Caustic Cover Critic
@causticcovercritic.bsky.social
Uncharismatic megafauna. Too fat to ride a horse, too poor to own a carriage. Buy my book, keep me off the streets: http://bit.ly/JMgibbons
That weird feeling of reading a book that has perfectly good ideas, nothing to object to sentence-wise, and yet it leaves you completely cold.
“Did you find an excerpt from the novel for a blurb?” “Sure did boss real incomprehensible just like you asked”
Got a bunch of Indian modern classics, translated variously from Kannada, Urdu, Tamil and Bengali, with the last originally in English. These are stupidly hard to get hold of in Australia--had to order them from Germany, of all places. (includes the excellent @shreedaisy.bsky.social)
Shakespeare meets the comics shop owner:
Caustic Cover Critic@causticcovercritic.bsky.social · 4d agoBut pray what be these comics you speak of? They are but words and pictures! Can'st be true That all stories might now be told this way? Much time spent etching plates and rolling ink To see a man in spandex punch a god!
Sad to hear John Crowley has died. I'm far from an expert on his books, but BEASTS is one of the best attempts to make the reader vividly feel a non-human viewpoint, and THE GIRLHOOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S HEROINES is just a perfect novella.
Fascinating despite its lacklustre prose and unintentionally jingoistic Americanocentrism (what sort of weirdos call their country “the homeland”?). A handy corrective to having too much faith in human nature.
What the hell, let's try this even though the idea of answering Q2 definitively is already giving me the heebie-jeebies. Each like will unlock an answer. It will be (for you) the least thrilling, least rewarding game you'll ever play.
If anyone's wondering what's the worst way to watch 'I Love Boosters' (2026), try renting it via a VPN because it's not available in Australia, fucking up the VPN process, only seeing 23 mins before a technical fault interrupts the streaming, then being unable to see the rest or get your money back.
Is Twitter currently full of grifter dickheads going "When is Men in Translation Month?" or haven't they caught onto that one yet? #womenintranslationmonth
I remember that I did once get the living heir to the vanished Austro-Hungarian throne to write a message to my wife saying she should let me get any Hungarian book I want, so maybe it's time to call that in.
Caustic Cover Critic@causticcovercritic.bsky.social · 2w agoAnnoyingly, the only book by Magda Szabó (translated into English) that I don't have is both very rare and extremely expensive. These are the only 2 copies I can find, and I can't afford either of them. My life is a Shakespearean tragedy, etc etc
Too fucked up by illness (shingles vaccine side-effects) to write anything coherent in the way of a review, but these graphic novels* are both great. *Vase is a memoir
airbnb I’m staying at unintentionally created the toughest punk album cover of 2027
Annoyingly, the only book by Magda Szabó (translated into English) that I don't have is both very rare and extremely expensive. These are the only 2 copies I can find, and I can't afford either of them. My life is a Shakespearean tragedy, etc etc
Reread (first read maybe 10 years ago) this Hungarian masterpiece. No little review because I'm saving my words for the translated fiction book group I'm in. But it's fucking great.
Secretly my favourite ever film review, in its entirety (James Agee, 1948)
I'm not being self-deprecating; I really am crap.
The final book in Whitehead's outstanding trilogy of trilogies (each book being 3 connected novellas/short novels), about Harlem furniture salesman and fence Ray Carney, the whole thing having taken him from 1959 to end in 1986.
please stop suggesting I solve my problem by changing my behavior. I do not want to do that
I've been waiting 8 years for a second book by Madame Nielsen to finally make it into English! And now I can't read it yet because of Prior Reading Commitments™, but I am very excited. Her 'The Endless Summer' is brilliant. Same excellent translator, too.
Brittle comedy from 1965, skating over hidden depths of grief, loneliness and need, about a gay, black teenaged boy living with two mother figures outside Kalamazoo. Add frustrated sexuality, a conman 'psychic' and a pile of hidden resentments, and you get the darkest of farces.
I love Carrington's fiction and art, but have read most of these short stories before. I got this for 'Down Below', her memoir of being trapped in a Francoist Spain mental hospital during WW2. Unfortunately it's a bit of a jumble-- (1 of 4)
I think it's safe to say that only a real man who was deeply secure in his masculinity could say that this was absolutely delicious and one wishes the bottle had been bigger.
Hugely enjoyable alternative history crime novel, set in a Norman Conquestless universe where 'our' southern UK is a backward Saxon kingdom with Celtic reservations, and with a Scottish Norse kingdom north of 'the Wall'. Clever, dryly funny and imaginative. For fans of the marvellous 'Cahokia Jazz'.
Magda watches Arthur forcing down his morning bowl of honey. She remembers when they used to talk, when they used to touch. Now it's just honey all the time. All the doorknobs and drawer handles are sticky. All the spoons are glued together with crusted honey. There are angry bees at the door.
"Well, I was born a shrieking selfish baby with no understanding of the world who grabbed everything in sight and yelled MINE!, and I never changed."
Cato Institute@cato.org · 4w agoHow did you become a libertarian? We sat down with 10 scholars and staff at the Cato Institute—with different origin stories, areas of expertise, and concerns—to find out how they came to libertarianism, what gives them hope, and what they would fix first if they could. https://ow.ly/ObOn50Zp4W9
'Children of Men' & 'The Shining' are both pretty terrible books, but astonishing films. 'Red Alert' was not bad as a book but 'Dr Strangelove' transforms it. 'Pontypool' the book is a unfocused and dull, but the film is great.
J.M. Berger@jmberger.com · 4w agoWhat are your favorite adaptations that transcend their source material? Blade Runner springs to mind