Never mind the bollocks: The case of John R. Brinkley and his goat-testicle remedy for lack of male virility testifies to the enduring appeal of the con artist
Those wondering from where Trump sprang could do worse than read Brock's book.
Bobbing and weaving: Lee Gutkind, the “godfather behind creative nonfiction” tries to explain the genre without bothering to define it
Gutkind demands that creative nonfiction be accepted as a viable subject of literary study while also insisting it is far too complicated and diverse to be pinned down in any definable way.
Literary links from around the web: A new director for Quill & Quire, an actual writer defending a Canada Reads title, and more
I have come down with Covid. New posts will resume once I'm feeling a bit better.
Books of the Year: 2023 in reading
These are books that made an impression on me.
Hardboiled, with heart: two tough-guy crime novels add a social conscience to the violence and mayhem
Sam Wiebe and S.A. Cosby are among the leading practitioners of a new strain of noir fiction.
Golems, ghosts, and the horrific Schnabelperchten haunt the pages of this seasonal anthology of horror tales
As with any anthology of this kind, not all entries work equally well.
Men behaving badly, part one: George Santos
Chiusano's portrait of a younger Santos is of someone painfully insecure, thin skinned, and desperate for some kind of validation and acceptance.
The Spooky Season: In two novellas and a short story, Eric LaRocca peels away the layers of poisoned relationships
The three pieces represent a triptych of horror tales that examine the various ways lack of personal connection can eat away at a person.
The Spooky Season: Alison Rumfitt’s second novel examines repression and abjection through the lens of extreme body horror
Brainwyrms is all about the horrors of transphobia
“The unsaid, for me, exerts great power”: Nobel laureate Louise Glück is dead at age eighty
The Wild Iris won the Pulitzer Prize; the 2014 collection Faithful and Virtuous Night won the National Book Award.