Open City by Teju Cole
transcript of a presentation from happier days
Tag: Fiction
“Herod’s Filthy Bathtime” from The Body and the Baptist
Once upon a time, I was trying to be a writer…
Blitzed by Norman Ohler
Hipster military history: if you’re not cool, this isn’t for you…
Zone by Mathias Enard
pleasure is a lightening bolt that leaves no trace
Vampire in Love by Enrique Vila-Matas
Experimental late 20th century short fiction.
From Russia With Love by Ian Fleming
This is my first blog post in a while, and even then it’s still happening a little earlier than expected.Continue Reading
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Memoir: A History by Ben Yagoda
This will probably be my last blog for a while, as I have a couple of essays to write over theContinue 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
Reality Hunger by David Shields
David Shields’ Reality Hunger is a non-fiction book about the fictional and the unreal being dead to contemporary creativity. ItContinue Reading
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
This is a bloody strange book. I was initially led to this postmodern 1960s American mystery-thrillery-comedy due to my enjoymentContinue Reading
Well Done God! Selected Prose and Drama of B. S. Johnson
I’m in a pretty filthy mood as I begin this review, but I have the excellent Naked City by John ZornContinue Reading
The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist by Orhan Pamuk
This little book, collected from a series of lectures Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk gave in 2009, is an interesting textContinue Reading
If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor
I was recommended to read If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things in order to marvel at McGregor’s impressive ability to leapContinue Reading
Simulating Cunnilingus On A Fried Egg Sandwich
The fridge didn’t have the food in to facilitate a fry up: no bacon, no sausage, no mushroom, no tomato.Continue Reading
My First eBook
Today I collated all the short stories. poems and openings to novels I wrote as an undergraduate and published themContinue Reading
Old School Friend
‘Which way?’ ‘Wherever, man. Just somewhere without CCTV, you know? My ket dealer got fuckin’ three years ‘cause some factoryContinue Reading
Triumph Of The Now 