brief book reviews

welcome to my reviews. are you ready to rumble? good. but first, i wanted to note that at the start of june, my family began participating in the local library system reading challenge, which lead to me reading some things i probably wouldn't have otherwise read, but i'm glad i read them. also noting that i somehow, unexpectedly, read books by four different nobel prize winners in a row in the middle of the month of june, which i found funny and enjoyable. sound off in the 'comments' about your favorite book by a nobel prize winner. ok. i also found it interesting how few small press/independent books i read this summer. if you're looking for sneering takedowns of your friends and compatriots, i'm sorry to say i will likely let you down. alright. time to rumble.

 

the kingdom of this world by alejo carpentier (vintage, 1957 translation): picked this up secondhand because it looked/sounded cool. originally published in 1947, this is a short novel about the haitian revolution, mostly following one particular slave and his experience navigating the multiple, absurd shifts in local governance. really enjoyed how it frames real historical events with a sort of fantasy framing, in which magic/voodoo is treated, from the perspective of most characters, as real and directly shaping events, including people turning into animals and summoning storms, which felt interesting both from a style/storytelling standpoint but also from a historical one, in that it requires remembering that for most of human history, grand events were understood as being shaped by supernatural forces, which we can then project onto more recent historical events. i found this stimulating and engaging. also enjoyed the exceedingly dark humor, the extensively detailed and poetic descriptions of places and people, the few chapters where the narrative follows other characters, and the unexpectedly fantastical ending sequence. read it slowly to savor the writing and imagery. would highly recommend.            

 

cold enough for snow by jessica au (new directions, 2023): a short novel about a woman and her mother going on a trip to japan while the woman remembers a bunch of memories and stories, mostly about family, ambition, and art. enjoyed the setting and the nature writing, and most of the reverie portions, especially the ruminations on art and trying to understand inarticulable aspects of artistry and vision. didn't really enjoy the style, which felt a lot like rachel cusk worship, a sort of precise, minimal, objective-like approach with formulaic placement of simile; feels like the writing is trying to emulate the experience of being in a museum, or something, which i found slightly annoying or formulaic, maybe. felt like some stuff toward the end felt like it was veering toward some really dumb 'reveal', but then self-consciously doesn't commit to the bit (probably for the best). weirdly balanced, structurally. i think i enjoyed it. curious what her next book will be like. would tentatively recommend, especially since it's a pretty short read and generally different from other contemporary stuff.

 

botchan by natsumne soseki (kodansha, 2007 edition): this is soseki's first novel, from 1906; i read and very much enjoyed his middle-late period novel the gate, so bought this one without knowing anything about it. a short, kind of 'action-packed' novel about a young tokyo man getting his first job as a math teacher in a remote city. enjoyed the way the narrator is constantly shittalking other people and sort of just saying random, boastful, often contradictory or wrong information about himself. didn't feel particularly interested in the plot, which revolves around some of the other teachers scheming about driving out other teachers. thought it would go the way of kafka at times, because of the bureaucratic shenanigans, but it never does. felt like the pacing was weird, too, especially at the end, which felt comedically short and sort of dashed-off. according to the introduction, which i read after reading the actual book, it's sort of a popular book read in school, and resonates with school children because it features a young teacher shittalking other teachers and engaging in stupid slapstick stuff; enjoyed that the introduction notes it's otherwise not a particularly well-written or interesting book. felt heartening to read a sort of shoddy debut novel by someone who would later become a certified master novelist. wouldn't recommend outside of being a historical/cultural curio.

 

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ok does that look better? nice 

 

Aug 9—Fog by kathryn scanlan (mcd, 2019): this is a very short, sort of 'erasure poem' style novella kinda thing, consisting of snippets of a single year of an old diary the author found at an estate sale. it's unclear how much 'editing' went into the production of the final text from the source material, and, since it's basically someone else's story/words, i feel weird considering it really being 'by' scanlan. but the end result is compelling, melancholic, evocative, and beautiful. enjoyed the arc of time, the recurring characters, the inexplicable phrasing, and the moments of very insightful, poetic imagery which we can ascribe to the original author. overall was better than i anticipated, and i'm glad i read it. would recommend.

 

the event by sam pink (self-released, 2024): i've read and enjoyed most of sam pink's books. this is a novella described as an "epic joke" in its synopsis, and, unlike his previous novels, is a relatively on-the-nose topical satire instead of his usual slice-of-life, meandering guy-doin'-stuff stories. this book instead directly, hamfistedly satirizes biden-era internet/media stuff, with tongue-in-cheek allusions to black lives matter, maga shitposters, alex jones, biden and trump, january 6th, mass shootings, internet discourse, etc., with a light action/thriller framing. found the satire to be relatively straightforward and thus uninteresting, with long monologues from both the joe biden character and alex jones character wherein it's just, like, yeah, that's how you would describe how they talk i guess. there's also an emphasis on coming up with slightly sillier names for the things he satirizes, like 'blather' instead of 'twitter' and 'black people are not bad' instead of 'black lives matter',  and so on. reminded me a lot of an episode of south park, in terms of the mix of cartoonish violence and pop culture satire as well as the way it's ostensibly 'skewering both sides' despite being more sympathetic to the social conservative side over the other. didn't like how i rarely felt surprised or intrigued by the plot, jokes, or dialogue, but i did enjoy a few random lines where he lets some non-satirical humor shine through. also found the book impressively poorly edited, with an extensive misuse of commas, random typos, cracks in the actual satire (e.g. referring to 'bleats' as 'tweets') and a couple paragraphs from the prologue more or less copy-and-pasted directly back into the final third of the book. kept thinking of it as a disappointing step down from his previous work and, like most topical humor, already deeply dated. wouldn't recommend.  

 

the boat of longing by ole edvart r[ølvaag (mhs press, 1984 edition): bought this used, on a whim, based on the description on the back. this is a long-ish, 3-part novel about a young norwegian man emigrating to minneapolis around 1912, published in 1933 (posthumously, as i understand it). deeply enjoyed the expansive vocabulary and nature writing, and the long, strange diversions in plot and setting; starts off with a prolonged description of random stories from northern norway, with impressively beautiful nature writing. felt compelled by and interested in the story and various characters, though felt that i had maybe been expecting (cynically) the plot to go a certain way and reveal certain negative aspects of humanity in the way that most 20th century literature does, but rarely is the protagonist actually taken advantage of or fucked over or shown to suffer for his optimism. in this way it was a little bit refreshing but also a little naive-feeling. enjoyed the ending sequence, and the conceit of how it's set up re: its relationship to the main character and the amount of ambiguity in how the story resolves; felt impressed by the structure of the book in this regard, even though some of the passages wore on tediously and were probably intended to convey or critique some aspects of modern society in a way that i don't understand, today, in the year 2026. enjoyed the description of a vaudeville show and the drunken poet character, among other random elements, including the inclusion of long, original poems. felt inspired by some of the writing style, but overall felt like the book was just ok due to its length and slow nature. unsure i would recommend it over any other book i've enjoyed, outside of it being a historical curiosity.

 

works by édouard levé (dalkey archive, 2014 translation): never read levé before but i know i should. got this one secondhand for free (long, convoluted story involving an acclaimed novelist, don't worry about it, please). originally from 2002, this is a long list of ideas of art installations that the author thought up but would never actually make. most of them involve the same few ideas, such as extreme juxtaposition of form, symbolic irony, and chance/generative art. felt interesting and fun to imagine the pieces as he describes them, but eventually – maybe because of the list structure, or maybe because of his kind of limited scope for a given project (everything hinges on a gimmick, necessarily, to be interesting, since he can never just say, like 'a really good oil painting of a field' or whatever, and the point is to describe contemporary art installations, not necessarily works of art in and of themselves) – the book felt tedious and, unironically, kind of unimaginative. felt mostly uninterested in the act of reading examples of generative installations, especially the long lists within the list. interesting to peruse, maybe as a coffee table thing. didn't finish and wouldn't recommend really.

 

my apologies accepted by bunny rogers (ccm, 2016): didn't know much about bunny rogers before getting this, aside from knowing that one particular enfant terrible in alt lit seemed obsessed with her for a while online. this is a moderately-lengthed collection of most very short (often two-line, sometimes even one-line) poems mostly about relationships, self-hatred, ennui, and confusion. enjoyed the dashed-off feeling of a lot of the poems, especially with the inventive-feeling misspellings. enjoyed the poems with repeated lines that read sort of like song lyrics. didn't enjoy how frequently some of the poems read as very opaque yet light on imagery or word play, feeling as if they were intended to describe specific feelings/experiences yet don't translate to a more universally appreciable image. enjoyed the moments of strange confidence and contrast, various turns of phrases, and unexpectedly recurring themes. felt tempted to take a picture of a few poems to share with others. enjoyed that it reads as stranger, more innovative in form, structure, and phrasing, and more confident than most contemporary 'alt lit' poetry. understood it as a good, maybe lesser-known representative of some of the post-flarfy alt lit stuff that didn't seem to leave a big impression on writers today as some other stuff from around this time. apparently very out of print and expensive now, which i learned only after i dog-eared ~40 pages. would recommend.

 

sunday by olivier schrauwen (fantagraphics, 2024): this is a large, contemporary, experimental graphic novel about a belgian, self-indulgent, asshole graphic designer fucking around for ~18 hours while other people in his life (his girlfriend, his cousin, and his cousin's friend) go on interrelated adventures. enjoyed the art style, especially its emphasis on people making stupid faces, and some of the more experimental depictions of characters superimposed against what seem like digitally traced frames from the da vinci code movie, and other stuff like that. enjoyed the story and the way aspects of the various characters are revealed through flashback. enjoyed that it never got overly serious. fun, quick, lightweight, funny, style-heavy. i generally don't care about reading graphic novels, but this one seemed good. would recommend.

a shining by jon fosse (transit books, 2023): enjoyed a lot of fosse's books and felt bored by others; sean thor conroe recommended this one to me during my episode of his podcast. this is basically just a short story about a guy getting lost in the woods. enjoyed it mostly for its black, unexpected moments of humor, especially with the parent characters and some of the phrasing throughout. enjoyed the inexplicable conceit of the start of the book and how it's never really examined or revisited, serving just to put a character in a place/situation. didn't enjoy that, aside from some of the humor, nothing really unexpected or surprising happens, and in this way it feels slightly disappointing. enjoyed the rhythm of the repetitive style; better than in melancholy, i felt, but not as interesting as some of his other books. funny it was published as a stand-alone book. not my favorite fosse, but there's some interesting stuff in it.

a personal matter by kenzaburo oe (grove press, 1994 translation): a snappy novel set in early 1960s japan (originally published in 1964) about a real piece of shit dirtbag asshole dealing with the fact that his newborn baby seems to have a severe brain defect. really enjoyed the gritty physicality of the book, especially its emphasis on physical discomfort from heat, grime, and thirst, and a number of the similes/metaphors. didn't enjoy just how many similes and metaphors are crammed into it, though, sometimes one after another, all describing the same thing, which felt distracting at times, like seeing a man wearing a complex-patterned shirt in an austere gallery, or watching a man with an untied shoe try to play basketball, rambunctious and sloppy. but i also enjoyed the unexpected images/objects he would spend time writing a simile about, like the appearance of a payphone receiver. deeply enjoyed the sort of punk energy, especially in the first few passages, and felt very inspired while reading it; felt very transgressive and innovative relative to the other classic 20th century japanese novels i've read the past few years. enjoyed the setting and the natural-seeming, albeit  in retrospect artificially-constructed plot devices used to create moments of symbolism. enjoyed the various unexpected, ridiculous scenes both in the main story and in flashbacks. very much enjoyed the moments of excessively, extremely dark humor. enjoyed the time and setting, especially from an anthropological point of view, e.g. the treatment of mothers during/after pregnancy, the form and function of social groups. felt a little underwhelmed by the ending, and the relatively quick tie-up of things, and the general way elements/characters that are introduced all get used later on – almost every character must serve a second, symbolic/meaningful purpose later on in the plot, which creates a strong sense of artificiality by the end. but i also enjoyed how various characters all feel a little insane, especially the characters that do only show up briefly. unrelated to the text itself, felt slightly bewildered/frustrated by the cover design and synopsis of the book, which leads the reader to believe going into it that the timeline scope of the book will be much longer than it actually is, and in fact dispels a lot of the narrative tension about the fate of the baby. but also the cover is really cool and good. it should probably just have been used for a later book. i haven't read anything by dennis cooper, but i imagine if you like him, from what i understand of his books, you may enjoy this book. excited to read more of his books. would recommend.

 

a girl's story by annie earnaux (seven stories, 2020 translation): never read anything by earnaux before; grabbed this at the thrift store. this is a short memoir about a specific ~2 year period when she was 17-19, working as a camp counselor and going to various schools and training programs. enjoyed the way she writes about herself as a third party, frequently noting things like 'i don't know what she's feeling/thinking in this moment." enjoyed some of the insightful phrases, but felt that it could read as a little self-indulgent at times. enjoyed the setting and emphasis on description, clothing, food, and music. laughed at various moments of her being an admittedly confusing, autistic, horny weirdo. enjoyed the arc of the story, and where she decides to start and end it, and the naturalness of how key ideas are incorporated over the course of the story. enjoyed seeing various, increasingly strange typesetting errors in this edition, including the word 'that' needlessly 2-3pts smaller than the rest of the text in a random sentence. interested in reading one or more of her novels, and maybe more of her memoirs. would recommend.

 

almost transparent blue by ryu murakami (kodansha, 1976): picked this up for very cheap secondhand at a library sale, which made me laugh. i've been meaning to read it for a while, having read some of his other books and knowing it was somehow influential on tao lin when he started writing novels; apparently it's referenced several times in brat by gabriel smith, ostensibly for this reason. this is a short novel told through several vignettes about a gaggle of young drug using prostitutes and other people. really enjoyed the calm, extensive descriptions of visual appearances of things, such as the scene that gives the book its title, and the moments when this emphasis intercuts otherwise action-oriented sequences. enjoyed also the emphasis on stench and other negative sensations as part of the sex scenes, making them darkly comedic and grotesque. felt like there were slightly too many characters all introduced at once in the beginning, making it hard to keep track of who was doing what. enjoyed the various extreme scenes, both in public and private, and the unexpected turns of events, usually toward bleaker and more violent events. i guess i can see the sort of detached narration of these events as comparable to the detached nature of early tao lin, but its effect feels very different in this context. enjoyed he way one o he characters' speech is written (or translated, i guess) similar to a southern american accent; felt like a simple, effective way to communicate things about character and setting which i don't often get from works in translation. felt a little frustrated by the obscurity of some of the plot, wished there was more about the lilly character and her relationship with the narrator, to justify some of the emotional turns toward the end. enjoyed the ambiguity of the text as ficitonal/autobiographical, with the main character being named ryu and the metatextual effect of the last page. enjoyed reading the book whenever i was reading it, despite the large, slightly imbalanced differences between type of scene and tone. good book, would recommend. weird it's not in print anymore.

 

the bluest eye by toni morrison (hrw, 1970): never read toni morrison before; everyone i talked to mentions having read beloved, but i picked this one, unsure why, and also unsure where i even got it or when. this is a mid-length novel mostly about a black family in ohio dealing with an incestuous pregnancy. the book is mostly told through long character studies, sort of tracing the character's entire life up until the book's 'present', as stand-alone chapters, but the book also begins with a framing device told from the perspective of another, unrelated character. enjoyed the unexpectedly dark slapstick humor, especially at the beginning, and the slow development of scenes/conversations that create a lot of atmosphere. enjoyed the settings from a historical perspective, and the emphasis on physicality, sex, and body-writing, including references to the relaxing lips of an anus, but especially in how lust/desire is put into contrast with logic, how characters that are suffering are unable to fully separate themselves from their bodies in a way that perpetuates their suffering. felt like the balance was weird at times, with unexpected literary flourishes showing up only in one random chapter, e.g. including long first-person monologue-like quotations, and the long-character-backstory move became more rushed-feeling and shorter toward the end. thought the language got at times a little too self-referential and synonym-heavy, and relied too much of literary wordplay, but the reason this kind of writing feels played out today is because it was good and fresh in 1970. enjoyed reflecting on how this book, with its high-literary play with syntax, meanderingly long backstory chapters. and extensively wide vocabulary (most enjoyed the use of 'erg'), was a national best seller in the 1970s, which puts that time period and its reading audience and expectations of the form in stark contrast with contemporary bestsellers. great book; feels like it puts comparable titles from today to shame. would highly recommend.

 

the stranger by albert camus (vintage, 1988 translation): i read this back in high school and remembered liking it (alongside the fall and the plague, which i read in college), probably because of what it connoted about coolness, literary influence, etc., but not much about the writing (or even plot) aside from the pop culturally infamous killing of an arab (and the first two sentences). reread it as part of a local library challenge to reread an old favorite. really enjoyed part 1 much more than i remembered, and marveled at how funny it is, with excellent timing and unexpectedly funny imagery and juxtaposition. felt impressed how much random stuff happens before the infamous murder scene, and enjoyed, like the narrator, the prolonged scenes of simple meditation on the beauty of the town and beach. felt that part 2 was more boring, sort of necessarily so, taking place in a prison and court room, but also unnecessarily so, with a surprising amount of repetition; also found this section less funny, and a little more uneven tonally. felt interested in how, from the vantage point of 2026, it really does feel like the narrator is presented as deeply autistic, both in terms of his strange approach to social situations and his strong sensitivity to external stimuli like light, noise, and touch. this framing makes the book feel a little more complex in terms of its social commentary than i assumed going back into it; but i haven't read any meaningful literary criticism about the book, camus in general, or really even much about existentialism, if i'm being honest. enjoyed the scenes of people fucking around and eating/drinking and some of the simple prose line-by-line, both of which reminded me of hemingway. overall enjoyed, would recommend, but not as much as i thought i would have, tbh. laughing at recommending people read one of the most famous and influential novels of all time in my little blog that gets ~200-600 page reads per article.

 

dog show by billy collins (random house, 2025): grabbed randomly from the library display shelf to check off a box on the library reading challenge. realized also that i've always confused billy collins with bill clegg, comedically. this is a short book of simple, conversational poems about dogs alongside a series of watercolor paintings of dogs. enjoyed various moments of stylistic or narrative play, e.g. when he describes himself as both person and dog ('i reach down and pet myself'), some of the minor insights into the thoughts of dogs, and the unexpectedly short, dour, penultimate poem. but otherwise rarely felt surprised or excited by any particular line or image or poem. pleasant, whimsical, slightly wistful. felt strange and off-putting that the author bio notes he currently doesn't have a dog. seemed fine overall but unsure i would recommend.

 

the walk book by sean thor conroe (little engines, 2026): ordered a free copy during the brief online sale of free copies out of desire to participate in the fun, potentially very expensive gimmick of selling and shipping free copies of a book. i liked fuccboi and enjoyed reading an excerpt from this in the paris review at the library sometime 1-2 years ago. this is a sort of day-by-day travelogue diary about trying to walk across the country, starting in philadelphia. felt surprised at the general lack of writing about the actual minute-by-minute experience of sleeping out in the wild, the logistics and emotions of it all, and would have enjoyed seeing more about how that changes over the course of the adventure. but still enjoyed seeing what themes/ideas/experiences surface as important in his day-to-day through repeated reference and consideration. thought it was funny how much time is spent walking to and sitting inside of a mcdonalds early on. reflected, now, writing this, that maybe something about the emphasis on people in the book, which is ostensibly about a log solitary journey, says something about the natural interest in social dynamics and people that sean, the extroverted person, likely has, which makes a book like this interesting. relatedly, felt frustrated by some of the lack of introspection, especially in terms of the (struggling) relationships described in the book and given the '12 years later' framing, which could have been used to communicate more about the experience and impact than it does, i thought. also felt like it relied too much on metatextual knowledge of sean to understand/appreciate some of the parts of the book – as such this book might be less comprehensible to a reader off the street who was unfamiliar with fuccboi, his irl relationships and experiences, etc. overall enjoyed the conversational style mixed with literary vocabulary, and enjoyed that the style isn't as put-on seeming as the voice in fuccboi, making it feel both more natural and readable. wished that he had done the entire walk, and i would have enjoyed reading another 300 pages, i think, but still would have wanted more of a wrapping-up re: the college experience that sort of kicked it all off. would recommend.

in watermelon sugar by richard brautigan (delta books, 1968): never read anything by brautigan despite some of my poetry being compared to his poetry. found a nice used copy of this in worcester and didn't realize this was a novel/novella. enjoyed the strange, inexplicable setting, and the half-hearted way of explaining/describing the setting, which never gets 'revealed' to be anything other than what it is; felt like this is a fun, confident, bold move which i appreciated, narratively. also enjoyed the plainness of the writing, emphasis on food and nature and interpersonal relationships, which reminded me of hemingway and the very short chapters with titles, how they flowed and created intrigue/humor. thought the imagery/setting was beautiful and engaging, but was less compelled by the romance subplot, which hinges on the narrator being kind of an aloof asshole. a quick, engaging read. would recommend.

 

stories and texts for nothing by samuel beckett (grove press, 1967 translation): bought this secondhand years ago but just now read it. i've read maybe two novellas and a play by beckett before. this consists of three stories, possibly related, or at least very thematically similar, and a series of short texts ('for nothing'). greatly enjoyed the three stories, and enjoyed their moments of intersection and the ambiguity of whether or how the three narratives were related. enjoyed lots of the imagery and unexpected turns of the narrative arcs, the viscerality of a lot of the images, and the emphasis on being old/aging. found various moments profound, others funny, others profoundly funny, etc. didn't enjoy as much the 'texts for nothing' section, as the narratives got more cerebral with less physicality and narrative arc to ground them. they ended up, to me, reading almost like poetry, sort of like slam poetry, with the stream of consciousness and 'riffs' on words and images. enjoyed, after the first couple texts, keeping a list of cool words he uses, but overall found myself getting distracted or sometimes falling asleep while reading (if i was reading in bed). thought it was interesting how they similarly often explore the same themes and images as the three stories, and felt like maybe the conceit of the whole book is that they are a collection of writing exercises where he was trying to capture some feeling from many different but similar angles, and instead of selecting one as the true 'story', he just collected all the drafts together as a set. unsure if this is what he actually did, but it feels like it. also enjoyed the several moments of recognition where i thought "oh bernhard's characters are just doing this", and thinking of this throughline of beckett -> bernhard -> fosse -> etc. here's the list of cool words i wrote down while reading:

 

xanthic

wilily

verdure

wanderyears

sere

pensum

threne

desinence

expiate

excipient

sequency

contumacy

 

curious to read more of his stories/novels. unsure i would recommend — seems like some of his less accessible work, formally, but overall i enjoyed it, the experience of reading it and picking out images/lines that felt strange and insightful. 

fights! by scott macclanahan (rose books, 2026): i've loved everything i've read by scott, which is possibly everything he's published in a book. this is a short novel about his complicated, conflict-heavy relationships with two people: his second (and current) wife (the writer juliet escoria) and the now-deceased publisher of two of his books (giancarlo ditrapano). like the rest of his oeuvre, this is a wistful, direct, funny, depressing, and 4th wall-breaking autobiographical narrative full of scott's usual but still very effective 'moves,' plus some more formally playful ideas that i found endearing and clever. found it very quick and readable, compelling, funny, and heartbreaking, and while reading i both laughed out loud and teared up (specifically at the end, with the parts about the blank spaces). felt impressed by how much of an asshole scott makes himself and basically everyone else out to be while also expressing very earnest love throughout. also enjoyed the way west virginia sort of serves as a character in the book, and the synchronicity of various moments reflecting its narratively-useful and natural-feeling explanatory power. like with any work of autobiographical fiction, i did feel curious about where and why he chooses to 'spend his time' narratively sometimes, e.g. the emphasis on the william guy acting weird toward the end and the unresolved tension of the bullet hole in the house, which i feel makes you either project some underlying goal onto the narrative or else wonder why it was included, really. relatedly, felt like a lot is left out that would serve the book's stated narrative angle, this tension between his 'professionalism' in the writing world and the 'punk rock' ethos of giancarlo is integral, but little time is spent examining his life as a professor, his experiences with sending writing out, working with other presses, etc.; instead we just get one scene with some work colleagues, a mention of zoom classes, and a couple scenes with the movie-villain-stylized literary agent. possibly this is just because i love how scott writes and wish it were 1000 pages, especially after the long wait between books, but i do think this exploration feels weirdly absent in the context of such a deeply personal, probing, open story. also felt curious about the tension it created in myself as a writer reading it, vaguely believing two strong but totally opposing ideas the entire time, that 1) this is the only kind of writing that matters and 2) scott could and should challenge himself to write some other kind of writing; while reading it i felt both sad that this champion of literature has been seemingly doomed to a lifetime of obscure small press publishing, but also i was invigorated by his in-text rejection of big press fiction and wanted my own giancarlo figure to push me into a doomed lifetime of publishing with obscure small presses. the book does a good job, i think, articulating the extremes of these feelings that probably all of us feel and/or have experienced. but i also think, as an outsider who doesn't really know scott and who had never talked to giancarlo, this book does a lot to capture the paradoxical beauty of giancarlo as a high-visibility publisher of challenging work — no one else was doing what he was doing, and no one will be able to recreate it now. related to this, i wonder what the appeal of this book would be, or could be, to someone not involved or interested in the writing world, let alone the small press/indie writing world, especially during some moments like the protracted-feeling 'twitter shitstorm' passage and allusions to other writers and their petty drama. i also didn't like the somehow low-quality printing of the images in the book, in which a narratively-important photograph of giancarlo at the end comes out looking comically blurry, but i don't think that's scott's fault. beautiful and often powerful book despite some of the fiddly bits, as anyone could have expected. would recommend.

 

the summer book by tove jansson (NYRB, 2008 translation): we've read some of jansson's moomin trolls books as family and enjoyed them. i tried reading this a few years ago but couldn't pay attention enough, maybe, because of life circumstances, to enjoy it; i'm glad i revisited it because it's actually really good. this is a novel about a grandmother and granddaughter (and a barely-mentioned father) living on a small island off the coast of finland for the summer, told over a series of vignettes. enjoyed the nature writing and emphasis on the role of weather on their daily lives, and the varied scenes of the characters exploring or fucking around the island or other islands. really, really enjoyed the juxtaposition of an old woman and a young girl, their preoccupations and worldviews, etc., and how they connect and disconnect with one another in various ways. enjoyed the moments of black humor and wistful recognition of aging and loss. thought the style, phrasing, and word choice was often surprising, effective, and clean in a way that impressed me. also enjoyed the inkpen drawings throughout. would recommend.

 

breakfast at tiffany's by truman capote : never read anything by capote, and mostly know this book from the song that references the movie adaptation, which is funny. this is a novella, i think, about a young writer in new york city who's obsessed-ish with a beguiling, beautiful, young woman who lives in his building. character-wise it reminded me of the film/play cabaret, and i kept picturing the holly character as liza manelli's character – wacky, narcissistic, traumatized, overly-sexualized. felt like the writing was fine, but that the story was actually kind of uninteresting, aside from a few random scenes and plot turns, but it wasn't enough for me to feel particularly engaged or excited; felt unsure why/how the narrator and everyone else would actually care about the holly character enough to do all the things they do in the story, so it felt kind of unrealistic or unrelatably dated. also marveled at how casually racist everyone is in the book, which i know is a reflection of the era, but still kind of comical and continually unexpected. enjoyed some random stylistic flourishes, specifically use of punctuation, but otherwise felt overall meh about it; didn't feel like it did anything particularly moving or fun style-wise. wouldn't recommend.

 

the sun also rises by ernest hemingway: read this before as a teenager, i think. relatedly, my used copy belonged to a kid named tony pinedo, who read it for second period english class in 2002. wanted to reread it 'for research' for a book i'm working on, having remembered very little about it but overall enjoying hemingway more whenever i revisit a book of his. this is a short novel about a guy who's in love with yet another holly golightly/liza minelli-ass character (i am just now discovering this archetype character in literature, i guess, and she sucks); they are in love but they can't fuck because he has penis problems, so he experiences yearning and heartbreak during a prolonged vacation in spain. enjoyed the famous simplicity of the prose, but sometimes felt frustrated by the lack of dialogue tags during conversations with three or more people. felt surprised by what feels like an emphasis on capturing the slang/lingo of the type of people being written about/'capturing an era' and literally doing cumtown bits about pop culture of the day but in a way that i didn't find very compelling; feels like hemingway was unironically just doing NYC-style autofiction about rich losers sleeping with each other and trying to act/feel special. funny how little literature has changed in a hundred years. enjoyed the gender-inversion, cuckoldry-adjacent psychosexual aspects of the book which i remember enjoying in his other books, e.g. the garden of eden, which i feel are under-appreciated by the current culture and comically at odds with his hyper-masculine characterization (likely based on his off-the-page life). felt conflicted when recognizing all the symbolism related to impotence/cuckoldry throughout the last half of the book – on one hand it was fun and exciting, but on the other hand made the experience feel like i was reading a book for high schoolers, which in turn made me think about literacy in general and my expectations from books, the appropriation of great art by didacticism, etc. Still enjoyed the scenes of people fucking around and drinking and fishing in europe. felt stymied by moments of him breaking the editorial standard of using a new line only when someone new starts talking, especially with how infrequently he uses dialogue tags. but it wasn't a big deal. more of a historical curiosity maybe. enjoyed reading about how different the world was, pre-industrial standardization, mass liability insurance requirements, and exploitation by private equity; there's something endearing about a spanish town having a designated fireworks guy who just makes all the fireworks and covers them with birch branches instead of the town hiring an out-of-town fireworks contractor who uses mass-produced fireworks stored in specialized plastic bins, for example, and i enjoyed thinking about all the various ways daily life used to feel more bespoke, regionalized, scrappy, and a mix of community-oriented and free. makes me curious what of today's realist novels will be looked back on fondly. fine book but unsure i would recommend relative to e.g. in our time.

 

inlands by elin willows (nordisk books, 2020): bought this used just because it was a nordisk book, and i generally like bleak scandanavian novels. this is a mid-lengthed novel about a young woman who moves up to the 'inlands' of sweden, near the arctic circle, to live with a boyfriend whom she breaks up with on arrival, so instead decides to hang around and start a new life there. enjoyed the fragment-based emphasis on daily minutiae, food, lodgings, work, and social life, and enjoyed the unexpected move of the narrator not caring about the nature despite living in a beautiful wilderness. felt like the book could have been edited down a bit, with several fragments throughout feeling temporally out of place and often redundant/very similar to other passages, repeating the same minor thoughts/observations in a way that didn't necessarily feel intentional; also felt like the timeline was unnecessarily sloppy, with her randomly referencing how long she'd been there as anywhere between 6 months and 2 years throughout and minor events being referenced out of order. if it was intentional – and i could see it being that way, to demonstrate something about the passage of time in a village like that – then i don't think it was effective, aside from the parts with the minor Tim character toward the end. felt like overall it went too slow and felt like a slog that could have been maybe 75% as long, especially since the few plot extant points were compelling and intriguing, and i liked the writing – not too melodramatic, not too austere, but full of interesting imagery and insight. style-wise it reminded me of helle helle and skomsvold, with the intentional use of pronouns instead of names for specific characters and the 'depressed in a sleepy village' plot. unsure i would recommend relative to other books i've read recently but i mostly enjoyed it and am curious to read more by willows.

 

letourneau's used auto parts by carolyn chute (perennial, 1988): i randomly read and greatly enjoyed chute's debut novel the beans of egypt, maine a couple years ago and so grabbed this when i found it used in western massachusetts. this is a mid-length novel about a couple interconnected, poverty-stricken families living in rural maine. it is set basically in the same area as her first book (and includes references to a couple members of the eponymous bean family) but functions well as a separate novel set in a slightly more modern time, although it more or less covers the same themes and social issues (but with, mercifully, less rape) and deploys all the same stylistic choices. i really like the style...lots of ellipses...lots of CAPITAL LETTERS for emphasis, and lots of cool words like "muckle" and "screel." i especially liked the really engaging, evocative domestic writing and detail. also enjoyed how many random lines will be grotesquely beautiful, darkly funny, and deeply insightful. like the bluest eye, i enjoyed the tension of logic and physical desire that inevitably leads to poverty and ruin. i imagine there's a lot of interesting scholarship on this type of storytelling in the context of feminist theory, but i haven't read any of it. in any case, i felt the overarching story was a little uneven and disconnected with no greater change in stakes, and some things left a little bare or abandoned-feeling. also felt like there were maybe a couple too many characters, with engaging storylines more or less dropping off at random in a frustrating way that undercuts the impact of their resolutions later on, and i frequently had to pause to remember who some random person was, especially by the end. but i thought overall the setting, line-level writing, and various scenes were so impressive that it comes out as a pretty great book. would recommend.

 

concertina by m. j. fitzgerald (penguin, 1987): this was another random used bookstore grab based on the cover and design. this is a short novel summarizing various important events in a woman's life, moving fluidly between her childhood, middle-life (and pregnancy), and old age (and dying), with an emphasis on sex, familial relations, and alienation. greatly enjoyed the way a given topic, in the narrative, is fluidly examined through the ~3 lenses of childhood, middle age, and old age within a given section, which i found insightful and unique-feeling. didn't so much enjoy the writing style itself, with overly-long feeling, complicated sentences that frequently treat abstract ideas (often through metaphor) as the subject. felt like something about this precious, semi-detached yet very floral style feels very english, and reminds me at times of rachel cusk, although more extreme and this in turn more exciting/challenging. early on enjoyed the unexpected and often very dark reveals, which felt effective and exciting because of the more resigned, retrospective tone of the book, although i did feel like the pacing was often uneven after the first few chapters, and found the repeated reference to specific events a little tiresome about halfway through. felt bemused by but not particularly enthralled by the continued 'move' of introducing large twists/plot points in a random-feeling embedded clause, intentionally backgrounding pivotal, increasingly melodramatic moments in an otherwise already complicated and unwieldy sentence. disliked especially how this happens but in a more extreme way at the ending especially, with a convoluted two-page paragraph that reads like an intentionally comedic summary of 30 years' worth of soap opera twists and reveals that felt increasingly unlikely, unrelated to the real narrative, and impossible to parse or actually care about; these parts of the book felt unique but almost satirical in their convolution and drama, but I'm unsure what it would be satirizing. enjoyed looking her up and seeing that she only published two novels and one story collection despite securing a long tenured professorship. strange book; i ordered her story collection. i think i'd recommend this one, if only because it often feels relatively unique, strange, and heavy in unpredictable ways.

 

todd by andrew weatherhead (monster house press, 2018): i like andrew's poetry and collages (i have three of his collages framed and hung up in my house), and he blurbed my story collection. this is a poetry collection consisting of four parts. the first part, my favorite, is a mix of collage and very short, often two-word poems, sometimes typewritten and sometimes cut out collage-like. i especially enjoyed the use of similar images (presumably from the same source book) for many of the collages, and the caption-like collage text put on them. also enjoyed his sense of color matching when superimposing a cut-out image over a beautiful landscape; i do really like his collages and recommend other people buy one. the second section is basically a long poem that looks/reads like an erasure poem, which felt fine but didn't grab me. the third section is a number of more normal-seeming poems, some of which were collaged from printed text, and i found these more evocative and interesting with good attention to imagery. the last section is a long found poem/collage where individual lines/words are pulled from book blurbs. i found this poem formally interesting/clever but, like with erasure/generative poetry in general, had a hard time feeling engaged by it. enjoyed overall weatherhead's various explorations of collage and conceptual poetry and his good sense for simple juxtaposition in image and form. made me ponder why i feel more affected by visual collage than poetic collage, which seems like a good thing for a book to do, to make you ponder something about art. would recommend. 

 

CHAPBOOKS

 

declaration of codependance by michelle d. salazar: traded a chapbook for this, i think. this is a hand-stitched, unwieldly-sized 6-poem chapbook between two fabric-covered pieces of cardboard. two poems hinge on wordplay, e.g. the two meanings of 'speedball'. enjoyed how half of them read like haiku and express earnest feelings of love. enjoyed the strange, hand-made nature of the physical chapbook. would be curious to read a full collection by michelle.

 

retirement plan: massachusetts by dimitri karakostas: saw dimitri read at a thing in western mass ~1-2 years ago, i think, and he said he made these state-themed chapbooks for all the different states he was touring through. this consists of 4 long, untitled poems across ~20 pages, that mostly explore self-defeat, pop culture, technology, and twitter-style wordplay riffs on memes. found the last (and longest) poem most compelling despite also feeling tired of the often dated-seeming, tweet-style stanzas. my favorite stanza in the book is i pursued my dreams / and it was mostly awful.