Ever since I retired from the public school classroom, I have voraciously been consuming titles new and those I regretted missing. And in keeping with my goals, I want to find the value of the widest range of reading.
Most book reviews are shopping guides designed to help you consume faster. This archive is different.
What you see below are framings; No more grading books, summarizing plots, or emotional proclamations. Instead, now you’ll see a quick three-word wrangle with the texture/style/content of the book and a recommended “Frictional Posture.” I offer an attitude, perspective, or question you might use to navigate the book’s uniqueness and discover more from your reading.
Don’t just read. Find traction. Read with friction.
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“The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.”
–Oscar Wilde
Quoted in Oscar Wilde, Art and Morality: A Defence of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Stuart Mason (ed.) (1908)
“The Jellyfish” by Samantha Leriche-Gionet (Boum)
3-Word Review: Experiential Demonstrative Memoir Frictional Posture: What does the graphic novel format accomplish that words absolutely could not?
“Enamels and Cameos” by Theophile Gautier
3-Word Review: Dreamlike Untranslatable Curiosities Frictional Posture: Find 2+ translations: Where might all fail to capture Gautier's aesthetic? Earlier Review: I read this volume inside the larger collected works of Gautier, a 1903 edition, Vol 24, by FC de...
“Men Without Women” by Haruki Murakami
3-Word Review: Quiet Self-Deluded Poignant Frictional Posture: Across the stories, to what degree are Murakami's narrators blame-worthy for their alienation?
“The Buffalo Hunter Hunter” by Stephen Graham Jones
3-Word Review: Culpable Generational Hemovorous Frictional Posture: Yes, horror, but what agreement might all three narrators have about accountability?
“One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This” by Omar El-Akkad
3-Word Review: Personal Incisive Outraged Frictional Posture: Reflect on how Akkad's claims resonate in your own experience. What accounts for this?
“Peter Grimes” by Benjamin Britten
3-Word Review: Grim Diversionary Elusive Frictional Posture: Consider how the opera re-orders your reader ethics/moral judgments. Why?
“The Ministry of Time” by Kaliane Bradley
3-Word Review: Hook-driven Romance-tropes Predictable Frictional Posture: Which arbitrary details compel the novel's romantic and thriller plotting?
“Literary Fiction Tourism” by Nicola MacLeod
3-Word Review: Pedestrian Utilitarian Circumscribed Frictional Posture: What human questions does such a study fail to ask? Earlier Review: This is an extraordinarily niche bit of scholarship. If this is not your field, it is far far too expensive a book to be worth...
“On the Art of Reading” by Arthur Quiller-Couch
3-Word Review: Humorous Upright Engaging Frictional Posture: Do Q's dated presumptions invalidate all of his claims?
“Dororo” by Osamu Tezuka
3-Word Review: Stark Myth-Laden Allegorical Frictional Posture: Across this work, which evil seems uncompromisingly primary?
“The Dispossessed” by Ursula K. Le Guin
3-Word Review: Mytho-poetic Knotty Humanist Frictional Posture Do communities in any way grow richer from conflict? What path to utopia?
“Mao II” by Don DeLillo
- : Brooding Dread-full Prescient : How does each scene, however uneventful, mirror the novel's other narrative ideas?
“So Lucky” by Nicola Griffith
3-Word Review: Grounding Stressful Autofiction Frictional Posture: How does Griffith's merging of fact and fiction affect the telling of truths about disability?
“The Spear Cuts Through Water” by Simon Jimenez
3-Word Review: Dreambent Fleshy High-Quested Frictional Posture: What stories still lurk in the margins of this framed story? . . . . . . .
“Black Leopard, Red Wolf,” by Marlon James
3- Word Review: Hyper-visceral Untrustworthy (!) Reader-Challenging Frictional Posture: What cultural mores/ethics govern these characters? Is it the same for all?
“A Poetics of Plot for the 21st Century” by Brian Richardson
3-Word Review: Prosaic Thoughtful Endeavoring Frictional Posture: Pre-selecting 5 of your favorite titles from the past 20 years, how well do they fall into Richardson's categories as you read them? . . . . . . . . . . .
“The Perseverance” by Raymond Antrobus
3-Word Review: Gulf-crossing Re-sensitizing Broadening Frictional Posture: Thinking of mind, body, and culture, where is language located?
“Pet” by Akwaeke Emezi
This YA story is at once a serious look at repressed trauma (personal and societal) and a sensitive examination of diversity and compassion. A wonderful introduction to community and responsibility.
“The Origins of Totalitarianism” by Hannah Arendt
Those looking for quick takeaways about totalitarian regimes, especially in our current climate, are disappointed that Arendt hasn’t offered the complexity of the issue in bullet points. But of course, the complex and nuanced and even contradictory history of the world isn’t built that way.
“Hardears” by Matthew Clarke
Clarke’s original Caribbean hybrid of history and myth is an act of art and decolonialization, of imagination and resistance to the mainstream, though not wholly penetrable to audiences beyond the island culture.
“Omeros” by Derek Walcott
Walcott’s epic poetic work is at once a refiguring of Homer and the colonial history of St. Lucia, of the indigenous everywhere, of the myths which mark poet and people. An extraordinary layering of all.
“A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” by James Joyce
If we allow the novel to work on its own terms, and quit asking it to meet our expectations of a common coming-of-age story, we can find that the style itself reveals the experience we seek.
“The Unbearable Lightness of Being” by Milan Kundera
Kundera’s near masterpiece is compelling story, hypnotic characters and interactions, a profound theme, and . . . something else more elusive still.
“The Refugees” by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Nguyen’s short stories are, each individually, a situation of struggle in identity across generations, gender, economies, traditions, and circumstance; absorbing and revealing.