I'm glad I read Dracula as a kid because I'm pretty sure there's no way I'd be able to finish it these days.

I finally finished Ulysses this year. Takes a lot of energy, especially if you're actually trying to keep track of things, not just enjoying the prose, but if you do it's surprisingly moving!

Great book, and I'm not even usually a fan of Count of Monte Cristo-style revenge narratives. Have you read The Demolished Man? Personally, I like it even better.

Yep, NYRB Classics is releasing some great stuff. I read Stoner and A High Wind in Jamaica this year, both of which were great. (Their cover painting selection is top-notch, too.) I definitely need to read some Adler, and I've heard good things about Comyns's Our Spoons Came from Woolworths, which they just released.

I once listened to The Postman Always Rings Twice on audiobook read by Stanley Tucci. It's pretty great! He has basically no intonation at all and doesn't even really try to do voices, so it all comes off as gruff and hard-boiled, just as Cain should.

Hmm, never really thought of those books together in my mind, but that is a pretty great trilogy. Would be really interesting to read them all in a row.

I haven't read that one, but I just read Go Tell It on the Mountain this year. I'd read a bunch of Baldwin's essays (everyone here should check out The Devil Finds Work - it's about movies!), but not his fiction. Thought the book seemed great but a little narrow in the first section and then it spans out to tell his…

They made someone use the Rollie on an episode of Cutthroat Kitchen (my current go-to bedtime show), and the resulting egg did look pretty disgusting.

Or, alternately, "#Gamergate: The Magazine" - https://avataric.files.word…

I stumbled upon it many years ago on one of those early music blogs in a post that was something like "Which synth-pop experiment is weirder/more annoying?: 'Temporary Secretary' or Steve Miller's 'Bongo Bongo'"? (The answer is definitely "Secretary.")

Yeah, it's definitely a venerable institution, and I guess you have to admire their willingness to change with the times to stay relevant. I just watched Some Came Running a few weeks back, and there's a major subplot revolving around Sinatra (playing, essentially, James Jones) submitting a story to The Atlantic, and…

I just listened to it recently, actually, which is probably what made me think of it. When I was a kid, I inherited a bunch of vinyl from my uncle when he died, including that album, so it was really interesting to hear the backstory on that recording, which I've always loved in a "what is this shit!?" sort of way.

Same for me! I'm a sucker for major artists doing crazy/weird/bad shit like that.

He seemed to have some weird fondness for out-of-synch synth lines. He does something similar (only more grating and bizarre) with the repeating synth pattern on "Temporary Secretary": https://www.youtube.com/wat…

I haven't read Musil, but he's been on my list for a long time. Man Without Qualities is hard for me to prioritize because it's so looooong.

Ooh, and I see it was directed by Alexander Mackendrick. Not who I would have expected but intriguing.

Yeah, it's a little hard to describe why it works so well, too. Williams isn't the most amazing prose stylist or anything, but it totally wraps you in its melancholy. Life as little more than a series of disappointments.

Yeah, a very strange book. I think it's right on about the way children can accept an incredible amount of strangeness and trauma as if it's completely normal.

Ah, I'll have to check out the movie.

I've been more and more into novels that blur the line between fiction and essay, which is what I loved about Satin Island. The lack of anything happening was kind of a plus for me.