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-
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.
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