Man, I loved that Larry Brown book. Might be my favorite one. The kid’s dad in that book is such a consummate fuck-up. The book ends abruptly because, well, Larry Brown ended abruptly.

I’m currently working on The Overstory by Richard Powers. I’m digging the whole arboreal motif, but I’m wondering if these stories are going to tie together. I’m 100 pages in, and it still reads like a collection of short stories.


I’m interested in reading Stoner by John Williams. Anyone ever read it? Apparently, it’s popular. The library wait list is 8 weeks. I’m all about the Austin Public Library lately, and I can’t remember the last time I bought a book.

Dave N. wrote: Mon Sep 08, 2025 3:01 pmI’m interested in reading Stoner by John Williams. Anyone ever read it?

Oh yeah. Interesting experience because it was almost word for word all my biggest fears about a life wasted and so on. Quite merciless. Didn't help me handle it better or anything but it was interesting seeing it written. Good book too.

Penguin Lost : Andrey Kurkov
Second and last part of a very captivating story. Ambiguous and conflicting impressions all throughout. Is it a happy ending? I can't even tell. Objectively speaking we are dealing with quite stressful events in a dangerous, unreliable environment, but the sparse and understated writing combined with the subtle humour makes it read to me like a feel-good story that nonetheless has a kind of constant low-level tension hovering over it. Lovely characters. Never predictable.

It might take the rest of my life but I'm trying to read a novel from every country. I arbitrarily started in the Balkans and I'm on Macedonia now... my choice was Pirey by Petre Andreevski, about a family there that lived through parts of the Ottoman occupation, the Balkan Wars, and WWI. So far it's been brutal, but fantastic. I knew very little about the pre-WWII history of the region before this, so it's been enlightening.

Mason & Dixon always had trouble with this one because of Pynchon’s adept use of the 18th-century style, so am reading it along with an audiobook - luckily the actor is fucking great at doing it. It’s kind of funny the scenes that are gripping in a read - thinking the naval battle in sailboats early in the book - can just fly by in an audiobook narration. On the other hand, a good actor really brings certain aspects of the text to light - oral storytelling wasn’t invented to sell books, after all.

Made my two laps around Against the Day - that book is beautiful. Fave Pynchon. I love all the characters in it, and I have suspicions that Tom does, too. Kind of done recommending GR as a first step - there’s too much good stuff starting with Vineland (though I wouldn’t recommend that as a first P book, either.

Anybody notice that he doesn’t kill that many people in his books? Granted, there is 9/11, World War I, the odd prop-engine plane brought down by pies thrown from a hot air balloon, but given his subject matter, the body count would normally be much higher - imagine if Cormac C were writing about that shit. Plus, everyone gets laid.

Writing, like music, requires operating on some sort of psychical wavelength that transcends the written and spoken into this other thing that completes itself with the receiver. Some guys are able to manipulate it technically, others blunder into it, but I get the sense the Pynchon has some kind of relationship to the present that he’s specifically tuned to. For all the talk about his difficulty, the plot (which I regret sort of downplaying), technical data, etc, its his social scenes, with characters eating and drinking and talking together that really make me love his writing. That motherfucker cares.

Looking forward to the new Paul Thomas Anderson film. Too many explosions in the trailer to get a handle on how close it follows Vineland, but giving that book the blockbuster treatment (PTA version, at least) makes sense given how much attention it pays to mass media. So we’ll see.

Toggling between Narrow the Road by James Wade and Play Like A Man by Rose Marshack.

This James Wade book is good. He cranks out one a year, and last year’s book seemed kind of phoned in. Glad to see him back on track. There are a couple of obvious nods to Cormac McCarthy, but Wade has always unabashedly worn his influences on his sleeve. This one definitely falls somewhere between Cormac McCarthy and William Gay. He’s young and still developing a voice, but he’s definitely my favorite new Texas author. This is his fifth book in as many years.

The Rose Marshack book jumps around a lot and I find myself wishing it was a little more linear, but I’m still enjoying it. I know nothing about computer programming, so those parts of the book are mostly lost on me.

I finished The Overstory. It was good, but it felt unnecessarily long-winded toward the end. I found myself thinking ok, let’s wrap this thing up.

Re-reading Stephen King's IT. This is my favorite novel of his, out of the ones I've read, and I found a hardcover cover (with the OG book jacket) at the library for a buck.

It's kind of difficult to read a book that heavy when you're holding it up in front of you while laying down.

I just finished Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay. It doesn't feel like a lot happens, but it kept me reading.

Just went on a binge and read:

Down Below by Leonora Carrington (very good)
Monsieur Pain by Roberto Bolaño (very good)

and now and 1/3 way through Europe Central by William T Vollmann, which is very good so far. I had heard about this but after seeing the book in person: the title, the size of the book, Vollmann's own name (I thought he was German) and cover art, well, I just had to get it.

Europe Central was one of my fav reads this year, one of my favorite books ever at the moment. Just all time beautiful writing. Blew my fucking mind and it was the first Vollman book I’d read, but after looking into him I kind of realized I was at least partly familiar with some of his print works.

Looking forward to reading a lot more - supposedly he has a 1,000+ pg book on the CIA that no one will print. Fuckin’ 2025.