Notes on Suicide by Simon Critchley
Slowly, the land recedes. I am writing this on a ferry, pushing its way across the surprisingly flat Bay (orContinue Reading
Category: Book Review
Mr Darwin’s Gardener by Kristina Carlson
Mr Darwin’s Gardener is a beautiful, modernist novella about the late 19th century inhabitants of the small village inContinue Reading
The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
I’ve come down from my massive caffeine high of several hours ago* and have since spent a low, undersharing, eveningContinue Reading
Sex: The Summer of Hard by Joe Casey and Piotr Kowalski
Again, I am too caffeinated to concentrate, too buzzed up to stop typing for more than the fifteen minutes orContinue Reading
The Guermantes Way (À la recherche du temps perdu 3) by Marcel Proust
I’m caffeinated up to the eyeballs and on holiday in the backwoods of Finland, and have spent the last twoContinue Reading
The Art of Happiness by His Holiness the Dalai Lama & Howard C. Cutler, MD
Anyone who passes even a cursory glance over my website (the rude TriumphoftheNow.com) will realise pretty quickly that I like books. IContinue Reading
Everything is Teeth by Evie Wyld and Joe Sumner
Evie Wyld is one of the successful graduates of my Creative Writing degree*, so I’ve kinda grumpily avoided her workContinue Reading
The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell
In England, Orwell’s two most famous novels are something everyone even remotely literary has thrust upon them when young. AnimalContinue Reading
Red Doc> by Anne Carson
It’s been a while since I’ve read any poetry. Life, I find, often gets in the way. Life, which isn’tContinue Reading
Anglo-English Attitudes by Geoff Dyer
I’m writing this on my phone, stood in the queue at the Apple Store where I’ve gone to replace myContinue Reading
¡Tequila!: Distilling the Spirit of Mexico by Marie Sarita Gaytán
Marie Sarita Gaytán is an American academic (an Assistant Professor of Sociology) and ¡Tequila!: Distilling the Spirit of Mexico is anContinue Reading
Midland: A Novel Out of Time by Honor Gavin
midlands novel and a road trip into childhood
To Wetumpka by Ellis Sharp
A couple of weeks ago, I got a strange email from a small publishing house, Zoilus Press. They said thatContinue Reading
Dotter of her Father’s Eyes by Mary M Talbot and Bryan Talbot
There’s something both lower-case romantic and sweetly anachronistic about a husband-wife literary collaboration. What makes this one, Dotter of herContinue Reading
The Vegetarian by Han Kang
The Vegetarian by Han Kang is an odd book. I bought it for myself on my mad, wild, Foyles birthdayContinue Reading
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Iran. Who knows much about it? We’ve all seen Argo, we’ve all heard of nuclear weapons, we’re all aware thatContinue Reading
Purity by Jonathan Franzen
I read every other novel by Jonathan Franzen during a period of about 18 months after really, really enjoying FreedomContinue Reading
The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler
So, as I periodically do, I decided to take a book off “serious” fiction and have a bit of aContinue Reading
The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy
This is a late novella of Tolstoy’s, and one famous for espousing a narrative rooted in his late-life, anti-sexuality, opinions.Continue Reading
Malcolm Lowry: Psalms and Songs (edited by Margerie Lowry
Psalms and Songs is an odd book, a collection of short stories by Malcolm Lowry (some previously published, others unfinished),Continue Reading
Leviathan or, The Whale by Philip Hoare
Whales. What are they? Who are they? And why did humans stop killing them just before their extinction was finallyContinue Reading
The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand
As many of you may have noticed, after the UK recently democratically elected a right-wing government, I shaved off myContinue Reading
The Lost Weekend by Charles Jackson
Malcolm Lowry, secret hero of these blog posts, fell into a deep depression after the publication of Charles Jackson’s TheContinue Reading
Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
Almost two years ago to the day, I read Arthur Koestler’s Arrival and Departure*. That, unfortunately, didn’t really thrill meContinue Reading
Dusty Answer by Rosamond Lehmann
Rosamond Lehmann is not a widely-read novelist any more, though in the middle of the 20th-century, she was both popularContinue Reading
Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy
The first Cormac McCarthy novel I read was 2006’s The Road, and it is by far and away his best.Continue Reading
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Big books. I have an odd relationship with ’em. The idea of big books, to be honest, I have aContinue Reading
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a big, serious novel all about big, serious things. It is intelligent, articulate, humaneContinue Reading
Lost Dogs by Jeff Lemire
Jeff Lemire’s Lost Dogs is a graphic novel first published in 2006. It is a dark, terrifying and immersive pieceContinue Reading
Under the Net by Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch is one of the handful of writers who I return to with regular irregularity. Like Graham Greene, VirginiaContinue Reading
Love, Sex & Other Foreign Policy Goals by Jesse Armstrong
Until yesterday, when I read the last 100 pages of Jesse Armstrong’s Love, Sex & Other Foreign Policy Goals, IContinue Reading
October Ferry To Gabriola by Malcolm Lowry
As I continue to read through the (surprisingly) ever-expanding oeuvre of the alcoholic, depressive, late-Modernist writer, Malcolm Lowry, I amContinue Reading
Kolymsky Heights by Lionel Davidson
So, am back in London and have a little over an hour in which to wash, shave, iron clothes, cleanContinue Reading
The Dispossessed by Ursula le Guin
I don’t really understand what is the fucking point of this dull novel. Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed is aContinue Reading
Eva Luna by Isabel Allende
Last night, as I wandered between bars and cafes in Taksim, North of the Golden Horn, I read most ofContinue Reading
The Diamond Smugglers by Ian Fleming
I’m writing this on an aeroplane to Istanbul, off for a “mimibreak”*. Treating myself to a trip, all on myContinue Reading
The Sugar Syndrome by Lucy Prebble
I haven’t read a play for a while. I used to read plays all the time, it was one ofContinue Reading
9th and 13th by Jonathan Coe
I picked this up a while ago from a secondhand bookshop somewhere, shortly after reading Jonathan Coe’s Like A FieryContinue Reading
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (The Omnibus Edition) by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill
I hadn’t read a graphic novel/comic book in a while, so thought I’d have a go with one of theContinue Reading
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
Well, it is good. It’s good. It’s possibly great, but it’s definitely good. Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend is basicallyContinue Reading
A Russian Journal by John Steinbeck
I’m going on a trip to Russia in about six weeks, so have begun my travel research. Unlike normal people,Continue Reading
Victoria by Knut Hamsun
I know I should be spending my free time writing something that isn’t this blog. I know I should haveContinue Reading
How To Use Your Enemies by Baltasar Gracián
I decided to read another one of the tiny little Penguin Classics. This one, How To Use Your Enemies byContinue Reading
Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon
Sometimes I read novels where I can’t really see why they were written. Novels that say very little to meContinue Reading
Viper Wine by Hermione Eyre
I often state that me taking more than a week to read anything, irrelevant of size, is a sign thatContinue Reading
A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing by Eimear McBride
Eimear McBride’s A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing was a surprise critical smash in the heady days of 2013/14, atContinue Reading
Audition by Ryu Murakami
I haven’t read a novel by the “other” Murakami for years. In my long and distant and pre-blogging past, IContinue Reading
My Day Trip with Knausgaard
A few weeks ago I went for a day trip, alone, with Karl Ove Knausgaard’s Dancing Is The Dark. Here’sContinue Reading
Mrs Rosie and the Priest by Giovanni Boccaccio
I don’t know if anyone else likes little books as much as I do, but I’ve been particularly charmed recentlyContinue Reading
The Tongues of Men or Angels by Jonathan Trigell
I like Biblical novels. So much so that I wrote one*, and so much so that after reading about ten/twenty,Continue Reading
Triumph Of The Now 