love that one. the story Buba from that collection is one of my favorite Bolaño short stories

A "naturalist" account of the life of an otter; almost akin to a nature documentary

A down-on-his-luck white man in Africa hopes to gain an audience with the king; has quite a surreal quality

Interesting overview of some of the important deities/stories/concepts of Hinduism drawing on visual art

Two of my favourites

Haven't posted here in ages but best books I've read in the last few months are Song of Solomon, A Visit from the Goon Squad, Augustus, Turtle Diary and Dune.

Song Of Solomon especially is an all timer, perfect book

reading Song of Solomon rn

Dune by Frank Herbert

5/5

i need some time to truly wrap my head around this one, but all in all this was a very excellent book. it’s a dense read, but only in the sense of the terminology imo. once you are able to get over that hurdle and let the book take you over, you don’t wanna put it down. i cant recommend it enough, even if you aren’t into sci-fi

I absolutely tore through this on my holiday last month, so much fun

I'm reading this soon!

4/5

Johnson's debut might have came out in the 80's but this has that gritty 70's feel all over it. Two drifters meet on the road and all hell follows! Johnson always knew how to write about addiction, crime and broken people but he really fine tuned it as his career went on.

Solid debut

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

Somehow I find myself always reading Butler towards the beginning of the year. Anyways wow how convenient is it that this book begins in the year 2024. Very prescient as usual of Butler but this book in particular of hers is extremely timely not only just for the fact it's the same year but because it opts out of the typical apocalyptic tropes and goes for a more realistic descent of a nation. Yes, climate is a major problem in this world but the real catalyst comes from the big wham combo of the spiritual, economical, and social collapse of American society. We can only keep up this facade for so long before the levee breaks and people turn into their most primal selves. Anyways, really good book, highly recommend. Definitely see similarities between this and Xenogenesis series but I'm like the way she takes the more grounded approach. Also I like how she approached the idea of writing a story about how a religious figure could be created in the modern world. I have already began Parable of the Talents so yea... another banger from Butler, no surprise there.

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

high concept novel about a woman who's able to choose books from a library that allow her to enter into different realities of how her life played out. premise was entertaining enough to get me hooked, but like a lot of these bestsellers with intriguing plots, there just wasn't enough depth for it to reach its potential and it often came across as preachy or pandering

7/10

Foster by Claire Keegan

third book of hers I've read now and this one might be my favorite. another short novella that is a quick read, this one's about a girl who is given to another family because her family can't afford to raise her anymore. Keegan is just a talented writer who is able to build these short intimate stories that have a lot of heart without being manipulative

8/10

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

wow this one was special. I had only read Beloved before this and while I remember really liking it, Song of Solomon just resonated with me so much more and is simply a perfect novel. it's about a mid 20th century family and their history. Morrison just knocks it out of the park with her prose, depth, and storytelling. I wanted to go back and read it again as soon as I finished. can't say enough about this one.
100/10 and now in my top 5

Vineland by Thomas Pynchon

my 3rd Pynchon novel and I did like this one a lot though I still find his style challenging. definitely the type of author you gotta concentrate on while reading. this was about hippies and revolutionaries in the 80's still living with the effects of their failed revolution of the 60's while dealing with a new war on d**** and old enemies. captivating plot but sometimes I had to go back a few pages and read again because the abrupt story and character changes were a bit confusing. also found it annoying how 2 random characters would pop up and get like 10 pages of description then never get mentioned again lol. but still, this was an entertaining read with interesting characters. made me wanna read more Pynchon and I can't wait to see what PTA does with this for his upcoming film

8/10

Started reading this Toni Morrison one today

take your time and enjoy it

Quick entertaining read. Idk they made a movie bout this. I might peep

I'm about to finish this book too. The things the Japanese did to the civilians and POWs was hard to imagine. These ppl killed approximately 100k to 300k ppl in gruesome ways. Thousands of extremely young and old women were raped .

I forgot about the live human experiments too!

Just finished Lonesome Dove

Absolute classic.

picked it up a couple months ago but i still haven’t peeped it. happy to hear you enjoyed it though

Olive Kitteridge

This was depressing to read. It's a story divided into seemingly unrelated short stories with different characters living in a small town in Maine. The catch is that each of these stories involve the titular character in some capacity, including a story from her perspective and her husband's.

I wasn't particularly too big on this one, because you'll find stories you like more than the other as is the nature of short stories, but holy f*** was this dour. The last page of this book shines, however.

3/5

Small Things Like These

This is another book about a small town and focuses on one Bill Furlong dealing with his coal business and his family on the week before Christmas, but Bill makes a discovery at the local convent that challenges his silence and complicity in the goings on around town.

As as introductory read to Claire, this was pretty good. I'm told that she goes deeper into character study with her other works, so I'll look for those too.

3.5/5

Survivor

I picked this one up as a palette-cleanser after those two books above (They're depressing), but I ended up not liking this one by much lol.

It's my fourth Palahniuk read after Fight Club, Choke, and Invisible Monsters. In Survivor, we get to hang out with the one of the last few survivors of a cult who's trying to make it in a busy world, until the few other members start getting killed off.

Anyone who has read those Palahniuk books I just listed should know what to expect: an aloof protagonist who's borderline sociopathic, surrounded by aloof secondary characters who are borderline sociopathic, sprinkled with a quasi-related list of facts about whatever the subject is during a scene. Maybe I've outgrown these novels, or I've grown less cynical with age, but I wasn't a fan of this one . The book dives into celebrity culture in the second half as well, which I don't care for, but if that's your thing, you might find something to like.

2/5

Poor Things

I read this one to prepare myself for the film adaptation, which ended up going in a different direction and made some changes that didn't quite make sense to me, but the book itself is a good read. Just know that it's a different vibe from the movie (This is a political novel at its core)

To summarize, It's a tale of a reanimated woman who sets out to understand the world, and part of what makes this book work, is that the world at the time as she knows it, is absurd, but that's what is considered normal. You couple her innocence at the start with her brutal realizations as the novel goes on, and you get a book that's aiming to say a lot. For the most part, it succeeds. I'm being vague about the details on this one but that's because I think it's worth a read, but let me emphasize again, that this is not the same vibe as the movie, and if you approach it expecting that, you may be disappointed.

4/5

Glad you dug Song of Solomon as much as I did, honestly haven't stopped thinking about it since I read it. The ending ffs

Matt Haig is far too much of a little nerd for me to ever consider picking up one of his books

This whole thing is told in one long paragraph over a single night as a dying Chilean priest reflects on the key events of his life. He skirts through the country's literary, religious and political worlds and is haunted on his deathbed by a cast of characters that he crossed in each of them. There's a flamboyant literary critic, Pablo Neruda and Ernst Junger, there's American spies torturing people in basements, there's Pinochet himself desperately trying to learn about Marxism, and there's a whole f***ing section on falconry obsessed clergymen!

It's a really good microcosm of most of
Bolaño's major preoccupations and serves as a pretty damning condemnation of all those in arts, religion and politics who were unwilling to actively oppose the Pinochet regime.

A minor masterpiece by a genius

Lot of Cormac praise in here. Think I’m going to read The Road by Cormac next. Currently halfway through a trip to the stars

Purple Hibiscus

This is a re-read. The story follows 15 year old Kambili going through an awakening with her family and in her love life, while under her pious but wealthy father's harsh supervision, and the backdrop of a Nigeria seized in a coup.

For a debut novel, this is very good, and a showcase of greater things to come from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. There are sinister overtones of domestic violence intertwined with religion, along with how it affects familial ties. You get to see how Kambili struggles to relate to other members of her extended family because of her father's status and his rules that have stunted her emotionally. It's an interesting read.

3.5/5

Just finished Heat 2 and that one had me on the edge of my seat. Gonna let it breathe a little before I start on The Wager by David Grann.