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Sex with Dwarves is my new favorite fairy tale.

I'm trying to read this slowly but I was never very good at self-restraint when it comes to unhealthy obsessions and Spaghetti Westerns is right near the top of the list.

Glimmers of greatness on nearly every page. Interior and economical. Not quite the level of Goon Squad, The Keep or Look at Me but you can see those books coming.

From the introduction: "the ordeals of the seafarers dramatize the poet's inner perseverance" Sign me up. (I'm not reading this edition but an English translation.)

Slow, mostly expository, and though I'm almost completely ignorant of the historical context, oddly alluring.

"I want this. I want lost days."

Each story in Fish’s “collection of undomesticated flash fictions” is fewer than 600 words—Wild Life has teeth. Although you can read it from cover to cover in a few hours, there’s nothing slight about these slim fictions. These stories are culled from real life, making them all the more harrowing.

Like James Joyce’s Dubliners and Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, Walsh uses place as an organizing principle, but his work is wholly original. Populated by dog-track bettors, shady doctors and all manner of smalltime crooks and con artists, Ampersand is a great place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there. Quote: “Decoder promises only three things to women: hard, fast, and long. Decoder can’t do tender

"Alone wasn't a room anymore, but the whole wide world, and now I was alone in the world, occupying it in a way I never had before."

"Before the pumpkin moon, we escape."

"Bravery when you have no choice is worth less if you brag about it."