December 2022

This year felt like a rollercoaster. Moments of pure excitement followed by crushing disappointment. Spring was rough. Fall brought redemption. Work got messy. My digital life exploded. Looking back, I read a lot but retained less than I hoped...

Continuing my recap of fall releases. Here's my contribution to Galéa's gems challenge, 2022-2024 edition. The rules are straightforward: books released between August and January. Pick your standouts. Share them...

"It's always unpleasant to admit that reality will never measure up to the dreams we've nurtured." Four friends: Rodolphe, Tanguy, Paul, and Benoit. They grew up in the same small town. Now they're navigating adulthood's disappointments...

"My existence shattered. Because of a meeting that never happened, a curve on a cliff road, my life went off the edge, crashed among thorns and stones into complete isolation, a few insects, silence..." Reinhardt captures dissolution brilliantly...

Guillermo, young Mexican traveler, has been in Japan for weeks. He meets Yûko in Tokyo. Together they head north to the sea. While they're making love, the earth begins to shake. What follows is a meditation on disaster and distance...

"A world of illusions. The middle class is a world of illusions." This novel, the author's second but his first in first person, is one long monologue. Manuel Carsen, obscure singer, just got dumped. His disillusionment pours out...

"He empties his mind, in this thorax where blood is evacuated toward the machine. He sees his hands as detached from his thought, firm and precise, they run along the heart, slip in, dissect, embroidery..." A surgeon's internal landscape...