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.