I’d been recommended John Williams’ Butcher’s Crossing several months ago, and had heard rumblings of it before then.  The biggest selling point for me was that it had been described as an ancestor to McCarthy’s Blood Meridian.  I grabbed a copy at Powell’s while I was in Portland and it sat on my shelf until [...]

Taking a leap from the Best of 2009 Blog Challenge, presented to me and you by 20SB, I give you my year in reading, approximately.  I say approximately because there’re a few here I can’t remember if I read in 2009 or the close of 2008.

The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan.  The only non-fiction [...]

I know I said last time that I would push my personal life under for a while, and make this a little more literary.  But this is a necessary exorcism.

Friday I went to a potluck with a number of people in my MFA program.  I made goulash from a simple recipe my mother sent me– [...]

She made a 19 second video of herself, in her room, at the mirror.  All manner of disarray, bottles of all those mystifying things men have no use for–scarves(?), beads, makeup brushes.  There’s a nice song playing in the background.  I can see her chair, her desk, something on the mantel.  But it’s taken me [...]