Two years ago, on a balmy summer day, I wistfully meandered around The Coop bookstore in Cambridge, 
Massachusetts. I was in town visiting my good friend Tyler (whose blog I have to advocate as essential reading if you’re into the philosophy of religion and cultural criticism) and, as always, I was also looking for something to read on the looming plane ride back home. While thumbing through the Russian literature, I found myself taken–in a purely aesthetic way at this point thanks to the lovely New York Review Books design–by Andrey Platonov’s Soul, a novella coupled with a few additional short stories. I’d heard of him before, but Platonov always seems to get lost amid the immense greatness of other Russian writers like Dostoevsky, Nabokov, Tolstoy, etc.
Simple Means
Halloween and Hardware
With this week’s post, I won’t be writing about a single book in particular, but rather about an author. And
that author is none other than the brilliant Kurt Vonnegut, who died (to my, and likely his, chagrin) over two years ago. Vonnegut has been on my mind for about a week or so, ever since I saw that a new collection of his stories, entitled Look at the Birdie, had been released. The collection (which I should probably buy) reminded me of my first experience with Vonnegut, way back in junior high, when prodigious awkwardness and pubescent wrath flourished like the acne that found a home on my pale and newly teenage face.
If Death Ever Had a Voice
Last week, three people on three separate occasions told me that I absolutely must read Juan Rulfo, 
especially if I loved Gabriel García Márquez (which I do). I took these recommendations and stored them in one of the tertiary parts of my brain for a later date; one not so fraught with midterms and other education-induced anguish, wailing, weeping, teeth-gnashing, etc.
Later, I was cruising around town listening to NPR–as is my wont–when one of the guests on whichever show I was listening to began to talk about Juan Rulfo, and how incredible he was. At that moment, I figured four mentions from four sources in one week is as good an impetus as any, so I ran out and bought Rulfo’s lone novel, the very short Pedro Páramo, first published in 1955. I finished this incredible book within a few hours.
Proustian Solutions
If you’re anything like me (i.e. deeply insane), you’ve probably tried to read Marcel Proust’s À la recherche 
du temps perdu in its entirety a dozen times or more. Because honestly: who doesn’t long to spend months painstakingly reading a seven-volume work of French modernist literature for no reason other than having the satisfaction of knowing you’ve spent months reading a seven-volume work of French modernist literature? I always make it most of the way through the first volume, and then something manages to get me away from it (usually, that part of my brain molded by the speed of modern society that has rendered my attention span mournfully impotent). Regardless, I do still love Proust’s writing, and I find myself continually drawn to him, even if I’ve yet to finish his most important work. As a result, when I stumbled upon Alain de Botton’s How Proust Can Change Your Life sitting patiently on a bookstore shelf, I thought to myself, “Of course Proust can change my life!” and purchased the book immediately.
Even More Darkness
Perhaps due to the relative closeness of Halloween, I’ve been writing about a lot of dark books lat
ely. And this week is no different (I promise, I’ll try to stop soon). For today’s post, I wanted to write about a book I stumbled across when I was in junior high that has managed to stick with me over the years. I don’t really recall the circumstances of how it came into my possession, but I remember finishing it in two days. Clive Barker’s Books of Blood short story collection is one of the best assortments of horror stories I know of, and it definitely forged any notion that I have of what horror fiction ought to be.
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