10 things that you have not read and should
- Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson
- An Imaginary Life by David Malouf
- "Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk" by Franz Kafka
- A Perfect Vacuum by Stanislaw Lem
- The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst
- Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo
- After the End of Art by Arthur C. Danto
- "The School" by Donald Barthelme
- Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich
- Beauty and Sadness by Yasunari Kawabata
Though many breathless blurb-writers have made this almost a meaningless statement, this is truly a novel unlike any other.
Lyrical throughout; one of the most beautiful last pages of any novel I have read.
A barely-talked about Kafka story that is more touching than any story about the pointlessness of art has any right to be. Plus it has animals, and they're not cockroaches!
Reviews of imaginary and yet-to-be-written books with a philosophical bent.
A Canadian poet on how the page should reflect the ideas on it. Also the best epigraphs of any book I've ever picked up.
The secret fountain of the Latin boom. Garcia Marquez and Cortazar approach the quality of this novel on only their best days.
How does one make and think about art in a world where so much has already been said, and the pressures to 'make it new' are ever-mounting to ever-lessening effect?
He has written so many stories in so many styles that this perfect 3-page jewel has been somewhat lost in the flood.
This oral history of the Chernobyl incident is terrifying and made me cry, and I'm a cold-hearted bastard.
It is a testament to the power of Kawabata's spare writing style that a story really best covered by Ricki Lake becomes something, well, beautiful and sad.
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