Columns – Page 3 – Vol. 1 Brooklyn

#tobyreads: Protests and Discontent, Then, Now, and Soon

October 3, 2014 No Comments

When Lauren Beukes is on point, she unsettles like few other writers. Her novel Zoo City is both metaphorically and literally terrifying. In it, animals become tethered to people because of guilt; separating the two leads to horrific, catastrophic events, and society becomes subtly and bleakly changed as a result. The Shining Girls brought together the story of a time-traveling serial killer with a resonant portrayal of Chicago in the 1990s. I haven’t yet read her new novel Broken Monsters, but a number of smart readers I […]

Columns, tobyreads

#tobyreads: Two From the (Fiction) Longlist

September 26, 2014 No Comments

I spent a lot of time last week involved in events that related to the Brooklyn Book Festival: talking with Luke B. Goebel, watching excellent readings by the likes of Dmitry Samarov and Megan Stielstra, and hearing a deeply reworked version of Karl Ove Knausgård’s opus. In the midst of all of this came the announcement of the National Book Award fiction longlist, several of which I had already been meaning to read. I’ll be wrangling with two of these books […]

Columns, tobyreads

#tobyreads: Reading in Hudson

September 19, 2014 No Comments

I was up in Hudson last weekend with plenty of time on hand before the evening’s music festival kicked off. I also had four hours total on the train to get up there and back; due to my just missing my northbound train, I also had a little extra time in scenic Penn Station to get some reading done. What were my subjects? Heroes, innovators, and figures who left this world far too soon.

Columns, tobyreads

#tobyreads: From Comedies of Manners to Surreal Crimes

September 12, 2014 No Comments

The other night, I was out with friends talking books, as tends to happen more than a little frequently. The subject of agency of main characters came up; the question of whether a particular central character was more proactive or reactive. This is something I think about a lot, both as a reader and as a writer. There have been things I’ve written that, on reflection, seem to be more or less a series of things happening to someone than […]

Columns, tobyreads

#tobyreads: On Celebrity, On Mortality, On Points of View

September 5, 2014 No Comments

In this week’s column, I look at short books from Sarah Manguso, Matthew Dickman, Forrest Gander, and Simon Jacobs.

Columns, tobyreads

#tobyreads: Three Trips Into the Unknown

August 29, 2014 No Comments

I haven’t done a comics-focused column in a while; seems like it’s the right time to remedy that. While none of the three books here is exactly what I’d call holiday weekend beach reading, there’s plenty to entertain in these volumes–and more than a little to unsettle as well.

Columns, tobyreads

#tobyreads: Reading Culture, Reading Politics

August 22, 2014 No Comments

A couple of weeks ago, I was out with friends talking books. My friend Jeremy recommended that I check out Ben Davis’s 9.5 Theses on Art and Class; from his description, it sounded intriguing, and I ordered it that night via WORD. The title is pretty self-explanatory: you’re going to get a lot of musings on art as it relates to class here. Given that I’m fond of smart writing on both subjects–which can be found in abundance here–this is not […]

Columns, tobyreads

#tobyreads: Journeys and Fragments

August 15, 2014 No Comments

I spent the weekend in central New Jersey, watching friends get married on a farm and doing a bit of exploring in and around Bordentown, New Jersey. Highly recommended: Randy Now’s Man Cave, a shop run the man responsible for booking Trenton’s City Gardens for many years, where I bought soda from Detroit and found a Huggy Bear 10″. Also? I did some reading.