#balzactogether all-- on june 1, we begin with Le Pere Goriot or Old Goriot. I'll be reading the Norton Critical Edition.

Highs and lows for me on The Waves. Next up Jacob's Room!

“they called us bottlers… NOW WE’RE HOLDIN THE BOTTLE”

Just finished my 3rd reading of INFINITE JEST. A dark perfect visionary comedy (streaming entertainment, drug-dependency, and hypercompetitive sections of society). #infinitejesttogether

SAVE THE DATE: A panel and reading inspired by WG Sebald, in English, in Berlin, June 6th. How does the past fall upon the present? Who gets mourned and how? Why this constant feeling of vertigo? Feat. Scraton, Kruger, Watts. Submissions NOW OPEN for readers >>> www.lettretage.de/programm/seb...

just finished my second reading of the NEAPOLITAN NOVELS, one of my favorite novels.

COME ON PALACE! Arsenal odds to win the league now at 88% on opta. www.premierleague.com/en/news/4644...

Happy pub date to BEST LITERARY TRANSLATIONS 2026 from @deepvellum.bsky.social. I’m very proud to have a translation in this volume, a poem by a Kyiv-based poet Olga Bragina, first published in @consequencef.bsky.social. Buy the book: store.deepvellum.org/products/bes... #booksky #translation

Book Talk with Rebecca Gopoian, author of First Rule of Fire. Her novel weaves stories from the Armenian Genocide in Turkey and suburban NJ exploring family memory, history, resilience, and hope. Sunday, May 17 at 11 am Teaneck NJ and Zoom. Email [email protected] for the Zoom link.

DFW's sister's take. #infinitejesttogether www.thesmallbow.com/p/consider-t...

i love mary oliver. yalereview.org/article/mill...

some fun joyce details in this article piece: "He took music lessons, and performed well in a singing contest, but was disqualified because he refused to sightread an unfamiliar score." #jamesjoyce journals.openedition.org/jsse/478?lan...

#balzactogether gang, I'm trying to figure out when to start our Vautrin Cycle (4 novels of Comedie Humaine), first up Pere Geriot. maybe june 1? some books i need to finish first: INFINITE JEST (3rd reread), LIMITARIANISM (my extreme wealth obsession), WHITE GIRLS (a beautiful gritty dream)...

perfect timing, his new novel is coming out and I was just in madrid, spain, reading his first novel. #benlerner

I finally finished SATANTANGO #satantangotogether What a slog through the mud and rain this was for me. I started to think about Franzen's brilliant essay MR DIFFICULT where he compares Status Novels and Contract Novels.

mes amis / mis amigos, i'm off to madrid for a week and along with A HEART SO WHITE which I'll reread for the 5th time, I'm bringing ben lerner's LEAVING THE ATOCHA STATION. let me know if you have any madrid bookstore / tapas bar recs. it's been 26 years since i was last there!

I'm spacing out my readings of these volumes and so far, it's like christmas in the middle of year. ON THE CALCULATION OF VOLUME II by SOLVEJ BALLE

our own together-slow-reads' @mcgranaghan.bsky.social has a short story coming to life next Friday April 24 at P&T Knitwear in NYC! www.eventbrite.com/e/short-stor...

Happy birthday #KingsleyAmis

If you’re asking for places to donate or aids to support in Minnesota, this website is a really good compilation of mutual aids, rent aid, food/supply donation and more! 👇

discovering nancy lemann thanks to @meginj.bsky.social ! www.theparisreview.org/fiction/8308...

last day! Day 44, Apr 13, Mon - p266 “It’s all in my imagination…” to THE END #satantangotogether

Day 43, Apr 12, Sun - START CH1 The Circle Closes p259 to “He lost confidence at this point.” #satantangotogether

Day 42, Apr 11, Sat - p256 “Having dealt so brutally…” to END OF CH2 p258 #satantangotogether

just the beginning. winter is coming. www.npr.org/2026/04/12/n...

thank you, this seems like a great idea. knock off 4 of them. #balzactogether

Day 41, Apr 10, Fri - START CH2 Nothing but Work and Worries p251 to p256 “Sexually immature.” #satantangotogether

Day 40, Apr 9, Thur - p243 “—because his ears were ringing…” to END OF CH3 #satantangotogether

Day 39, Apr 8, Wed - p236 “Shut up…” to p243 “As you can see, it has all turned out for the best…” #satantangotogether

Day 38, Apr 7, Tues - START CH3 The Perspective, As Seen From the Back p229 to p236 “Stabbing each other?” #satantangotogether

"Among young American men, the strongest predictor of support for the tradwife lifestyle was not gallantry but hostility towards women" Apparently this is not what researchers "expected". Which makes one wonder: had these researchers thought about it for 30 seconds? www.thetimes.com/life-style/s...

Day 37, Apr 6, Mon - p223 “The bald man leaned closer.” to END OF CH4 p227 #satantangotogether

exactly where my head is #satantangotogether

Love seeing the fantabulous Ben Lerner being accused of “autofiction.” Just kidding. :) But also, seriously— this is a great piece by Kevin, and autofiction isn’t as new or novel as we like to think. www.vulture.com/article/ben-...

You wrote a novel using AI? Cool. It's like that time I ran a marathon using a Ford Focus.

dragging suitcases in the mud...but where oh where are they going??? #satantangotogether

I'm up for Jacob (original publ. 2014). If Balzac, le Père Goriot or The Exiles? I agree with Scholar Wm Hobart Royce that we don't need to go in chronological order unless reading all 50+ of them. See blog here for suggested 24 books. messybooker.wordpress.com/2022/03/11/h...

Day 36, Apr 5, Sun - p220 “But how can you say this now…” to p223 “What’s new, Tóth?” SHORT DAY #satantangotogether

last week (week 6) of #satantangotogether starts tomorrow! thanks to everyone who kept reading.

Day 35, Apr 4, Sat - p214 “He peeped out to the path…” to p220 “There’s no escaping that, stupid.” #satantangotogether

A little like Molly's monologue at the end of Ulysses. But are everyone's dreams running together? I lost track of whose mind was whose in the last pages.

if it's not going to end well, it's important they stay together #satantangotogether

#SatantangoTogether nothingchangedoutside itwasneithermorningnoreveningitjust carriedondawnortwilightwhichever . . .

Day 34, Apr 3, Fri - START CH4 Heavenly Vision? Hallucination? p207 to p214 “Cold shivers ran down his back.” #satantangotogether

one day I will see TRIFONOV play this! on my bucket list. www.youtube.com/watch?v=kD4T...

Day 33, Apr 2, Thur - p200 “We thought you’d changed your mind…” to END OF CH5 p206. #satantangotogether

Thread. Sianne Ngai calls “cute” as “aestheticized powerlessness.” I talked about this when I wrote my anti-cute manifesto all those years ago (re: Down syndrome)

'later justify' is so true! 'For Ngai, an aesthetic judgment always begins with feeling, the fine gradations of affect inspired by an encounter with a photograph or a line of poetry that we may later justify through intellect.' lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-...

Day 32, Apr 1, Wed - p194 “or ‘You remember how Petrina once salted that…” to p200 “This year grant him pleasure…” #satantangotogether