In Ballast to the White Sea (A Scholarly Edition) by Malcolm Lowry
The biggest tragedy in Malcolm Lowry’s life (in his own opinion) was when the lakeside shack he lived in burnedContinue Reading
Tag: Book Review
Molloy by Samuel Beckett
I’m going to be honest, I did not get what the point of Molloy was. Oooh, it was Beckettian; itContinue Reading
The Birds by Tarjei Vesaas
Obnoxiously (the manner in which I do most things), I read Tarjei Vesaas’ The Birds because Karl Ove Knausgaard refersContinue Reading
The Great War by Joe Sacco
Joe Sacco’s wordless, 8 metre long panorama of the first day of the Battle of the Somme is a harrowingContinue 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
The Chairs Are Where the People Go by Misha Glouberman with Sheila Heti
The Chairs Are Where The People Go is a strange book, and a highly-acclaimed one. It’s semi-written by Sheila Heti, authorContinue Reading
Life, End of by Christine Brooke-Rose
Well, this is a rather painfully depressing read. Life, End of was Christine Brooke-Rose’s final novel, one written in herContinue Reading
Stamboul Train by Graham Greene
I don’t really feel I need to hide it any more – I love the novels of Graham Greene. ThisContinue 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
Preacher: Book One by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon
I first read about Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s comic Preacher at the 2014 British Library exhibition, Comics Unmasked. OfContinue Reading
Penguin Modern Poets 25
Other than having an excellent cover, this 1975 collection of poems by Gavin Ewart, Zulfikar Ghose and B. S. JohnsonContinue Reading
The Last Summer by Boris Pasternak
Boris Pasternak was the author of Doctor Zhivago, which I didn’t realise when I picked up this slim novella aboutContinue Reading
Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf
Both the blurb and the author biography of my 1980s edition of Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf state that thisContinue Reading
Justine by Marquis de Sade
Last night I cut my hand in several places on a broken champagne flute, and to recuperate took myself offContinue Reading
Jerusalem the Golden by Margaret Drabble
Margaret Drabble is not a novelist I’ve read before. To be honest, I’m mainly aware of her for being withinContinue Reading
Endgame by Samuel Beckett
Like most pretentious teenagers who go on to study English Literature as an undergraduate then sink into an unhappy morassContinue Reading
ABC of Reading by Ezra Pound
I’ve never gotten on well with Ezra Pound’s poems. Though a staple within the pretentious anthologies I used to readContinue Reading
Scum by Isaac Bashevis Singer
My pile of books, towering as it often is in January, needs to be got through. So in order toContinue Reading
The Book of Dave by Will Self
Hello. Happy New Year etc. I finally got around to reading Will Self’s The Book of Dave after carrying theContinue Reading
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
Sticking with middle-brow Scottish literature, I followed Irvine Welsh’s Filth with another dark, scary, psychological story about a disturbed ScottishContinue Reading
Filth by Irvine Welsh
Recently I’ve been very much enjoying Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong*’s Channel 4 police drama, Babylon. This under-watched TV showContinue Reading
Maya’s Notebook by Isabel Allende
I’ve said it before and I will say it again: Isabel Allende is brilliant, an under-rated writer of supreme skill,Continue 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
The Death of Ivan Ilyich & Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy
This week, I decided to dabble with a bit of Leo Tolstoy. I’ve never read anything by the big-hitting RussianContinue Reading
The Missing of the Somme by Geoff Dyer
Yes, I read another book by Geoff Dyer and, yes, because it was a structurally complex non-fiction text featuring aContinue Reading
Oblivion: Stories by David Foster Wallace
After reading his Infinite Jest last Summer, I’ve been consistently disappointed by the further fiction I’ve perused by the postmodernContinue Reading
The Cinema of Malcolm Lowry – A Scholary Edition of Lowry’s ‘Tender Is The Night’
In 1949, Malcolm Lowry (author of Under The Volcano) decided to adapt F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is The NightContinue Reading
The Poems of Wilfred Owen
In a few weeks, I am driving my father to Paris for a couple of days, and on the wayContinue 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
The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
I’ve read a lot of old religious texts over the past year* and have enjoyed many of them. I’ve readContinue Reading
Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams by Sylvia Plath
I intended to read Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams for a while, but held off doing so forContinue Reading
Penguin Modern Stories 7
I sourced this 1971 collection of short stories for one simple reason: ‘For Bolocks Please Read Blocks Throughout’, a B.Continue Reading
Lonesome Traveler by Jack Kerouac
Last Summer, whilst twatpacking* around the Mediterranean, Tunisair lost my backpack between Casablanca and Tunis. Though it contained nothing ofContinue Reading
Chess by Stefan Zweig
Chess is an excellent little novella written by Stefan Zweig in the early 1940s. An Austrian who’d run from theContinue Reading
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is, I must begrudgingly admit, a great Haruki Murakami novel. One ofContinue Reading
How to be both by Ali Smith
Ali Smith’s latest novel – How to be both – has been shortlisted for this year’s Man Booker PrizeContinue Reading
Working the Room by Geoff Dyer
As often happens with essay collections (particularly ones read for the writer’s personality rather than his or her topics), WorkingContinue Reading
A Million Little Pieces by James Frey
This is a book I’ve read a lot about. It is referred to repeatedly in both Ben Yagoda’s Memoir: AContinue Reading
Swann’s Way (À la recherche du temps perdu 1) by Marcel Proust
I’m writing this in the beautiful Spanish Pyrenees, having spent a day doing little more than reading Proust and lookingContinue Reading
Batman: The Killing Joke by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland
Due to a bereavement, I spent a lot of time with my family over the Summer, and one of theContinue Reading
Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille
Phwoar! Actually, I retract that. Other than the bit where a priest is raped by a woman and two menContinue Reading
Nadja by André Breton
Urgh. Nadja by André Breton is the worst book I’ve read for fucking ages. Dull, poorly structured, self-important and smug,Continue Reading
Love’s Work by Gillian Rose
A few weeks ago, I was recommended this short memoir by a customer in the bar I work in. Obnoxiously,Continue Reading
A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne
Laurence Sterne is the writer of the (rightly) famous Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. A hilarious and experimentalContinue Reading
Opium: The Diary of his Cure by Jean Cocteau
Opium: The Diary of his Cure is an odd, but engaging, book by the French not-Surrealist modernist Jean Cocteau. FriendContinue Reading
Generation X by Douglas Coupland
Well, err… this was nothing like I expected. I LOVED, when I was younger, the brash 80s decadencia* of writersContinue Reading
Commonplace Book by E. M. Forster
Over the last week I have read a strange text: Commonplace Book by E. M. Forster. Bits of it thrilledContinue Reading
King Jesus by Robert Graves
For the past year, I have been working on a historical novel set in “Biblical times”, and during that timeContinue Reading
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
It’s been a while since my last post, yes, that is true. I’ve been having a busy (and not particularlyContinue Reading
Quesadillas by Juan Pablo Villalobos
This is a very short novel (that, somehow, feels even shorter than it is) published by the commendable independent publishingContinue Reading
Triumph Of The Now 