The Best American Essays 2007 edited by David Foster Wallace.

 

Fascinating essay about the culture of sexualization  and the sexual revolution by Mark Greif called "Afternoon of the Sex Children."

Great analysis of the Iraq Wars.

Amazing opening essay about a man dying in an apartment fire.

Came for the Wallace imprimataur, and it's ringing true.

Less by Andrew Sean Greer

 

Started out thinking I would hate this, now suddenly charmed.

Learning to Talk: Stories by Hilary Mantel

 

Charlie Martz and Other Stories: The Unpublished Stories by Elmore Leonard

 

Good and Evil and Other Stories by Samantha Schweblin

 

Saw this review in the WPost (probably). Strange, eerie, pathologically deep examinations of characters and plotlines that sometimes feels like they're straight outa Stephen King fiction. 

Wasn't digging it, but just read and liked her long story ("The Woman from Atlántida") about two young sisters "rescuing" an alcoholic reclusive poet living in the beach resort town they're visiting.

Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival by Stephen Greenblatt

Good but the usual Greenblatt treatment - take a subject about whom almost nothing is factually known, and build out the social/intellectual/historical era around the black hole of the character's existence, and posit how he must have participated.

Marlowe is regarded as being Shakespeare's progenitor with his plays TAMBURLAINE, DR. FAUSTUS, and THE JEW OF MALTA. He was the first playwright to succesfully use blank verse in his works, and though Shakespeare surpassed Marlowe by a stunning margin, it's possible to see how Marlowe had to come first.

Watched SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE again last night, in which Kit Marlowe features.

Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph by Jan Swafford

 

I remember as a child reading a young person's biography of Beethoven - or at least reading the first chapters, where a six year old Ludwig races home through the village streets humming the melody of a composition he's going to give to his mother at her nameday celebration.

This biography is good if stuffed with cultural history of Bonn and Vienna, the other German states and Europe at the end of the 18th century. Lots going on. Meanwhile, Beehoven, preternatually gifted, sullen, isolated, productive, does exactly what he needs to do.

From a junior Mozart/Hayden imitator, he creates incredible music that builds on their example, and then towers over it.

The Angel of Rome and Other Stories by Jess Walter

 

Good if minor stuff. Seems like he's imitating Richard Russo sometimes though, but without Russo's snarky undertones.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

 

I'm late to this party, but find the novel clarifyingly beautiful...

... if long and somewhat tediously overwritten. I watched the 2007 BBC series with Ruth Wilson instead. Quite good!

Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima

 

Finally got around to this. Found it tedious and overstuffed with internal psychologizing.

The Novelist by Jordan Castro

This was what the literary world did now, I reminded myself, they celebrated stupid novels for stupid reasons.
Not very compelling single day single consciousness pov of someone not writing.

 

Independent People by Halldór Laxness

 

12/23/25: Finally bearing down and reading this. It's a slog but worth it so far. Like the incident where the farmer chases down a reindeer and jumps on top of him and they ride down the river together, farmer nearly freezing to death.

And the wife killing the ewe who's been left behind as her company, then eating it.

Brutal. Only entertainment is coffee and reciting ancient poetry. My kind of people.

1/20/26: Still laboring away at this. It's great but so dense: some of the most common, primitive people in world having extraordinary poetical thoughts about mortality and the natural world. Finally into the life of Bjartur's children, which is helping things. But much work still ahead of me.

2/3/26: Less than a hundred pages to go, and it's certainly an epic: who knew that primitive sheep farmers and their families could have such rich inner lives, in such a blasted, bleak, and unforgiving environment. Not I for sure.

So Far Gone by Jess Walter

 

Good but not that exciting.