Luck is the Hook by Imtiaz Dharker (Bloodaxe, 2018) is my stand-out book of poetry this year. Lyrical with a compassionate humanity, Dharker’s poems have a piercing, deceptive simplicity of image and language, particularly… Continue reading
2018 was the year I started to read obsessively, hungrily, like a child again. Maybe this was because the internet was giving me nausea; maybe because I turned towards authors whose work not… Continue reading
Deborah Levy Things I don’t want to know (Bloomsbury, 2014) and The Cost of Living (Penguin, 2018). The best reading experiences are journeys; books that move you from one place to another, their… Continue reading
Lena Andersson Acts of Infidelity (translated into English by Saskia Vogel) Just like Andersson’s previous book, Wilful Disregard, this is a story about unrequited love – but not as you know it. Acts of Infidelity can be… Continue reading
Dave Cook and Craig Paton Killtopia #1 The first volume of new cyberpunk comic series Killtopia by Scottish writer and artist team Dave Cook and Craig Paton is a joyous celebration of the history… Continue reading
Ilse Aichinger Der Gefesselte This 1953 collection of short stories remains true to the spirit of the short story in that the narratives are almost certain to end realistically, often, inevitably, in death,… Continue reading
SHERI BENNING‘s third collection of poetry, The Season’s Vagrant Light: New and Selected Poems, was published by Carcanet Press in 2015. She’s published two books in Canada: Thin Moon Psalm (Brick Books) and Earth After Rain (Thistledown Press).… Continue reading
My critical thinking courses usually center on analysis of visual objects, and this means that twice every year, fall and spring, I re-read Ways of Seeing, John Berger‘s 1972 multi-modal masterpiece avant la lettre, and every time I… Continue reading
Hans Fallada, Jeder stirbt für sich allein (Aufbau, 2018 [1947]) My first Read of 2018 is also the first book I read in 2018, which is a blessing and a curse: a good,… Continue reading
Julia Schoch, Mit der Geschwindigkeit des Sommers (Piper, 2009) Julia Schoch’s 2009 Mit der Geschwindigkeit des Sommers [With the Speed of Summer] opens with the narrator announcing her sister’s death, which she dissects… Continue reading
