by Kris Bertin Use Your Imagination! is a short story collection that very immediately put me in mind with Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son, both because the majority of the stories deal with misfits behaving badly––or just strangely––and because they’re built upon a solid foundation of exceptional writing. This is happily one of those cases where…
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by Kurt Vonnegut After taking control of the Rosewater Foundation, Eliot Rosewater dedicates his time and the copious amounts of money in his trust to helping average Americans, no strings attached. Some people––including his father, Senator Lister Ames Rosewater, the man who started the Foundation as a way to prevent tax collectors from getting at…
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by Anakana Schofield Bina––pronounced Bye-na, not Bee-na––is the latest non-traditional story by Giller nominated Schofield. Told as a series of warnings scribbled on the backs of old envelopes and receipts, the titular septuagenarian bluntly describes her dangerous encounters with men. Because Bina’s convinced that he’s largely to blame for ruining her life and turning her…
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by Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan of the Apes is the book that introduced the world to the now all but ubiquitously known king of the jungle. After the death of his parents in a remote region of Africa, the infant Tarzan is raised by a great ape, taught to survive in the wild. As he…
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by Mesha Maren Eighteen years after being sentenced to life in prison in the late ’80s at the age of 17, a lawyer takes interest in Jodi McCarty’s case, resulting in her release. Sugar Run bounces between two periods: running off with her lover, Paula, to find happiness and easy money on the fringes of…
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by Chuck Palahniuk Though it feels at least a bit silly to write up a synopsis for a book as famous as Fight Club, a review without a synopsis conversely feels incomplete. (Those who don’t believe me are welcome to check out some of my older reviews in which I believed synopses to be frivolous.)…
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by Jaroslav Hašek The Good Soldier Schweik is said to be one of the most famous pieces of Czech literature that exists, if not the most famous. It’s at least the most widely-translated and far-reaching novel to come out of the region, with lasting influences on language and culture in the Czech Republic and elsewhere….
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by Rawi Hage Taking place in the midst of the Lebanese civil war in the late ’70s, Beirut Hellfire Society follows Pavlov, the son of an undertaker. After the sudden passing of his father, Pavlov agrees to carry on his life’s work helping an underground organization perform last rites for those denied proper burials because…
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by Kurt Vonnegut I don’t think I can fully express how important this book is to me. The first time I read Breakfast of Champions was sometime around ’07 or ’08, when I was an impressionable University student building up my knowledge in areas unrelated to literature of this sort. And it seriously blew my…
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by Evelyn Waugh Understanding the importance of getting the best man to cover the impending civil war in the small African nation of Ishmaelia, Lord Copper, owner of the Daily Beast newspaper, follows the advice of a dinner companion to enlist novelist John Boot to go. Miscommunication and misunderstanding causes his staff to send the…
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