Mark Schiffer
Pretty fantastic piece of folk horror based in Irish mythology and packed with gooshy and squishy bits. Also, one of the best riffs on the Candle Cove creepypasta I've encountered. Also, a lovely queer coming-of-age story set in an undergraduate theater group in the late 90s/early 2000s. If that sounds perfect for you, it's because it probably is. God knows it was for me.
My first Maigret took significantly longer to read than I would have liked, but it was a good time. The Inspector and his wife take in the waters of the spa town of Vichy. It turns out that a woman in a lilac dress has been murdered. Time to solve a mystery! Simenon apparently meant each installment in his series to be consumed in one sitting by day laborers. While I found Maigret in Vichy to take a bit more effort than one might expect from that description, it still was a chill and pleasant experience. Definitely will be reading more.
I seriously loved this installment of the Wexford series, even if the cast of characters at the station house has gotten a bit ungainly for me to easily keep track of. Wexford's wife Dora (along with 4 others) are involved with a kidnapping scheme meant to overturn plans for a bypass development in Kingsmarkham. The result is a novel which reads a bit more like an airport thriller than a murder mystery. Gorgeous descriptions of the countryside are accompanied by Dora's interview transcripts and sequences of investigation on Wexford and the team's part. Some great twists and turns along the way to what, for me, was a truly surprising conclusion. Would totally reread this one.
Erasure was one of those books which made me want to buy a copy for every person I meet on the street and shove it into their hands. It's the kind of compelling litfic which far exceeds the bounds of genre and hits something transcendent. Thelonious AKA Monk AKA Stagg R Leigh is sick and tired of being sick and tired of his failing career as a novelist. Publishers keep asking him, “Why aren't you writing about the black experience? No, not THAT black experience, the other one!” So, outta spite, outta anger, outta depression, he writes My Pafology, the most grim and grotesque depiction of black life he has in him. And he gets the deal. This is all supported by an absolutely wrenching depiction of dementia, family dissolution through longform shared traumas, dreams and reveries, and interview transcripts. I tore through this book in two days. There's a movie coming out with Jeffery Wright as Monk, called American Fiction. I couldn't be more excited to see it. Meanwhile, I now have to read as much Percival Everett as I can.
Functions more as a tonal poem/distillation of some of Mingus's key experiences and musical works than an actual biography. That's cool, but it made for somewhat cryptic reading for me. Super abstract/difficult to parse at times which I suppose is in line with the subject matter. Respect to Massaruto for not putting out your standard “story of an artist” but this won't be for everybody.
Guy (actually, though, his name) is an absolute cipher of a man, absolutely lacking in any moral character and seemingly incapable of bringing anything of worth to society. He's been in love with Leonora for far too long.
So, this is a book about obsessive love and stalking. Though (typical for Rendell) there isn't much in the way of “on-page” violence, it's still a deeply troubling read. You spend the majority of the <300 pages in Guy's head or around his person, and it's not a fun place to be. Despite a denoument that kinda flubbed for me, this is another masterpiece from Rendell - crushed it. Crackin' audio version as well.
Though I would have appreciated more info on the creative process from album 2 on, this was a tremendously enjoyable read. Framed around Lou Reed and John Cale's reunion at Andy Warhol's funeral, and magnificently portraying the arty scenes of Boston and NYC in the 1960s, this graphic history of The Velvet Underground is totally worth a look.