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s it doesn t quite have the same juice i also spent a good chunk of 2025 finally catching up on some big novels i d been meaning to read for a long time this produced largely negative results as i must say i fully expected i loved bolaño s 2666 though not as much as his short stories especially those in last evenings on earth which is one of my favorite books of all time but that was the outlier and probably mostly due to the fact that it s actually 5 normal length well focused novels which are thematically linked and bound together into a single book i thought musil s the man without qualities was an unexpectedly delightful breezy read through most of the first book but never really found its direction and just wandered around for a really really really long time before eventually winding down and collapsing into a million pieces leaving me to wonder why i d spent all that time learning about all those characters who never went anywhere or did anything thomas mann s buddenbrooks was fine but in the end just a realistic and largely humorless family saga not a genre that interests me much and nowhere near the kind of towering marvel of wonder and terror that is the magic mountain cartarescu s solenoid was incredible for the first 200 pages just so much fun so wild and fresh and inventive but then became repetitive and seemingly endless my personal nightmare some other long books i read and didn t like this year d h lawrence s the rainbow don t remember anything about this tbh london fields by martin amis though it get points for imagination humboldt s gift by saul bellow great if you want to hear some assholes rant at each other for 700 pages bleeding edge by thomas pynchon don t even get me started on thomas pynchon carrion comfort by dan simmons a ton of great horror ideas but just completely buried beneath hundreds of pages of extraneous running about and the pillars of the earth by ken follett i actually enjoyed this quite a bit until all the characters i liked died and the book just kept on going and eventually crushed me via page count i did enjoy of human bondage by somerset maugham though not as much as the moon and sixpence or the razor s edge or even the magician little big by john crowley while it was definitely better in the beginning than the end it was mindblowingly great in the beginning and everyone should read it a voyage to arcturus by david lindsay which was brilliant mystifying and terribly boring in about equal measure kinda like twin peaks the return in that way only minus the attractive ladies and a game of thrones by george r r martin martin is an excellent writer with a ton of focus who really knows how to build and turn and explode a scene my only problem with the book is that i prefer my fantasy to be full of well fantasy and what martin is doing is to my mind more along the lines of realistic historical fiction only taking place in a world with a slightly different geography than our own but that s a me problem so whatever i did like it but when it was over mostly i just wanted to go reread the king of elfland s daughter by lord dunsany what else i continued my trip through octavia butler s work by finishing her xenogenesis series or what i guess they re now calling her lilith s brood series for some reason i think i m pretty much done with butler now except for parable of the talents and some of the non fiction my favorites are still the patternmaster books where i started and which i think are phenomenal just a really fascinating and unique psychic world and of course the short story bloodchild which is a miracle of economy power and imagination i also love the world of parable of the sower and esp the idea of a street drug that makes fire so enjoyable that the us citizenry immediately burns the whole country down but find the actual story kind of boring continuing my years long michael mcdowell journey i read his katie not quite first tier mcdowell which is to say not quite blackwater but definitely frightening and a lot of fun and has an audiobook read by the great kimberly wetherell his unfinished until tabitha king came along and finished it candles burning which uh might have best been left unfinished imo and vermilion the first of the four gay detective novels mcdowell co wrote with dennis schuetz under the name nathan aldyne which i really enjoyed i always like a book that really dives into a super specific time and place and subculture i went to college in boston in the years right after those the book details but let s just say i had a very different experience of the place i found myself saying oh i didn t know that a lot and checking back and forth between the book and wikipedia and google maps and street views etc totally nerded out on this book and felt like my world grew larger katie kitamura i read three books by katie kitamura this year audition intimacies and a separation and liked them all she does this thing where she s mostly just writing normal everyday relationship stories but somehow doing them in the style of suspense novels i get all nail bitey but it s just two people being sad after a break up not sure how she came to be doing what she s doing but i m a fan and will read more what else i read two books by helen dewitt lightning rods and the english understand wool and loved them both two by john steinbeck the red pony and tortilla flat and loved neither though the actual story the red pony is wonderful and made me sob uncontrollably and two by denis johnson nobody move and the laughing monsters and thought they were both kinda eh i also read three books about the ramones the nicholas rombes 33 1 3 one johnny ramone s commando and dee dee s lobotomy surviving the ramones and mostly just decided that the ramones while a great band were not very interesting people what else i reread three books alfred bester s the stars my destination john wyndham s the day of the triffids and fredric brown s the screaming mimi and am pleased to report they all hold up the bester really comes out swinging and feels like the best sf book of all time for the first third or so after that it goes a little emotionally blank but is still a whole lot of pulpy fun the day of the triffids is just plain scary as hell start to finish i don t even really like to think about it also this time around i suddenly realized that one of my other favorite sf books tom disch s the genocides is pretty much just an extension not to say rip off of it somehow i d never noticed that before finally the screaming mimi while not my favorite fredric brown that would be here comes a candle or the far cry or maybe night of the jabberwock or oh i forgot nightmares and geezenstacks it s gotta be nightmares and geezenstacks really inscribes some powerful images into your brain and nails you to the floor with a great sense of doom i love fredric brown so much and feel bad because i think he maybe didn t have a very happy life fredric brown deserved better some other books i enjoyed this year colm toibin s the master the maniac by benjamin labatut got me really into the game go for about seven minutes all for nothing by walter kempowski james galvin s the meadow ann schmiesing s the brothers grimm a biography mozart the reign of love by jan swafford nothing to see here by kevin wilson run man run by chester himes hiroshima by john hersey madeline miller s the song of achilles sarah levine s treasure island tove jansson s the summer book penpal by dathan auerbach michael streissguth s outlaw waylon willie kris dancing aztecs by donald westlake ed mcbain s doll the pornographer by john mcgahern the fiend by margaret millar the ask by sam lipsyte suttree by cormac mccarthy actually i didn t like this at all but enjoyed suddenly noticing how much he loves steinbeck metzger s dog by thomas perry nate lippens ripcord and the wordless novel the depository by andrzej klimowski i also read a lot of essays by seneca cicero and plutarch and enjoyed them all but they all kinda blended together in my mind and now i can t even remember which was which my favorite short story i read this year was window boy by thomas ha which i read in the best american sf fantasy 2024 but which you can now also find in ha s debut collection uncertain sons other stories out from undertow publications i also really liked how much land does a man need by tolstoy i love how so many of tolstoy s short works read like twilight zone episodes light is like water by gabriel garcia marquez the aforementioned the red pony by steinbeck bring a hanky a really large hanky and playing metal gear solid v the phantom pain by jamil jan kochai lastly this was the year i finally read marx s capital which i did while lying flat on my back in emirates business class on my way to the uae i didn t expect it to be fun but it was marx is an entertaining writer an excellent explainer and is boiling over with sarcasm and righteous anger and really knows how to get you all fired up about injustice most of the book probably went over my head as i have no capacity for abstract thought but i did enjoy the experience a lot more than that god damn thomas pynchon nonsense and lastly here s my favorite photo i took in 2025 some kind of mary poppins lookin tree happy 2026 everybody let s hope it gets better because worse would be really really bad january 11 2026 january 17 2026 ben loory tagged book review book reviews books fiction reading leave a comment the vatican in new york if you happen to be in new york state tomorrow sunday october 5 my story the vatican will be performed at the stissing center in pine plains as part of the selected shorts on tour program the vatican will be read by tony award winning actor santino fontana aka the voice of prince hans in disney s frozen who will also be reading jesse eisenberg s if she ran into me now other performances will include jessica hecht and cindy cheung reading stories by helen schulman and ling ma respectively information and tickets available here october 4 2025 october 4 2025 ben loory leave a comment reading at taix on sept 26 i ll be reading a story at the taix french restaurant in echo park on friday sept 26 as part of the this friday reading series along with mariah flores jesse pearson nick plett zara schuster and gabby jones show starts at 7 00 and is rsvp only to rsvp send 10 to co host evanlaffer via venmo hope to see you there september 17 2025 september 17 2025 ben loory 1 comment pets i was interviewed by dalton monk about my childhood pets over at zona motel the interview did not extend to my childhood posters but i m pointing out here that that s princess leia on the left in the preview pic and darth vader on the right you can t see from the pic but the darth vader poster was actually signed by darth vader when he came to visit the rockaway townsquare mall i think it was jc penney s specifically when i was six which i don t know who thought it was a good idea to bring darth vader to visit a bunch of little kids seems like well pretty much anyone else from the movie would ve been a better choice but suffice to say it was a tense day for all involved and i got a bloody nose on the escalator afterward either from terror or relief i don t know anyway i survived and put the poster on my wall and there it is but that s not what this interview is about august 25 2025 ben loory leave a comment stories on selected shorts interview at humming fools i m having a big month on the selected shorts podcast right now with three of my stories airing in rapid succession first up there s the man the restaurant and the eiffel tower from tales of falling and flying read by actress stana katic on the july 17 episode sizzling summer travels then the book from stories for nighttime and some for the day read by jane kaczmarek on the july 24 episode reading between the lines and finally the man and the moose also from stories for nighttime and some for the day read by michael cerveris on the august 14 episode perfectly unmatched they all do a great job and it is a supreme honor as always to be on selected shorts the one absolutely necessary podcast for short stories you can listen to those episodes here on their website or whenever you listen to your podcasts in other news i was interviewed by karl stück for the humming fools podcast a few weeks ago and that interview is now live you can listen to the episode number 97 on the humming fools website over on spotify and also probably some other places i don t know the internet has become a bit beyond me at this point anyway it was a fun conversation and karl sent me this drawing they made of me based on a photo taken by my landlord mars sandoval thanks mars and thanks karl and i guess that s all i got for now i hope you all are doing well and hanging in there if you re looking for a good book to read some recent favorites of mine are audition by katie kitamura lord of light by roger zelazny and be my baby how i survived mascara miniskirts and madness or my life as a fabulous ronette by ronnie spector the audiobook of this is especially amazing as it s read by rosie perez and she makes every line an emotional journey and a delight july 18 2025 july 18 2025 ben loory tagged books podcast podcasting podcasts writing leave a comment what i read and wrote and did in 2024 i published only one story in 2024 the true story of george washington and the cherry tree which appeared in r r the new literary journal from relegation books one isn t a lot of stories but it was a good one so it counts double maybe even triple or 10 20x that s what i m telling myself this was the third in a series of stories i ve written about famous people and their weird relationships with trees which began with james k polk in 2012 later included in tales of falling and flying and then continued on with joan of arc in 2019 one of my favorite stories i ve ever written maybe there will be more i hope so but who can tell it s not like i m in charge around here many thanks to editor joey grantham for his help on the story and for publishing it and teaming it with the perfect brad holland painting i love what joey s doing over at r r and i hope they are rewarding him handsomely i did four public readings in 2024 first out in baltimore at the hidden palace reading series which was maybe my favorite reading i ve ever done i got to stay in a fancy hotel and drink fancy drinks in a loud cramped dimly lit bar and eat 700 lbs of delicious french fries at 3 in the morning and hang out with danielle evans and ashleigh bryant phillips two of my favorite short story writers in america then back in los angeles i did a reading at the hannah hoffman gallery in concert with an exhibition related to ursula le guin s lavinia alongside my old student emily hunt kivel whose first novel dwelling is coming in august from farrar strauss and giroux i also got to see some old friends from dennis etchison s writing classes back in the day they were ...