Blogs about Books and literature

Vincennes Review of Books 2022 is here!Key:* = Excellent, highly recommend~ = Actively bad, do not recommendFirst readsThe Dinner — Herman Koch Their Eyes Were Watching God — Zora Neale Hurston Naples ’44 — Norman …

Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki Read Apr 4, 2022 - Apr 10, 2022 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ This is a lovely book, filled with lovable characters and feeling. It is a novel about food, music, and …

I recently encountered a choice example of academic snobbery, the lording of a tenured professor over lecturers, adjuncts and even “mere assistant professors.” Normally the perpetrator tries to disguise his snottiness or treat it as …

Hi everyone! You may have noticed that we’ve slowed down a bit on posting, approving comments, and, well, pretty much our whole end of the deal. We’d like to say we’re just too busy and …

My new poetry pamphlet from Melos Press, The Dictionary Speaks, is now out and can be ordered post-free via this link.From the publisher’s blurb:-NICHOLAS MURRAY’S many books include poetry, two novels, critically acclaimed biographies of …

Aleksandr Afanasyev was the major nineteenth-century collector of Russian folk and fairy tales. Unlike other collectors such as the Brothers Grimm, Afanasyev also collected bawdy folktales, though these are much less known that his fairy …

With this work by Sarah Freligh, we continue to highlight original fiction and poetry from writers who either published their first book at 40 or after, or who have yet to publish a book. Writers …

The twenty-third album by Habibi Funk Records was released on the 14th of July 2023. But it may as well have been the 14th of July 1973, another summer day in warm Beirut. The album …

“Saint Peter’s Denial” by Caravaggio It’s hard to pick a favorite essay from my new anthology, All Desire Is a Desire for Being: Essential Writings – all of the pieces by French theorist René Girard …

An end of week recap “The book itself is a curious artefact, not showy in its technology but complex and extremely efficient: a really neat little device, compact, often very pleasant to look at and …

This is my friend’s lovely cat who died recently.

Last week I completed my translation of the second volume of Andrey Kurkov’s Samson Kolechko mysteries, which are set in Kyiv in 1919. As I confessed in my brief translator’s note to the US edition …

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Sharlene from Real Life Reading that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like …

My twitter journey started in May 2007 and it ends today, July 23, 2023, with 32.6K tweets. I cannot sustain Elon Musk’s nonsense. Sorry. I have archived my twitter on github (will update this link …

Poirot’s Early Cases published 1974 The Affair of the Victory Ball I have embarked on a Christie catchup programme – I realized that I have blogged on almost all of Agatha Christie’s books (and there …

Hello Ridgeliners! I walked wonky alleys flanked by old wooden temples and stone walls that looked like they had been there for a few hundred years and, reader, I was sweating. Sweating so much I …

I just noticed where NYRB Classics has released a new translation of Ernst Jünger’s On the Marble Cliffs. My brief notes on New Directions’ 1947 translation by Stuart Hood can be found here. I highly …

My second choice for Czech Lit Month is from 1967 (though it wasn’t translated into English until 2016, by Eva M. Kandler). I understand that Ladislav Fuks (1923-94) often wrote about the period of German …

Pagan LoveJohn Murray GibbonToronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1922310 pagesThe start of this novel sees a suicide thwarted. Walter Oliphant awakens to the dawn of a day he'd determined would be his last. He walks leisurely, …

Reading Terrace Story is finding yourself delighted to be in the fairytale, even when you know the witch is coming for you. Charming and devastating in equal measure, this slim trickster novel asks questions of …