clásico, one of my favorites from last year

lmk if you read anything else from his trilogy The Cemetery of Forgotten Books. like Lonesome Dove, the first book was so perfect that I've been reluctant to read the rest of the books in the series

seriously i got no idea how you follow up a book as strong as that...
and now thats the second trilogy I have lined up where the first book was so good i dont want to read the rest lol
coz Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe was also really good
and of course i have Lonesome Dove on my tbr list lol. so many books, so little time!

outright impossible to read at times as it features some really f***ed up stories. also makes you realize war crimes as a concept is entirely fraudulent

Never read any Franzen before and I can see why he's so polarising but I thought this was f***ing class. Some of the most well drawn characters I've ever read. Completely pulls you into it's world and makes you care about all these flawed, miserable people. Just the right level of cynical and pretentious. Everything here worked for me.

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Short novel set in a seedy LA bar. Written entirely in second person as if you are the bartender, drunkenly trying to get through your shifts surrounded by dozens of drunks, criminals and lunatics living on the edge of society. I think both second person narrative and writing about alcohol can often be a bit crap but deWitt nails it all here. Really dark, really funny, great sense of place - you can practically feel how greasy it all is. Definitely read if you're a fan of Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son.

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Classic story of unrequited love set just prior to the second world war in London. Love the main character here, a schizophrenic loser who you can't help but root for. I think about 80% of this book takes place in pubs and bars and again there's such a great sense of time and place with it, it's all so gloomy and seedy, and you can feel the spectre of the impending war hanging over everybody. Really good.

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Enjoyed this way more than I thought I would. An autobiography of a French women from the 1940s through to the early 2000s, told in an entirely impersonal way through photos, events and memories. She doesn't use the words "I" or "me" once, instead her life story is told through the collective experience of the entire country. It's a great meditation on aging and memory and the passing of time, and the way the format and structure feeds into that is f***ing genius. And I also learnt a lot about the French, some of which helps explain why they're all so weird

The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison

Incredible book. Toni Morrison packs so much emotion and creates such a vivid cast, not a word is wasted. She breathes life into every character: each character is totally humanized despite some of their heinous acts, no one feels like a caricature or a stereotype. It slaps you in the face, there's no pathos, no characters trying to evoke your pity, no characters trying to prove they deserve to be treated with dignity - because nobody needs to demonstrate it when others receive innately. Unapologetic is a way overused term in this context, but honestly this is the first word that comes to mind when thinking about this book.

One of the most memorable parts to me is how she can pierce your heart with a banal episode of daily life. I'm thinking about the ice cream anecdote: so palpable in its intensity. Honestly, Claudia might be the favorite child character I've read.

High Rise - J. G. Ballard

I've been thinking about reading his works for the past year or so. I don't exactly remember when or where, but I came across a quote of his about the vanilla middle-class secretly dreaming of violence and that made me a bit curious about how he would explore it. I don't want to say I was disappointed in the book, it's a cool little short read - although, for a short book, it does drag down a little near the end. Ultimately, I think I was expecting a bit more. There are some nice ideas, the writing is cool, but I feel it never totally picks up. Still, I've been convinced to continue to read his work and I'll hope to find what I'm looking for

Pachinko - Min Jin Lee

I love historical fiction and I love intergenerational tale. It's a lovely book about immigration, matriarchs holding a family together, Korean people moving to Japan during the Japanese occupation. 500 pages, but honestly I think there was room for 500 pages more. I think this is ultimately my main gripe with the book - although I really enjoyed it, I can't help but think some of these time jumps deserved to be filled. Still, I guess the novel acts perfectly the way a family works - some characters become non-entities, but that's the same way someone wouldn't necessarily care on more than a surface level about how a distant uncle lives. Life moves on. Some characters are a bit too symbolic rather than fleshed-out humans, but that didn't bother me too much.

The writing is generally practical, but to me, it worked perfectly. It made me think of an oral fable, and the dichotomy worked especially well during the vile parts of the story. There are some stuff popping out a bit from nowhere sometimes, and by contrast with The Bluest Eye earlier, it does love to dip into gratuitous pathos, but I wasn't bothered. Ultimately a book about inner strength and mental fortitude and the desperate wish to escape.

I didn't know too much about the lives of Korean people being forced to move to Japan during the early 20th century, but I felt I learnt a lot. Although the novel doesn't intend to serve as a historical lesson and instead wants to focus on a family living through these times, Min Jin Lee clearly researched a lot. It made me think a lot about people without a nation - or I guess a nation without a state. Lots of interesting themes are explored throughout the book: sexism and misogyny, Christianism, beauty, self-hate, the obsession with discipline and vertical hierarchy.

| The final sentence might be one of my favorite ending sentences of all time. So simple and matter-of-factly, yet it encapsulates basically everything the book is about and callbacks to my favorite aspect of the novel which is the sisterhood between Sunja and Kyunghee |

January thus far

You should read Gustav Hasford. The Short Timers was the basis for Full Metal Jacket. There's a sequel called The Phantom Blooper. Both are better than Kubrick's adaptation. The best stuff on Nam short of the Hearts and Minds documentary.

Wasn’t Hasford mentally ill? I read a Kubrick biography recently and the guy seemed like he was going out of his mind. Probably from the PTSD

Nick Turse's Kill Anything That Moves is a top down view of the war that goes into the bodycount rationale and cribs from the military's own records to describe its genocidal rationale. That one made me nauseous.

He was a writer before and after the war, a correspondent during. Back when that meant developing novels in workshops with other working writers. He had a habit of stealing books from libraries I guess. Died of diabetes. The books themselves are crazy however.

Kubrick had icy relations with just about every writer he ever worked with. At least as early as Raymond Chandler. The guy who wrote the source material for AI Artificial Intelligence curses is name in the forword to that collection. Says Spielberg was a godsend by comparison. Then there's the Stephen King fiasco. He shopped Eyes Wide Shut around to many, many writers for an adequate adaptation. I just don't think there was room for others.

Yeah I know that was all in the book, but I thought I heard crazy stories about Hasford breaking in in libraries and s*** and actually going kinda crazy at that time, not just because of Kubrick.

Oh he was a klepto. Unsure of his demeanor though

Guess I'm a Denis Johnson fan. Movie trailer had Malick vibes. The novella is kind of like if the Coens made Big Fish. Didn't expect the humor.

good s***

Rounding out January

Read his first Parker novel. Some disturbing stuff in there. Didn't know he wrote a horror. Will check it out

Yeah I was gonna add that to my list thx for the reminder. Not sure I'd call The Ax horror but def worth the read. I started it bcoz it's been adapted into a movie called No Other Choice and I wanted to read it before seeing the film.

I'm getting back into reading, so I'm going to be lurking this thread to see what to read next.

I had no idea that movie had source material. Everyone makes it sound like another crazy Park Chan Wook joint. Nice

Suttree by Cormac McCarthy (1979) 471 pages

McCarthy's longest novel about about a social outcast living in poverty near Knoxville in 1950s and the adventures and characters he meets while trying to survive. the protagonist is a stoic man who doesn't say much but still has a strong presence. really it's the wide cast of characters that provide the humor and plot devices. as always, McCarthy's prose was amazing and made me go back and read whole sentences or paragraphs on nearly every page. half of the time to better understand what he wrote, half of the time just to appreciate the poetic descriptions of life and nature. that said, similarly to Blood Meridian, this novel was pretty light on narrative and story and instead used episodic tales to explore the lives of the rural poor. I'm a reader who usually likes more narrative, so while this didn't resonate for me much on that level, and at times did seem to drag, the prose and characterization still made this a worthy read and I can see why it's celebrated as one of his best

8.3/10

Vigil by George Saunders (2026) 192 pages

Saunders' latest novel that just came out last week about an oil tycoon on his deathbed being visited by a guardian angel figure and people from his past to see whether he will repent before dying. I like Saunders' short stories a lot, but similar to Lincoln in the Bardo, this one fell flat to me. just seemed very derivative and predictable at all times, and felt like a short story that was stretched out into a novel but without the emotional weight required. we've already seen this story done well so many times in works like A Christmas Carol and really the synopsis tells you everything to expect from this. some passages I liked but was very underwhelmed and disappointed otherwise

6.4/10

The Final Score by Don Winslow (2026) 302 pages

collection of short stories from probably my favorite contemporary crime writer, Don Winslow, that also came out last week. only six stories but they were all well paced and dealt with different aspects of the crime world including heists, mob ties, and surviving in prison. just entertaining reads and Winslow as always is a talented storyteller who mixes humor, grit, and psychology. they're already talking about adapting some of these stories, and my only knock on this collection is that I wish it were longer. Winslow is an instant-read author for me and despite talk of retirement, I hope this isn't his last book

8.5/10