everything is poetry; everything is fiction

in April, everything is poetry. i was interviewed by thunk blog. read all about it here. thank you ryan manning. i want to know how to do the tinyurl thing. sometimes it does it by itself. sometimes it doesn't. this confuses me. i read almost all fiction in month. totally weird.

but this is my blog post for...

books read: march

How to be alone by Jonathan Franzen

this book of essays consistently teaches its title with grace and goodwill. i liked the one about the post office in Chicago a lot because i love the post office. i liked this book. i like being alone. i might like being alone more now that i've learned to appreciate it via completion of this excellent book. the paperback one i read has an extra essay in it that the hardcover doesn't. read the paperback.

The Proof of the Honey by Salwa Al Neimi

read a review of this book that sounds like part of an academic essay in GIGANTIC SEQUINS volume 1.1, which is coming out so soon, so soon.

Ghosts by Cesar Aira

this book by an Argentinian writer was my favorite book i read this month. it was simple and weird and just enough haunting. it was a novella. new directions published it and the book is printed small and gray and waiting. i read this at work. reading it felt like a good breeze on a really hot day. i recommend it. note: there is a little dash thing above the "e" in his first name that i am failing at.

The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith

re-read for my thesis. maybe enjoyed this one more as a re-read. read something about fandom today in a cultural studies book on pop culture i am reading for my thesis, too, and how the mark of a fan is to constantly re-read and re-consume that which they are a fan of, and i thought "academics do this, too."

Bed: stories by Tao Lin

Tao Lin is one of my new favorite writers. he has ways of saying things that seem like things you should have thought, but you know you didn't, that it was all him just kind of perfectly articulating. his nouns are as impressive as his metaphors. the titles of his stories are always sommething to look forward to when you've finished the one before it. and each story ends like tracks on a good cd end. i read a lot of these laying (lying? i always fuck that one up) in my bed. that felt right.

Lowboy by John Wray

this was my "new" fiction of the month. i would like to say i try to read something new every month, but that's a lie. so i don't know why i said "this was my 'new' fiction of the month." but it was. i read a review in the NYT book review about this book, then one in Boston's Weekly Dig, then one in the Village Voice. the Dig didn't like it too much. i liked the opening chapter the best. it was a pretty vague book in certain ways. it felt like it was hiding something, and then when it revealed what it was hiding, it still felt like it was hiding something. maybe i shouldn't say, vague, maybe i shouls call it minimalistic. i read the whole thing pretty quickly. there's something to be said about that.


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