Reviews

I have been saving the film adaptation of this short story for years. In high school, closeted, I fell in love with a cowboy-type straight boy, with his long legs and goofy grin. And so, for many years, all evidence of cowboy eroticism would remind me of him and all of those things that didn’t and couldn’t happen. But, that was years ago and time passes and memories fade. Cowboys no longer have that drastic connection to that first crush, and are safer now to think about without a full lapse into fantasy. ...

I love an eye-catching, one-word title. “Porn” is about as good a one as you could think up, though at times I wondered if “Taboo” might be a more fitting title for Polly Barton’s exploration into the scandalous arts. Through interviews with 19 people, most of whom she already knew, the author reports more about societal expectation and anxiety than the specific “oral history” of the porn industry. What is common, what is kink? What is normal, problematic? At a few points, this question comes up: “Do we fuck this way because of porn, or does porn look like this because it’s how we fuck?” ...

This book was mentioned last week in our book club’s discussion of We All Loved Cowboys. Hearing the plot, I made sure to buy a copy before I left the store. It is a short little book, and it can barely contain the emotion within it. Letters are prized and terrible things. I cannot imagine carrying a letter for decades, knowing it contains the words of the person that I love and adore, and not having means to hear those words in my heart. I can imagine knowing that a letter like that exists, and not receiving that, because that has happened to me. But this is something different and something more. ...

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. ...

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? ...

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? ...

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...