I reviewed Matthew Simmons’s A Jello Horse for Vol.1. Here’s a bit of it:
This mundane surrealism contrasts with a more vivid dreamlike imagery that arises throughout the novel in intervals, sometimes as a result of slumber, sometimes arising out of hallucinations. It serves as a bridge between the protagonist’s childhood and his restless twenties, and …
A little while ago, I linked to my review of David Ohle’s chapbook Those Bones.
In the time since then, Calamari Press has released a collection of two novellas from Mr. Ohle: Boons and The Camp, provided in the increasingly-popular flipbook format. Both novellas are worth your time — they’re unsettling in both their imagery and …
The September issue of the generally excellent Word Riot is up, and with it is my review of Ben Greenman’s Please Step Back. (Which, you may recall, I also delved into here.)
The September issue of The Chapbook Review is up, and I have a short review of Ken Sparling’s Isn’t This What You Were Looking For?
In the same issue, John Madera has an interview with Mr. Sparling.
I’ve just finished Amelia Gray’s AM/PM. The spine lists it as “a book by Amelia Gray”, and that, rather than “stories by”, sounds about right: it’s composed of just over a hundred works of flash fiction, many of which share characters, and is structured in such a way to provide a fair amount of emotional …
Two new reviews up at Lit Mob as of today: Achewood: The Great Outdoor Fight by Chris Onstad, and Doktor Sleepless: Engines of Desire by Warren Ellis and Ivan Rodriguez. I’ll have some thoughts in this space later this week on Doktor Sleepless’s run since then.
Couple of random links that I think dovetail interestingly, beginning with the announcement of the closure of the Washington Post’s Book World section.
As it happens, Book World never garnered much advertising from publishers, who generally spend very little on newspaper ads. Publishers now focus their marketing dollars on cooperative agreements with chain bookstores, which guarantee …
This is by no means a complete list of books I read that impressed me in 2008. It’s more of a selection of a few that I particularly dug, or that got under my skin, or did something that caught my eye. You’ll notice a strange dearth of proper 2008 releases on here. Part of …
As promised earlier, my review of Tony O’Neill’s Down and Out on Murder Mile is now up at Lit Mob.
My review of Alejandro Zambra’s Bonsai is now up at Lit Mob.
Last month, I picked up Aetheric Mechanics, a graphic novella from writer Warren Ellis and penciler Gianluca Pagliarani. I read it within a few weeks of Neil Gaiman’s “A Study In Emerald”, and some comparisons are inevitable: Gaiman and Ellis are both writers who work in multiple disciplines (starting from comics and moving into novels …
Specifically, A Better Angel, for Lit Mob.