I am logging off Twitter and IG for a while.

Will be back to share substack articles and 2024 reads.

The perfect book mail doesn't exi–

'One must write for oneself, first and foremost. Only that way does one stand a chance of producing something good.'

– Gustave Flaubert

A journal that features new and unpublished works from some of my favourite writers but more importantly matches my velvet blue reading chair.

This has just become a Libra stans thread.

After recently listening to the wonderful The Rest Is History episodes on JFK, this has rapidly shot up my TBR.

I've read my fair share of Delillo but not this. How does it rank amongst his oeuvre?

With HERZOG under my belt, I now have an itch to read more Bellow. Heading back in time to some of his earlier novels, which Coetzee described as more 'literary.' Knowing that it wasn't until Augie that he gained public appraisal, i'm interested to see how this reads.

Under $30

Welcomed some Coover to my shelves today.

R.I.P. John Barth. A most original and challenging author, creator of the quote embedded in a quote embedded in a quote embedded in a quote embedded in a quote embedded in a quote embedded in a quote (see his story Menelaiad, collected in his magnificent Lost in the Funhouse).

'A book is something essentially organic, a part of ourselves. We tear out a length of gut from our bellies and serve it...but once our work is printed—goodbye! It belongs to everybody. The crowd tramples on us. It is the height of prostitution, and the vilest kind.'

– Flaubert

seems insane that dfw looked like this

'Literate people appropriate all the best things they can find in books, and dress themselves in them just as certain crabs are supposed to beautify themselves with seaweed.'

– Herzog, Saul Bellow.

if a writer is a reader moved to emulation, I wonder who she is emulating?

Andrei no one can read it for you so you don't have to, because, simply, you have to.

Secured some Xue