The Devil in the Flesh by Raymond Radiguet
It is 1230am on a Friday night, I am (which is very rare for me) not at work, my girlfriendContinue Reading
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Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
Over the last month, Don Quixote has travelled a huge amount with me. He was with me for the tailContinue Reading
BS: Automatic Prose
In 2014 I took part in an “initiative” by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra that sought to use classical music asContinue Reading
Book of Blues by Jack Kerouac
This is going to be short, because Book of Blues by Jack Kerouac is shit. I’m sat in Munich airport,Continue Reading
Lila by Marilynne Robinson
Many months ago, back when I had a regular social life, a friend of mine who works in publishing gaveContinue Reading
James Bond: Never Send Flowers by John Gardner
Please, sir, don’t send any flowers So ends one of the strangest books I’ve ever has the misfortune to encounter.Continue Reading
Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson
A few months ago I read Anne Carson’s recent, (rightfully) acclaimed Red Doc>, a narrative collection of poems about G,Continue Reading
Preacher: Book Three by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon
I don’t know what to add to my previous comments on this series of comic books I’ve slowly been readingContinue Reading
Othello by William Shakespeare
About two months ago I spent a week in Finland, driving through the countryside from flea market to charity shopContinue Reading
The Art of War by Kelly Roman
This week, amidst the 21 hour shifts and the bottomless corporate bar tabs of a December in hospitality, I’ve foundContinue Reading
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
This is the 300th book review I have posted on this blog*, and it seems appropriate that its focus is aContinue Reading
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
fuck So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. fuck fuck fuck fuck fuckContinue Reading
The Life of a Stupid Man by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
I read another one of those cute Penguin Little Black Classics, this one a collection of three short stories byContinue Reading
Flaubert in Egypt by Gustave Flaubert (kind of)*
Flaubert in Egypt is ostensibly (though it isn’t) a book written by Gustave Flaubert about his hedonistic travels through EgyptContinue Reading
How I Escaped My Certain Fate by Stewart Lee
During the Summer I crossed a line in the sand I scratched out a long time ago and, accepting mortality andContinue Reading
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
I’ve been reading a massive book* since I got back from my holiday last month, and have only just reached its end.Continue Reading
Hip-Scott: Pass the Dostoevsky on the Left Hand Side
Please enjoy my hot new drag-hop video:
Preacher: Book Two by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon
I read the first volume of Preacher about a year ago, and really enjoyed its brash ridiculousness. This second volumeContinue Reading
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
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
Triumph Of The Now 