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Book 16: Alejandro Zambra’s ‘The Private Lives of Trees’
Posted on January 14, 2016 Leave a Comment
This week, Football Book Club is reading The Private Lives of Trees by Alejandro Zambra. And we’re posting about The Dirty Dust by Máirtín Ó Cadhain — and How to Be Happy by Eleanor Davis and River House by Sally Keith and who knows what else because it’s the playoffs, most of our teams are done for the […]
Fever Dreams: On Eleanor Davis’s ‘How to Be Happy’
Posted on January 13, 2016 2 Comments
By Adam Boretz Because of a high fever, ear infection, and generally delicate constitution — my doctor once told me I have the stored protein levels of “a frail elderly woman” — I ended up reading Eleanor Davis’s How to Be Happy twice. The first time, I burned through about two-thirds of the book, took […]
Getting the Most Out of One Woman’s Suffering: On ‘The Case Against Satan’
Posted on January 4, 2016 Leave a Comment
The Case against Satan is ostensibly about an exorcism. The haunting cover would seem to suggest the book is concerned with the woman who does (or does not) need to be exorcised. It is concerned with her, as far as how she arrived at her current state, sort of. It cares about saving her, for […]
Book 15: Mairtin O Cadhain’s ‘The Dirty Dust’
Posted on January 4, 2016 Leave a Comment
This week, Football Book Club is reading The Dirty Dust by Máirtín Ó Cadhain — and getting caught up after the holidays with posts about everything from How to Be Happy by Eleanor Davis to River House by Sally Keith. The Dirty Dust — all the characters of which are dead in their graves — has finally been translated into […]
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 […]
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