The MF DOOM biography and Shantaram.
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Mary Oliver’s Rules for the Dance,
“A handbook for writing and reading metrical verse”
Oliver’s a poet, won a Pulitzer, I needed to learn metrical verse, seems like a great match 
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Just finished Billy and Girl by Deborah Levy. Didn’t really know her - it was just a random recommendation on Goodreads - but this was very good, and now I definitely need to read more of her stuff.
Big recommendation if you are up for something short, sharp, dark and funny! Very 90s, starts out sort of a satire on England, consumerism and the ide of the family unit, but then moves into stranger places. A bit like Martin Amis at his best but without the macho bullshit.
And now I will take a deep breath and dive into The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk. Have loved her other ones, so now’s the time to tackle the big one. 
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Just started Eurotrash by Christian Kracht. Its wonderful!
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Sigrid and Elyn by Edale Lane
A lesbian love story set in the Viking age
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I’ve fallen deeply into Jorge Luis Borges again, which I guess is obvious to anyone who’s heard the music I’ve been posting.
Mi Español es bastante pobre, so I’m reading it in English translation. There are lots of different translations available, and since it’s all short stuff, I’ll read the same story a few times in a row by different translators. I have 1 print book, 2 as ebooks on my phone, 2 as audiobooks.
It’s fascinating to catch the subtle changes in meaning and tone that happen through word choice or syntax. It reminds me of the way mixing can be a creative art.
Some of the translators seem to lose the sadness I find so touching in Borges. Others do a poor job distinguishing the translator’s or editor’s footnotes from Borges’s original footnotes. Some of the choices are more annoying than interesting. The audiobooks have extremely different acting and direction, which is both fascinating and frustrating because they’re both deeply flawed.
In Labyrinths, Dominic Keating has a very proper, received pronunciation delivery that gives the stories an almost biblical, elegiac feel. But also cold, in a way that may or may not fit the material.
Also, Keating’s editor or director must have been asleep at the board, because he’s constantly mispronouncing shit—not just foreign names or words, but also English words. It’s bizarre that a professional production is so error-ridden. But it also feels like Borges playing yet another intertextual trick on us, this time from beyond the grave.
Castulo Guerra’s performance in Collected Fictions is much better. He comes at the stories more as an actor than a narrator, and you can see the difference in their cadences just by looking at the timecodes. Guerra’s reading of a story can be up to 25% longer than Keating’s. And maybe it’s silly but it feels more fitting to hear Borges’s words in an Argentine accent.
But Collected Fictions is also deeply flawed, because it’s missing almost all of Borges’s footnotes, which means that many stories are incomplete. Like, there are some major plot points missing because Borges hid them in a footnote that the actor doesn’t read. Such a weird editing choice, but again, extremely Borgesian.
Repeatedly encountering these multifarious variations on the same key phrases has affected my music, which I guess is obvious to anyone who’s listened to the stuff I’ve been posting. Must be a side effect of falling deeply into Jorge Luis Borges again. Mi Español es súper rudimentario, so I’m reading it in English translation. There’s a lot of different translations out there.
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im reading The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro and its an interesting ride. i found it by looking for similar vibes as Murakami and i’d say it fits the bill for me. feels like some dreamy slice of life type writing, which ive found is my favorite kind of writing. it kinda reminds me of a Safdie brothers film where some parts are just stressing me out from the long drawn out nature. but it certainly captures the feeling of moving through life half awake.
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I haven’t read that one, but I absolutely love Ishiguro. I feel like all his work is so thick with memory and dreams and melancholy. Putting the pieces together as i read Never Let Me Go was one of my favorite reading experiences ever.
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ill have to read that one next. i havent been this engrossed in a book in a while! The Unconsoled feels like an exploration on the assumptions people make in public life and personal relationships and im really liking how its keeps the reader in uncomfortable moments.
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Gilles by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle
For the second time
But that’s probably Frencho-French
Not sure how well it survives translation
If he was ever translated
I’m reading Mark Z Danielewski’s new book, Tom’s Crossing. (He’s the House of Leaves guy.) It literally has 1200 pages and weighs four pounds, and it is maybe the slowest moving novel I’ve ever read. I’m about a hundred pages in so far and I’m onboard but physically holding it up to read in bed is a challenge lol. Mark Danielewski you fucking weirdo.
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Straight up my favorite novel
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It‘s been ages since I read Borges (in German translation), but I really should revisit his works. „Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote“ is my favorite among his short stories.
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I just got a signed copy of this while he was on tour, he’s a really interesting speaker. I probably won’t get around to actually reading it for a while though.
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I’m about a third into Doctor Sleep and really enjoying it. Stephen King knows how to spin a great scary story, and this one is hitting me hard as I approach 6 months of sobriety. Highly recommended.
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City of Saints and Madmen has been an unbelievable journey for me. At times impenetrable (Duncan Shriek’s The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of the City of Ambergris) and often spellbinding (The Cage) I’ve truly enjoyed this eclectic collection of tidbits from the fungal city. It’s incredible that this is the same writer as the Southern Reach saga, and Borne. I’ve been bought even more of his books for Christmas so will be spending the coming months dedicating my reading time to Jeff’s weird fiction.
Well done 
Stephen King is such a great writer, and Doctor Sleep needs to be one of the next of his I read. The Shining is incredible - I grew up with the film but the book is even more disturbing. I saw the Doctor Sleep film in the cinema, liked it but The Hat grated on me, felt silly somehow, can’t put my finger on it.
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finished:
finished:
started:
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The Hat is a strange choice…I can get past it because I’m digging the other stuff so much. And thank you! I’m so grateful to be sober, and this one and the Shining are such incredible commentaries on active addiction and the struggles of recovery. One day and one page at a time.
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I’m in the last 300 pages of Stephen King’s The Stand.
My reading has seriously slowed since I got a Digitakt.
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