The Honorary Consul by Graham Greene
Right. My blog is back in business, back to books. (As I’m sure you can see, my hair is far,Continue Reading
Category: Book Review
Birthday Blog Post: You Ain’t Achieved Nothin’ Yet, OR Old Men, On The Road and Becoming an Old Man On The Road
Twenty five is not, in itself, a significant birthday. However, it does mean that one has distinctly reached an ageContinue Reading
An Outcast of the Islands by Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad was notorious for being unable to write women. Actually, no, less that, he was more notorious for veryContinue Reading
Scott Manley Hadley, Queen of Carthage (It Reminds Me That It’s Not So Bad, It’s Not So Ba-ah-ad)*
Despite dandling no one on my lap, my time in Tunis (so far) has been a highspincycle of emotion. ThereContinue Reading
We’ll Always Have Casablanca: Getting Out of Morocco and Racing Through Kurt Vonnegut’s Galapagos
Casablanca felt very different to the other Moroccan cities I visited. Very European, actually, in terms not just of architecture,Continue Reading
Of Mutability, Sad and Sand: Me Reading Jo Shapcott in the Sahara Desert as I Really Start To Feel The Loss Of The Anti-Depressants
I’m pretty certain, as I write this on the minibus back to Marrakech, that I have sand inside my anus.Continue Reading
A Rubbish Couple of Days
Over the last few days I have made a series of unforgivable travel booboos. Yesterday I nearly gave myself heatstroke,Continue Reading
Ul-Essaouira-sses: James Joyce and Morocco’s Atlantic Coast
Desperately needing some cooler weather and a low pressure environment in which to cold turkey from the anti-depressants I’d beenContinue Reading
On Not Being Bowles-ed Over by Paul Bowles’ Let It Come Down
Spent two nights in Marrakech, ran into most of the people I’d met before, had a pleasant time, but I’mContinue Reading
Exploring Fes, Grappling With John Ashbery’s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror
I’ve tried recreation, Reading until late at night, train rides And romance. from ‘Worsening Situation’ by John Ashbery As IContinue Reading
Straddling The Strait of Gibraltar: Tarifa & Tangier
In the southernmost tip of Western Europe is a small beach resort town called Tarifa. Full of hostels, kite-boarding schools,Continue Reading
Hanging out alone in Seville, reading Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives
Well, I’ve been away four days and have already completed my first read of the trip. Roberto Bolaño’s HUGE TheContinue Reading
Poems by B. S. Johnson
When asked his occupation, or for any kind of self-identification, B. S. Johnson would reply that he was a “poet”.Continue Reading
Travelling People by B. S. Johnson
Today I have returned to the British Library in order to read more out of print books by Bryan StanleyContinue Reading
The Striped World by Emma Jones
Emma Jones’ debut collection, The Striped World, is an evocative and image-fuelled foray into contemporary America, sunken wrecks of transportation shipsContinue Reading
Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez
It’s hot, I’m sweaty, it’s almost late. I’ve just read a little novella by Gabriel García Márquez (Colombian, Nobel Laureate, octogenarianContinue Reading
Angle of Yaw by Ben Lerner
Ben Lerner’s recently published first novel, Leaving the Atocha Station, is a great read I’ve recommended to several people (ReviewContinue Reading
Important Artifacts and Personal Property From The Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion and Jewelry by Leanne Shapton
The day began with a shock. Pascale Petit, the poet, sent me a series of angry tweets about the reviewContinue Reading
Destination X by John Martz
Another original book from my local graphic novel publishing house, Nobrow, Destination X is a short science fiction piece about interstellarContinue Reading
The Plague by Albert Camus
Albert Camus was (according to the blurb of this 1960s Penguin edition) active in the French resistance during the NaziContinue Reading
What The Water Gave Me (Poems After Frida Kahlo) by Pascale Petit
Pacale Petit’s fifth poetry collection, What The Water Gave Me, is a verse biography of the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. EachContinue Reading
Arrival and Departure by Arthur Koestler
This is the last of the lovely old books I bought whilst in Hay-on-Wye a few weeks ago, a charmingContinue Reading
Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth by Warsan Shire
Warsan Shire was born the same year I was, 1988, so reading this excellent collection of intelligent, though-provoking and matureContinue Reading
A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro
Kazuo Ishiguro’s first novel, A Pale View of Hills, doesn’t quite pack the emotional punch of his later, more famous, The RemainsContinue Reading
Under The Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
Malcolm Lowry was a tragic figure. A hugely talented writer, yet an alcoholic of such self-destructive proportions that he diedContinue Reading
Speedboat by Renata Adler
Renata Adler’s Speedboat is an award-winning experimental novel from 1976, recently republished by New York Review Books. I, however, was readingContinue Reading
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
I’m a sentimental, emotional, man. I’m sensitive. I feel. I feel big. And Jonathan Safran Foer’s 2005 Extremely Loud & IncrediblyContinue Reading
The Sweet Smell of Psychosis by Will Self
I bought this for two pounds in a Walthamstow Oxfam. Definitely worth it. A tiny little picaresque novella, less thanContinue Reading
See The Old Lady Decently by B. S. Johnson
B. S. Johnson’s final novel, the first part of the never-completed Matrix Trilogy, has been out of print for decades.Continue Reading
Alien vs. Predator by Michael Robbins
Today I have made a fantastic discovery: if you stay sober, it is possible to read and enjoy poetry afterContinue Reading
Three Lives of Tomomi Ishikawa by Benjamin Constable
This is a brand spanking new book, given to me before its UK release by a friend with connections. Ooooh.Continue Reading
Hope: A Tragedy by Shalom Auslander
Hope: A Tragedy is a dark, funny novel. Hilarious, yet also quite serious, it is the narrative of the mentalContinue Reading
Rabbit, Run by John Updike
I’m going to be utterly uncharacteristic and not write a glowing review of a book. I found Rabbit, Run a bitContinue Reading
Nil Nil by Don Paterson
That’s right, more poetry. I’ve gone poetry mad. I’ve got at least two more poetry books on my shelf andContinue Reading
A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood
Life goes on. The worst thing that can happen in a life is not the end of the world.* This,Continue Reading
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson, and more specifically his volume of interconnected short stories, Winesburg, Ohio, has had an odd history. Once considered aContinue Reading
Antwerp by Roberto Bolaño
I made a mistake. Open. Frank. Honest. I made a mistake. Several people have told me to read Roberto Bolaño.Continue Reading
Ariel by Sylvia Plath
I will be the first to admit that I’m not an expert on poetry. That I don’t read enough poetry.Continue Reading
Ultramarine by Malcolm Lowry
This book took quite a bit of searching to find. I first read about it in Jonathan Coe’s Like A FieryContinue Reading
Bel Ami by Guy de Maupassant
Bel-Ami by Guy de Maupassant is a fun romp through the bachelor pads, newspaper boardrooms, restaurants and theatres of glamorous,Continue Reading
Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner
Leaving the Atocha Station is a recent novel written by a young American poet who spent a year living in MadridContinue Reading
Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
This is a stunning, beautiful, deeply moving novel that had me in streams of tears, laughing from the pit ofContinue Reading
How Should A Person Be? by Sheila Heti
Sheila Heti’s brand new* How Should A Person Be? is a charming – and very contemporary – autobiographical novel detailing aContinue Reading
Maldoror and Poems by Lautréamont
Maldoror is a fucking weird book. It was written in the late 1860s by Isidore Ducasse, a young South American-bornContinue Reading
The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch
This is a beautifully crafted and elegantly written novel, a complex and intelligent exploration of ego, aging and self-fabrication. WrittenContinue Reading
Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
Tropic of Cancer, to use a colloquialism Miller might have approved of, is a cunt’s hair from being EXACTLY myContinue Reading
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath is an aggressive, brutal, novel that tears a reader through the depths of starvation, disease andContinue Reading
Sad Man On A Beach
Please watch my new short film where, a la B. S. Johnson, I openly discuss the way I see theContinue Reading
The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
Like the fashionable urbanite I am, yet again I’ve arrived late to a party. The problem with encountering something highlyContinue Reading
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Building up towards my planned reading of Ulysses in August, I decided to try a different, shorter, Modernist classic. This was Woolf’sContinue Reading
Triumph Of The Now 