The best novelist of the last 30 years also wrote incredible short stories, obviously. There's a couple of duds in here but for the most part they're brilliant. The intextricable paths of art and life, small moments of indescribable beauty and an underlying sense of dread throughout. It's classic Bolaño. Highlights for me were "Sensini" which may be the most tender thing he ever wrote and the title story which is absolutely electric.

About as high concept as anything I've read by him (or anyone). Just an insane premise and it's a miracle that he managed to pull it off this well.

My misses recommended I read this so I don't want to be too horrible about it lol, and to be fair I did enjoy reading it for the most part. The story is great, love the characters and it handles its themes of religion, coming of age and destiny really well, at least at the start. But it goes on for far too long, the writing becomes a bit cloying and the ending is such contrived, manipulative nonsense that it almost undoes all the good stuff. One of those that I don't regret reading at all and enjoyed for the most part, but the more distance I have from it the more I sort of hate it.

Margo's got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe

3/5

Margo has a baby at 19. Margo needs financial support. Margo starts an OnlyFans.

It started off cool but it got less and less interesting as it went on and by the end I just wanted it to wrap up. The loose ends were too cleanly tied, the romance subplot was also contrived. Her OnlyFans buddies were boring and I skipped everytime they were on the page. I like Margo overall, but yeah, this was just okay. I'm slowly learning that I should avoid books where social media plays a prominent part in the plot; I tend to not care for these, but if you like some wrestling/WWE trivia, then you might get a kick out of this.

5/5

Great work on humility and approaching life as an enthusiastic child to reach the divine.

Just finished All the Pretty Horses

What a fantastic book.

loved that but just wait til you get to The Crossing

my favorite Cormac and one of my favorite books of all time

I’m gonna read dungeon crawler Carl next lol for something easy on the brain for more McCarthy lol

But damn I loved his writing. I also love the southwest so right up my alley

How many books in that series? I'm thinking of restarting Blood Meridian.

it's a loosely connected trilogy; All The Pretty Horses, The Crossing, and Cities of the Plain

first two aren't connected and then the characters intersect in the third. all are worth reading imo but The Crossing holds a special place in my heart

McCarthy has become one of my favorite authors and I know Blood Meridian is considered his magnum opus but oddly enough that one didn't really work for me, might have to reread it

Thanks for the info. I'm actually looking for a entry point when it comes to his works but I've had blood Meridian at 50% complete since 2019 lol, might as well restart. But before that, I think I'll do the Border trilogy, maybe a little Bolano (was thinking Savage Detectives) and we'll see how I like these

I think All the Pretty Horses would be a good entry point but if you don't want a trilogy then The Road or No Country for Old Men are great entry points too

Bolaño is another one of my favorite authors. I started with The Savage Detectives and that had me hooked

got some bangers on your list, enjoy bro!

Oh yeah I think I tried The Road too but I wasn't in the headspace for that much greyness lol. It was a while back. All The Pretty Horses will do for now, then I'll work my way up. For No Country, I've only seen the film. Is it a 1:1 of the novel? Or does Cormac has his own spin different from the Coens

yea the movie is a pretty faithful adaptation iirc

Bolaño mentioned my goat

Savage Detectives is great, Distant Star and Amulet (top book of all time) are two of my favorites, I prefer them because I feel SD drags at points but your really can't go wrong with any of his work

Bet, I'll look into amulet first then

Chronicle in Stone by İsmail Kadare

Cool WWII part novel/part memoir about an Albanian kid (like 8-10 y.o.) in a town that keeps captured and re-captured by the Axis and the Allies. The reality of life itself is surreal, the more magical elements are ambiguous enough that they could just be the provincial kid's understanding of the world. It reminds me of Mr. Garcia Marquez in style, breadth of characters, and how richly realized the place is. The stone that the titles refers to is the village itself, built from stone into the steep side of a mountain. The echoes of the massive cisterns in the basement of the houses feel are rendered real by Mr. Kadare, probably because they are to him.

What Happened Here: the Bush Chronicles by Eliot Weinberger

A collection of essays written in the days, weeks, months, and years after 9/11 and one from between Bush's 2000 election and 9/11. I've never really heard anyone talk about Bush's presidency as a coup before, but Mr. Weinberger makes a good case for it. Its crazy what Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Powell, Rice, and more got away with. Enriching themselves and destabilizing and entire region entirely through lies and illegal warfare. We should never stop hating them.

Faraway the Southern Sky by Joseph Andras

Again part memoir/part biography of Hô Chi Minh's time in Paris in the 1920s, before the Vietnamese War of Independence. For the purposes of the book Uncle Hô's time there is shrouded in mystery, mostly pieced together from French secret police surveillance and supposition. What's known is that he agitated for left-wing causes, wrote for papers and magazines in favor of Vietnamese independence, attended two Communist Internationals, and helped found the French Communist Party. The narrative slips between the 1920s and a modern researcher (the author) following his trail. The researcher examines Uncle Hô's impact on history, and the path of world revolution in the years following Vietnam's ringing victory over the French. Fantastic book, short, lyrical, and powerful.

Its funny how a lot of people don't remember or frankly weren't even born yet to understand what the Bush administration essential did during those terms. Conspiracy theories aside he really was the worst. All these years later he's quite the artist and considered likable now

Yeah dude, it's crazy to think they just lived normal lives after that. It's almost unbelievably evil what they did and it's so obvious with just a little research that they knew full well they were lying about WMDs. It was purely just to get richer. There's also a bunch of stuff in the book about his election that I didn't know about, how blatantly it was stolen and how incestuous the American election equipment market is/was with republicans

...So I'm going through a break up. It's been the toughest 2 months of my life. Some days we're so close to getting back together and some days we hurt each other so bad it feels like there's no hope for reconciliation. In the midst of all this, I'm trying to find a semblance of normalcy in life. I went to my favorite local bookstore. They usually carry niche literature. The deep vellum, dalkey archive, NYRB type of stuff. Lots of indie publishing. Lots of political, marxist texts. Art books. etc... ANYWAYS I went last month as a form of retail therapy to help myself feel better and found they had started carrying romance books which is a pretty big turn for them. The publisher was 831 stories which I only learned about after finishing the book. I picked this book up as a way to just i don't know... escape? I know it's weird... reading a romance to get your mind away from a breakup but for me it made total sense. I wanted to read something that romanticizes love. Because I romanticize love sometimes too.

Either way long intro but I thought this book was cute. It follows this woman who's a wine seller and her boss sends her to France to learn more about wine and she meets this sexy french man. This ain't reinventing the wheel or anything but I sort of like how it deals with their romance in a realistic way. Her escapade in France is one that has a time limit. She has a job, a life back home (albiet not much). And her romantic interest is in a bit of a pickle himself. They're romance is fast and passionate but also quite intimate and personal. I find it so interesting how women (because this was written by a woman) view a whirlwind romance. They always make time to build an emotional connection. It's never just about the sex. I really like that.

Anyways this was a long post, this was a silly little novel. Helped get my mind away from the harder stuff in life right now. I read up a little bit about 831 stories. Apparently they are a publishing company that wants to separate themselves from other "romance" publishing companies. So that's why their covers look the way they do. It's romance for people who don't like romance. Really interesting, feels almost elitist but at the same earnest in its mission. Here's an article about them nytimes.com/2025/11/13/books/review/831-stories-romance.html

In the last 70 or so pages of this

Just read Patrick Radden Keefe's new book London Falling in two days. Absolutely impeccable work as always, think it might be my favorite or at least top 2 from him

Count of Monte Cristo was really good but the ending left me disappointed. It was good for like 80% of it.

What do you think? Looks kind of sick

Just wrapped this up. Pretty quick read, it’s a historical novel about fernand iveton a French Algerian revolutionary’s struggle against colonialism and Algerian independence. Story weaves back and forth between his trial for an attempt to bomb a factory and of his relationship with his wife. Really good character development for such a short novel. 4/5

It’s awesome bc this stuff is right up my alley. I knew the broad strokes of this stuff like coups in Iran and Guatemala, MKULTRA, Bay of Pigs, JFK assassination, etc. but Talbot fills in a lot of the gaps and weaves a compelling story of Dulles’ command of it all. He comes off as a calm old oracle sitting atop and directing a covert globe-spanning imperium of murder and influence, at the behest of his corporate buddies.

The last third of the book is about JFK’s break with that order and the events in Dallas. I’ll finish it in the next couple of days.

It seems JFK was the last serious chance we had at a free and democratic world. Dulles and his friends made sure to scuttle that

fantastic book, glad you liked it. I would really recommend Andras' other book Faraway The Southern Sky, it's a similarly political novel and it goes crazy