Writer and software engineer in the US Midwest. I enjoy poetry, horror, some f/sf, some mystery, some literary fiction (but not the kind where the main character is a professor and nothing happens).
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The whaling vessel Merciful has just made its strangest catch yet: a massive whale containing …
Moby-Dick in an alternate world, but the whalers are the ones being hunted. Body horror, eroticism, mutiny, nature taking revenge, gods of the deep, bigotry, capitalism at its harshest, a main character with a secret (and then another, and another), a steadily mounting sense of dread—this book has it all.
The whaling vessel Merciful has just made its strangest catch yet: a massive whale containing …
So far (a little past halfway thru) I’d say this is Herman Melville meets Castle Rock. I’m enjoying it.
None of the writers in this collection came to play nice with the Nazgûl. Plenty of anger and pain and body fluids in these stories, and fantasies of revenge and fantasies of justice and tenderness and hope that even if the forces of good don’t prevail they’ll go on fighting. A couple of stories even feature repentance and attempts at making amends. Strong stomach required.
"Widely acknowledged as Yasutaka Tsutsui's masterpiece, Paprika unites his surreal, quirky imagination with a compelling, …
Similar in concept to the movie Inception, but this novel came first and is more firmly in the surrealist tradition. You don’t think things can get more absurd than the opening chapters, but they do. A riot of Freudian and Jungian psychology, folklore, occultism, sex, violence, and—most savagely irrational of all—the internal politics of organizations.
A novel about love, loss, memory, identity, family, acceptance, rejection (including self-rejection), clinging, letting go, how we are who we are and why. This story continues the tradition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. It made me cry more than once.
The first of the acclaimed Ripley novels, this clever psychological thriller introduces the reader to …
Based on the episodes I’ve seen so far, the tv series stays closer to the book’s plot than the movie does, but only Highsmith’s prose brings you into Ripley’s head. That’s a fascinating and terrible place to be.
A beloved fable-manifesto from the 1970s queer counterculture. The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions, …
I found this book in the fiction section of the bookstore, but it’s… well, it has narrative vignettes, but I’d say it’s a work of visionary queer philosophy, with elements of satire, fable, polemic, and comfort. Maybe this book found me when I needed it, but I think it’s one of the most important books I’ve ever read. I’ll certainly be re-reading it.
This collection of Gertrude Stein’s writing was first published in 1967. The introduction describes Alice B. Toklas as Stein’s “close friend and helper.”
The dream of a queer separatist town. The life of a gay Jewish Nazi fighter. …
With my old eyes, I had to resort to aids to my vision (cell phone camera zoom, magnifying glass) to read parts of this book, either because the lettering was too small or because there wasn’t enough contrast between the text and the background. That’s not a criticism, except perhaps of time itself. The book repaid the effort.
These comics generally fall into three categories: personal, informative, and satirical. The satire is hit or miss, as satire tends to be, sometimes too on-the-nose. The informative pieces are all interesting, whether about history, biography, culture, or medicine. Among the personal narratives, some speak to me directly, making me feel seen and affirmed, and making me cry or laugh or do both at once. Those that don’t affect me with such immediacy, I appreciate for offering me a start at understanding the experiences of people who aren’t like me. They are …
With my old eyes, I had to resort to aids to my vision (cell phone camera zoom, magnifying glass) to read parts of this book, either because the lettering was too small or because there wasn’t enough contrast between the text and the background. That’s not a criticism, except perhaps of time itself. The book repaid the effort.
These comics generally fall into three categories: personal, informative, and satirical. The satire is hit or miss, as satire tends to be, sometimes too on-the-nose. The informative pieces are all interesting, whether about history, biography, culture, or medicine. Among the personal narratives, some speak to me directly, making me feel seen and affirmed, and making me cry or laugh or do both at once. Those that don’t affect me with such immediacy, I appreciate for offering me a start at understanding the experiences of people who aren’t like me. They are also moving.
A chilling historical horror novel set in the American west in 1912 following a Lutheran …
This unusual vampire tale takes the form of a story within a story within a story. The embedded narratives span more than a century, but they are all one story, beautifully told. (I noticed one period vocabulary slip-up, but it’s something only a pedant like me would care about.) The characters are complex, and the dueling vampires might not be the most evil among them, not even when they feed on children. Jones creates his own vampire lore, similar to what we know from Stoker and Hollywood but also alien. The Blackfeet terms were challenging for me to keep track of, but that’s not a bad thing. Blackfeet history and culture are central to the story. A tense, eerie, tragic novel, not without wit and humor.
A quick read, 60 small pages with plentiful white space. Some useful ideas, but you have to decide what’s applicable to your own life. Quitting your job because the boss doesn’t respect you is easier if you’re a US-born, non-disabled, white cis man with no dependents than if you’re not all of those things. (I don’t know how many of those things are true of Gnade. He looks like a white guy in the author photo.) But Gnade doesn’t claim to bring universal truth. This book is very much “Here’s what works for me, maybe it can help you.”
The poems in Bob Sykora's debut collection, Utopians in Love, travel back and forth through …
Disclosure: I’m personally acquainted with Bob Sykora. We’re both on the committee for the Riverfront Readings series.
That said, I really enjoyed this book. Partly that’s because the author and I seem to share some interests (American Transcendentalism, surrealism, utopian thought), but mostly it’s because these are good poems, with heart and wit and many lines I wish I had written. The theme here is the human longing for a perfect world (society, relationship, self) we never manage to find or make.
This book isn’t titled How to Bring Down a Dictator. It’s also not How to Safely Stand Up to a Dictator. Ressa doesn’t guarantee success or safety, and she doesn’t pretend that resistance is easy. This is a memoir by a member of a profession (journalism) that’s targeted by authoritarian regimes. The application of Ressa’s life lessons is largely left as an exercise for the reader. The book is a call to arms, not a field manual, but it is filled with important information, principles, and strategies.
Two sisters hunt down killers and collect body parts, all the while complicating their lives …
This could best be described, I think, as cozy cosmic horror. I’m continually amazed by Jeremy C. Shipp’s imagination. Hard to review without spoilers, but if you find yourself transfixed by a desiccated eyeball in someone’s hand, you probably brought it on yourself.
To be honest I’ve been reluctant to read this book because I’ve seen such praise for it, that I was afraid it wouldn’t live up to its reputation. But Tananarive Due has never disappointed me yet. Characters to care about, in a suspenseful and poignant story. Just to complicate things for the main characters, who already are dealing with angry ghosts, a psychopathic warden, and the Klan, they also have to manage well-meaning allies who don’t believe in spirits or who do believe in the fairness of the justice system.
To be honest I’ve been reluctant to read this book because I’ve seen such praise for it, that I was afraid it wouldn’t live up to its reputation. But Tananarive Due has never disappointed me yet. Characters to care about, in a suspenseful and poignant story. Just to complicate things for the main characters, who already are dealing with angry ghosts, a psychopathic warden, and the Klan, they also have to manage well-meaning allies who don’t believe in spirits or who do believe in the fairness of the justice system.
