recognito

All my friends are reading Sebald, so I checked some of his books out from the library and chose to reread two books I originally read in 2018: The Idiot by Batuman and Invisibility Cloak by Ge Fei. The Idiot touches on a few books I've covered recently, while Invisibility Cloak is more of a "I don't know what the fuck the reviewers are going on about and I'm also not sure what's going on in this book?!" style of a review.

As with everything I've reread recently, I like it more on reread than I did when I first read it… Let's start with The Idiot, since I have less to say there.

Last book blog of the year! I recently read the first big story Janet Malcolm did for the New Yorker and… you know what, it rocks, lmao. Really reassuring that she published Psychoanalysis at the age of 47… never kill yourself, etc. I'm in the middle of The Sadeian Woman by Angela Carter and The Purloined Clinic by Malcolm, both which I feel strongly positive on and will write up in more detail next time. Also in the middle of Laing's The Garden Against Time, which I feel generally positively on and lol one million novels I most likely am never going to finish.

Some quick notes on two recently read books, and then some reflection on the rest of the year:

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I had a good time reading this year on a whole, in part because I dedicated myself to two or three authors (44 completed titles, 31 unique authors) and every time I hated a book, I fled back to Janet Malcolm or Tanith Lee until I stopped being mad… I was about to reflexively start writing a whole morose thing about how my attention span has been blighted by the problem of "I love dicking around the computer and playing video games" (how about Hades 2 and Silksong, eh?) but I guess I don't care that much. I'm still growing as a writer and reader, I like writing my little book blog, and that's enough to keep me pretty happy about how things are going in my chosen dumb, meaningful, and penniless occupation. Viva la 3:00am book blogging, and see you all in 2026. 

This post is so, so late... the good news is that I'm writing a lot for a new novel project, which means instead of channeling my frustrated writing impulses into book reviews, I'm back to being a genius writer. The bad news is, I am so, so, so so behind.

This post covers all my July reads and some of my August ones.

Weird book month: I read half of many very good books that I then put down and didn't pick up again and promptly guzzled down one text-heavy video game (Hundred Line--will not be reviewing it just yet but you know it's a Visual Novel when the "prologue" is 20 hours of reading) and one game that's about getting jump-scared by mimes while a man wanders around muttering, You would do this to our family?? Clair Obscur is actually SO good that it's making me want to get back to final fantasy.

Now all that is well and good, you might say. but what of the books you have read, recog? What can you tell us about those?

I finished three books this month, none which I loved and one that I experienced a knee jerk dislike of but kept reading due to my special interest (Rebecca West)... let's goooooo

For reasons (American), I have been more in the mood to play bad, mediocre, and sometimes even good video games than to read, but my beautiful cat continues to demand his tithe... I've read a few books. Most of post will be devoted to descending into a hater fugue state. 

Books I'm in the middle of: How Should a Person Be by Heti (enjoying, finding it funny, I had a funny disagreement with someone about the value of Heti's work that I am excited to write about in a blog post where I can take multiple L's at once instead of collecting them one-on-one), The Magic Mountain by Mann (I GUESS I'M UNDERSTANDING WHY HE'S A HIT), Sula by Morrison (she's doing it yet again), Uncommon Carriers by McPhee... I think it's about time I pick up another Malcolm for my spirits and to extend the dominion of the letter M in my reading list. Do you think I should change my pen name to start with m as an homag

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