think it's good, readable, compelling, and unique. would recommend.

 

rejection by tony tulathimutte (william morrow and company, 2024): never read anything by him prior to reading this, but got it due to it being a widely praised, alt-adjacent big press collection; the internet/press materials seem unclear whether this is a story collection or novel, but in any case i feel like it fails at either/both, so maybe it doesn't matter. it's composed mostly of long, 1st person diatribes by caricatures of contemporary life people, with strong emphasis on social media/internet shit, politics/culture war bullshit, and sexual/racial identity. my biggest complaint is that the stories/chapters never really surprise or delight: each starts as an obvious, mean-spirited caricature of some loser asshole and then just makes the same caricaturizing joke over and over again until it ends (albeit sometimes in a pointlessly slapstick way). as such there never feels like any narrative propulsion or reveal to any of the stories - most stories/chapters just protractedly bludgeon you with their 'comedic' thesis statement over and over again, often based on trying to ridicule some particular amalgam of contemporary stereotype (social justice warrior guy, lgbtq poly people, instagram addict chick, startup entrepreneur dude) and 'showing off' how much random internet-brained jargon and references he knows. i was having a hard time understanding why i didn't even feel compelled by the super long, absurd, fantastical description of a ridiculous, cartoonish porn video request, but i think it's because there's still so little development throughout, the same gag more or less repeated in slight variations for fifty pages with no character or plot development, reflection, or even interaction between characters. there's then a needlessly melodramatic and 'clever' mfa-workshop-style list poem about rejection, and some shoehorned in jokey nod toward metafiction (an invented internet conspiracy about timothy being the author of an in-fiction story) and then – jesus christ, really – a fake rejection letter about the book you're reading that, again, doesn't do anything novel after the first page, but goes on for some ungodly number of pages anyway, trying to preclude itself from serious criticism by self-consciously listing problems with the book you just read, as if trying to manipulate you into thinking it's better than it is. wouldn't recommend.

 

first snow on fuji by yasunari kawabata (1958): a collection of short stories. i don't really remember much about any of them in particular, aside from one of them actually being a vaguely incomprehensible play, but i remember liking them. very much standard kawabatan fair; i think one was about a flower that bloomed in a small divot in a large boulder. would recommend, i think.

 

beauty and sadness by yasunari kawabata (1964): a short-ish novel that continually surprised me in terms of the plot development but ends in a sort of silly way. it's about a novelist visiting kyoto and thinking about getting in touch with a beautiful female artist he knows from his past. enjoyed the slow reveal about their relationship, him being kind of a huge piece of shit with an idiot son, the rumination on autofiction, the lesbian subplot, and the denouement hamfistedly using a man-made lakeside resort as a symbol for japan's modernization. never really knew what would happen next in both a literary and thriller-y way. not sure it stands out in terms of his nature writing or interpersonal drama writing, so unsure i would recommend relative to his other novels.

 

breath by james nestor (2020): a nonfiction book about breathing, with emphasis on the negative health effects of mouth breathing and consuming processed foods (lack of time/effort spent chewing). explores a mix of contemporary scientific study, first-hand experimentation (starts with him plugging his nose completely so he can solely mouth-breathe for two weeks, then does the reverse for two weeks), and historical curios (catacombs, nepalese yoga, mewing, psychedelics, a theory about reciting the rosary as breathing exercise). found it mostly engaging, curious, non-preachy, and informative, and have been personally inspired by it to tape my mouth at night (and use a magnetic nostril expander), which seems to have cured the severe sleep apnea i unexpectedly developed in the spring (highly recommend doing this). would have enjoyed more advice on practical application of some of the discussed exercises and practices, but i think - in a good way - it's designed not to be be a "this is how you fix your life" self-help books but instead a series of open-ended questions based on a number of interesting observations. found it readable, albeit occasionally confusingly written, with rushed endings in most chapters. would recommend. 

 

american lit by jennifer greidus (querelle press, 2025): jenn is my friend (mark kozelek voice) and editor/founder of x-ray lit. this is a novel about a gay teenage boy who navigates blossoming high school romance, marijuana/sex addiction (due to the trauma of his father dying before the novel starts), and trying to seduce his american literature teacher. i found it competently-written, readable, moody, horny, well-paced, unpredictable (positive), and engaging, despite realizing that it is more or less definitionally a young adult romance book with a light dennis cooperian turn in the second half. found it interesting that all the (living) adults are absent, stupid, manipulative, and/or evil, while all the teenagers are friendly, supportive, and kind. laughed imagining a school where 99% of the boys are gay, due to the frequency with which the protagonist mentions having hooked up with every male background character. enjoyed the very fat, heart-of-gold drug dealer character who constantly rubs and pats his big fact belly. would have enjoyed more about tennis (and the associated trips to play tennis) and less about the teacher. would recommend.

 

fresh, green life by sebastian castillo (soft skull, 2025): sebastian is my friend (mark kozelek voice), but even is he wasn't, i would still have enjoyed this book. it's a short novel about a silly, self-serious adjunct professor who goes on a brief, ill-fated adventure to the philadelphian suburbs. enjoyed the voice/style and the misanthropic demeanor of the idiot protagonist and the slow, comedic reveal of certain plot points/context. really enjoyed and laughed at lot at the scene with the old advisor, which i think is the highlight of the book. didn't care for the longish, detached/oblique description of social media websites. enjoyed the various small and comedic scenes, like seeing people watch tv through a front window and the lecture. found it overall a strange, clever, funny, and absurd book that takes many refreshing structural and narrative risks, despite the way most reviewers seem bent on discussing it just in terms of culture war bullshit and inceldom/masculinity. would recommend.

 

spring tides by jacques poulin (archipelago press, originally published 1986): a short, kind of funny, kind of cozy novel about an autistic-seeming comic strip translator whose boss sends him to a deserted quebecan island, but then the island slowly fills up with silly characters (and two cats). in this sense it's vaguely kafkaesque, but much more calm, silly, and romantic. i enjoyed its simplicity, mood and tone, humor, elements of nature writing, and the brief digressions about translation. enjoyed the different characters, such as the lazy/shitty novelist, the slight ambiguity in interpersonal action and relationships, and the general arc of the story. includes some full reprints of shitty old newspaper comic strips, like the one about a viking, which i've never seen before in a novel. enjoyed a lot and asked for another one of his other books-in-translation for my birthday. would recommend.

 

autumn rounds by jacques poulin (archipelago press, originally published 2002): a short, cute, wistful, meloncholic, and romantic novel about a near-elderly driver of a bookmobile touring northern quebec and falling in love with another near-elderly woman. enjoyed the emphasis on nature writing, the simple day-to-day minutia, the amount of coffee and hot chocolate consumed, the emphasis on people loving books and music, the inclusion of short nonsequitur-seeming scenes, and the straightforward, earnest progression of the story. would recommend. ordered two more poulin novels after finishing these two.

 

self-romancing by l scully (dopamine, 2025): i have done several readings with L and enjoy their poetry in a general way. this is a collection of affirmations culled from their instagram, as i understand it, and presented as a poetry collection. as such the poems are blocks of text, with each sentence often starting with "i will" or "i don't", etc., but, instead of what you'd expect from typical affirmations, these leverage enough oblique references to specific, personal events, feelings, and situations so as to function like a form of list poetry. enjoyed the structure/format and effect of the affirmation format to do poetry in general, the juxtaposition of certain ideas and topics, the humor, the refrain of certain elements, and the moments when they break the format to continue a thought across multiple sentences.

 

alone with other people by gabby bess (civil coping mechanisms, 2013): a collection of short prose and poetry by someone i see mentioned re: Alt Lit a lot but who i've never read. enjoyed unironically the alt litness of it, such as the Tao Lin-y "ingesting caffeine"-erisms and minimalist affectation, didn't enjoy the pretentious chapter headers and subheaders, from both content and design perspectives. enjoyed the stories more, where depressed 20 somethings with shitty jobs make droll observations about America and Love, although the poems offer some great moments of interpersonal insight and bleak wisdom. would have enjoyed two separate, fuller collections of each form. would recommend.

 

kill rudy johnson by rudy johnson (pig roast publishing, 2025): a collection of poetry (and some MS Paint art) lightly framed in a choose-your-own-adventure format paired with an intentionally-broken-seeming website accessible via QR codes. the poems are more or less all multipage pieces with internal narrative arcs, focusing on video games, mental illness, the military industrial complex, childhood, race, and self-loathing. enjoyed the incredibly bleak, dark humor present throughout, the free-associative connection of elements within each piece, the moments of unironic introspection/autobiography, and the over-the-top sci-fi-style conceits used by some of the poems. didn't enjoy the choose-your-own-adventure framing of the book as a whole, since the choices seemed jokey and the results arbitrary - also felt like i would end up in a loop sometimes, which was frustrating. didn't feel compelled by the interactive website element, which again seemed jokey and with arbitrary linkage between the particular book page/text/section and webpage (and probably not optimized for cell phone). didn't like the choice of font (plain times new roman) or cheap white paper (gotta go creme, baby); i have a personal beef with the proprietor of pig roast publishing and consider him beneath me in all ways, and thus relish in whatever petty means i have of dumping on him and his press. but i like rudy's poems. would recommend.

 

phallic symbols by cletus crow (pig roast publishing, 2024): a collection of mostly short poems revolving around penises, primarily from the lens of homosexuality. i like cletus and his poetry, and published some of these poems on the back patio website. the individual poems are frequently funny and intriguing, and have hints of both classic and contemporary influence, but it sometimes felt a little scattershot as a collection; felt like it would have benefited more from a narrative or stylistic through-line instead of just relying on the penis theme to make it cohere. unrelated to the text, the front cover seems riddled with jpeg artifacts (somehow) and the back cover is the laziest excuse for a back cover i've ever seen. as such one could argue that the pig roast design team should be executed and dumped in a pit before they are allowed to ruin any more nice books. but i like cletus's poems. would recommend.

 

bipolar cowboy by noah cicero (civil coping mechanisms, 2015): a collection of poetry that is very explicitly about a failed relationship with someone; includes a timeline of events (though few seem relevant to the text) as a sort of preface. really enjoyed it for its often bare, vulnerable, emotionally volatile style which emphasizes explicit events, memories, locations, and people, thought felt it sometimes dwells too much in self-pity and borders on obsession. enjoyed the structure/conceit of the book as a raw-emotion retrospective of a break-up without hiding behind shitty metaphor overall. i have always liked noah's unselfconscious approach to writing and this scratches the same itch as his other books. would recommend (there seems to be a new edition out now, from a different press).

 

 

 

 

brief book reviews

found myself accidentally only reading books by women early in the summer so decided to continue this theme and do some kind of "brat summer" but for literary fiction. it went well and i enjoyed it.

girls, visions and everything by sarah schulman (seal press): found this in a little free library and felt like it looked interesting. this is a 3rd-person, presumably autofictional novel about a 20-something jewish lesbian living in new york city in 1984. the protagonist is an acolyte of jack kerouac and frequently opines for an on the road style life in a way that made me laugh in how it contrasts with the general 'problematic' vibe people have about young male lovers of the 'ouac. the story is mainly a straightforward love story but full of rumination on and fear of settling down, which results in an interesting, bleak, comedic ending. but the majority of the story consists of little character sketches in her social circle - endearing drug dealers, avant garde actors, other writers - and detached discussion of gentrification, racism, and homophobia. felt surprised by how contemporary a lot of the political discourse felt (which speaks to how 'behind' the mainstream is) - she capitalizes the B in Black, she gets mad that her stories are rejected for describing characters as 'fat', she worries about the looming reelection of reagan, and so on. enjoyed the way she writes about the protagonist's burgeoning relationship throughout the book and the minor, engaging intimacies they share. felt confused at times by the number of characters with generic names who do and say similar things. felt like the scenes intended to show off the crazy artsiness of her social group were uninteresting in a predictable and embarrassing way, but there were only a few of these. overall very much enjoyed it and found myself feeling frequently impressed by some insightful, well-executed line, observation, or stylistic effect. would highly recommend.

earth angel by madeline cash (clash books): a collection of short stories. a couple read as relatively straightforward cultural commentary by way of near-future dystopia, but with an emphasis on character and relationships that i found enjoyable and engaging. enjoyed the more 'literary' nature of these stories compared to those in my first book (the two authors are friends, or something, as i understand it), with the higher level of ambiguity, detachment, and experimentation; the book's best stories imo are when there's room for ambiguity, strangeness, and comedy, like the story about hitting her sister's leg with a sledgehammer, or the longer, more 'normal literary fiction' stories about complicated characters navigating love. i also enjoyed the more minimal tone and style, reminiscent more of the traditional early tao lin-type alt lit which has always appealed to me. to continue comparing the two books in a minor way, i found it interesting that the first and last stories in my first book were the most engaging, but in earth angel, the opposite is true: the first story is a short, vague, more expressionistic vignette, and the last story is a boring, self-referential riff on autofiction. i think the book would have benefited from either drastically more or drastically less self-referentiality. as it is it feels a little less cohesive as a collection than it could have been, but overall would recommend. feeling optimistic about cash's future stories.

this should be written in the present tense by helle helle (soft skull): a short, bleak, scandanavian novel about a weird anxious person moving to a new small town and navigating various relationships. enjoyed the minimal style and emphasis on daily minutiae, clothing, and food, and the sparse background/context for the story. also enjoyed the emphasis on exploring femininity through consumption/shopping/image - i don't think i've ever read a book that explores the realistic avoidance behavior of just buying things as clearly as this, and this does it well and consistently, sometimes to comedic effect, sometimes to sad tragic effect. enjoyed the descriptions in general, emphasis on clothing/materials, awkward conversations, and detached nature of the narrator in contrast with her relationships with others. didn't like that the penultimate line is the title of the book, which, combined with the seemingly nonsequitur turn of the narrator getting into writing (presumably writing this book) and last-minute shift in style, made the ending disappointing. overall would highly recommend.

the beans of egypt, maine by carolyn chute: found this in a little free library somewhere and felt interested in it based on the title and description. a style and voice-heavy novel about the Bean family, a large, poverty-stricken, insane, fecund family living in a rural, shitty area of maine. greatly enjoyed the style and narrative quirks (such as words in ALL CAPS for youthful emphasis), the strong emphasis on dialect and setting (logging trucks, houses without electricity, etc), and strange, evocative, poetic imagery.  enjoyed the progression of characters from children to adults and the interesting, depressing inter-generational commentary this allows for. greatly enjoyed the overall bleak, fucked up-edness of the whole thing; often found myself alternately shaking my head/cringeing and laughing out loud. would highly recommend - possibly the best book i've read in a long time.

conversations with friends by sally rooney: a novel seemingly about a young woman in a major city sleeping with a married man; lost my copy somehow, unsure where it went, maybe read 30% of it. very much enjoyed the detached tone and the emphasis on the narrator describing and being aware of her own emotions and bodily movements, using phrasing that felt impressively concise, accurate, and evocative, but felt like the story overall was uninteresting and straightforward. would enjoy reading other books by her, maybe, or finding my copy of this book and finishing it.

the book of x by sarah rose etter (two dollar radio): read the first and last pages and felt thankful i didn't bother reading any of the other pages. there you go. that's a good snarky review. how does that make you feel

drive your plow over the bones of the dead by olga tokarczuk: technically a murder mystery with some elements of european small village life and long rants about astrology. feels "quirky" in the same way that the author sporting polish dreadlocks feels "quirky." didn't really keep my interest.

alphabetical diaries by sheila heti: a collection of excerpts from heti's personal diaries presented in alphabetical order, with each chapter corresponding to a letter of the alphabet. enjoyed reading the first two chapters and seeing the interesting juxtapositions, repetition, contradiction, and recurring characters, but didn't feel sustained enough interest to read the whole thing. felt vaguely disappointed in learning (i think via back cover synopsis or somewhere else in the book) that the collection was extensively edited and 'worked on' by the author instead of just being a raw alphabetized dump of her diary entries -- this, i feel, is antithetical to the project's whole concept as found art and further makes me feel disinterest in finishing the book.

end of brat summer (literary fiction edition)

dandelions by yasunari kawabata: a short, unfinished novel that was originally published serially in a magazine. mostly consists of a protracted dialogue between a woman and her soon-to-be son-in-law after they've committed the daughter/fiancée to an insane asylum. really enjoyed the unhinged and uncomfortable turns in the conversation, the subtle sexual tension between the two characters, and the way long flashbacks are unceremoniously woven into the story. enjoyed the classic kawabatan themes of talking about flowers, intergenerational tension, exploration of domesticity and sensuality, and people traveling to interesting areas in japan. unironically enjoyed the temporal inconsistencies (noted by the translator in a footnote) due to its unfinished state, felt like it could have been an intentionally surreal choice and be expanded upon. one of my top 4 kawabata novels, i think, along with snow country, wild geese, and thousand cranes.

follow the brush by tyler dempsey (self-released): a generally themeless, grab-bag collection of short stories and nonfiction. some stories are very 'experimental', silly, donald barthelmian pieces, some are very straight forward mini-essays, and some are standard 'serious' internet flash fiction fare. i think dempsey is best when he plays it straight and earnest, and i would enjoy, i think, a memoir in flash kind of collection from him. some of the zanier fiction stuff is fun but feels a little too undisciplined to really land for me. would have enjoyed the book more if it had a consistent theme or mood as opposed to being an eclectic mix of what he's done recently, but i think the project was borne out of him writing exclusively while on the toilet and then self-released, so it also makes sense for it to be kind of loose and playful instead of striving toward a larger stylistic statement; as far as i can tell dempsey has been exploring many different kinds of writing and releasing very different kinds of books instead of working toward solidifying a more specific voice, so i'd be interested in seeing him take on a more ambitious project that refines what he does well. overall i enjoyed it and support him in self-releasing it (and sending me a copy) and seemingly having fun making a book end-to-end. i would recommend, but you can't buy it anymore, so fuck you all, eat my shit and go to hell. just kidding. he'd probably send you a pdf if you asked. made myself laugh imagining including a line here talking shit about tex's typesetting of this book (i recommended tex to tyler).

the third realm by karl ove knausgaard: the third of what i think is a 5-book series about a sort of biblical apocalypse set in modern day. generally a big fan of his writing, and greatly enjoyed the previous books in this series. this book however is more or less a 'mirror image' of the first book, the morning star, in that it's basically the same chapters/stories but told from different perspectives. as such plotwise there is little overarching development until about halfway through the book, and i felt disinterested in the characters themselves to want to read the material i was already familiar with from their perspectives. found myself growing weary of the more expositional "i put coffee in my mug, slurped it down, and went out into the hall, closing the door behind me" style, likely due to the lack of newness in the story. also noticed more annoyingly redundant scenes of characters thinking something, then explaining that something to another character, then possibly explaining it yet again to another character, or something, which made random parts drag on needlessly. felt slightly embarrassed reading the passages describing a black metal concert and frustrated by the big plot 'reveal' feeling obvious early on then being very slowly dragged out. surprised by how many negative emotions i experienced while reading it relative to his other books, even the other books in this series. the second half picked up a little, i felt. curiously-constructed series.

the flowers of buffoonery by osamu dazai: i've read and enjoyed two of his other novels in translation. this one was just translated last year (apparently more have just been translated); this is my favorite of the three i've read so far. this is a very short novel about a guy who fails at a double suicide, but the text is maybe 50% asides by the author talking about how he feels like a hack. enjoyed the simple, clever plot, the small cast of entertaining characters, and the subversive style, and the ending a lot. excellent book. would highly recommend.

Skull Slime Tentacle Witch War by Rick Claypool (Anxiety Press): i have read and enjoyed two other novels by rick claypool and enjoyed them to a great degree despite what felt like straightforward prose and some needless emphasis on action sequences. i liked that they are inventive, psychedelic, and astoundingly bleak for sci-fi, a genre i read as a kid but have generally avoided as an adult. this is another action-packed sci-fi like the others, but it impressed me with its new and expert emphasis on style. i like its humor-leaden minimalism, repetition, fun use of ALL CAPS, and focus on mundanity/humanity/shittiness (despite being about mutants on the moon who puke knives and etc.) i also appreciated his commitment to absurdity despite its earnest preoccupations, and both are cranked up to an impressive, insane degree. a truly strange, endearing, phenomenal book that i recommend to everyone.

brief book reviews

i was in a bad place in many ways for a very long time, so hadn't been prioritizing reading or writing reviews, but i have read a few books since the fall. i also wrote some reviews that are supposed to come out in beyond the last estate, so i haven't included them here. you can add 3-4 books to this list, mentally, if you are trying to keep tabs on my reading habits.

 

holy cow by david duchovny (farrar, strauss, and giroux): a really stupid (derogatory), short novel by the guy from x-files. checked it out from the library partially because i liked the cover and partially because i was curious to see if it was any good. this is a brief, 'comedic' adventure story about a few farm animals trying to travel to different countries to escape being eaten (the cow wants to go to india, the pig to israel, the turkey to...turkey). full of bad farm puns, dated slang to make fun of teen girls (the cows say "amazeballs" at some point), and weird jewish stereotypes (although the most interesting scene is when the pig decides to get circumcised). feels comically "un-politically correct" in an old-fashioned, "hollywood humor" sort of way (e.g. unfunny, relies on tropes/stereotypes, generally mean-spirited, lazy). felt bothered by the internal logic inconsistencies (the cow doesn't know what tv is, calling tvs "box gods", but also makes frequent references to pop culture, including tv and movies) and by the core plot being a lazy, childlike premise (they don't eat cows in india so the cow wants to go to india). relies heavily on the post-modern affect of referencing the writing and editing of the novel for long passages and several barely-motivated decisions to move through the plot. not very good, but mercifully short and relatively snappy. thinking on it now, i'm unsure what the 'purpose' of a book like this is. i liked the ~4 drawings by natalya balnova a lot, though. wouldn't recommend.

woman world by aminder dhaliwal (drawn and quarterly): saw this on the staff recs shelf at the library and wanted to 'expand my horizons'. this is series of mostly disconnected 1-2 page comic strips set in a near future where there are no men. there is a slight subplot about a character pining after someone who is already in a relationship and a child being obsessed with a dvd copy of paul blart: mall cop. the humor felt blisteringly dated and bad (cf. paul blart jokes), and sometimes the attempt at a pun is so brutally stretched that the result is nearly nonsensical (e.g. the sperm bank is 'maxed out', meaning they are 'out of sperm from people named max'). also felt like the attempts at pro-trans messaging is weirdly crammed in/lipservicey and inconsistent with the world building/other aspects of the story (only female sexed babies are born, but also there are still trans women, but also the semen supply is limited from the reserves when men were still around). enjoyed making my wife read various pages to upset her with how bad it was. would not recommend.

house of hunger by uzodinma okehi (self-released): uzo manically messaged me about several things, including asking to trade books, and has since accused back patio press of being run by a racist cabal of nyc writers or something because he convinced himself some shitpost tweets were about him (many people have believed this to varying degrees with varying results); i feel like he enjoys being annoying and mischaracterizing what people say to him because of some sort of victim complex or to stoke engagement, which i don't respect. anyway, this is a very short narrative about a guy going to college in iowa city and feeling horny and alienated. the style is very heavy on comma-heavy list-like descriptions and flashes/snatches of action/conversation to propel the brief narrative, i think to intentionally evoke a sort of graphic novel/action movie flow, since the protagonist is an illustrator who wants to make an action movie. enjoyed the characters that are more fleshed out, like the movie auteur who gets addicted to mario 64, but most of the characters are zero dimensional, existing only to deliver one line of dialogue or entertain one single thought. the impression i got is that there is a lot of story in the author's head that didn't make it to the page, making the female characters confusingly interchangeable and more or less nonexistent, and some of the long impressionistic sketches of scenery/buildings unengaging/unclear. thought it was interesting that, while presumably autofiction, the most direct exploration of the racist manipulation of men by women in the text comes from a sort of monologue from a random south asian guy over the phone who we know nothing about, and not from the protagonist's own specific experience, which is stated as the fulcrum of the story despite only being alluded to a couple of times. enjoyed the culminating scene being a terrible blowjob. enjoyed the pointlessness of each chapter being titled "house of hunger". overall felt confusingly short and underdeveloped despite what i thought was an interesting/promising premise and setting. felt mixed on the style/presentation. felt impressed by the poor-quality printing, seemingly worse than print on demand books. slightly curious to read his other, longer book, but not that curious. would recommend if you get it for a good deal; seemed fine. would not recommend interacting with him on twitter.

diaries of an oxygen thief by anonymous (simon and schuster): bought this used because i had read a publisher's weekly article about how it was an 'indie hit,' which actually ascribed its success to 1) the author receiving 1,000 free copies of the book from his friend, 2) the author being a marketing executive able to quit his job to focus on selling the book in new york city for over a year, and 3) the alluring cover; it went on to sell 10s of thousands of copies and was rereleased by simon and schuster. this is a short, repetitive, annoying, protracted, frustrating novel about a rich loser guy who breaks women's hearts and then later has his heart broken, kind of, barely, not really, by a woman. lots of space is spent hyping up its own narrative and culminating event which was, ultimately, severely underwhelming, uninteresting, and confusingly written; the 'comeuppance' the book hinges on appears to be that the woman tells her friend that the protagonist has a small penis in a public setting, and they try to photograph him looking upset in a bar. overall a very poorly balanced, poorly edited, poorly executed story. severely would not recommend. 

the lone ranger and tonto fist fight in heaven by sherman alexie: a collection of interlinked short stories that sort of read like a novel in that they mostly follow the same characters (though sometimes from different perspectives) through different stages in life. focused on family, native american identity, alcoholism, and life on the reservation vs. the big city. really enjoyed it in general - the dialogue, the setting, the themes, and characters - but laughed at some of the heavy handed similes/metaphors used to evoke/emphasis native americanness, e.g. things like (i'm making this up) "his smile felt like a promise, an occupation, a treaty." enjoyed the moments where absurd irreality is simply stated for interesting effect (e.g. (making this up) "i slept for 400 years"), not quite in a dramatic metaphorical way, but a sort of wry, defeated way. enjoyed the emphasis on basketball as a throughline. felt mixed emotions about how some of the stories are written with "MFA"-style attempts at different voices/affects, and disliked when the prose veered into the more melodramatic framing. checked wikipedia and saw that the screenplay for the movie smoke signals, which i like, was very, very, very loosely based on the characters in this collection (and written by alexie). would recommend both the book and the movie.

molly by blake butler (archway editions): never read/enjoyed much by blake aside from his chicken essay in the pets anthology; i remember starting 300,000,000 and feeling disinterested in the writing style. this is a memoir about his first wife, the poet molly brodak (i have only read a few poems by her), committing suicide, and as such has been the topic of prolonged literary discourse. in terms of the actual content, i found it to read overall moderately self-aggrandizing and thoroughly, consistently critical of/angry toward molly in an off-putting way. felt like it reads like a slow mystery thriller about an evil, lying wife who sucks and you should hate. i think it's fine he wrote the book, and support him in writing it however he wants (enjoyed the inclusion of the suicide note and other details), but i was surprised by how aggressively anti-molly it reads almost from the beginning and how uncharitable it is toward her despite frequently proclaiming love and admiration for her (or her work ethic, mainly). this is expecially contrasted with how quick he is to only performatively slap himself of the wrist when it comes to examining his end of their relationship. for example, his own infidelity early on is addressed in a short passage or two and he emphasizes that he had already resolved to be better before he was found out, and he glibly claims to not have a gambling problem despite admitting to frequently screaming and breaking things in a blind rage whenever he loses a bet, etc. meanwhile he spends a long time slowly examining the minutiae of any given time molly possibly lied to him and what it says about how terrible of a person she was. it feels difficult to critique these aspects of the book without the criticism being viewed as a moral or personal judgement but i do feel like it affects the narrative and structure of the book in a negative way; considered that if this were a novel written entirely about made-up people, it would feel like a very obvious attempt at writing an unreliable narrator. my most common complaint about autoficition(/memoir) is a lack of introspective honesty despite in-text and/or metatextual claims otherwise, which i feel applies here as well. however, my real complaint is that the book is simply written in a style i don't really find engaging, and that it is very poorly edited, in terms of its often redundant and awkward syntax and also in terms of plain copy editing, e.g. the same exact needlessly complex multi-line simile is copy and pasted, verbatim, twice, in the span of a page and half (including in the 2nd edition). i relatedly found the dependence on showy but generally meaningless and clunky similes distracting, and found myself becoming overly critical of the writing the more i encountered them, e.g. getting mad that he describes a feeling as if he had a "black stone in [his] stomach" and dismissively asking myself "what does the color of the stone impart to this feeling? what if it was a blue stone?" i was also surprised by the number of awkwardly artless cliches and expressions (such as 'spill the beans'), primarily because of how overwrought the similes and vocabulary tend to be otherwise (blake rarely "says" anything but frequently "iterates" things, etc.; my father in law read most of the book while visiting and once frustratedly moaned "i get it, you got a degree in writing!"); i found the resulting style confusing, frustrating, and unstimulating. i also want to note that i have found people oppose my off-handed critiques of the writing/editing by saying they would consider it understandably difficult to write, let alone line edit, a long, personal narrative of loss like this, ie. "imagine being put in the position of giving editorial feedback on someone's description of finding their wife's corpse, of course you wouldn't suggest a lot of changes." i understand this feeling but also don't think it holds any merit if we're trying to make good, worthy books, which i otherwise assume blake would argue in favor of. ultimately i would classify the book as the kind that depends on its premise/idea more than its execution, which is a kind of book i don't like much, and so the book's draw for me simply becomes one of bleak voyeurism. wouldn't recommend.

my first book by honor levy (penguin randomhouse): i vaguely remember reading (and not being gripped by) her story on tyrant, and have mostly only been aware of her due to discourse about/reviews of this book and its emphasis on 'terminally online' internet culture; wanted to read the book to see what all the hubbub was about (assumed it would be better than people were saying). aside from the first and last stories, however, which i assume is intentionally sequenced to bookend with the aforementioned 'online' effect, the book felt relatively straightforward, grounded in mostly irl scenes or relatively older internet experiences (e.g. 'internet girl' discusses using the internet in like 2004), and only casually references memes and contemporary pop culture/internet stuff -- instagram is mentioned a couple times, a story talks about a lot of people being 'cancelled,' caitlyn jenner is mentioned a few times, there's a brief critical discussion of facetuning, etc. i disliked how the bulk of the stories read like mid 2010s personal essays (note: on 1storypod, honor mentions being very excited when she learned about 'creative nonfiction', so this makes sense), with nearly every story relying on quoting a definition of some term from a website or providing a shallow survey of a topic in a very plain, essayistic format that i do not care for; i angrily laughed out loud when reading some later story that actually reads like a near-future scifi short story for 3 pages before it launches into a multipage history of an aztec god to reaffirm the fragmented essay conceit. the other stories mostly revolve around a few recurring (i assume) autobiographical themes (e.g. problematic college boys who go to greece and are mean to/impregnate college girls) or exploring the aforementioned ideas related to using the internet but with a very straightforward criticality (which helps reinforce the feeling of a personal essay in almost every story) instead of exploring any social/moral/narrative ambiguity or subverting much of anything style- or narrative-wise; i found little of the internet stuff to be truly insightful or accomplish much, aside from the first story (a sort of twitter snapshot slang-forward fairytale) and the final story, "pillow girls", which i consider a great, well-executed piece of ambiguous and subversive social commentary (despite illogically taking place in a dystopian near future yet, also, somehow, the year 2016)). i also didn't like the reliance on frequent slam poetry-style free word association, like (making this up) "we broke up, we broke down, we broke everything we touched", which to me feels lazy and melodramatic. enjoyed the stories that seem to go off on a narrative tangent by the end and never resolve the main plot and would have enjoyed more of this (could be billed as a comment on something something attention span and the internet). felt confused by the sequencing and composition of the collection in general. felt vaguely convinced that this would have become a NYT bestseller if it had been edited/promoted as a collection of experimental-ish essays instead of stories. would recommend.

the exploding tree by kevin richard white (anxiety press): kevin is a curmodgeony short story writer from philly who used to host the no edit podcast, which i  enjoyed (and was on 1-2 times). these stories seem to be deeply in the vein of carver/cheever/yates/other 'serious'/bleak mid-century writers; most of the stories revolve around alcoholism and domestic problems, often consisting almost entirely of stilted dialogue between two unhappy characters (usually a romantic couple). enjoyed some of the exotically dark/bleak ideas, such as the story about the amputee and the one about the alcoholic parents driving to the horse races, but some of the others kind of blur together. the dialogue-heavy presentation made it sometimes difficult to understand the context for a given scene and i found some of the phrasing hard to parse due to their reliance on (i assume) certain vocal inflection or emphasis that isn't easily included in a written story. enjoyed the articulation of some of the bleak observations/ideas that the characters entertain but didn't enjoy some of the prose itself, which leans toward a little dramatic and serious, which makes sense given the subject matter, but feels like it's trying to emulate a style more than innovate. enjoyed some brief passages for their sense of dark whimsy, which was unexpected and promising. noted that all of these stories have been published online before, which i don't like, but can't really articulate why. also disliked that the cover image seems ai-generated. would recommend.

the satanic verses by salman rushdie: listened to an interview with rushdie on a podcast and he said something about how the fatwah against him due to this book has unfairly given it an air of austerity and religious seriousness despite being whimsical and humorous, so i checked it out from the library. a very long, wordy, post-modern, whimsical novel about two indian men who survive a plane crash and one sort of becomes a devil and the other an angel, or something (i don't really know the full plot, having only read 1/5 of the book). definitely a 'humorous' book with an emphasis on post-modern narrative play, mixed up vocabulary/register, pop culture/political references/satire, and extensive wordplay. felt unable to really get into it due to how long and self-indulgent everything is, with every scene/dialogue spanning pages and pages. i did laugh out loud at one joke, but otherwise felt like it was trying too hard to be clever and witty. felt like it seems 'good' in its execution and is probably worth finishing, but i didn't have the stamina for it. would recommend.

septology by jon fosse: have read and enjoyed several books by fosse before and started a ~15 person book club online to read this book. i think maybe 6 people finished it very quickly, 6 people didn't read a single page, and 3 people gave up toward the end (i am one of the 3). enjoyed the book club twitter groupchat while it was active but felt disappointed in myself for not being a better host or being able to finish the book (my life had fallen apart, generally, at this time). generally enjoyed the book but found the (infamous, intentional) repetition to eventually wear me down. enjoyed the moments where he is able to capture/create a sense of anxiety about something going wrong without things going wrong (usually). enjoyed the descriptions of foods and various humorous scenes (the dog shitting, the guys talking about delirium tremens, the name of the cafe). didn't enjoy some of the reliance on various 'traumas' to create tension. enjoyed some of the religious rambling and discussions of art. enjoyed reading it at the beginning knowing that it uses a very limited vocabulary -- felt excited every time a good word (like 'shit' or 'piss') was used. felt like i was able to enjoy it despite not finishing it in the way you can enjoy a piece of ambient music. would recommend.

awful people by scott mitchell may (death of print): traded books with scott based on reading praise of this book by people whose opinion i value. this is a novel told mostly in interview format about some kind of government agency investigating some kind of supernatural incident involving a woman in the center of some kind of love triangle thing. very reminiscent of david foster wallace with its conspiracy/government agency plot, intentionally mixed registers, rambling dialogue, and wordplay (lots of instances of characters breaking apart/riffing on common expressions). read about half of it and got distracted, didn't finish. not very excited by dfw-styled novels like this, but i understand their appeal when writing them. seemed fine if that's what you're looking for.

the rainbow by yasunari kawabata: have enjoyed several novels by kawabata. this one wasn't translated until last year for some reason. overall enjoyed it, similar in many regards to his other novels: lots of scenes of aristocratic people quietly suffering family drama, walking through fancy gardens, and talking about flowers. enjoyed the moments of soap opera-level dramatic reveals mixed in with insanely dark and cutting observations/meditations on death. enjoyed the 'light touch' he brings to certain themes and narrative arcs, where the 'point' is clear but not overwrought. felt like the structure/focus was a little inconsistent, in that the book sort of changes 'main characters' 2/3rds of the way in. felt like there was some needless, distracting repetition that i assume is related to the novel having been serialized originally - would have enjoyed a snappier, better-edited version. not my favorite by him but has some good moments. enjoyed that the first line is about the eponymous rainbow.