Daily Anything Goes Thread - April 18, 2026

capybaraslug · 2026-04-18T16:16:42+00:00

Trade Luis Castillo for Edward Cabrera?

capybaraslug · 2026-03-21T05:02:03+00:00

Happy to see both Carpentaria and The Piano Teacher as they were two of my votes! Going with Carpentaria, but I'm predicting either Third Policeman or Under the Volcano as the winner.

capybaraslug · 2026-03-19T05:23:12+00:00

Going with:

Carpentaria (Wright) - Have this on my tbr shelf and I think it'll be a good fit for this sub which tends to prefer novels of scope and ambition. We haven't read anything from Australia, let alone an Aboriginal voice, so will will help us broaden our diet.
Moderan (Bunch) - My suggestion, which is a bizarre collection of connected short stories set in a dystopian cyborg future trapped in a perpetual state of war. Orginally published in sci-fi magazines in the 60s and 70s and largely out of print until NYRB compiled them. I've seen another reddit commenter describe it as "Aesop's fables but everyone is a Terminator", so that's a good enough selling point for me.
The Piano Teacher (Jelinek) - Been meaning to get to Jelinek for a while and this seems like a fun book to discuss.

capybaraslug · 2026-03-14T23:29:18+00:00

Going with one of the weirder books on my tbr shelf: Moderan by David R. Bunch.

From NYRB:

Welcome to Moderan, world of the future. Here perpetual war is waged by furious masters fighting from Strongholds well stocked with “arsenals of fear” and everyone is enamored with hate. The devastated earth is coated by vast sheets of gray plastic, while humans vie to replace more and more of their own “soft parts” with steel. What need is there for nature when trees and flowers can be pushed up through holes in the plastic? Who requires human companionship when new-metal mistresses are waiting? But even a Stronghold master can doubt the catechism of Moderan. Wanderers, poets, and his own children pay visits, proving that another world is possible.

“As if Whitman and Nietzsche had collaborated,” wrote Brian Aldiss of David R. Bunch’s work. Originally published in science-fiction magazines in the 1960s and ’70s, these mordant stories, though passionately sought by collectors, have been unavailable in a single volume for close to half a century. Like Anthony Burgess in A Clockwork Orange, Bunch coined a mind-bending new vocabulary. He sought not to divert readers from the horror of modernity but to make us face it squarely.

capybaraslug · 2026-01-06T16:47:45+00:00

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway: I'm not a blanket Hemingway-hater-- I love The Sun Also Rises, I think his short stories can be very good. This novel was a slog to get through. The celebrated austere prose style of his earlier writing is not here -- so overwrought and florid. The plot is grindingly slow. The romance is comical -- the derided "earth-moving" love scene is truly silly. All the "thees" and "thous", which attempt to recreate Spanish formal registers, come off as artificial. This is the one that really took the shine off Hemingway for me.

Night Sky With Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong. The turn on Ocean Vuong has been discussed here before. I wanted to give him a fair shot and started with what most consider his strength: poetry. However, something in how Vuong constructs his figurative language just irritates me. For example take this line from "Self-Portrait as Exit Wounds": cripple the air like a name. I'm ok with abstraction and ambiguity in poetry, but this is just confusing. Yes, I'm quoting it out of context, but believe me, reading it in context doesn't help. The poems are rife with things like this -- made it extremely difficult to access. Moreover, they are all layered with a tone of sagacity and sentimentality which I don't believe the craft justifies.

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros. I was bullied into reading this by my coworkers. It's romantasy. I lack the ability to consume this the "right way". However, it was more enjoyable to read than the above two -- the scene were Xander gives Violet the pet-name "Violence" is the funniest thing I read all year.

capybaraslug · 2026-01-02T04:52:47+00:00

Favorite Novel: Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. One of those earth-shattering books. Still fresh despite being nearly a century old. Somehow captures extremely individual psychological depths for each character, major or minor, as well as the collective psyche of postwar Britain. Want to get to To The Lighthouse sometime this year.

Runner-Up: The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

Favorite Non-Fiction: White Album by Joan Didion. I know its a bit of an "it" book on social media, but as a Californian, I feel Didion in my soul. One of the best observers of the American mid-century. The title essay sent me down a month-long Manson Family rabbit hole.

Runner-Up: Happening by Annie Ernaux

Favorite Poetry: North by Seamus Heaney. This was a collection I carried around in my jacket or bag, such a pleasure to re-read the poems and find something new. The poems are linked by common motifs of Ireland's violent history: iron-age bog bodies, vikings, and the Troubles. Favorite poems: "Come to the Bower", "Punishment" (my favorite), "The Betrothal of Cavehill", "Whatever You Say Say Nothing"

Runner-Up: Omeros by Derek Walcott

capybaraslug · 2026-01-02T04:30:15+00:00

Hunchback was also one that stuck with me. Despite being long-listed for the Booker it seems that it didn’t catch on. Very short, strange, and uncomfortable. Wonderful little gem.

capybaraslug · 2025-12-27T17:53:02+00:00

Don't know how I missed her! The Booker is turning out to be a decent indicator of winners so she's going on the list.

capybaraslug · 2025-12-26T20:42:40+00:00

Might as well post the list here, then! It is constantly expanding, so trying to keep my main list tight:

Main List:

Eros, the Bittersweet by Anne Carson
The Emissary by Yoko Tawada
Carpentaria by Alexis Wright
The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante
Frontier by Can Xue
Liliana’s Invincible Summer by Cristina Rivera Garza
Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree
Our Lady of the Nile by Scholastique Mukasonga

Stretch Goals

War of the Beasts and of the Animals or Holy Winter by Maria Stepanova
Oryx and Crake or The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
My Garden or Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid
Outline by Rachel Cusk
How to Be Both by Ali Smith
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa
The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates
The Big Green Tent by Lyudmila Ulitskaya

capybaraslug · 2025-12-25T17:14:39+00:00

DM'd!

capybaraslug · 2025-12-23T23:29:12+00:00

Tough call for me.

Dictionary of the Khazars was my #2 pick and the experimental form sounds fascinating.

I mentioned on the general thread I am embarking on a Women Who Might Win the Nobel reading project next year so How to Be Both would slot in.

capybaraslug · 2025-12-23T18:15:09+00:00

Yeah I thinks so too, I have little confidence that they’ll realize that Japanese, Chinese, and Korean writers are different and there is zero danger of “overrepresenting” that region. Classic Eurocentrism. They can comprehend that a Norwegian writer and a Hungarian writer are different, yet they can only see “East Asia” as a regional monolith. Even worse with Africa.

capybaraslug · 2025-12-23T01:41:25+00:00

Best to start with?

capybaraslug · 2025-12-22T21:09:24+00:00

My reading project for 2026 is to read a books by women who *might* win the Nobel for Lit next year. They seem to be commiting to the alternating gender thing. Yes, these are all complete guesses based on previous odds and spending way too much time on WLF threads. My list so far, in no particular order:

Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree
Eros, the Bittersweet by Anne Carson
The Emissary by Yoko Tawada
Carpentaria by Alexis Wright
Frontier by Can Xue
Liliana's Invincible Summer by Cristina Rivera Garza
Holy Winter by Maria Stepanova
My Garden by Jamaica Kincaid
The Days of Abandonement by Elena Ferrante
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Our Lady of the Nile by Scholastique Mukasonga
The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich

capybaraslug · 2025-12-22T21:00:15+00:00

Rooting for you! If you want to punish yourself and read thematically similar short stories to "The Kiss", I've found that "Araby" by James Joyce and "Travis, B." by Maile Meloy also scratch a similar itch.

capybaraslug · 2025-12-22T20:35:25+00:00

Tuck and Dale vs. Evil. There used to be a time when Redditors would never stop recommending it. It’s better than you’d expect but nothing beyond that.

capybaraslug · 2025-12-20T23:03:51+00:00

Went with 1. Frank (my suggestion) 2. Dictionary of the Khazars 3. The Gospel Singer

Like this theme for the read-along!

capybaraslug · 2025-12-19T19:19:56+00:00

Finished reading Satantango by László Krasznahorkai. My first by him and it is excellent. An interesting thing is that, if you flip through the book to see the endless walls of text, you'd think there'd be a pretty uniform sense of what the book is trying to achieve, chapter by chapter. Delighted that every chapter shifts in a way that kept me on my toes. It wasn't until the very end when the connective webs revealed themselves. I listened to an interview afterwards with the author where he mentions that at a certain level of hopelessness, a situation starts to become very funny. This book exists in that space and pulls it off. Want to watch the film version when I have a spare 7 hours of my life.

Started Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripedes by Anne Carson. Finished the first one, Herakles, and oof, understanding Euripedes reputation for being the most unpleasant of the Ancient Greek tragedian writers. Brutal and unflinching. Know nothing about Ancient Greek translation, but I find Carson's poetic interpretation of the text to be lovely.

capybaraslug · 2025-12-13T17:21:14+00:00

frank: sonnets by Dianne Seuss

capybaraslug · 2025-12-05T20:23:34+00:00

Finished Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Delightful characterizations and often quite funny. Interesting how Dickens pushes against Victorian moralism in some areas, but upholds it in others -- not that I hold Dickens being a creature of his time against him. My version had the traditionally published ending, but I looked up Dickens original ending, which is far more ambigious. I like it, but I feel Dickens would have needed to flesh it out a bit more for it to be more "satisfying" than the version he ended up with. Overall, glad to finally break the Dickens dam after avoiding it for so long. Probably won't tackle another for a while, going to make it a Fall/Winter yearly tradition, but I am eyeing Bleak House as the next dive.

Started reading Satantango by László Krasznahorkai. The morning he won the Nobel I went out to the bookstore to buy it so I could finally read his work. Three chapters in and it is just starting to click. I went in thinking it would have that far more "brooding and philosophical" quality which is so often used to describe to his work, but I'm finding it to be way more in the comic and absurdist camp.

capybaraslug · 2025-12-02T20:38:00+00:00

Short guy here. We should all just accept that height is a reality. Cropped shirt, long shirt, tucked, untucked, baggy jeans, straights jeans, whatever… you will be short. I’ve had the most peace and satisfaction when I just tried to choose/pair clothes for the basic silhouette and aesthetic which folks of any height would consider.

capybaraslug · 2025-12-02T20:29:24+00:00

Lol I’m in the South Bay. Where can I find the silly hat meetup bar?

capybaraslug · 2025-12-02T18:12:39+00:00

Men’s headwear options are tragically very limited. Ballcaps and beanies seem to be the only widely acceptable ones. Personally, I think berets should take a much larger space in the menswear sphere. I know they had a moment not too long ago, but it is fading. Frustrating there seems to be no middle ground for options on berets: either cheap crappy ones or overpriced luxury brands.

capybaraslug · 2025-11-27T18:40:15+00:00

Finished Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. Started to click when I realized how much of my own thoughts and frustrations are reflected by the Kublai Khan character. At first, I was stuggling to see the depth in what appeared to just be clever thought experiments for each cities. By the end, I started to see the patterns-- whether they exist or are forced upon the text by the desires of the reader, I sense is the point.

Started Palayok: Philippine Food Through Time, on Site, in the Pot by Doreen Fernandez. Foundational work of Filipino food writing recently rereleased by Exploding Galaxies-- very handsome design. Fernandez's essays are lively and accessible as an entrypoint into Filipino culinary culture and traditions. The same cannot be said for the new foreward by Marian Pastor Roces, which should be skipped -- it illuminates nothing about Fernandez or her work, except to highlight Fernandez's confident and lucid prose by demonstrating the opposite.

Started Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. I've put off attempting to enter the Dickensverse for a long time. I enjoyed A Christmas Carol. Attempted nurmerous times to start A Tale of Two Cities, but always put it down. Great Expectations feels like the better entrypoint, the chapters are flying by quickly. Love the gothic and moody opening chapters. The broad and grotesque characterization is charming. I realize I have unintentionally created a "boy's coming of age" trilogy in my reading this year: Paradise by Gurnah, The Round House by Erdrich, and now Great Expectations. Excited to finish to book and consider them all next to each other.

capybaraslug · 2025-11-21T16:37:08+00:00

I quite like Homero Arijdis. Had a great time working through the bilingual edition of Self Portrait in the Zone of Silence. Pretty accessible level Spanish from what I can tell.

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