I’ve never had a ‘favorite’ writer before, at least not in the sense of if for some reason I was being stuck there and I could only have one author’s set of books with me I could produce the name instantly.  I was introduced to Burroughs by my very good friend, and soon-to-be-published poet, Ian […]

A young Irishman sits in a Paris jail.  He has confessed to a murder his lawyer is convinced he did not commit.  There is a witness of the run in the city of Paris, and she, a young street kid, may have the answer.  But his neurotic Paris Lawyer, haunted by his own rural upbringing […]

I can sum up my feelings about this book in one sentence: wave upon wave of disappointment.
This isn’t a criticism, however.
Firstly, it’s not immediately obvious that this book is not a novel but a collection of short stories.  I saw the title and thought ‘ah, it’s about ‘that Wow signal, which is a pretty spiffy […]

First, a confession:  I’ve never read Trainspotting.  I’ve  seen the film (as if that’s any compensation) and thought it was excellent, and have meant to read the book, but found the dialect in the writing too damn dense.  I had Filth recommended
to me by Brandon Wilkinson some time ago and I decided that, since he’d […]

I’ve been interested in this book for a few years and was very keen to find out where the title had stemmed from when I started reading it.  Turns out that testicles look like eyeballs when both are popped out of their respective cubby holes, and our dear sweet Simone, fuck-buddy of the protagonist, likes […]

This is Logan’s first collection of ‘industrial fiction’, consisting of eight stories that take place in a world of electrical monsters, steel webs and sad televisions.  It’s a bold movement into a ‘new’ genre, and I can tell that his heart’s really in the right place, but it just doesn’t come off.
The pacing within the […]

This has been praised as ‘the’ seminal book on transgression, though I would say that Chris Jenks’  more far more recent Transgression is a really good lead-in to this book.  It’s dense, chewy and thoroughly academic, yet also very readable.
It seems to cover the following, though:
* Fairs (some of which evolved into…)
* Carnivals (one of […]

A while ago I read a squeamishly good little book called Exquisite Corpse. It was about necrophilia and cannibalism. Great stuff on top of being very well written. I decided that I rather liked this Brite girl, and picked up Liquor, which was pitched to me as a story of two cooks […]

I think if I had ever done drugs (aside from alcohol, which I enjoy swimming in from time to time), I’d have ‘gotten’ this book more.  I thought Junky was a masterpiece - a rambling, meandering and crazy book but excellent all the same.  I’d heard from many a source that Naked Lunch (actually a […]

And so I continue to nibble on through the Palahniuk collection with much glee and abandon, indeed with the same energy that I use when I mash up that glassy layer of jam when you open a new jar, and I can’t help but see all the threads. Like Fight Club, Haunted and Lullaby, […]