zero fetishes and zero sexual organs

—Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

This book is important

From Theresa Stern's poem "the light's too dim in here"

Peter Rudy's 1959 introduction to Yevgeny Zamyatin's We.

June-Alison Gibbons, the Pepsi-Cola Addict

I only finished one book this month: Of Human Bondage by Maugham. It took me two months to read and I was completely engrossed the entire time. Maybe my favourite book I've read this year so far. It is not a book but a life that you become involved in. Having finished it I feel a massive lack in that the narrator's life is no longer going on in continuation with mine. Worth all the time it took and I wouldn't want to experience it in a shorter amount of time. Have read very few things like it. 5 stars for me.

NOTHING. I was reading Of Human Bondage all month & was so involved I couldn't bear to take it on at a faster speed than it moves at. And I've failed incredibly as a man. And as a living thing.

After waiting for Godlike to be reprinted for nearly a year it somehow still didn't fall short of very built-up expectations. It struck me as utterly beautiful, deeply pathetic, and the most mature piece of work I have yet to encounter by Hell. It not only stands as a genuinely interesting interpretation and redux of the Rimbaud myth and the relationship between love and death but also of the NYC poetry scene in the early 70s and the strange times shared by Hell and Tom Verlaine before their CBGBs debut. Choke was my first venture into Palahniuk beyond Fight Club which admittedly I haven't read in several years. As a lover of motifs and gimmicks I found the repetition enjoyable but it almost stretched my limits. Still a worthwhile read on childhood instability and sex addiction. More humourous than you'd expect, and less visceral. Neither of these were 5 stars for me but Godlike was quite close to it.

I only read things I ended up adoring this month. The Voidoid I knew I liked and yet liked it more the second time reading it. Sula, one of the most unbelievably crafted pieces of fiction in the entire English language canon, reminded me how every single sentence Morrison writes knocks you clean out. She is undeniably one of the best novelists America has produced in its short history. Theorem was insanely Marxist and also impeccably crafted. I'm always a sucker for a mixture of forms within a book, and the poetry in Theorem was almost the highlight of it were it not for the short descriptive moments trapped in visuals that hit me brutally. & Wanna Go Out? was an entirely unique short collection that I can fairly say I've never read poetry like in my life. Childish and beautiful and uninhibited and fatally infected with its own fear of love. The concept of Theresa Stern has always compelled me and this glimpse into her 'character' is more than one could ask for. So upset and uncomfortable, so beautiful and strange. Paired well with everything I read this month & read best in one sitting & shortly after midnight. Everything this month but Theorem was solidly 5 stars, & Theorem was solidly 4 or even higher but I found his route of framing almost too reliant on image. A personal preference and nothing more; the book is insanely prescient and achingly forlorn.