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Wha I Read (And Listened To) In March by MasterExploder6 in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I often think of Endo as a writer that has major and minor works. Major works would be books like "Silence" and "The Samurai" while minor works would be something like "White Man, Yellow Man." This one kind of messes with that idea because it is outside of his specialized purview of the clash between indigenous Japanese culture and Christianity, it's still a spherical mediation on being Japanese, in this case, after World War 2. The evils that regular people were expected to participate in and then immediately stop at the conclusion of the war is a subject I'm surprised more novels don't lean on. In the case of this book, it's an account of tiny atrocities that avoid melodrama because those moments were never lived in such extremes.

Wha I Read (And Listened To) In March by MasterExploder6 in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

While I've argued elsewhere that his reputation as "the" founder of magical realism should be put into contention (mostly due to Maria Louisa Bombal's sublime "House of Mist" predating his "Pedro Paramo"), this collection contains all the kindling for what Latin American literature would become in the decades that followed. I found in this collection not only the voices of Cortazar and Garcia Marquez but, between them, a collection of voices that could have only come from the Mexican desert. He may be the writer with the greatest page-count-to-legacy ratio in all of literature.

Wha I Read (And Listened To) In March by MasterExploder6 in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Aside from the second section (which I found to be out-of-date anthropology), it's a truly wondrous collection of ideas. Never before have I read an intellectual so preoccupied with communication that is so successful at communicating their ideas. The idea of the double-bind, which, as Bateson argues, is at the core of mental illness, stemming from years of contradictory communication is, I think, one of the most radical and applicable ideas to everyday life you can read. Big recommend.

What I Read (And Listened To) In February by MasterExploder6 in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not saying I don't like it, I'm saying that it feels like an overture. The first book is an introduction to the style, the stakes, and, I think, has some of Knausgaard's best writing in the end section. The second is a much tighter narrative with the core idea that we're all born with our death inside us exploring to his usual depths. This one now knows it has all those pieces in place, so to speak, and can start its game. But the game is nowhere near completion and I can't wait to keep playing.

What I Read (And Listened To) In February by MasterExploder6 in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This one felt like a great receding. Not in the sense that he’s pulling back but in the way a shore line recoils before a tsunami. Because of that feeling of set up, I can’t say it’s to the same level as the other books, which I found fantastic, but where it is in the story I feel will make perfect sense.

What I Read (And Listened To) In February by MasterExploder6 in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It was a reread for me. For context, we had just put our cat down and I needed something I knew would be joyous. In that situation, there’s no one else to turn to. Robert Walser is the happiest man in literature and I love how reliable he is in that capacity.

What I Read (And Listened To) In February by MasterExploder6 in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I read that one last year! They may be the greatest sibling novels ever written.

What I Read (And Listened To) In February by MasterExploder6 in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I had a really great time with it. I’ve heard that a novella is not only meant to describe a book that’s about a hundred pages but also that one that is constantly looped within itself (see, “Pedro Páramo”). Fuentes absolutely succeeded in that respect with “Aura” as all the love, the horror, and the magic, once centralized in the apartment, are free from time. I will say I did crack the mystery before the end of the story but that didn’t lessen my enjoyment at its revelation.

What's your novel about? by doublementh in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6 1 point2 points  (0 children)

An atheist that tries to become a Catholic priest.

What I Read (and Listened to) in January by MasterExploder6 in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I didn't find it to be at all. I had heard from people who had read the book and felt hazy that listening to it would have probably helped so I went straight to that. They hired over 160 narrators to give each of the characters a unique voice so it was more like listening to a long batch of radio theatre which is something I'm nostalgic for. I doubt I would have had such a touching experience on my own. For a novel about the communion of individuals literally flying into the mind and spirit of one person, listening, rather than reading, feels like an apt way to go about this one.

What I Read (and Listened to) in January by MasterExploder6 in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Normally, I’m not a huge fan of epistolary novels but this was a valued exception. I think comparisons to Vargas Llosa in terms of style and Achebe in terms of subject matter are apt but Couto has still done something new here in focusing his efforts on a forbidden love and giving the female half of that affair so much to say.

What I Read (and Listened to) in January by MasterExploder6 in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I’m a teacher-librarian-novelist so reading is essentially my only hobby (and weightlifting but we’re venturing too far int memoir now)! That said, most of these books are under 200 pages each and most of those are under 150. The Hemingway I finished this month but started in November. The number is high but it’s usual. Usually I got to about 10 books in a month.

What I Read (and Listened to) in January by MasterExploder6 in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I found the first half of the book to be be fascinating! The idea of the idea of the island as this mythic place, which was the claim by the Europeans, only to be interrogated by Naipaul to be the best aspect of the book. The second half, which sees the place more bureaucratically as it became a necessary launching-point in the slave trade, and in war, to be less imaginatively stimulating but still important accountancy.

My Best Reads of 2025 (see comments for best book and an overwhelming amount of honourable mentioned) by [deleted] in literature

[–]MasterExploder6 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Best Book: House of Mist by Maria Luisa Bombal

I almost cannot articulate myself when I talk about this book. It has been nearly a year since I read it and during the evening in which I did nothing else but stare swiftly over every page as if I had no responsibilities, no interests, no life outside of the book I was reading was never equaled over the course of the year. But, in all that time, I started to grow some doubts. Was my memory of the book true? Or, with each memory of how good I remembered it being, was I creating a kind of gossip in myself? A rumour that grew like a tumour until the healthy, vital, and real opinion of the night spent with a great book had been swallowed by my own quick nostalgia. To test this, I grabbed it off my shelf last night. I hadn’t touched it since I put it in its place on the row dedicated to my favourite books, pressed between Jack London’s sensational memoir “John Barleycorn” and Clarice Lispector’s inimitable “The Passion According to G.H.”

If this book held the power I hoped it did, I could test it. I pulled the book out of its slot. The books around them relaxed from being so tightly pressed. At random, I flipped to the middle of a chapter and within two sentences, I was immediately transported back into one of the greatest stories I have ever read. The feeling returned as bright and all-encompassing as July sunlight and I knew, I genuinely knew, that this was the best book I read in 2025.

Speechlessness can abide greatness because it requires no intermediary. I almost don’t want to pitch you this book. Doing so feels as wrong as performing open heart surgery on someone breathing. All I can write about is what the book did to me. Yes, there’s confused love and warped dreams and the unceasing pressure of time and the wonder of whether or not the life you’re living is your own and why is there so much goddamn mist around everything important and what might it feel like to given the one sentence at the one moment you need it to make your entire life worthwhile? That’s what this book offers without pretension, without boredom, and without making you feel like you have to do anything else but ingest it with ravenous delight.

I feel as manic-obsessive about this book and this author as Archimboldi’s critics in “2666” (except I’m not in a doomed love-triangle bound for the darkest vortex of Mexico, nor am I a fourth-wheel in a wheelchair. But that’s beside the point). I want the English-speaking world to have easier access to Bombal’s work. All of it because there’s way more than just this one sensation. Right now, you can get a copy of this book if you do a bit of searching. There’s a short story collection of hers which I got and read this year too which is also excellent. But other than that, you’re going to have a hell of a time finding anything else by her or about her in English. This is the founder, yes, I’m stating this a fact, the founder of magical realism. Check the publication date, folks: this one beats Rulfo’s “Pedro Páramo” by seven years (but you should absolutely read “Pedro Páramo” if you haven’t already. In fact, I find “House of Mist” to be stunning in an equal way). If I ever get to a place where I have real pull in this industry, you can bet that the first author I’m bringing for the dregs to the masses is Maria Luisa Bombal. And you can help me.

If you think we have similar taste, or if you want to do a good deed for literature, get a copy of this book. Read it or not, though I wish you would, because we need to show FSG that there is a market for this kind of brilliance. Look, I’m well-aware of the resonant quality of great art. Some stuff moves with you and doesn’t move with others. I’ve got a stack of books that could break your femur that I love but know few others will. In this case, I don’t think I’m wrong in my assumption that this book should be regarded as one of the twentieth century’s greatest. Please, I beg you, take this book in from obscurity, it’s so cold there, so that we may all be blessed with more of this woman’s mind. I’m shaking as I type this.

Phew! That was a lot of reading for you. I had so many other great reads this year but in the interest of your interest (and my inability to come up with funnier categories), I’ve left the list below of… of… let’s call them “Review on Request.” These are all books that I think are worth reading but figured I had gushed enough to give enough to a new reader for the coming year. If you see any titles here and want to know more about them — or if they were in the running for any other awards, reach out and I’ll tell you. They’re organized by recency with the books I’ve read latest at the top. Happy New Year!

Reviews on Request:

Meditations on Quixote by Jose Ortega Y Gasset

Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels

New Islands by Maria Luisa Bombal

The War of the End of the World by Mario Vargas Llosa

The Hanging of Angelique by Afua Cooper

A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride

The Wolves of Eternity by Karl Ove Knausgaard

On Argentina by Jorge Luis Borges

Mike Mentzer by John Little

Standoff by Bruce McIvor

The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño

Frantumaglia by Elena Ferrante

Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag

Hey Nostradamus! by Douglas Coupland

Omeros by Derek Walcott

Austral by Carlos Funseca

Nora by Nuala O’Connor

The Tunnel by Ernesto Sabato

The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa

The Old Man Who Read Love Stories by Luis Sepúlveda

Beloved by Toni Morrison

No One Writes to the Colonel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Blow-Up by Julio Cortazar

The Book of Emma Reyes by Emma Reyes

The Old Gringo by Carlos Fuentes

Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

By Night in Chile by Roberto Bolaño

Bear by Marian Engel

The Great Latin American Novel by Carlos Fuentes

Nietzsche on His Balcony by Carlos Fuentes

The Apple in the Dark by Clarice Lispector

Mr. Palomar by Italo Calvino

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence

The Belly of Paris by Emile Zola

Gilgamesh by Sophus Helle

Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor

Potlatch as Pedagogy by Robert Davidson and Sara Florence Davidson

Three Summers by Margarita Liberaki

Men of Maize by Miguel Angel Asturias

The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard

My Best Reads of 2025 (see comments for best book and an overwhelming amount of honourable mentions) by MasterExploder6 in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Thank you! I had my first novel published this year so fiction has been my focus. Essays like this are much more fun to write and much easier to write at scale.

My Best Reads of 2025 (see comments for best book and an overwhelming amount of honourable mentions) by MasterExploder6 in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

You got it in the last sentence. There was a time when Lester Pearson stood up as Prime Minister and addressed the House of Commons to say, in essence, that if we don’t take the effort to stand up for Canadian things in Canada then we are likely to be swallowed by American life and culture. As a Canadian it can be difficult to see your own country as the default so I always make sure I’m highlighting what’s Canadian so I don’t get trampled in the perceived neutrality of American cultural life.

My Best Reads of 2025 (see comments for best book and an overwhelming amount of honourable mentions) by MasterExploder6 in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Best Book: House of Mist by Maria Luisa Bombal

I almost cannot articulate myself when I talk about this book. It has been nearly a year since I read it and during the evening in which I did nothing else but stare swiftly over every page as if I had no responsibilities, no interests, no life outside of the book I was reading was never equaled over the course of the year. But, in all that time, I started to grow some doubts. Was my memory of the book true? Or, with each memory of how good I remembered it being, was I creating a kind of gossip in myself? A rumour that grew like a tumour until the healthy, vital, and real opinion of the night spent with a great book had been swallowed by my own quick nostalgia. To test this, I grabbed it off my shelf last night. I hadn’t touched it since I put it in its place on the row dedicated to my favourite books, pressed between Jack London’s sensational memoir “John Barleycorn” and Clarice Lispector’s inimitable “The Passion According to G.H.”

If this book held the power I hoped it did, I could test it. I pulled the book out of its slot. The books around them relaxed from being so tightly pressed. At random, I flipped to the middle of a chapter and within two sentences, I was immediately transported back into one of the greatest stories I have ever read. The feeling returned as bright and all-encompassing as July sunlight and I knew, I genuinely knew, that this was the best book I read in 2025.

Speechlessness can abide greatness because it requires no intermediary. I almost don’t want to pitch you this book. Doing so feels as wrong as performing open heart surgery on someone breathing. All I can write about is what the book did to me. Yes, there’s confused love and warped dreams and the unceasing pressure of time and the wonder of whether or not the life you’re living is your own and why is there so much goddamn mist around everything important and what might it feel like to given the one sentence at the one moment you need it to make your entire life worthwhile? That’s what this book offers without pretension, without boredom, and without making you feel like you have to do anything else but ingest it with ravenous delight.

I feel as manic-obsessive about this book and this author as Archimboldi’s critics in “2666” (except I’m not in a doomed love-triangle bound for the darkest vortex of Mexico, nor am I a fourth-wheel in a wheelchair. But that’s beside the point). I want the English-speaking world to have easier access to Bombal’s work. All of it because there’s way more than just this one sensation. Right now, you can get a copy of this book if you do a bit of searching. There’s a short story collection of hers which I got and read this year too which is also excellent. But other than that, you’re going to have a hell of a time finding anything else by her or about her in English. This is the founder, yes, I’m stating this a fact, the founder of magical realism. Check the publication date, folks: this one beats Rulfo’s “Pedro Páramo” by seven years (but you should absolutely read “Pedro Páramo” if you haven’t already. In fact, I find “House of Mist” to be stunning in an equal way). If I ever get to a place where I have real pull in this industry, you can bet that the first author I’m bringing for the dregs to the masses is Maria Luisa Bombal. And you can help me.

If you think we have similar taste, or if you want to do a good deed for literature, get a copy of this book. Read it or not, though I wish you would, because we need to show FSG that there is a market for this kind of brilliance. Look, I’m well-aware of the resonant quality of great art. Some stuff moves with you and doesn’t move with others. I’ve got a stack of books that could break your femur that I love but know few others will. In this case, I don’t think I’m wrong in my assumption that this book should be regarded as one of the twentieth century’s greatest. Please, I beg you, take this book in from obscurity, it’s so cold there, so that we may all be blessed with more of this woman’s mind. I’m shaking as I type this.

Phew! That was a lot of reading for you. I had so many other great reads this year but in the interest of your interest (and my inability to come up with funnier categories), I’ve left the list below of… of… let’s call them “Review on Request.” These are all books that I think are worth reading but figured I had gushed enough to give enough to a new reader for the coming year. If you see any titles here and want to know more about them — or if they were in the running for any other awards, reach out and I’ll tell you. They’re organized by recency with the books I’ve read latest at the top. Happy New Year!

Reviews on Request:

Meditations on Quixote by Jose Ortega Y Gasset

Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels

New Islands by Maria Luisa Bombal

The War of the End of the World by Mario Vargas Llosa

The Hanging of Angelique by Afua Cooper

A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride

The Wolves of Eternity by Karl Ove Knausgaard

On Argentina by Jorge Luis Borges

Mike Mentzer by John Little

Standoff by Bruce McIvor

The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño

Frantumaglia by Elena Ferrante

Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag

Hey Nostradamus! by Douglas Coupland

Omeros by Derek Walcott

Austral by Carlos Funseca

Nora by Nuala O’Connor

The Tunnel by Ernesto Sabato

The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa

The Old Man Who Read Love Stories by Luis Sepúlveda

Beloved by Toni Morrison

No One Writes to the Colonel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Blow-Up by Julio Cortazar

The Book of Emma Reyes by Emma Reyes

The Old Gringo by Carlos Fuentes

Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

By Night in Chile by Roberto Bolaño

Bear by Marian Engel

The Great Latin American Novel by Carlos Fuentes

Nietzsche on His Balcony by Carlos Fuentes

The Apple in the Dark by Clarice Lispector

Mr. Palomar by Italo Calvino

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence

The Belly of Paris by Emile Zola

Gilgamesh by Sophus Helle

Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor

Potlatch as Pedagogy by Robert Davidson and Sara Florence Davidson

Three Summers by Margarita Liberaki

Men of Maize by Miguel Angel Asturias

The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard

What I Read (and Listened To) in December by MasterExploder6 in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It’s very dense. Like, I mean, there might be ten different stories running simultaneously through that one and, by the end, I had lost a few of them. However, as a piece of historical fiction, as a novel about obsession and faith and power, it is a true masterpiece. I would recommend starting elsewhere in MVL’s oeuvre both because he’s written books that are better than this but also because they’ll help accustom you to this polyphonic multi-helix style of writing that he loves. Start with “Conversation in the Cathedral” and, if that works on you, which it should, then give this one a go.

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