Another Country by James Baldwin
another hagiography on Baldwin as scott packs up his north american life
Tag: American fiction
Ambergris by Jeff VanderMeer
a big book about mushrooms that are magic (not magic mushrooms)
The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain
struck down by covid, scott crawls into a classic novel
Clotel or, the President’s Daughter by William Wells Brown
excellent, significant, 19th century anti-slavery novel
The Seep by Chana Porter
very gen x “internet is bad” vibes
Jazz by Toni Morrison
redressing a gap in my reading
Cygnet by Season Butler
a solid contemporary novel
It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis
powerful, tho rushed, 1930s novel about fascism in the USA
Always Coming Home by Ursula Le Guin
impressive experimental speculative fiction
Selected Tales by Edgar Allan Poe
mediocre prose and a child bride: time to cancel Poe
The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead
Colson Whitehead’s intriguing, if imperfect, debut
Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
ideologically, i’d love to tear this apart, but i cannot…
Go Tell It On The Mountain by James Baldwin
there ain’t no fool like a holy fool
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
an accurate depiction of the lust and boredom that threatens to overwhelm all of us who aren’t pious, delusional, fuckheads
Radar Road: The Best of On Impulse by Nath Jones
A short story collection, and my first experience of an eBook.
Recovery by John Berryman
Long before James Frey was breaking Oprah Winfrey’s fragile heart by fictionalising his time in addiction therapy and the behaviourContinue Reading
The Book of Daniel by E. L. Doctorow
The Cold War is a period loved by fiction. The world at that time was cast into blurry, grey-stained, blackContinue Reading
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon
Where is Pittsburgh? At any point while I read this novel, I could’ve looked it up. I didn’t, and I’mContinue Reading
By Grand Central Station I Sat Down And Wept by Elizabeth Smart
I’m not at work, so I should be writing real prose, doing something creative, emailing pitches for articles through toContinue 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 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
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
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
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
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
10:04 by Ben Lerner
Well, I just wrote a huge, gushing review of this and then my computer crashed and deleted it. So, withContinue Reading
I Don’t Need You Any More by Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller’s 1967 collection of stories, I Don’t Need You Any More, contains one of the finest pieces of short fictionContinue Reading
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
Fuck it, I’m going to discuss the plot. MONKEYS. It’s about MONKEYS. Or, to be technical, chimps. Chimpanzees (which aren’tContinue Reading
Child of God by Cormac McCarthy
Child of God was Cormac McCarthy’s third novel, and is the first book of his I’ve read for a while.Continue Reading
S. by JJ Abrams and Doug Dorst
Over the last couple of weeks, I have slowly read through S., a weird, postmodern novel by JJ Abrams and DougContinue Reading
Stoner by John Williams
Not a book about reefer addicts written by a composer, John Williams’ Stoner is a long-winded novel detailing the whole lifeContinue Reading
The Penguin Book of New American Voices edited by Jay McInerney
I found this excellent 90s-scene short story collection in a charity shop, picking it up mainly because amongst its sixteenContinue Reading
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
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
Triumph Of The Now 