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Book 14: Eleanor Davis’s ‘How to Be Happy’
Posted on December 14, 2015 Leave a Comment
This week, Football Book Club is reading How to Be Happy by Eleanor Davis and posting about River House by Sally Keith — and maybe Richard McGuire’s Here and Ray Russell’s The Case Against Satan. How to be Happy is Davis’s first collection of graphic/literary short stories, was named one of NPR’s and Publishers Weekly‘s Best Books of 2014, […]
The Empty House: On ‘Here’ and ‘The Case Against Satan’
Posted on December 11, 2015 Leave a Comment
By Adam Boretz 1. I was hoping Ryan Joe would deliver the goods in his response to Richard McGuire’s Here — and his post did just that. For me, this was actually a second reading of Here. The first time around — months ago, when I got my hands on a galley — I really liked the book for […]
The DNA of Place: On Richard McGuire’s ‘Here’
Posted on December 9, 2015 1 Comment
By Rob Casper So we’ve reached week 13 in the NFL season — time enough to think of how FBC has changed my life. I’ve read a whole lot of books I never would’ve known of, or otherwise found the time to break open. Which has led me to more reading — right now I’m […]
Book 13: Sally Keith’s ‘River House’
Posted on December 3, 2015 Leave a Comment
This week, Football Book Club is reading River House by Sally Keith and posting about Richard McGuire’s Here and Ray Russell’s The Case Against Satan. River House is Keith’s fourth collection of poetry and received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, which called the book “heartbreaking and robust” and an exploration of “the complexity of the mind […]
Two Sides of Being Hyper-Specific: On ‘The Sixth Extinction’
Posted on December 1, 2015 Leave a Comment
By Dan Bjork Upon reading The Sixth Extinction and sitting down to write this, I had a very similar initial reaction as Adam: sheer amazement at human beings’ ability to compartmentalize. We are so hyper-specific in our outrage. Never again will we allow Subway to put this specific yoga mat ingredient in their bread. Never […]
The Organizing Principle Is No Organizing Principle: On the Bears, the Patriots, ‘Ash vs. Evil Dead,’ and ‘Milk & Filth’
Posted on December 1, 2015 Leave a Comment
By Adam Boretz It’s Year in Reading time over at The Millions, which, for the purposes of FBC, means one thing: I did not have time to write a proper post about Carmen Giménez Smith’s Milk & Filth. Which is why, Gentle Reader, you are reading this piece, which is pretty much entirely lacking in any organizing […]
Pure Potboiler: On Ray Russell’s ‘The Case Against Satan’
Posted on November 25, 2015 1 Comment
By Ryan Joe Ray Russell’s The Case Against Satan is a pure potboiler with grand aspirations. Spoiler alerts. Most exorcism stories are implicitly about a bunch of sexually excitable old men trying to deal with a teenage girl. Gabriel García Márquez’s Of Love and Other Demons springs most immediately to mind. But The Case Against […]
What Have We Done to the Earth? On ‘The Sixth Extinction’
Posted on November 22, 2015 1 Comment
By Adam Boretz 1. I never cease to marvel at the human ability to ignore inconvenient truths. Present us with a fact that is not to our liking — smoking cigarettes causes cancer; it’s pretty much impossible for an invading army to win a land war in Afghanistan; the music of Bon Jovi is simply […]
Bad-Ass Beatific Yawp: On ‘Milk and Filth’ and ‘The Case Against Satan’
Posted on November 21, 2015 1 Comment
By Rob Casper First off, the Packers. My sister and her sons went to last weekend’s game, and she consoled them after the loss — to the Lions! — by saying at least they’d seen some crazy football in the closing minutes of the game. But still…now they have to beat the Vikings (the Vikings!) […]
Book 11: Ray Russell’s ‘The Case Against Satan’
Posted on November 17, 2015 Leave a Comment
This week, Football Book Club is reading Ray Russell’s The Case Against Satan — and posting about Carmen Giménez Smith’s Milk and Filth and Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction. Russell was an associate editor and executive editor at Playboy — back when the magazine published fiction by the likes of Kurt Vonnegut — and The Case […]
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