Review It would not be quite true to say that I have loved the Arthurian tales since I was a child. But, in a way, I have loved their progeny. A young boy from nowhere, swept up on an adventure that may never end, full of love, magic, and wonder. It’s the tale of various Narnian stories, of Taran from the criminally underrated Disney Renaissance film The Black Cauldron (not to mention the books on which that is based), of Luke Skywalker, of Harry Potter. It is the Wizard of Oz, the Lord of the Ring, and the Dark Tower. We all want to believe that there is more out there, somewhere. That magic is real, and that love need not hurt. ...

Review I tried and tried. I got 5 pages in and started begging for paragraphs. I got 20 pages in and decided maybe it wasn’t the right time, so I put it down and read a 700 page fantasy book. I read 20 more pages and could barely force myself to focus on it. I put it down at 50 intending to DNF it. I see every review mention that it picks up at page 60, so I go back. At page 70 I start skimming again, totally unable to keep my focus. I find it painfully boring. I skimmed the rest. This style does not work for me at all. ...

Review Yet another Ernaux work that I simply could not put down once it was before my eyes. What is it like to write in this way, so utterly vulnerable? I wonder if anything in this style, from someone else, rings hollow by comparison. Just absolutely frustrating to read something so good. Of course, it is also frustrating that a book like this can and must be written. The contexts leading to its creation are socio-religious dominance that criminalized abortion in France. Written in ‘99, Ernaux frequently interrupts her tale with parentheticals, reflecting on her recollection of events some 30 years later. It all seems so far away and also like yesterday: ...

Review Ernaux always makes me think about people I love. Usually, in a romantic way. But in this book, as with The Years, I thought about my mom. Growing up, I was fortunate to know several of my great-grandparents. My mom’s grandma, Bernice. My dad’s grandpa and grandma, Roscoe and Lois, as well as his other grandma, Modena. Bernice lived to be 82, Lois 92, Roscoe 92, and Modena 97. When I was born, there were pictures in the paper with some of us and however many generations were living at the time, because it was rare enough then to be newsworthy in a small town. ...

Review An absolute beauty of emotion, particularly jealousy and haunting. Ernaux describes the end of a relationship and the sense that she has been possessed by the ‘other woman’ in terms so raw and so relatable that you (or, I,) feel professionally jealous of the skill with which it is executed. I think a lot about sentimentality, because I am a sentimental person. Places become stained with chance meetings or meaningful silences. Forever after, I think of those moments when passing by. In warmth, these are pleasant reminders and stoke joy. Once things change, deteriorate, complicate, they’re falling icicles piercing your heart. It happens to places, films, books, songs, even whole genres of idea; anything that was important or noteworthy. ...

Review I picked this up solely based on the title/cover and the want to read essays, having no familiarity with Chu or her writing. I liked it a lot! I may come back and update this review with additional thoughts, but in general I had a good time. Few writers have me cackling on the metro quite like Chu did in her takedown of Bret Easton Ellis or her piece on Hanya Yanagihara. Some of my favorites: ...

Review “Often I have made love to force myself to write.” Ernaux writes about 30 pages (in this Fitzcarraldo edition) on a short affair-turned-relationship with a 20-something when she’s 50-something. She seems pleased to put a lot of words to, what I think, may boil down to “I wanted to fuck a young guy,” and if you can write as well as Ernaux, you should too. I don’t begrudge her, as she outlines, men have been doing the same thing with much less judgement for centuries. That said, I do wonder a bit what the point of this little essay was, other than to say, “I got my rocks off pretty good and wrote well while doing it.” I say the last part because in her ending pages she ties this affair to her work, Happening. I think this is a fine context, but I don’t feel the affair needs an excuse (I do not think she would agree that is what she is doing, and yet, she is clearly tying the affair start middle and end to that work as if it were necessary for it). ...

Review 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. ...

Review 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?” ...

Review 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. ...