Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (Vladimir Nabakov)
Most books can be read; some books have to be studied. For example, I signed up to join an Independent Study on Ulysses in college because I wanted to read it, and I knew I’d ....
Tag: Books
Ideal Cities (Erika Meitner)
Someone recommended Erika Meitner's work to me, but didn't mention a specific title. I chose this one because I liked the idea of poetry about cities, possibly even utopian cities, possibly even poetry about utopian ....
Shoot an Iraqi: Art, Life and Resistance Under the Sun (Wafaa Bilal and Kari Lydersen)
Yeah, how about that title? Can you imagine walking into a bookstore and saying, “I’d like Shoot an Iraqi“? (For the record, I ordered online from an independent bookstore so I didn’t actually have to ....
The Language of Baklava (Diana Abu-Jaber)
Literature of the in-between or, if you must, liminality, will always have the same basic plot – the tensions, both internal and external, that come with having one foot in two cultures. What was new ....
The Dead Key (D.M. Pulley)
I’ve been struggling to figure out how to describe the quality of Pulley’s writing that I so admire. I think I have settled on ‘immersive.’ I open her books and just fall right in. I ....
Nightshift Belonging to Lorca (Sean Thomas Dougherty)
A quick Google search just informed me that the cliche, “Politics makes strange bedfellows” was inspired by a line from Shakespeare. It came to mind when I saw this title because my instinct told me ....
Frankenstein in Baghdad (Ahmed Saadawi)
For all of it epic ambition and scrawling scope, I am a big fan of Frankenstein. Mary Shelley made no small plans with her ghost story, and I respect that. It’s one of those classics ....
The Street Kids (Pier Paolo Pasolini)
The challenge of picaresque novels is that they have to end. The form Pasolini chose here matches the content. The kids he describes, almost always boys, are drifting through life – through money, through sexual ....
Waiting for the Barbarians (J.M. Coetzee)
I read another of Coetzee’s novels a while back. I am pretty sure it was Disgrace. That I can’t say for sure tells you what I thought about it. It’s not that I thought it ....
How a Poem Moves: A Field Guide for Readers of Poetry (Adam Sol)
The subtitle with the cover to support suggests the light touch Sol will take with this project, and this approach serves him quite well.A digression: When I was in college, we had been assigned to ....