House Mother Normal – B.S. Johnson
I am constantly conflicted with Johnson. Is he a successful experimental author because of or in spite of his formidable ability to spin a yarn?
WATCHFIRES explores how personal accounts of cancer and autoimmune disorder might illuminate the collective contemporary moment.
My Private Property – Mary Ruefle
Voice is a strange part of me. It gives language to what I experience, and experiences alongside me. Voice — in speech or in Ruefle’s case writing — also affects the very experience it tries to articulate.
Homesick for Another World – Otessa Moshfegh
We’re human, we’re fucked, how do we even love when the impulse yields nothing but disgusting spores because we’re breathing into the necks of garbage people: it’s 2017.
Folding the Red into the Black – Walter Mosley
Written before the Trump ascendency, Walter Mosley’s UNTOPIA stands as an accessible point-by-point inventory of real systemic shortcomings dressed up by American optimism.
This Blue Novel – Valerie Mejer Caso
The line “English is a language of water and good for recounting disasters” reads like meta-commentary about these translations.
It has been eleven months since I quit smoking cigarettes; eleven months and seven days. And I can honestly say I only think about smoking several times a day.
Living a Feminist Life – Sara Ahmed
This book is very kind because it teaches you to read between the white men, even if it’s chairs.
Visceral Poetics – Eleni Stecopoulos
In [Stecopoulos’] travels through health, “words, vocables, writing, and philological aura” exist as medical technology.
Bright Magic: Stories – Alfred Döblin
The variety of Döblin’s work may have hurt his chances at posterity, but it’s this same quality that makes BRIGHT MAGIC such a joy to read.