by Arjun Basu Long-time readers will probably know how often I like to go out on a limb and suggest some fairly outlandish things––making presumptions about deeper meanings or even an author’s mentality when settling in on specific techniques used. While the discussions that result can sometimes feel not far off from taking a stab…
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by Kim Moritsugu Looks Perfect is about the fashion-editor extraordinaire for Panache magazine, Rosemary, and her romantic entanglements. While covering the ready-to-wear collections in Europe and New York, she keeps bumping into Brian Turnbull––the sexy and rich owner of multiple fashion magazines. The first half of the book involves his extramarital fling with Rosemary, along…
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by Ann Y. K. Choi I seem to be finding it harder and harder to give an author the benefit of the doubt while reading, and I think it’s becoming a problem. The realization came partway through Kay’s Lucky Coin Variety after reading something particularly unsubtle or repetitive and putting the book down, likely more…
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by Patrick deWitt I’m a fan of Patrick deWitt. (I don’t think I’ve kept this a secret.) So naturally I was tickled pink when I heard he had a new book out. And, hearing it consistently described as something of a “tragedy of manners,” I wasn’t particularly surprised. Given what I saw as parallels to…
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by Leonard Cohen Beautiful Losers was apparently a big deal when it was originally published in the ’60s. From what I’ve read, critics understood it to be the most interesting and unique Canadian novel of its time, but for the most part it was panned for being incoherent and vulgar. (And, I mean, it is,…
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by Iraj Pezeshkzad My Uncle Napoleon is a famous, cherished Iranian novel. Written in the ’70s, it was banned briefly after the 1979 revolution, presumably because of lewdness and sexuality. The story apparently struck such a chord in Iran because Pezeshkzad so accurately captured and poked fun at the widespread paranoia toward the British that…
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by Ta-Nehisi Coates When I originally heard about David Chariandy’s I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You, it immediately brought Between the World and Me to mind. Of course, I hadn’t actually read Coates’ book yet at the time, but I nonetheless wondered whether Chariandy’s essays directed at his young daughter about the history of racism…
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by Stephen Markley Ohio is made up of four stories. Bill Ashcraft bombs across the United States in a drug-addled frenzy, smuggling a mysterious package; Stacey Moore reluctantly agrees to meet her former lover’s mother who traumatized her in her youth; Dan Eaton returns from a tour in Afghanistan to visit the high school sweetheart…
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by Farley Mowat Never Cry Wolf is presented as the true account of Mowat’s time in the Canadian subarctic in the late ’40s, sent as a government researcher in order to investigate the impacts wolves were having on declining caribou populations. However, I’m led to believe from parallel reading that “true” may be more than…
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by Louis L’Amour I was recently wandering a large antique shop in Duluth, perusing their small display of books for sale––including a sizeable collection of Westerns––when it occurred to me that I almost certainly have never read a genre Western. Eager to remedy this deficiency, (who am I to think myself broadly-read otherwise?) I picked…
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