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meta-squash · 1 year

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Squash’s Book Roundup of 2022

This year I read 68 books. My original goal was to match what I read in 2019, which was 60, but I surpassed it with quite a bit of time to spare.

Books Read In 2022:

-The Man Who Would Be King and other stories by Rudyard Kipling -Futz by Rochelle Owens -The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht -Funeral Rites by Jean Genet -The Grip of It by Jac Jemc -Jules et Jim by Henri-Pierre Roche -Hashish, Wine, Opium by Charles Baudelaire and Theophile Gautier -The Blacks: a clown show by Jean Genet -One, No One, One Hundred Thousand by Luigi Pirandello -Cain’s Book by Alexander Trocchi -The Man with the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren -Three-Line Novels (Illustrated) by Felix Feneon, Illustrated by Joanna Neborsky -Black Box Thrillers: Four Novels (They Shoot Horses Don’t They, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, No Pockets in a Shroud, I Should Have Stayed Home) by Horace McCoy -The Dictionary of Accepted Ideas by Gustave Flaubert -The Chairs by Eugene Ionesco -Illusions by Richard Bach -Mole People by Jennifer Toth -The Rainbow Stories by William T Vollmann -Tell Me Everything by Erika Krouse -Equus by Peter Shaffer (reread) -Ghosty Men by Franz Lidz -A Happy Death by Albert Camus -Six Miles to Roadside Business by Michael Doane -Envy by Yury Olesha -The Day of the Locust by Nathaniel West -Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche -The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code by Margalit Fox -The Cat Inside by William S Burroughs -Under The Volcano by Malcolm Lowry -Camino Real by Tennessee Williams (reread) -The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg -The Quick & The Dead by Joy Williams -Comemadre by Roque Larraquy -The Zoo Story by Edward Albee -The Bridge by Hart Crane -A Likely Lad by Peter Doherty -The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel -The Law In Shambles by Thomas Geoghegan -The Anti-Christ by Friedrich Nietzche -The Maids and Deathwatch by Jean Genet -Intimate Journals by Charles Baudelaire -The Screens by Jean Genet -Inferno by Dante Alighieri (reread) -The Quarry by Friedrich Durrenmatt -A Season In Hell by Arthur Rimbaud (reread) -Destruction Was My Beatrice: Dada and the Unmaking of the Twentieth Century by Jed Rasula -Pere Ubu by Alfred Jarry -Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath by Anne Stevenson -Loot by Joe Orton -Julia And The Bazooka and other stories by Anna Kavan -The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda by Ishmael Reed -If You Were There: Missing People and the Marks They Leave Behind by Francisco Garcia -Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters -Indelicacy by Amina Cain -Withdrawn Traces by Sara Hawys Roberts (an unfortunate but necessary reread) -Sarah by JT LeRoy (reread) -How Lucky by Will Leitch -Gyo by Junji Ito (reread) -Joe Gould’s Teeth by Jill Lepore -Saint Glinglin by Raymond Queneau -Bakkai by Anne Carson -Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers -McGlue by Ottessa Moshfegh -Moby Dick by Herman Melville -The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector -In the Forests of the Night by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (reread from childhood) -Chicago: City on the Make by Nelson Algren -The Medium is the Massage by Malcolm McLuhan

~Superlatives And Thoughts~

Fiction books read: 48 Non-fiction books read: 20

Favorite book: This is so hard! I almost want to three-way tie it between Under The Volcano, The Quick & The Dead, and The Man With The Golden Arm, but I’m not going to. I think my favorite is Under The Volcano by Malcolm Lowry. It’s an absolutely beautiful book with such intense descriptions. The way that it illustrates the vastly different emotional and mental states of its three main characters reminded me of another favorite, Sometimes A Great Notion by Ken Kesey. Lowry is amazing at leaving narrative breadcrumbs, letting the reader find their way through the emotional tangle he’s recording. The way he writes the erratic, confused, crumbling inner monologue of the main character as he grows more and more ill was my favorite part.

Least favorite book: I’d say Withdrawn Traces, but it’s a reread, so I think I’ll have to go with Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters. I dedicated a whole long post to it already, so I’ll just say that the concept of the book is great. I loved the whole idea of it. But the execution was awful. It’s like the exact opposite of Under The Volcano. The characters didn’t feel like real people, which would have been fine if the book was one written in that kind of surreal or artistic style where characters aren’t expected to speak like everyday people. But the narrative style as well as much of the dialogue was attempting realism, so the lack of realistic humanity of the characters was a big problem. The book didn’t ever give the reader the benefit of the doubt regarding their ability to infer or empathize or figure things out for themselves. Every character’s emotion and reaction was fully explained as it happened, rather than leaving the reader some breathing space to watch characters act or talk and slowly understand what’s going on between them. Points for unique idea and queer literature about actual adults, but massive deduction for the poor execution.

Unexpected/surprising book: The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code by Margalit Fox. This is the first book about archaeology I’ve ever read. I picked it up as I was shelving at work, read the inner flap to make sure it was going to the right spot, and then ended up reading the whole thing. It was a fascinating look at the decades-long attempt to crack the ancient Linear B script, the challenges faced by people who tried and the various theories about its origin and what kind of a language/script it was. The book was really engaging, the author was clearly very passionate and emotional about her subjects and it made the whole thing both fascinating and fun to read. And I learned a bunch of new things about history and linguistics and archaeology!

Most fun book: How Lucky by Will Leitch. It was literally just a Fun Book. The main character is a quadriplegic man who witnesses what he thinks is a kidnapping. Because he a wheelchair user and also can’t talk except through typing with one hand, his attempts to figure out and relay to police what he’s seen are hindered, even with the help of his aid and his best friend. But he’s determined to find out what happened and save the victim of the kidnapping. It’s just a fun book, an adventure, the narrative voice is energetic and good-natured and it doesn’t go deeply into symbolism or philosophy or anything.

Book that taught me the most: Destruction Was My Beatrice by Jed Rasula. This book probably isn’t for everyone, but I love Dadaism, so this book was absolutely for me. I had a basic knowledge of the Dadaist art movement before, but I learned so much, and gained a few new favorite artists as well as a lot of general knowledge about the Dada movement and its offshoots and members and context and all sorts of cool stuff.

Most interesting/thought provoking book: Moby Dick by Herman Melville. I annotated my copy like crazy. I never had to read it in school, but I had a blast finally reading it now. There’s just so much going on in it, symbolically and narratively. I think I almost consider it the first Modernist novel, because it felt more Modernist than Romantic to me. I had to do so much googling while reading it because there are so many obscure biblical references that are clear symbolism, and my bible knowledge is severely lacking. This book gave me a lot of thoughts about narrative and the construction of the story, the mechanic of a narrator that’s not supposed to be omniscient but still kind of is, and so many other things. I really love Moby Dick, and I kind of already want to reread it.

Other thoughts/Books I want to mention but don’t have superlatives for: Funeral Rites was the best book by Jean Genet, which I was not expecting compared to how much I loved his other works. It would be hard for me to describe exactly why I liked this one so much to people who don’t know his style and his weird literary tics, because it really is a compounding of all those weird passions and ideals and personal symbols he had, but I really loved it. Reading The Grip Of It by Jac Jemc taught me that House Of Leaves has ruined me for any other horror novel that is specifically environmental. It wasn’t a bad book, just nothing can surpass House Of Leaves for horror novels about buildings. The Man With The Golden Arm by Nelson Algren was absolutely beautiful. I went in expecting a Maltese Falcon-type noir and instead I got a novel that was basically poetry about characters who were flawed and fucked up and sad but totally lovable. Plus it takes place only a few blocks from my workplace! The Rainbow Stories by William T Vollmann was amazing and I totally love his style. I think out of all the stories in that book my favorite was probably The Blue Yonder, the piece about the murderer with a sort of split personality. Scintillant Orange with all its biblical references and weird modernization of bible stories was a blast too. The Quick & The Dead by Joy Williams was amazing and one of my favorites this year. It’s sort of surreal, a deliberately weird novel about three weird girls without mothers. I loved the way Williams plays with her characters like a cat with a mouse, introducing them just to mess with them and then tossing them away -- but always with some sort of odd symbolic intent. All the adult characters talk and act more like teens and all the teenage characters talk and act like adults. It’s a really interesting exploration of the ways to process grief and change and growing up, all with the weirdest characters. Joe Gould’s Teeth was an amazing book, totally fascinating. One of our regulars at work suggested it to me, and he was totally right in saying it was a really cool book. It’s a biography of Joe Gould, a New York author who was acquaintances with EE Cummings and Ezra Pound, among others, who said he was writing an “oral history of our time.” Lepore investigates his life, the (non)existence of said oral history, and Gould’s obsession with a Harlem artist that affected his views of race, culture, and what he said he wanted to write. McGlue by Ottessa Moshfegh was so good, although I only read it because 3 out of my other 5 coworkers had read it and they convinced me to. I had read a bunch of negative reviews of Moshfegh’s other book, so I went in a bit skeptical, but I ended up really enjoying McGlue. The whole time I read it, it did feel a bit like I was reading Les Miserables fanfiction, partly from the literary style and partly just from the traits of the main character. But I did really enjoy it, and the ending was really lovely. In terms of literature that’s extremely unique in style, The Hour Of The Star by Clarice Lispector is probably top of the list this year. Her writing is amazing and so bizarre. It’s almost childlike but also so observant and philosophical, and the intellectual and metaphorical leaps she makes are so fascinating. I read her short piece The Egg And The Chicken a few months ago at the urging of my coworker, and thought it was so cool, and this little novel continues in that same vein of bizarre, charming, half-philosophical and half-mundane (but also totally not mundane at all) musings.

I'm still in the middle of reading The Commitments by Roddy Doyle (my lunch break book) and The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell, but I'm not going to finish either by the end of the year, so I'm leaving them off the official list.

#squash rambles #reading year in review #book list year in review #book list #reading list #book roundup #reading roundup

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vympr · 2 years

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hello! do you have any fiction recs for westerns? or any other books in any other different time periods as well :) thank you!

ooo interesting i don't think i have any recs for westerns in particular but here are some books set in other time periods in general (if that's what you're asking?)

tang dynasty (6th century)

my fair concubine by jeannie lin

13 / 14th century or earlier

two old women by velma wallis (northeastern alaska)

17th century

the mercies by kiran millwood hargrave (vardø, norway)

19th century

the widows of malabar hill by sujata massey (mumbai, india)

the hacienda by isabel cañas (mexico)

mexican gothic by silvia moreno-garcia (mexico)

20th century

comemadre by roque larraquy - first novella only (buenos aires, argentina)

sula by toni morrison (medallion, ohio)

mrs. march by virginia feito (upper east side manhattan, new york)

passing by nella larsen (harlem, new york)

blanche on the lam by barbara neely (north carolina, US)

mrs. caliban by rachell ingalls (southern CA, US)

#books #add on recs if u have any please ty

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amiguiz · 1 year

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Roque Larraquy y Diego Ontivero, en Informe sobre ectoplasma animal

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saintofbloodbanks · 2 years

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My Halloween recs, for if you want something kinda weird or kinda spooky:

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

Love love love this one! A set of horror short stories each with a unique approach/format. You might have read one or two of these before but they’re all great.

A wife refuses her husband’s entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store’s prom dresses. One woman’s surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in the bravura novella “Especially Heinous,” Machado reimagines every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show we naively assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgängers, ghosts, and girls-with-bells-for-eyes.

Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica with Sarah Moses (Translator)

This one’s short but the world it creates is so messed up yet you can see how our current world could have developed into it. I read this in like a day I couldn’t stop.

Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans--though no one calls them that anymore.

You’ve Lost a Lot of Blood by Eric LaRocca

I see his other book (things have gotten worse since we last spoke) recommended a lot but this is definitely my favorite of the two. A story within a story, the pacing was great, it keeps you engaged the whole way. One of my favs

"Each precious thing I show you in this book is a holy relic from the night we both perished-the night when I combed you from my hair and watered the moon with your blood.

You've lost a lot of blood . . ."

Comemadre by Roque Larraquy with Heather Cleary (Translator)

I feel like after reading this you either love it or question why you picked it up in the first place. But I love it lol

#feel free to ask me about the contents of any of these if you’re worried #bc there’s a lot of messed up stuff #reede talks #halloween books

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kitap1sevda-blogkitap · 2 years

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Comemadre - Roque Larraquy (kitap yorumu) Tesadüf eseri denk geldiğim, konusu ilginç olunca merakıma yenik düşüp okumak istedim. Yayınevi ve çeviri bakımından oldukça muntazam ve başarılı olduğunu belirtmem gerekir. Konusuna değinmeden önce uyarmak isterim ki, bu kitap herkesin okuyacağı bir tür değil. Özellikle 21 yaş ve üzeri için uygun. Sadece yaşla sınırlı değil, kriminal tarz konulara, bilimsel deney ve olsadı gerçeklere karşı dayanıklı iseniz Önerebilirim. Okuması kolay bir kitap değil. Okuması yürek, dayanıklılık, mide ve cesaret ister 😱. Gerçekleri kaldıracak biriyseniz kesinlikle tavsiye ediyorum. Bilinçlenmek adına iyi ki okumuşum dediğim bir kitap oldu. Konusundan bahsetmem gerekirse,kitap iki bölümden oluşuyor.1907 yılında, Bir klinikte doktorlar arasında geçen, bilim için tüyleri ürperten gizli bir deney yapma kararı alınır. Olan biteni "Quintana" isimli doktor anlatmaktadır. Konu ile ilgili detaylar olası gelişmeleri okurken yaşadığım şaşkınlığı anlatmam mümkün değil 😱bilim adına yapılan bir deneyin korkunçluğu okuru sarsacak türden. İkinci bölümde ise günümüze( 2009) değinmiştir. İlk başta ne anlatılıyor diye düşünürken, üç kişiden bahsedilir ki, biri deneye katılan doktorlardan birinin torunudur. Geçmişte olan biteni öğrenmiştir üç arkadaş sanat ile ilgilidir. Onlar da bu duruma sanatsal açıdan bakmaya karar verir, şaşırtıcı ve tüyleri diken diken eden bir karar alırlar. Detaylar sizi sarsacak türden. Kitabın kendisi her açıdan sarsıcı 😱tabi ki kitaba adını veren "Comemadre" nin ne olduğunu okuyunca öğrenmiş oldum📖😱okumaya başlamamla bitmesi bir oldu. O yüzden size hitap etmeyen bir alansa uzak durmanızı, ilgili iseniz okumanızı öneririm 🤔📚☠️ #roquelarraquy #folkitap #comemadre #kitap1sevda #roman #doktor #klinik #hemşire #deney #bilim #kanser #tedavi #ölüm #delilik #sanat #insanlar #giyotin #quintana #temperley #geçmiş #gelecek #dehşet #vahşet #korku #korkunçdeney #zehir #yalan #para https://www.instagram.com/p/CjMKMgqtmdm/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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anthologarium · 4 years

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— Roque Larraquy, Comemadre (2018, orig. 2010)

#roque larraquy #comemadre #heather cleary #lit #quotes #regarding yours truly #death etc.#tw suicide #currently reading

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laluchasigue · 4 years

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#literature #books #argentinian literature #comemadre #roque larraquy #decapitation #guillotine #beheading #quote

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wiser-blood · 5 years

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Laughing uncontrollably, I push his terrible frustration from center stage. This is how I show my love.

Roque Larraquy, Comemadre

#roque larraquy #comemadre #2010's #well #2010 #argentinian lit #spanish lit #booklr #quote #words #darling #m #this book is good as fuck

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dare-g · 2 months

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"With the invention of the guillotine, capital punishment becomes a technical matter. The figure of the executioner is reduced to the meager role of machinist. The austere practicality of this new method leaves no room for style.

The executioners, however, refuse to give up their characteristic gesture of lifting the head of the condemned for the rabble to see, once the task has been carried out.

a)The executioner offers decisive proof of his performance, not as a matter of personal pride, but as a means of gaining recognition and reward.

b)The rabble adores simple, categorical statements. The head serves as a period at the end of a sentence. Everyone is happy. The executioner as aphorist.

(a) and (b) seem to exhaust all possible explanations for the act. But the executioner knows the alphabet of death from beginning to end. Starting with (c), there are more personal reasons, which represent favors or concessions afforded the condemned. This is the executioner’s secret rebellion.

It is a little-known fact among those outside the profession that the head remains conscious with full use of its faculties for nine seconds after being severed from the torso. Lifting the head, the executioner gives his victim one last, waning glimpse of the world. As such, he not only contravenes the very idea of punishment, he also turns the crowd into the spectacle."

Comemadre

#comemadre #roque larraquy #talks

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the-dust-jacket · 6 years

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Check out the longlist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature!

#National Book Award #Gunhild Oyehaug #Olga Tokarczuk #Perumal Murugan #Negar Djvali #Dunya Mikhail #Roque Larraquy #Hanne Orstavik #Yoko Tawada #Tatyana Tolstoya

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dougwallen · 5 years

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Comemadre book review for The Big Issue

#Comemadre #The Big Issue #book review #Roque Larraquy

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vympr · 2 years

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Hello! Do you have recommendations for your favourite horror-anything? Films, books, short stories, whatever comes to mind? I'm trying to explore the horror genre more. Thank you, have a wonderful day!

This is kind of broad, do you have specific horror stuff you're looking for?

Horror Movie Recs:

Black Christmas (original)

Candyman (original)

Hellraiser

Hellraiser II

Scream

Les Diaboliques (the old ass one idk the year)

The Crow

The Invisible Man (2019)

The Wolf of Snow Hollow

Blade

Aamis

Eve's Bayou

Atlantics

Horror Book Recs:

Beloved by Toni Morrison

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones (save this one for after you've watched/read some more horror just that you get the references)

Now You're One of Us by Asa Nonami

Near the Bone by Christina Henry

No Exit by Taylor Adams

On Sundays, She Picked Flowers by Yah Yah Scholfield

The Wrong Family by Taryn Fisher

Goddess of Filth by VC Castro

Hairspray and High Heels by VC Castro

Bath Haus by PJ Vernon

Comemadre by Roque Larraquy

City of Red and Ash by Pyun Hye-Young

Horror Shows

Slasher: Solstice

Brand New Cherry Flavor

Midnight Mass

Castlevania (seasons 1 and 2 only)

#horror #book recs #movie recs #tv show recs #horror recs

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rockislandadultreads · 3 years

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Humorous Horror Stories: book recommendations

Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero

1990. The teen detectives once known as the Blyton Summer Detective Club (of Blyton Hills, a small mining town in the Zoinx River Valley in Oregon) are all grown up and haven't seen each other since their fateful, final case in 1977. Andy, the tomboy, is twenty-five and on the run, wanted in at least two states. Kerri, one-time kid genius and budding biologist, is bartending in New York, working on a serious drinking problem. At least she's got Tim, an excitable Weimaraner descended from the original canine member of the team. Nate, the horror nerd, has spent the last thirteen years in and out of mental health institutions, and currently resides in an asylum in Arhkam, Massachusetts. The only friend he still sees is Peter, the handsome jock turned movie star. The problem is, Peter's been dead for years. The time has come to uncover the source of their nightmares and return to where it all began in 1977. This time, it better not be a man in a mask. The real monsters are waiting.

Secondhand Souls by Christopher Moore

In San Francisco, the souls of the dead are mysteriously disappearing—and you know that can't be good—in New York Times bestselling author Christopher Moore's delightfully funny sequel to A Dirty Job. Something really strange is happening in the City by the Bay. People are dying, but their souls are not being collected. Someone—or something—is stealing them and no one knows where they are going, or why, but it has something to do with that big orange bridge. Death Merchant Charlie Asher is just as flummoxed as everyone else. He's trapped in the body of a fourteen-inch-tall "meat" waiting for his Buddhist nun girlfriend, Audrey, to find him a suitable new body to play host. To get to the bottom of this abomination, a motley crew of heroes will band together: the seven-foot-tall death merchant Minty Fresh; retired policeman turned bookseller Alphonse Rivera; the Emperor of San Francisco and his dogs, Bummer and Lazarus; and Lily, the former Goth girl. Now if only they can get little Sophie to stop babbling about the coming battle for the very soul of humankind...

Comemadre by Roque Larraquy, Heather Cleary (Translator)

In the outskirts of Buenos Aires in 1907, a doctor becomes involved in a misguided experiment that investigates the threshold between life and death. One hundred years later, a celebrated artist goes to extremes in search of aesthetic transformation, turning himself into an art object. How far are we willing to go, Larraquy asks, in pursuit of transcendence? The world of Comemadre is full of vulgarity, excess, and discomfort: strange ants that form almost perfect circles, missing body parts, obsessive love affairs, and man-eating plants. Darkly funny, smart, and engrossing, here the monstrous is not alien, but the consquence of our relentless pursuit of collective and personal progress.

What the Hell Did I Just Read by David Wong

Dave, John and Amy recount what seems like a fairly straightforward tale of a shape-shifting creature from another dimension that is stealing children and brainwashing their parents, but it eventually becomes clear that someone is lying, and that someone is the narrators. The novel you're reading is a cover-up, and the "true" story reveals itself in the cracks of their hilariously convoluted, and sometimes contradictory, narrative.

#horror #fiction #genre fiction #horror books #horror stories #scary stories #humorous fiction #humor #book recs #reading recommendations #recommended reading #booklr #to read #tbr #reading list #book list #library

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