Reviews

Review I read this for my Small Press Book Club. In a recent view, I proclaimed, “three stars is good,” and in general this is true. However, this is not a “three stars is good” three stars. This is a, “I have no idea what to rate this book as” three stars. I found it mostly inoffensive, but also not compelling or engaging at all. There are some passages that read to me like white noise, words on a page without meaning, meandering. Occasionally, there is an interesting line. But overall, I leave the book not knowing what to do about it. ...

Review I probably read one comic book omnibus or graphic novel a year. Last weekend in Philly a very chatty bartender told me that I simply had to read HoX/PoX. He was very friendly and poured heavy drinks and so while I was busy giving googlyeyes to the other bartender I promised I’d read it. For whatever reason I take my word seriously and so ordered this and read it this week. It’s pretty good! I probably haven’t read an X-Men comic in 20 years, I don’t even know what the last one was that I’d have read. The X-Men have a special place in my heart as the 2000s era films were some of the first I recall seeing in the theater, and naturally the gay/queer-analogy of it all speaks to me. The analogy is sort of present here, although it is of course all very fantastic. Who wouldn’t want a land of their own to be who they are? ...

Review I purchased this at Giovanni’s Room in Philly, a nice little shop, on the recommendation of a friend from a book club. It was good, though perhaps the wrong book for me right now. Still, 3 stars is good and this is worth a read if you are interested in something light, slightly romantic, and a little yearning. (slight spoilers follow…) It is safe to see I could see the ending coming for miles and miles, and I didn’t exactly appreciate that. I wonder why people read these books of romance where all of the heartbreak and the struggle boils off into reunion and tenderness. Particularly folks who are alone – doesn’t it make one feel worse? ...

Review I’ve put off reading this for months. Cormac McCarthy is probably my favorite writer, and I’ve read him described as “Faulkner’s heir” without having a context for what that means. Sparse language? Esoteric vocabulary? A distaste for little punctuals, smudging up the page? I hope it goes further than having hick characters talk like hicks. I say that as someone who grew up in rural Illinois and spoke plenty of hick then and sometimes now. ...

Review Apparently I started this book in February, last year. I remember my intention was to read an essay or two between other books or at leisure, so as to parse out these echoes of a pre-9/11 Hitchens. Whatever happened, that didn’t. I read in a short burst and then the occasional hiccup, then months and months later I picked it up if only to get it off my goodreads “currently reading” section, swallowing up the last 150 pages as best I could. ...

Review There are some books that are forever changed by the passage of time. They become outdated, the references stale, the issues dissolved by time’s arrow. Wish that this were one of them. And yet, there are events that have impacted how we read this book today, in 2025, in ways we may not even ten years ago. One may take issue with the rapid deterioration of a State, the sudden and stark transition of liberal democracy into the most wretched despotism, as one such review I read does. They would be forgetting the evening of the Wiemar Republic, and how it woke to Hitler’s Germany. They would be forgetting the revolution in Iran. They, ten years ago, lived in a world in which domestic terrorists beat and stomped law enforcement in order to invade the Capital of the United States. A world before sad, lonely, men embraced hate and dawned masks and zipcuffs and entered that building with the goal of taking hostages of elected representatives. A world where gallows had not yet been erected on the National Mall. ...

Review I have eyeballed this book at my local shop for weeks and weeks, picking it up and flipping through it probably four or five times. I decided to put a hold on it at my local library instead of purchasing it – and I’m glad I did. Not because I find it a little odd that a book all about the ills of capitalism to be sold for $18 before tax. Rather, because I think this book means well but I think it is rather wrapped up in itself to the extent that it forgets two things: who it is written for; and, what the point it wants to make is. Those are big problems. ...

Review I’ve been eyeballing this at the bookstore for a while, now, and finally I picked it up. I like writing letters. I have a red Mead notebook that I take out sometimes to write letters like this, to get things out. It is a special kind of writing. Unvarnished and yet, when pure, truer than any high-polished thing. This edition is 221 pages and is a quick read, full of lovely little letters. I appreciate that the editors (R Smith and B Vesey) have by-and-large retained the spelling and grammar of the original authors. They give the letters a real sense of texture. There is a letter here that is so sentimental that the author writes a second line hoping that the reader doesn’t think his writing is faint on purpose, clarifying that he blotted the page too quickly, and so he thus writes, “All my love now and forever.” I adore that. It’s something I’d feel sensitive about, something I’d clarify. ...

Review Simon Critchley often references this work in his book, “Notes on Suicide.” Levé, on page 29, writes: The way in which you quit it rewrote the story of your life in a negative form. Those who knew you reread each of your acts in the light of your last. Henceforth, the shadow of this tall black tree hides the forest that was your life. When you are spoken of, it begins with recounting your death, before going back to explain it. Isn’t it peculiar how this final gesture inverts your biography? It is now impossible for this book to be read as anything other than a form of suicide note, which makes it voyeuristic. Levé ended his life ten days after submitting this manuscript. It is of course interesting that this happened, and, as Jan Steyn writes in his afterword, “demands” the work be interpreted through this lens. For me, the author’s actions are less compelling than a simpler fact: the book demands that we imagine ourselves as both Levé’s “you” and “I.” The character who ended their life, and the narrator who imagines and recalls the life ended. ...

Review I have had this book on my living room table for months. Originally, it was to by my book club’s January read, but scheduling and then supply issues pushed it out months and months. The whole time I eyed it warily for its weight and size. I’ve been in a mood of 200-300 page books, and I had no concept of what this would be about, only that it was surprisingly dense to lift. The last book I read from Archipelago Press was Sara Gallardo’s January which is a tiny thing. ...