2025: The Premier Grand Unified WAYR thread

Happy New Year, y'all. Welcome to the first What Are You Reading thread of the Reform Era.

Due to a slacking off in the pace at which ILB's WAYR threads have been piling up posts, combined with some mild grumbling from our Southern Hemispherical friends about our quarterly threads constantly referencing the wrong season for them, I thought maybe we should ditch the old quarterly/seasonal format for a sleeker, modern streamlined thread. After the first six months we can decide if we want or need one or two WAYR threads per annum.

I'm about to start in on Emily Wilson's translation of the Odyssey of Homer. It's waiting for me at the public library (currently closed for New Year's Day). Meanwhile I'll browse around in David Hinton's translations of the poems of Wang Wei.

Here's a link to last year's final WAYR thread: Caught, Back, Party Going: What Are You Reading In The Fall of 2024?

I'm reading Hard to Be a God by the Strugatsky brothers, given to me by a friend years ago.

I think I left it sitting around because I mistakenly thought that Refn movie (Only God Forgives) was an adaptation? Even though I already loved Roadside Picnic. Idk, very silly of me. But I'm Strugatsky-pilled after reading The Doomed City and I'm glad to have it on hand (any other Strugatsky recs?).

I'm reading about the moles.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/917AlrBb9aL._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg

ALTERNATE COVER

https://archive.org/services/img/isbn_0600204340_no1/full/pct:200/0/default.jpg

alternate alternate U.S. cover

https://images.pangobooks.com/images/a260111c-a71b-4229-8be5-e881e035cb9a?width=800&quality=85&crop=1%3A1

"the savage kingdom of moles"? goodness me!

"I think I left it sitting around because I mistakenly thought that Refn movie (Only God Forgives) was an adaptation?"

The 2013 movie version of Hard to Be a God is nuts! watch it after you read it. There is also an earlier one with Werner Herzog in it but i've never seen that one.

I just recently finished “Say Nothing” by Patrick Radden Keefe, so am continuing this particular rabbithole with an overview history: a re-read of “The Troubles” by Tim Pat Coogan. I somehow lost my original copy & mr veg gave me a new one for xmas
He writes quite beautifully but it is a bit slow going as my holiday-brain struggles to keep hold of all the info

oh and am also reading “Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays The Rent” by Judi Dench w Brendan O’Hea

series of long-ranging interviews w Judi on the various Shakespeare characters she’s played over her career; at times line-by-line /scene-by-scene insights into her perspectives on the characters & the text, it’s pretty fascinating!. a friend gave it to me for xmas, i hadn’t even heard about it, loving it so far.

Great moles.

Yes, good moleage indeed.

In prep for teaching Faustus next term, I'm reading Anthony Burgess's A Dead Man in Deptford. Being Burgess, it's full of language games, and he's hot on Latin filth*. Marlowe's time in the 'service' of Walsingham is really well put together, particularly the sections in Paris; it's great on the scuzz and grime of London (the brutal death of Babington is vivid and disgusting); I love the conversations over pubs with Raleigh and co, the dramatisation of Catholic and atheist guilt like a cloak over everything. It's probably a bit 'do you see' about Marlowe's sexuality but some of the sex is great all the same. There are also some 'chubby hmm' moments where he's working out his 'might line' drunkenly walking the streets and when he first tries 'the nymph' tobacco with Raleigh. I'm enjoying myself immensely.

*Irrumabo - Latin for fuck (I think). It appears in a poem by Catullus and in the phrase Irrumabo Omnia Et Facti Pirata, which translates to "Fuck everything and become a pirate”, which is 100% my new motto.

I think yearly threads are a good idea, fwiw. Happy new year you lot.

Happy new year! We made it. We can continue to read more.

Fleur Jaeggy - Proleterka

89 pages of very tightly written prose.

I found the mole book on my parent’s bookshelf over Christmas. On the inside cover there’s library stamp from my middle school library. I guess I borrowed it around 1990 and forgot about it. Or quite possibly I just stole it. Maybe I’ll actually read it this time.

I’m reading the new Richard Osman, it’s the start of a new series, the usual undemanding fun. I always try to give myself something easy at the start of the year, when it’s miserable and I feel like I’ve forgotten how to read.

Why not just What Are You Reading in 2025? And then if you eventually want to add a second, can guess the rest.

Anyway, I'm currently going back and forth between The Brothers Mann and Babel 17, young Delany's driving ambition proving compatible w the competitive sibs'.

Just finished the first volume of Your Face Tomorrow. Won't be getting the second. The long discursive sections that make up almost all of the book might have been hypnotic if my attention had been captured, but it wasn't. There is something compelling about it, but it's hard to say what. Maddening.

Why not just What Are You Reading in 2025?

Why not the current title?

The Penguin Book Of Korean Short Stories - Focuses on the modern Koreas, def nothing pre 20th century has appeared yet, but surprisingly there are some Northern writers!

South Korean writer Yi Munyol's "The Old Hatter" takes the cake in terms of a traditional mentality that feels alien to a Western reader in 2025. Check this lament:

Our old morality went the way of the old learning. The pious man who cooked his son to feed his old father; the filial daughter-in-law who cut off her finger to bring her mother-in-law back to life by feeding her drops of blood; the faithful wife who took her own life after her husband's death - we have totally forgotten these virtuous people, whose memory once shone brighter than any monument of gold. The world now belongs to those sons whose filial piety amounts to not striking their aged fathers, daughters in law who can earn praise by not throwing out their old fathers-in-law, and wives whose loyalty simply meant not having children by other men.

Society is in the gutter!!!

Very different indeed is Pak Taewon's A Day In The Life Of Kubo The Novelist, a stream of consciousness piece about a sad young man walking through the nightlife of Seoul. It's fascinating both as an example of how Beaudelaire, Woolf and Joyce (who gets a namedrop) were being digested outside of Europe, but also as a glimpse of Korea under Japanese occupation, a period which coincided with the beginnings of Westernization, writers in thrall to modernism, women hitting the bars in the style of flappers, etc.

Taewon ended up joining the North when the civil war came and stayed in N Korea until his death in the 80's; he had his right to write revoked for a few years but apparently regained it. NO IDEA what his later writings are like. He did leave a daughter in the South though, who in torn had a son...who turned out to be Bong Joon-Ho, you may have heard of him.

Thanks Daniel! I really want to check out Korean lit. Local library is closed for repairs, though relocation seems more and more likely (and then Local Library War can ramp back up, maybe with more xenophobia, considering return of Mr. T.)

Why not just What Are You Reading in 2025?

Why not the current title?

Pierre Senges - Rabelais's Doughnuts

A very short collection of stories and essays. Going for a bit of Borges here -- favourites are an essay on libraries, both actual and fictional, and a monologue by a counterfeiter -- its pretty good

i finished a book in 2025 which afaict means im ahead of 2024 already- i was gifted all the presidents men

anyway it tripped along more than i had expected and didnt get too bogged down in all the names, i enjoyed it

Currently reading Bryan Burrough's Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence, which I bought in December. Giving it one chapter a night. It's good, but he clearly hates the Weathermen and has a red-hot hate-boner for Bernardine Dohrn.

Also downloaded a couple of ebooks that I'm either dipping in and out of (the Ellison) or going to get to soon:

Julia Armfield, Private Rites (apparently a modern gloss on King Lear focusing on three daughters after Daddy's death)
Alex Van Halen, Brothers (autobiography)
Ralph Ellison, The Collected Essays of... (grabbed this just for his writings on jazz)

not far along, but

FALL OF CIVILIZATIONS, paul cooper: awkwardly written and handwavey, doubt i'll continue

BLISS & BLUNDER, victoria gosling: retelling of camelot with arthur as a tech billionaire, gwen as his influencer wife, etc. which may not sound all that promising but it's brilliant so far

Currently reading Raymond Smullyan - The Tao Is Silent. Prefer his style in smaller doses, honestly, although I'll finish this.

If I were you I'd skip it and just read the best bit online: Is God a Taoist?.

Currently reading "The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics" by Henri Bergson. The last book published in his lifetime, it's a collection of essays and lectures written over a twenty year period, but it holds together pretty well, since Bergson is at his most readable, and a couple of the essays were written specifically to tie the collection together.

Started rereading Moby Dick because Backlisted did their Christmas episode on it. I had vaguely remembered it as a good story with quite a lot of asides about whaling; I'm now finding that it's maybe 85% essays on whaling and 15% story, mostly concentrated in the first and last chapters. There are moments where Ishmael goes, "Now I really must tell you about X," and X is, like, the wooden fork that the harpoon rests in when it's in the boat, and tbh I really think the book would have survived without a chapter on it. Still good, though.

it's the way he does it, though, reveling in his knowledge, like some mad monk ov Dark Ages (not a sociable guy ashore, and sea life is getting pretty dark too, he even disappears for a while)

I stopped really keeping track of what I was reading around August of last year— I was reading but not in any organized fashion, feeling a little harried and disorganized in my thoughts and patterns.

In any case— this year I have resolved to take more organize joy in my reading and listening.

So far, I have finished ‘Skip Tracing,’ a book by Philly poet Ken Bluford. It’s his first major collection though he is nearly 75– it seems he was active in poetry in the 70s and 80s and then sort of dropped out for whatever reason and is finally having a little renaissance. Excellent book, the Tom Weatherly comparisons are apt but there is a classical air to some of Bluford’s poems that is really striking.

Also finished ‘The Climbing Zine: Book One,’ a collection of writing from the first twelve issues of a climbing-based zine out of Colorado. The best pieces are up there with some of the best adventure writing I have ever come across, and the worst pieces were among the most indulgent and insipid I have ever read. Only some athletes are good writers!!

Now just about to finish Emmanuel Hocquard’s ‘Conditions of Light,’ translated by Jean-Jacques Poucel. Uncanny, elegiac, formally restrained sequence of poems, with each iteration consisting of five poems of five lines each. Quite lovely, here is a nice sample from this morning:

It is noon touches the back
In the darkness photos await
The dough rises on the type
shop stool
The very idea of relation

Read Alex Van Halen's autobiography, Brothers, in a day. It's pretty good. He quotes from other relevant figures' VH books (David Lee Roth's, producer Ted Templeman's, former manager Noel Monk's) and tells you what he agrees with and what he disagrees with, and he's affectionately scornful of Roth, calling him a dilettante and a dummy but an immensely talented live performer/attention magnet on multiple occasions. Worth a read if you're a Van Halen fan; it will make you hear the records differently.

I'm about a third into Emily Wilson's Odyssey translation. It reads swiftly and clearly, but isn't prosaic at all. To achieve that she clearly trimmed and paraphrased rather than trying to save every detail and repetitive epithet in the text. Some people would consider that editing Homer like that is the height of presumption. Not me. I commend her for doing an excellent job, while losing nothing of real importance and producing a first rate modern translation.

For some unfathomable reason I also read the 90 pages of Introduction and Translator's Note, which delved far too deeply into the immense pile of marginalia that has accumulated around Homeric texts. What's worse is that I'd already rummaged around fairly thoroughly in that junk drawer back in college, so there was nothing new for me to learn.

Ia Genberg - The Details. A woman's life via her remembrances of 4 people. Liked it a lot.

Mariana Enriquez - A Sunny Place for Shady People. Short story collection, mostly set in Argentina, mostly horror or macabre/unnerving/supernatural in tone. I enjoyed it but I feel like I was missing a lot of stuff that someone more intelligent would get out of it.

Jean Paul - Maria Wutz

Maria Wutz?

Wutz it to you

Maria Wutz:

https://sublunaryeditions.com/products/maria-wutz-jean-paul

I really liked it but was reading it on a plane journey with two very nervous people sat beside me.

on a chapbook spree, though I did try to break it up with a book of poems which I decided was MFA-core slop after the first fifteen pages.

Augusto Monterosso - The Rest is Silence

Novel released in the late 70s, now available in a translation from NYRB.

Its about the 'life' of a literary critic in a small fictional town, by the name of Eduardo Torres. It starts with a few testimonies by others (unreliable, with digression as king), then we move to his 'criticism' (its ofc terrible, this is like the first novel I've read that really lampoons Sunday supplement crit properly), then we have aphorisms (most bad, but some might be good, this section is totally playing with your expectations of this kind of writing), and then an analysis of one of Torres' poem by a 'colleague' (or a rival, or Torres under a pseudonym), with a final two page commentary on the whole thing just before publication.

If you are into criticism its funny. If you are not you can read these as short stories -- which is what Monterosso spent most of his career publishing in Mexico (where he lived in exile from Guatemala). Whatever way you read it there isn't a lot like it.

Its possible this is the only way he could structure something approaching a novel.

Starting 2025 in suitably apocalyptic style: negrophobia by Darius James and late victorian holocausts by Mike Davis. Might have to go lighter for the next one

A while back, a friend said I should get into writing YA fiction because it can be lucrative and remain interesting, and because my poetic field has been feeling pretty fallow recently, I decided to dive into some newer YA books to see whether I think I could pull it off.

Of course, the first book I chose absorbed me completely for several hours and brought up some painful memories of adolescence. ‘Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe’ by Benjamin Alire Sáenz is a lovely book, narrated by Aristotle, a fifteen year old loner with some family drama, inner rage, a loathing of most other boys. He becomes friends with Dante, who is more of a hippie free spirit with a loving set of academic parents. It’s set in El Paso in 1987. I won’t give away much, but the essential drama of the book is Ari learning to “stop fighting the war he’s fighting” against himself.

It’s hard to read books like this sometimes— they didn’t really exist when I was a teenager. I wish they had, as I probably would have felt a lot less alone. Also tied into this thread is the idea that if my parents and the general environment hadn’t made me so afraid to be myself, my life could have been very different, and much happier. It’s a fool’s errand to obsess about what could have been, but it’s hard not to do so when looking back on how repressed and broken I was for much of
my teenage life.

What I am happy about is that teenagers today have these sorts of books. I am getting the sequel out from the library this afternoon.

I really liked Aristotle and Dante too, but I gave up on the sequel before the 100pg mark. The writing was super banal and just...bad in a way I don't remember the first book being (sample line of prose from the sequel would be something like: "I don't like it when Ari is mad at me. It makes me feel sad").

Queer YA is kinda my thing, so I'm here for any recommendations you need.

crypto— please give me all the recs for queer YA! thanks in advance <3

i am hesitant about reading the sequel because i have heard similar things, but i guess we’ll see.

I'd say start with Bill Konigsberg's Openly Straight--and then if you like it, move on to its (actually good!) sequel, Honestly Ben. Don't want to claim anything as authoritative as these being the *best* queer YA novels, but I did make them a focus of my dissertation, and I include Openly Straight whenever I get to teach my Gay Life & Culture in the 21st Century course (the students usually respond very positively to it). But there's plenty more where that came from, so feel free to reach out whenever you're ready for more.

I'm reading a posthumously published novel by Barbara Pym, An Academic Question. The narrative voice has many touches of her somewhat rueful and self-deflating humor, but I can see why she held onto it; it's a bit underdeveloped.

Currently reading "Letters On the Aesthetic Education of Man" by Friedrich Schiller, and also slowly making my way through "Family Furnishings: Selected Stories 1995-2014" by Alice Munro.

xpost thanks crypto, going to get that transferred to my local branch library.

today i *did* go to the library to get the Aristotle and Dante sequel, then read some reviews and thought better of reading it— i loved the first one and would rather not have it tainted, tbh.

Also took out ‘Darius the Great is Not Okay,’ ‘Boy Meets Boy,’ ‘Different for Boys,’ and a few others. Already finished ‘Different for Boys’ because it’s more like a short story, but it had its small moments.

Richard Russo “risk pool.”
I’d like to thank whoever it was (Scott?) who recommended him after I mentioned Richard ford. I adore this book, don’t want it to end.

yeah i love Russo’s books, he’s great

Read The Devotion Of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino this weekend. It's the first in a series of mystery novels set in Tokyo; a woman and her daughter kill her shitty ex-husband, and her stalker-ish next door neighbor helps them cover it up. We know this going in; the plot is how the detectives figure out what happened. (There's a good twist.) There are five books in the series, and I think my local Barnes & Noble has all of them.

Reading Nancy Garden’s Annie On My Mind for my young adult literature course— it’s an early-ish lesbian YA. It’s quite good! Though I can already sense some of the same tropes that pervade gay YA— the dreamy girl vs the practical girl, class divides, etc. Still, I am enjoying it.

I am screen reading that since I didn’t have time to get a paper edition, so will have a paper copy of Joseph Torchia’s The Kryptonite Kid by my bedside for later this evening. That one was recommended by my pal Michael Kl4usman, who said it was one of his faves as a young teen.

I like Higashino a lot; the other book of his I read, Newcomer, leans into coziness even more than Suspect X. Mostly this dude uncovers mysteries where people hide things from each other out of love and not wanting to hurt others.

I once got a knowing smile from a Japanese zoomer for reading him on public transport.

I finished Antonia White's *The Lost Traveller*. It's a bildungsroman but it lacks the first novel's tight focus on Clara and her introduction to and crises with the Catholic church. By necessity, the scope widens to include the adult world that Clara/Nanda is growing into, so the narrative voice becomes more diffuse and varied. Some shocking events occur late in the book; these events are simultaneously tests of faith and analogues for WWI, which happens almost entirely off-screen, but they threw me out of the text somehow.

I started Thich Nhat Hanh's *Silence* but couldn't get on with it. I've read various texts like this, and it felt like AI had amalgamated a bunch of soft Buddhist teachings. Started Pema Chödrön's *When Things Fall Apart* instead and instantly felt the presence I needed.

But the material culture of the world of the book is so far from that of our world today that it leaves me questioning whether 6th graders in 2025 would become obsessed with these books like I did.

tbh it was like that in 1986 when I read it too

xps

Annie on My Mind is one I keep meaning to get to. Don't know The Kryptonite Kid at all, but onto the list it goes!

The Kryptonite Kid is amazing (and the only book I know to have a praise blurb from Pauline Kael on the cover!)

Torchia wrote a short story sequel. 'First Communion', that can be found in Mae West is Dead: Recent Lesbian and Gay Fiction edited by Adam Mars-Jones.

The Kryptonite Kid is amazing (and the only book I know to have a praise blurb from Pauline Kael on the cover!)

I was already sold!

But the material culture of the world of the book is so far from that of our world today that it leaves me questioning whether 6th graders in 2025 would become obsessed with these books like I did.

tbh it was like that in 1986 when I read it too

― hungover beet poo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, June 3, 2025 5:12 AM (nine hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Didn't feel that way to me in 1996. Like, it felt a little dated in terms of its popular references— the Beatles vs Elvis, for example— but in 1996, some kids committing a crime and then skipping town on a freight to hide in some rural butthole felt a lot more possible. Today, there's little to no chance they'd make it out of town.

Glad that others are a fan of Kryptonite Kid, the beginning is promising!

zpost though I know this is irrelevant to looking for 6th grade reading recs, I think the Soshsers, the gang protected by Daddy's money etc, would still hit home w teen readers at least.

Soshers, prob.

I'm reading The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, Heinrich Böll. It's written in a very flat style, relying on keeping your interest by slowly developing the plot/storyline in a methodical way, but the author's real intent is making a few political statements about West German society, back in 1974, when West Germany was doing its impression of nationhood.

Finished the Eco, though i skim-read the last quarter. It lost me when the nearly 70 year old amnesiac started obsessing over an unrequited crush he learned he had in school, desperate to remember the face of a girl he barely spoke to and who disappeared (and died, it turns out) after two years.

Sent An African History of Africa back to the library unfinished. I really wanted to read it but the prose was so awful, like a middle school textbook with every "in conclusion, Kenya is a land of contrasts" cliché you could ever expect tucked right in there, that I gave up in disgust.

Starting James McBride's Deacon King Kong. And S.A. Cosby's new one comes out next week; that's on the way.

I finished the first volume of Arthur Rubinstein's memoirs ("My Young Years"). Its a pretty hefty volume, and there's still a second one to go ("My Many Years"), which I will probably read at some point, since I enjoyed the first. Rubinstein lived an interesting life in interesting times, essentially striking out on his own at the age of 17, living off the kindness of friends and a highly unstable flow of performance earnings. His spendthrift ways didn't help. Luckily it seems like lots of music-loving aristocrats couldn't resist the young charming keyboard genius, although he could also be a bit of a shit.

After that, I read the short and fairly inconsequential "Look at the Lights, My Love" by Annie Ernaux, and am now reading Curtis Sittenfeld stories from her new collection.

Started Rafi Mittlefeldt’s It Looks Like This, one of the options for required reading for the YA lit and libraries course I am taking. It’s a queer YA I haven’t read, and one thing stands out so far: the narrative voice is like a teenage Raymond Carver. Tight-lipped, understated, terse sentences. It totally works!!

I'm reading David Sheff's Yoko bio, wanna reread The Blue Flower because it didn't move me at all despite loving Penelope Fitzgerald's other work, and will today pick up Mark Polizzotti's Why Surrealism Matters.

Finished It Looks Like This rather than finishing some work, it’s one of the better queer YA books I have read, especially given its style. Glad it was an option for the class.

Forgot that I finished another book too, "LaserWriter II" by Tamara Shopsin, about working at the Macintosh TekServe repair shop on 23rd St in what sounds like the mid-90s. Slight, but it hits a lot of Gen-X nostalgia buttons.

Finally finished The Well of Loneliness, which is quite a ride: some beautiful writing (which I noted in a previous post) but seriously marked by early-20C attitudes on homosexuality, in addition to some fleeting but no less horrifying racism. I had thought it was considered a queer classic before reading it, but the commentary in the new Oxford edition point to a more uneasy reputation. I can see why: if queer misery bothers you, you might want to stay away.

I'm really enjoying Rachel Cusk's The Last Supper, a travelogue of her family's three-month Italian sojourn that was published in 2009.

Her writing feels ornate and controlled at the same time. I've not read anything else by her, but I'm interested.

The Outline trilogy is amazing and generally considered her best I think. I've read one from long before (The Country Life, not at all controlled - basically a farce) and one from after (The Second Place, very controlled, not much fun).

Just re-read Le Guin's A Fisherman of the Inland Sea. As usual I'm in awe (of the title story especially), and sad that we don't live up to her imagination.

Several appealing takes in this big round-up (not paywalled)https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/what-were-reading-this-summer-mega-read"> https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/what-were-reading-this-summer-mega-read I'm especially intrigued by quotes from and comments on Elizabeth Jane Howard---is she good??

The Hell?
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/what-were-reading-this-summer-mega-reads

Yeah, that one works.

can't believe i've missed this thread for the last 6 months because i keep subconsciously clocking the title as some uk sportsball thing

anyway, rfi for you kind ilb-ers: on some thread, a month or two ago, someone was taking about a series of espionage novels set in europe, eastern and/or otherwise. i sampled the first page of one and liked the prose. it started off with some kind of creaky transport ship with a load of anatolian wheat (?) on it. does anyone know what i'm talking about or who the author might be?

novels were written from early 90s through the late 2000s iirc

It *could* be Alan Furst. Sounds a bit like *Night Soldiers* but not sure about the Anatolian wheat detail.

Yes, I think there was a small revival of this Furst thread recently:

alan furst

yes, ty!

S.A. Cosby's King Of Ashes is one of the best crime novels I've read in years. Really dark, really strong, starts out as one kind of story and becomes very different.

Still reading James McBride's Deacon King Kong, which is pretty good and is also going in unexpected directions. If you've liked Colson Whitehead's two Harlem-set crime novels, you'll like this, probably. Reminds me of those and of Richard Price's kaleidoscopic NYC stories.

I took a trip recently and finished two books, mostly while on the airplanes, while in transit. They were just a couple of whodunits, Maigret Sets a Trap, by Simenon, and Find a Victim, by Ross Macdonald. They met all the requirements of good whodunits, although the Macdonald one included some very strange and wrong ideas about the effects of marijuana.

I've read a bunch of Macdonald but not that one. 11 of the 18 Lew Archer novels were anthologized by the Library of America in three volumes; that one was left out, possibly for good reason. (I had to read the Wikipedia summary three times to make sure I understood.)

My hospital reading has so far been limited to a re-reading of Gass’ “The Pedersen Kid,” which remains as insane and enigmatic as ever, and a book by Paul Baker titled Outrageous!, about Section 28, queer education, and culture in 80s and 90s UK, and the after effects of the law today.

Started Edith Wharton's Twilight Sleep last night. One of her later novels and, at least based on the first few chapters, one of her funniest.

Dr No, Percival Everett - My second Everett after I Am Not Sidney Poitier. Once again lots of deadpan humour and a love of messing with language; this one's about a mathematician who studies nothing, and gets roped into a big heist because the mastermind behind it is convinced there is nothing hidden away in Fort Knox. Both the narrator and his love interest are on the spectrum. There's also a one legged dog that talks to him in his dreams with the voice of Michael Caine. Good stuff.

just finished hampton sides' the wide wide sea about captain cook's final voyage. very well-written and thoughtful, and great fun to read along with an atlas.

now about halfway thru darryl by jackie ess, which is awesome.

Darryl is a great book

Finished Twilight Sleep, which started out funny but ended up quite sad. I am now ready for Season 3 of The Gilded Age this weekend.

Finished Nicola Yoon’s ‘Everything, Everything’ for my YA lit class. Book with worthwhile themes but a lousy (and impossible!) extended metaphor as its main conceit. Meh.

Am slogging through Paul Baker’s ‘Outrageous!’ It is ostensibly a personal guide through the passage of Section 28 in the UK and its aftermath, but christ, there’s just way too much detail about this bill’s passage and how it came to be. I am uninterested in the vicious homophobia and voting record of Lord Vomswell Beadle (MP, Bosom Manor), I am interested in how the law impacted bookstores, kids, and culture. Luckily it seems like it is moving in that direction.

I also began a side quest with a little chapbook by one of my favorite poets, Norma Cole. She is incredible.

Another two chaps, one by Language poet Kit Robinson and another by contemporary working-class realist poet Steve Orth, and getting to the back end of the Baker book, which has become much more interesting as its moved on.

I just read Double Indemnity, James M. Cain. The plot is less believable than The Postman Always Rings Twice, which is understandable, since 'Postman' is a stone cold classic. Still, 'Indemnity' is a very good book after 90 years and a very rapid read. I have Mildred Pierce in the queue for later this year.

Finally finished Lonesome Dove. What a book. Still mourning for it. Certainly one of the most enjoyable books I've ever read, even though it's pretty friggin' bleak.

Mildred Pierce is great, love that book.

Started and finished a re-read of Camille Roy’s ‘The Rosy Medallions,’ a book that a friend stole from me years and years ago but which I found a good cheap-ish copy of recently. It was as I remember it: reflexive, cutting lesbian poetry and lyric prose with a deep class consciousness and excellent sense of the abject. Roy will always be one of my favorites of the New Narrative movement, even though she isn’t as well known as Dodie Bellamy or Bob Glück— her work is really incredible.

Read a minor Barbara Guest book of prose poems around filmic subjects. She’s an odd poet, I have only truly enjoyed one book of hers, but I somehow find the work mysterious enough that I keep coming back to it every few years. I think because I simply don’t understand her poetics?

Read a small sheath of poems by one of my favorite poets, John Wieners. Not book-length by any means, but worth mentioning because they’ve never been reprinted and so it felt special to read them in their original form.

Also finished a nice collaborative chap by Miri Karraker and Caroline Rayner.

The greatness of MP as a novel shocked me 15 years ago. I'd assumed it was pure pulp.

I stole it from a friend’s hoarder roommate many years ago, had similar thoughts when I was reading it!!