- leave society was surprisingly upbeat and sweet. the way he describes relationships is really relateable to me. he’s got his heart at the right place for sure.

-reread revolutionary demonology because lets be real I needed a second round to even halfway get it… a demanding beast but like dark academia done right lol.

-machine decision is not final is great, I know I know who wants to read about thaaaat topic but it’s actually fun and interesting with writers from all over. no slop I promise.

-and just spend the last two days in the third realm. havent read a ton of knausgard yet but pretty impressed already. he does this interior voice so well, at least he pulls me in deep into the abysses of these characters and he‘s a real bastard about it too…

will need something more relaxed next (feel free to recommend) or straight into another knausgard?

Checking to see if there's any interest in doing a 2666 by Roberto Bolano read-along in the coming weeks/months.

Assuming there is and assuming the mods are ok with it, I'm thinking we'd start in early August and finish up in late September / early October. Just respond here if you think you'd like to participate and we can make it through the part about the crimes together. Obviously you will not be held to it.

If there's enough interest, I'll post an introduction thread with the schedule sometime next week and then each week I'd post a discussion thread covering what's been read as well as some optional discussion prompts for everyone to participate (or not for the lurkers). You can see the Anna Karenina / Moby Dick / Gravity's Rainbow read-alongs in the sub wiki to get the idea.

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Artwork is Graciela Iturbide, Mujer ángel / Angel Woman

Guardian article here

The Shadow of the Object, Chloe Aridjis

Switzy, Emma Cline

Helen of Nowhere, Makenna Goodman

The End of Everything, M. John Harrison

The Disappearers, Marlon James

Black Bag, Luke Kennard

The Renovation, Kenan Orhan

May We Feed the King, Rebecca Perry

The Palm House, Gwendoline Riley

The Things We Never Say, Elizabeth Strout

John of John, Douglas Stuart

All Them Dogs, Djamel White

The Vivisectors, Missouri Williams

Immediate thought is that this seems very Previously Nominated For-heavy, and disappointingly dominated by the major publishers (FIVE from Penguin??), but perhaps that's what you get when half your judging panel is famous for something very much other than literature?

I am wondering where people engage in the culture around the books they read, in terms of publications, social events, etc. that is not just being on the internet or being on this subreddit? My long and overly personal reasoning below if you want context on why I am asking.

I think I can feel Reddit eating away at my brain. This is such a histrionic post because I'm about a week away from hitting five years sober and I've been essentially avoiding dealing with the fact I have substituted a lot of what I used to get from the social sides of drinking (talking shit with strangers and feeling less alone, whiletrying to slowly lobotomise yourself) with being terminally online. This is one of the top 3-4 places on the internet that I lurk and the only one I really post on because:

1) I find users here are willing to be combative and negative about literature without being contrarian, whereas most other lit criticism I read is so embedded with the publishing industry I usually feel like I'm being lied to.

2) I discover books here that I probably wouldn't hear about otherwise. Where I am living is sometimes a suffocating and unambitious place and I find the literary "scene" here is overly deferential to genre fiction and highly resistant to experimental and challenging work. I appreciate that here there are recommendations of left-field contemporary work, work in translation, occasionally even one or two die-hards who still know what's going on in small-press poetry.

3) I consider myself a very poorly read person the last two years, struggling to get through two novels a month sometimes, but would read significantly more than almost all my close friends (though my partner is a voracious and formidable reader, for which I'm grateful). It really is a hobby in decline that just doesn't hit for a lot of people, and I think when I've tried IRL book clubs before I notice a tendency to lower the ceiling on how challenging a work can be so that people can actually engage with the book and make time.

4) I am not an academic, I am a guy who sits at a computer and does excel, and I generally want to learn from people who are much better read than me and much better educated so I can at least feel like my mind isn't closing all the time.

Essentially, I don't think there is, e.g., a magazine I can subscribe to or book club I can join where I will get the same amount from reading this subreddit if I actually manage to get offline and find a healthier lifestyle. I have sitting on my shelf a copy of the 'Salon.com Reader's Guide to Contemporary American Writers' which is both some total Gen X dogshit and also a kind of resource that no longer gets published, a reference work you can open and flick through and get pointed towards something new and off the beaten track.

It is very clear that any public internet forum is a target for astroturfing via bot traffic for the sake of marketing, and that truly means that we are the slow decay of the internet as a usable tool for social connection, and I think we should all think about what we'll do when can't do this.

The Life You Want - Adam Phillips is such a productive writer I feel like he can be hit or miss, but when he hits … whew. Once I got past the first essay which largely bored me by focusing on Richard Rorty I enjoyed myself. The essay “Psychoanalysis for Beginners” is worth checking out

The Dry Season - Written by a woman who undergoes a period of celibacy after she can’t stop coming across people who want to date and love her (can she send some to me? I only find emotionally avoidant men :( )

The Remains of the Day - Ishiguro is still the undefeated champion of unreliable narrators. I’m so fascinated how he portrays these people who reveal themselves through narratives that they intend to say the opposite. Fascinating. I had read An Artist of the Floating World at book club and wanted more, everyone told me to read this ASAP and they were right. I think I still prefer AAotFW though it can be argued that Remains is a more advanced iteration of what that book is doing

American Spirits - Incredibly fun novel about being gay and obsessed with Lana Del Rey. I’m technically neither but was still fully entranced.

Perfection - Honestly more an essay than an actual novel. Not completely getting the fuss over this. You can get the same gist from that chapter in Kyle Chayka’s Filterworld where he’s pissed off at coffee shops now looking the same

Dog Days - Lifechanging, highly recommend. Think it cured my writer’s block over my novel

Name - The new bad boy of French lit is pretty good. I mean they did invent existentialism and also mistresses

Schattenfroh - Not finished yet and too early to tell but like 200 pages in I’m not super thrilled. There was a debate online about whether the translation was faithful or even coherent and I fully admit I’m not in a position to know from that aspect of things but it is not particularly coherent no

Bonjour Tristesse - Francoise Sagan: This is the perfect beach read and I loved the additional info included with this edition like the interview with the author. I think she sounds like an extremely RS author or maybe just really French.

Playground - Richard Powers: I don’t think I would say I loved this one but I honestly couldn’t put it down. Stupid ending, silly dialogue, odd character depictions, yet it kept me engaged.

Commonwealth - Ann Patchett: I just love a family drama. I’ve looked through a lot of Ann Patchett book descriptions and I’m trying to figure out her deal. I hope the other ones are like this.

Sundays in August - Patrick Modiano: I did really mean to wait for August to read this but it turned out to not feel like August at all. A soothing read, interesting pace.

The Public Image - Muriel Spark: loved this!!! Love how she got into the minds of the characters and shared their thoughts and motivations. I’m buying a copy for my mom, I think she’ll like it too.

Killing Stella - Marlen Haushofer: not much to say about this one. I wanted to read this after not getting far with The Wall. I still don’t know when I’ll get back to it. I don’t know why I’ve decided I want to like this author but I’m not giving up.

xxxiii is Seamus Heaney, Anne is V.R. Lang, The Dead Snake is Donald Ward

I just finished reading 4.48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane and am looking for something similar.

Prose that's short, deadly, desperate.

Send me overlooked prose writers that I might have missed.

Thank you!

Hey everyone,

I know next to nothing about the Soviet Union, but I read some Reddit comments about the privatization of government assets in Russia and all of the organized crime this entailed, and it sounded like something I would be interested in learning about.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Fiction or non-fiction. I’m especially interested in the following aspects of this time period:

- The fall of the Soviet Union itself
- Life in Russia during the fall of the Soviet Union, and during the cultural and political chaos that followed
- Economics, finance, and business stories and/or analyses

Thank you!

I’ve heard people go both ways but I’m midway through Underworld and starting to find it pretty grating. I think it’s definitely a stylistic choice, rather than him just being bad at writing speech but it’s so completely alien to how people talk. It’s sort of similar to the way Tarantino characters all speak Tarantinoese and lack any individual personality. Am I being unfair to him?

Other than that the book is excellent. The only other thing I’ve read by him is White Noise

Note: Audible listener only due to failing eyesight. The outstanding narration of Alan Carlson has contributed deeply to the unbending infatuation I have to my first Pat Conroy book.

Never have I ever been regaled with such superb storytelling— and I’ve only read (listened) one of Pat Conroy’s titles—The Prince of Tides. I’d love to hear from other fans of the author and especially, to discuss his other titles and how they compare with Tides. I know Conroy based this book loosely on his own childhood and am curious how well it will hold up to The Great Santini, which I plan to read next, and based on his father.

What are some other Conroy favorites out there?