Lady Chatterley’s Brother The first ebook in the new TQC Long Essays series,  called “an exciting new project” by Chad Post of Open Letter and Three Percent. Why can't Nicholson Baker write about sex? And why can Javier Marias? We investigate why porn is a dead end, and why seduction paves the way for the sex writing of the future.
Available now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and direct from this site:
Translate This Book! Ever wonder what English is missing? Called "a fascinating  read" by The New Yorker, Translate This Book! brings together over 40 of the top translators, publishers, and authors to tell us what books need to be published in English. Get it on Kindle for 99 cents.
|
Shop though these links = Support this site
Interviews from Conversational Reading  See this page for interviews with leading authors, translators, publishers, and more.
|
All my favorite reads of 2010 collected here.
Quoting myself, Wonder book is a little more difficult to write up in short form than some of the other titles I’ve discussed lately because there isn’t really a dazzling conceit to the book. It’s simply about a man driven insane by the Nazi legacy in Belgium. (And it’s interesting to note that this is the second straight year the BTB longlist features a European title that deals centrally with collaborationist war guilt; last year was The Darkroom of Damocles, a fine book in its own . . . continue reading, and add your comments
My reading divides into 3 kinds of books: 1) the books I just don’t care for; 2) the books that are pleasing but ultimately forgettable; and 3) the books that force me to reckon with them. Of the three kinds, the third is indisputably the best. Even when the ultimate reckoning does not come out in their favor, these are books that have seduced me to live in their world, and I will not forget them easily. . . . continue reading, and add your comments
If you come to my house and look at my bookshelves, you can very quickly and easily distinguish the gods from the demigods and lesser beings. The gods simply take up more space, and they do so in the shape of rows of books with their names on them. Thomas Bernhard is a god, and right now he has a 7-book tract of shelf that will surely grow very, very soon. . . . continue reading, and add your comments
Mimesis is one of those titles that everybody talks about so much that you begin to get the idea that to not have read it is some horrible mark against you, like having a third eyeball, or, even worse, a copy of Shift: A Novel (Gate of Orpheus Trilogy) in your hand. But then you actually look at this brick of literary criticism, and you begin to think that it’s one of those books that people more often claim to have read than actually read. But no. While I’m not going to go so far as Borges did . . . . . . continue reading, and add your comments
If you pick up Atlas of the European Novel 1800-1900 and flip through it, it’ll look like something you might see in The Believer. Your eye will be drawn to all these interesting diagrams with suggestive titles like “Colonial wealth in British sentimental novels.” First you’ll ponder those, and then when you sit down to actually read this book, you will find that it is literary criticism, albeit literary criticism of the best kind possible–genuinely innovative and genuinely readable. (And in fact, Moretti has something rare in an academic critic–a fresh, engaging prose style.) So what is this book? Well, let me tell you. Franco Moretti is an unabashed lover of the 19th-century novel (he says he favorite book of al is Old Goriot by Balzac). That’s great for a lot of reasons, but . . . continue reading, and add your comments
You could actually put just about all of Marias’ books in this spot. (I’ve read 5 of them this year, counting Your Face Tomorrow as one novel and counting Manana en la batalla piensa en mi, which I’m 2/3 through and must be the longest Spanish-language book I’ve ever read.) I’ve come to love the work of Javier Marias this year, but if I were to ding him for something it’d have to be that his style can be a little loose at times. Part of this is, I think, just a matter of differences of opinion–Marias likes that maximalist kind of prose where he lets his words stream on for pages and pages, and I prefer novels that pare back to a nice arid essentiality. . . . continue reading, and add your comments
Thomas Bernhard does a strange kind of realism. His books tend to be extremely intense character studies of 2 – 3 people, yet they are told entirely through the obsessive monologue of a single character, so everything about all of the characters studied in his books is flattened into a single narrative voice. (And, in fact, all of Bernhard’s books sound similar, so really everything is flattened even further into Bernhard’s prose style.) . . . continue reading, and add your comments
When was the last time you read an anthology cover to cover? What about a 700-page one? For me the last–and the first–was Tablet & Pen. I read this anthology cover to cover, and in fact I did most of that reading in 8-hour bouts of extreme concentration while on a transatlantic flight. Any book that can induce that kind of concentration in that kind of circumstance is doing something incredibly right. . . . continue reading, and add your comments
This is essentially Adorno’s book-length definition and dissection of the culture industry—how capitalistic society creates and sells popular entertainment and lifestyles to pretty much every single person within its purview. That is the culture industry and that is what it does, and make no mistake, it is out to colonize every last second of your “free time” (and speaking of, Adorno’s essay on “free time” in this book is wonderful). . . . continue reading, and add your comments
If I could be King for one year, what I’d do is call together 10 or 15 of the best Spanish-language translators I could find, and I’d set ‘em loose on Cesar Aira. Between the translators’ skills, Aira’s naturally beautiful writing, and the fact that his novels tend to be very short, with any luck we’d get through a good quarter of the 80+ Aira titles that remain to be translated into English. . . . continue reading, and add your comments
|
Recommended Books DeLillo's major work before White Noise is probably his most underrated novel. Its all right here--the politics of paranoia, terrorism, the unnamable--set in an evocative, timeless Greece.
The most bizarre Abe novel I've yet read, which is indeed saying something. About a subclass of Japanese men who go around wearing boxes from the waist up (and then use them as domiciles in the evening), the book is also an experiment in perspective shifts, a highly unstable, metafictional first-person narrative, and an exploration of voyeurism, consumerism, and aberrant sexuality.
Charting the path to three gunshots--the one that killed filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, the one that disabled his Islamic extremist assassin, Mohammed Bouyeri, and the one that led to Vincent Van Gogh’s one hundred years earlier--Olsen tells three separate stories that resonate with one another on numerous levels: the logic of extremism, the role of the dissident in Dutch society, the limits of tolerance, the purpose of the artist, the feeling of the most important five minutes of your life. Read my interview with the author.
Creatively structured, well-executed epic novel of rural South Africa from 1950 - 2000. Takes on a lot and lives up to it magnificently. Highly recommended.
A book that's an interview about the book you're supposedly holding in your hands. Creative, potent, and full of life. Just what metafiction should be. Read my post on it.
|
96 Percent Stupid
The Names by Don DeLillo (1982)
The Box Man by Kobo Abe (1973, English 1974)
Head in Flames by Lance Olsen (2009)
Agaat by Marlene van Niekerk (2006, English 2010)
The Weather Fifteen Years Ago by Wolf Haas (2006, English 2009)
You Say