I really am loving this. Currently a little mired in the 'book review' section of it (though the Beckett chapter is both good and relevant to what I’ve been working out in my own work), and although some of the ideas are dated a lot of the way(s) of thinking are not; it’s kinda like how no matter what you think about the prescription, a Marxist critique is always useful. Except this is books and metaphor and stuff, e.g.,

So far, very, very good. And kinda fun!

I’m honestly not quite sold on this one, but Alia really liked it. I was about to give up and then Geddes did something really smart in the way he introduced something so I’m going to give it another twenty pages or so, we’ll see.

So goddamn good and fun. My (very cool, kinda socialist) grandparents gave this to me a few years ago and I’m just now getting around to it. I really love it.

These were wild. Jealousy is, I think, a masterpiece. How he builds with the repetition and variation is genuinely masterful. I didn’t like In the Labyrinth nearly as much though I did very much enjoy it. I think it ended up falling into my genre expectations a little too much, but was still pretty wonderful. Jealousy, though. You’ve got to read Jealousy.

Was good to read the first Perec novel — you see the beginning of a lot of tendencies. I think I liked A Man Asleep better but I get why Things was such a big deal when it came out.

If you don’t want to read the whole book at least go read this.

I like this but find it somewhat a slog; a friend lent it to me and I look forward to discussing it with him once I’m done with it. A lot about the prose is fun and exciting (on some level), and I appreciate that it is doing a lot though it doesn’t really demand that the reader follow everything: the overwhelming nature of the prose is a part of the point, I think.

A club book! Love club.

A friend asked me to read this real quick with her and it was indeed real quick. I agree broadly with a lot of what he was saying but it did feel very acutely post-2008, if that makes sense.

I listened to this via the Libby app from my library, to pair with club’s reading of The Second Sex. I really enjoyed it; I love literary biographies.

So fucking good, this one. Ripped right through it, too.

Jane told me to read this for place; it’s good for place and a few other things. It had been about a decade since I’d last read it. I have thoughts but not so so many, maybe.

I Put a pause on her craft book because my friends who’d beat me to reading it told me to read more of her novels first, as she talks about them a lot. So I’m reading this, and it’s really good. Like, really good. What she was able to accomplish by (for example) only page 14…​? Fucking marvelous. Amazing. Also there’s lots of sex in this book so far, which is always fun.

Feels appropriate to be reading this right now.

This has been on my list for a very long time, and though dated in a lot of cringy ways, it was a very fun read, I’m not going to lie (file this alongside things like reading Ian Fleming: sometimes so good, sometimes so…​ chauvinistic, sexist, racist, etc.; I realize I could/should be reading other things. I realize that.)

Ugh this was so good someone please read this so we can talk about it. So, so goddamn good.

I thought this was a very well-put-together collection; I liked all the mirrorings across the book. I really liked some of the poems. Wasn’t so much excited by others. I did enjoy the prose poems for the most part.

So, so wonderful.

I really enjoyed this, in the end. The "Los Angeles 2012" chapter, in particular, does some really wonderful and exciting things with mediated storytelling.

Finished! I have some thoughts on this. I can’t say I loved it but I think I sort of figured it out by the end. Some things about it were interesting; some things about it were very tiring.

This was just so fucking good. John Murillo introduced me to Nicole at AWP in Chicago in like…​fucking 2012. I’m ashamed I waited so long after this came out to read it. It’s so fucking good. Also, I finally finished John’s book, Amerikan Kontemporary Poetry, which maybe didn’t get onto this list? I should check but it’s near midnight and I want to go to bed.

Alia read this so I read it and it was really fun and nice ("fun" is the wrong word, or no — I’ll say it was fun). It was a very enjoyable read.

This was the next "Foucault Club" book! We’re still kind of working through it, but I couldn’t wait (slash needed a "win" the other day, and finishing a book counts).

Delightful! Also, so interesting! From a narrative point of view, a political point of view…​so fun! ALSO MY SUPER COOL FRIEND GOT HER FIRST ACADEMIC PAPER PUBLISHED IN A HUGE DEAL JOURNAL IN PART ON THIS! I need to read the essay still, but very exciting…​

This was so good. Weird, and I’m still not 100% sure how or why it was so good, but it was (I stayed up well past my bedtime to finish it the other night, like I was a kid again). The topic, obviously, is intense and interesting, but I think what gripped me most was the prose, and specifically something about the oblique repetitions…​a lot like the memory of a place, come to think of it.

I’ve had this on my shelf for years, but a friend of mine borrowed Jane’s Nine Island (which is excellent) and I’ve been wanting to read something very different and this fit the bill. Who knew Ovid was so sexy? Also, I spent a lot of time working with Jane as an undergrad, and it’s a pleasing kind of nostalgia to read her work.

A really wonderful meditation on the novel, art, erotics, rhythm—​I really like Carole Maso. She came to UMB to give a reading once and read for (I shit you not) an hour or an hour and a half straight, and it was freakin' enchanting.

I’ve thus far gotten through "Which Moped with Chrome-Plated Handlebars at the Back of the Yard?" which was very fun, and am a few pages into "The Exeter Text," which is pleasingly wild though requires a certain kind of attention that I’m struggling with this weekend (10/18)

The "O.G." Foucault Club book…​ very interesting and fun. Also, Foucault is hilarious! The reading group is with a bunch of writers (a couple of prosers and a poet) so we ended up having a bunch of interesting discussions about the literary style of this one, in addition to all that "discourse" nonsense (it’s not nonsense).

I really enjoyed both these novels. This was recommended to me by ol' Askold Melnyczuk when I was working on my MFA thesis, and though I only just got around to reading it (a year or so late), I really enjoyed it! Plus it felt very…​ timely, given the current political circumstances and my evolving thinking about "decadence" in today’s America.

I thought this was actually really fun. Turns out a lot of my friends really don’t like Nabokov. I don’t know how I feel about him in a big sense, but I found this one delightful. Very playful and fun.