Borges Marathon, Part 18: Funes, His Memory
My thoughts on Funes, His Memory, aka Funes the Memorious, a short fiction by Jorge Luis Borges about a man with an infinite memory.
Reading Wales Month: Clear by Carys Davies
A church minister is sent to evict the last inhabitant of a remote island, but things don't go as planned.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.