briefer book reviews

after experiencing minor petty twitter bullshit over a middling review on my blog, i stopped publishing book reviews. i felt like the petty twitter bullshit stirrer made me reassess the purpose of me writing book reviews, what role they could serve anybody, and whether my criticisms of any given book weren't just rooted in various biases. i spent some time learning, in a shallow way, ideas related to art and taste, quality, etc. i also talked with some people about the role of negative reviews in small press publishing, how there's little value in it in contrast to the millions of dollars invested in keeping small press books out of serious press to begin with -- someone puts out a book on a no-name press because they care about their art more, i believe, than someone who views publishing as a job, and their books as marketable products. i have nothing new to say about literary criticism or critique. i like reviewing and talking about books. i had mostly positive, personal feedback from people who read my more honest and open reviews of indie books. i have seen a fun trend in people i like writing single-paragraph reviews of books online (eg nathan, crow, and sebastian), on their blogs. i feel inspired by this and want to participate again. and, finally, if you don't like my review of your book, fuck you. just kidding.

Michael Kohlhaas by Heinrich von Kleist: this is from 1808 and apparently was a favorite of franz kafka, which is why i assume people know about it today and revere it, and why it was recommended to me. it's about a horse trader who suffers a petty slight from some baron or something, and his quest for justice escalates in exceedingly rambunctious and bizarre ways. wikipedia describes it as eerily modern for its time, which i agree with. it made me laugh in several places, although i felt like the ending dragged on a little bit. i liked the emphasis on absurdism by way of pettiness and honor. the writing is at times hard to follow, with lots of long, complex sentence structures and confusing references to people, eg lots of referring to someone as 'the latter' or 'the former' in a 200-word sentence, and using various titles like 'the elector' that had to be understood in context (as there are many electors). i celebrated kohlhaas's various victories and cursed his enemies. fun book.

The Mold Farmer by Rick Claypool (six gallery press): a purely sci-fi book that i felt was compelling for its severe bleakness and provocative imagery. i haven't read much sci-fi as an adult, but i enjoyed this, its emphasis on family obligation and futility, the conceit of the world post-alien invasion, and the non-contrived-seeming ways some people act, the ambiguity of their choices/actions. i felt the dream sequences and some aspects of the prose were distracting, but overall the book made me feel frustrated and depressed in a fun way.

What Are You? by Lindsay Lerman (clash): written to a sort of aggregation of men in the narrator's life as a condemnation of patriarchal values, sex, and relationships. a unique means, i felt, of communicating personal trauma and connecting it to broader patterns. i felt frustrated by what felt like a lack of direction/plot and a little confused on whether it should be understood as a novel or a collection of essays. i noticed a large number of cliched expressions, which surprised me, as there is otherwise an emphasis on style and philosophical expression. i think its strength is in its anger/indignation and how it collectively functions as a subjecting you, by the narrator's experience, to a sort of 'onslaught of bullshit' that is ruinous to life and depressingly common for all women. glad i read it.

Small Moods by Shane Kowalski (future tense): fun collection of mostly very short things. mostly reminded me of lydia davis in terms of style, but with some more 'fun' and absurdism. someone in an interview asked about the ellipses, and i think they contribute well to the tone, conveying 'madness' or being 'unhinged', which was effective when it happened and elevated the stories by emphasizing the speaker in a unique way. reminded me of the joy williamsian exclamation point and the bernhardian parentheses. i liked the stories most that didn't try to end on a clever pun or poetic turn, but i think for a different audience those are probably the best part of the stories. a few made me laugh out loud.

You can't betray your best friend and learn to sing at the same time by Kim Hiorthøy (nordisk books): something like 40 short stories/scenes and a few bleak drawings presented as a novel. emphasis on comical, farcical relationship things with an antagonistic/misanthropic/stupid narrator. made me excited and giddy at times and i sent pictures of the chapters to people. many of the 'chapter's made me laugh and feel validated about my own writing. felt impressed/interested that it's originally from like 2001 or 2003.

 

Yes by Thomas Bernhard: ok by bernhard standards. made me laugh in a couple very specific scenes, but mostly felt like the repetition wasn't as effective as in other books by him. the last fourth was the most exciting part, i felt, and included the best jokes. for example, the (unhinged) narrator randomly describes his library as 'the spider room' without any reason/context, and repeats it a few times - both effective and comical. i also liked the 'reveal'/explanation of the swiss couple at the end and the last few scenes in particular. it has an effective title for the book, which also made me laugh, learning its context. interested in reading more 'middle period' bernhard books.

The Lake by Yasunari Kawabata: recommended to me by troy. enjoyed it a lot and i think of the imagery/characters often. oddly split something like 30-70 between two protagonists who briefly overlap. great book about fucked up freaks doing weird, vaguely threatening shit and feeling sexually repressed. fits in the canon of books about a little creep acting weird and then revealing that they suffered some kind of trauma in their youth in the last quarter of the book. i liked the ending a lot and a lot of the dialogue, and the way that scenes and transitions are allowed to slowly develop - felt like it's presented with confidence, which appeals to me. never really knew what was going to happen next throughout the whole book, in spite of it not being a 'thriller.'

Woodcraft and Camping by 'Nessmuk': mostly a travelogue/collection of 'yarns' about bushcraft and camping from the late 1800s, written by a conservationist. includes a lot of practical (but in modernity impractical) advice/tips on camping, like how to make your own bugspray, cook certain kinds of bread, fishing, building a fire, and prepare shelter. mostly enjoyed the shittalky parts about lumberjacks (wasteful and dumb) and soft tourist-type campers. includes a very dated/racist but interesting discussion of getting into coffee on a trip to brazil. includes a good day-by-day travelogue of a trip through michigan in the deep woods. i think this author was a big influence on hemingway's outlook on the natural world and sport. made me excited about camping.

La Serenissima by Wallace Barker (gob pile): travel writing poems, mostly about continental europe. lots of repeated imagery of drinking aperol spritzes and seeing famous places i've never heard of. enjoyed the icelandic section and the montana camping sections most i think in spite of how short they are comparatively. some good humor and observations throughout. i think these are mostly technically sonnets and qualify as poems with line breaking that i don't understand. made me want to travel places again.

Easy Rider II: Sleezy Drivers by KKUURRTT and Tex (and Cavin and Brian Alan Ellis): split-perspective road novel with some cameos by cavin and brian. i liked the humor and emphasis on the physical experience of being on a long road trip with someone. enjoyed the sillier parts and the sort of meta-writing-world commentary (shout out colin winnette, who i think anyone read because of his soft skull book) and the comedic scenes at tourist traps. felt rushed toward the end - would have enjoyed it going on longer, maybe with a stronger character arc for the tex character, combating his insecurities. ends in a puff.

 

shithead laureate by homeless (clash):  this is a book of his usual type of poem - the same recurring themes and images, such as self-hatred/depression, fast food, homeless people (which he refers to as 'housing-impaired', which i think is supposed to be a joke, but feels weird in the context of his penname (and that he's not, you know, homeless)) and stuff on the street, nostalgia for childhood, and being judgemental about people who use social media. compared to his earlier poems, there's less emphasis on hope/beauty in the mundane/broken and more bitterness about things.  noticed here a reliance on convoluted, sometimes recursive metaphors/similes. usually i found myself sort of skimming them for the imagery, which i feel is the intended way to read them, but sometimes i'd actually trace one out/pay attention and feel like the metaphor doesn't make any sense. one that i remember is describing the sky as the color of a dead vacuum cleaner - what color is your vacuum cleaner? does a vacuum change color when it dies? there's also an inexplicable poem about being on a boat made out of scabs, or something, and jerking off onto a woman's feet, which made me laugh in its nonsequiturness. i also want to say here, and this has nothing to do with homeless as an author, that this is possibly the worst typeset book i've seen. i'd be really mad if this were how my book ended up looking.

 

telapaphone by adam soldofsky (maudlin house): bought based on randomly reading what felt like a compelling excerpt online which turns out to be the first few pages. it's novella-length and goes by quick. starts out with what felt most interesting, to me, as a herman hesse-style portrait of a man's friendship with another man at art school, a compelling scene of them presumably going to a baseball game together, but it quickly moves into a sort of light sci-fi thriller where the characters freaky friday into each other's bodies and the (depressed, alcoholic) protagonist, pretending to be the more successful friend (by occupying his body) comes to learn the guy's mixed up in shady bullshit. there's a russian mobster and goons, there's some quickly-resolved mystery stuff about figuring out what the mobster wants, then everything is all fixed and smoothly cleaned up and everyone's happy.  my main complaint is how underdeveloped it all felt -  felt like a 1st draft to get general plot points down and was left at that. most characters stand around or seemingly disappear when it doesn't serve the action, especially at the end.

islands in the stream by ernest hemingway: didn't finish, but enjoyed reading ~1/3 of it and would probably enjoy the rest but didn't feel compelled to keep going. i liked the protracted scenes about fishing the most especially in context of fatherhood, plus various scenes of dark comedy after his sons die. felt like some of the style was overly affectational and would have benefited from him writing more freely like in other parts of the book. thought the mysterious romance of the past angle was uninteresting and artificial. laughing at considering the ideal hemingway book one in which some dudes go camping or fishing and don't talk about women ever, which i think is what critics say is why he's bad.

the first collection of criticism by a living female rock critic by jessica hopper: didn't finish, but enjoyed various parts. main disappointment is how little criticism there is - it's mostly just a collection of published stuff about music from various sites and magazines, including short interviews, some personal essay stuff, and an interesting article about indie bands getting commercial sync deals. there are a few pieces specifically engaging with rock criticism, such as misogyny in emo music, but mostly the interviews and reviews don't seem particularly cohesive or engaging in terms of criticism. like, there seemed to be very little of herself in the writing, mostly read like stuff she wrote for a paycheck. not as in-your-face pot-stirring as i'd expect based on the title and description. favorite part was the profile of pedro the lion from 2009 with emphasis on his relationship with religion.

the vacation by garth miró (expat): didn't finish. kind of wacky. lots of exclamation points. has an emphasis on generically shittalking rich fat people; the hero is an antihero drug addict who thinks he's better and cooler than everyone. it feels weirdly inauthentic to me, kind of contrived and repetitive with a frustrating back-and-forth pacing., some vague sci-fi thrill element in it. noticed a lot of noun compounding as a stylistic effect, like 'mind-fat.' when trying to think of an example of this i thought up 'poopstink', which i don't think is in the book but made me laugh. people (for various reasons) either publicly or in private compare it to body high, which i didn't like.

the morning star by karl ove knausgaard (penguin): overall i liked it, and felt like it lets his many strengths shine, but in a lot of ways it felt like he was trying to write it to be more of a polished, engaging standard litfic best seller type novel. he's an excellent nature writer and emphasizes writing about daily minutiae, specifically food, still, in the book, which is a highlight for me. i felt kind of disappointed in what felt like a cynically transparent attempt to shake off his autofictional baggage, like it could have been better if focused on just a few narrators, like the book would be better as either closer to 300 pages or 1200 pages. i felt like the characters were more caricatures than real in a lot of ways, although sometimes this leads to funny scenes/images, like jostein cutting the line in the bathroom because he has to pee so bad and him describing ejaculating as something like 'squirting out hot juice'. i also felt like the attempts at creepy horror-y images and twists at the end of chapters were kind of lame, and felt mostly at odds with the larger theme of, i think, theological horror (i'm sure there's a real/better term for this), which is the best part of the book (and why i liked a time for everything so much, in part - making angels terrifying in a sense, undermining the omnipotence of god with emphasis on ritual and other autonomous, mystical beings). i felt like the second half, which actually started to explore this theme instead of allude to it, was more compelling. the last chapter (not the in-fiction essay, but the last jostein chapter) reminded me of the haruki murakami trick of characters entering mysterious worlds, although knowing how much of a biblical scholar knausgaard is (and my lack of biblical knowledge) i assume a lot of the mysteriousness is explained by the external lore it builds on. i enjoyed the essay at the end and the ruminations on life and death, in particular a quote from a philosopher that says something to the effect of "for early humans, everything was living - trees, rocks, water, houses, the air - but for modern humans almost nothing is living - including our own bodies, the idea of matter and space, etc."

 

the ax book by D. Cook: got as a present, along with an ax. didn't finish, but plan on going back to it sometime. some interesting history of the ax in america. diagrams and tips on cutting trees/logs/etc. interesting anecdotes about penknives. used it as a guide for cutting down a small tree. it was harder than i anticipated, but enjoyable. 

the weather book by eric sloane: felt interesting in learning about understanding the weather in a way that doesn't rely on reading accuweather maps, which this book is billed as. i liked the introduction, which emphasized connecting more with nature and the outdoors and a brief overview of the science behind various folk wisdom about the weather. ironically, the intro is dismissive of how boring meteorology has become in terms of memorizing maps and equations, but then i found most of the book just attempting to give the same kind of overview, but the maps and diagrams are hand drawn and interesting. learned a lot about identifying warm and cold fronts, how they work, the different kinds of clouds and rain associated with them. enjoyed the outdated emphasis on sailing and lightning rods being new. feel like i need to reread it to better understand high and low pressure zones vs warm and cold air zones. would enjoy reading more about understanding the sky through direct observation, realized while reading i don't confidently understand what a 'northerly' wind means, eg is it blowing south to north or north to south. but overall enjoyed being able to predict rain 12+ hours out based on observing the sky a few times.

Third World Magicks by Mike Kleine (inside the castle): i enjoyed this book, comprising two very short stories/novellas (maybe like 4k words total in the book?) connected by a couple-page fancy-word soup. i felt like each story was interesting and engaging on its own - one about music critics, one a sort of sci-fi farce on a mysterious island.  i liked the latter the most, though, and it made me laugh several times. the emphasis on 'jobs' and, as i read it, arbitrariness in seeking purpose, was interesting and clever. i also liked the visual elements throughout the book.

The Novelist by Jordan Castro (soft skull): fun, inventive, bernhardian, shittalky, cathartic. i liked a lot of the imagery and the meta aspects of it, and felt compelled by the seemless way he embedded the 'novel' into this novel, showcasing his talent as a novelist in a sort of dual way. i enjoyed the philosophical discussions, the humor, the daily life minutiae, the use of semi-colons, and the descriptions of social media. feels like a fun book to have written. made me laugh a lot. have enjoyed thinking of comparing the sound of making coffee in my chemex to the sound of a woman peeing, after reading.