Reading Archives - Andrew Blackman

Reading

What Is Literary Fiction Anyway?

Literary fiction is hard to define, but I'm going to try anyway. The debate tends to be poisoned by debates about elitism and being "better" than genre fiction, which I'd like to avoid here. Instead, I want to identify the…

Reading

Books I Read in January 2025

With novels set in Malaysia, Russia, Germany, India and Serbia, along with some interesting non-fiction, here's what I read this month.

Reading

Borges Marathon, Part 17: The Garden of Forking Paths

A pacy wartime thriller mixes with an abstract meditation on the forking paths of time and fate in a classic short story by Jorge Luis Borges.

Reading

After Dark by Haruki Murakami

After Dark is a strange, elliptical novel that weaves together layers of meaning in a story that unfolds over a single Tokyo night. Here's my take on what it all means.

Reading

Borges Marathon, Part 16: The Library of Babel

An infinite library of every possible book sounds wonderful until you contemplate the realities of it, which Jorge Luis Borges does masterfully in "The Library of Babel".

Reading

November 2024 Reading Roundup

From Indigenous Americans discovering Europe to Voltaire destroying my last shred of optimism, here's a summary of my reading this month.

Reading

Borges Marathon, Part 15: A Survey of the Works of Herbert Quain

Join me as I survey Jorge Luis Borges's survey of the works of the non-existent writer Herbert Quain.

Reading

Review: The Other Side by Alfred Kubin

What would a dream world look like? A world in which the normal rules of cause and effect don't exist, in which social obligations are subordinate to each individual's ability to dream? In Alfred Kubin's vision, it looks a lot…

Reading

There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak

Why was I disappointed by a novel that everyone else seems to love? Follow me as I try to find the answers.