In the mid-1980s, I fled Ronald Reagan’s America for the jungles of Costa Rica. Before leaving–forever, I thought–I shipped two boxes of paperbacks to the tropics. I would soon read…
Ariana Reines’ Coeur De Lion makes me want to drink and have sex. Not frilly drinks but hard strong liquor, and not just any sex, but the stuff of human…
It’s not easy to explain David Foster Wallace’s Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, especially to a co-worker or a parent, or your wife or your wife’s friend. First you have…
The moment when a new book is begun it is a moment that vibrates, as potential energy (a writer’s wisdom distilled into a completed work, printed, bound, placed in your…
Was there ever a place greyer, wetter or lonelier than Paris in the fall? For an Irish person, that’s a weighty question to consider. I guess that in some other…
One of the first things that became apparent while reading Yvonne Vera’s The Stone Virgins was a gentle spiraling, a contracting of the scope of the novel, from the streets…
Having been an English teacher with an undergrad degree in Journalism, one might think I read a lot of quality work, but I don’t. I read news and posts that…
Have you ever read a book about a sensational event that isn’t sensational itself? That manages to transcend the shocking element to reveal a much more interesting and nuanced story,…
I read Seek: Reports from the Edges of America & Beyond in a hotel room. Nowhere fancy: I was in Asheville, North Carolina, facing nothing more uncomfortable than bugs and…