#helen dewitt

[cat-claw]

from ‘Some Trick’ by Helen Dewitt

[biblioklept]

Blog about some recent reading (Jan. and Feb. 2026)

Joy Williams’ collection The Pelican Child was the first book I read this year. I picked up a copy back in December and surprised myself by reading most of it over a few days. It’s a much heavier collection than the wry vignettes of 2013’s Ninety-Nine Stories of God or its sequel, Concerning the Future of Souls (2024). The stories here alight on mortality, human ecological cultural aesthetic,…

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[itsevidentvery]

Just give her money

Caste, class and Helen DeWitt

Who up for a deep dive into niche Literary World Controversy?

Featuring: disability discourse! The Literary Prize Industrial Complex! Artistic Purity! And way! Too! Many! Twitter! Links!

[meikuree]

In a less barbarous society children would not be in absolute economic subjection to the irrational beings into whose keeping fate has consigned them: they would be paid a decent hourly wage for attending school. As we don’t live in that enlightened society any adult, and especially a parent, has a terrible power over a child.

– Helen Dewitt, The Last Samurai

[coquelicoq]

i have insomnia so i decided to read the english understand wool and of course it was incredible loved the story classic dewitt but i feel like i'm losing it because what is up with the author's note? the whole author's note is her talking about how difficult but beneficial it is to include images in text and her thanking people for helping her do that. but there are no images in the text????? and no one is talking about this online that i can see. what am i missing????

[wellconstructedsentences]

I would see languages with shades of each other, like the colours of Cézanne which often have a green with some red a red with some green, in my mind I saw a glowing still life as if a picture of English with French words French with English words German with French words & English words Japanese with French English & German words.

The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt

[pumpkinblossoms]

I didn't have a particularly stellar year of books in 2024. I read ~120 and I've only got six that stood out as particularly excellent.

Now, Conjurers by Freddie Kolsch (2024)

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers (1940)

Rainbow Black by Maggie Thrash (2024)

The Last Samurai by Helen Dewitt (2000)

Blackouts by Justin Torres (2023)

Mystery and Manners by Flannery O'Connor (1969)

Honorable mentions:

How to Become the Dark Lord or Die Trying by Django Wexler

The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden

Greta and Valdin by Rebecca K. Reilly

[littledidiknow]

Books Read in 2022

Faggots by Larry Kramer (1978)

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk (2009)

Never Be Alone Again: How Bloghouse United the Internet and the Dancefloor by Lisa Abascal (2020)

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro (2015)

Arriving Today by Christopher Mims (2021)

But What If We’re Wrong? by Chuck Klosterman (2016)

Fuccboi by Sean Thor Conroe (2022)

Red Notice by Bill Browder (2015)

How Should A Person Be? By Sheila Heti (2010)

Astragal by Albertine Sarrazin (1965)

Human Wishes Enemy Combatant by Edmund Caldwell (2011)

Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry (2019)

This is How They Tell Me the World Ends by Nicole Perlroth (2021)

Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy by Dave Hickey (1997)

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami (2009)

Gentleman Overboard by Herbert Clyde Lewis (1937)

A Wreath for the Enemy by Pamela Frankau (1954)

Lightning Rods by Helen DeWitt  (2011)

Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner (2019) (reread)

LaserWriter II by Tamara Shopsin (2021)

By Night in Chile by Roberto Bolano (2000)

Hot Milk by Deborah Levy (2016)

The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt (2000)

Milkman by Anna Burns (2018)

The Golden Spur by Dawn Powell (1962)

They by Kay Dick (1977)

Bliss Montage: Stories by Ling Ma (2022)

Status and Culture by W. David Marx (2022)

This was a big year for me both for quantity (nearly twice as many books as i read last year) but also for quality. So many standouts! And I'm learning I'm very here for experimental literature, please send me your weirdo recos.

Where the hell has Helen Dewitt been all my life? How are so few of her books published?! (she claims to have a dozen ready to go and i need all of them).

Chuck Klosterman has really grown up since I last paid attention to him like 15 years ago. But What if We're Wrong? changed the way I look at the world. He looks at the present day from 1000 years in the future and comtemplates what we could be completely wrong about based on what we've been wrong about in the past. Some of the interviews I've listened to of his this year have really opened my mind to new ways of thinking. Will be doubling back on what I've missed from him in years past in 2023.

Fuccboi was a blast and all the literture snobs that hated it are just completely fucking wrong.

I found Human Wishes Enemy Combatant through a newsletter or something. How lucky we are that this was released again! Read if you want to experience someone completely destroying the structure of a novel.

Milkman is gorgeous. Read immediately.

Gentleman Overboard is another that was nearly lost to time and recently published again. A beautiful and haunting little story.

Read Faggots for a very fun and raunchy romp through the gay sex scene of the late 70s moments before the AIDs crisis. You won't be able to keep track of all the characters, but it doesn't really matter.

How Red Notice hasn't been made into a movie by Adam McKay is beyond me. Maybe it's coming. A great window into Russia's transition after the Soviet Union and also the mindset of modern Russians. Also lots of fascinating stock, money stuff.

Read Arriving Today and This is How they Tell Me the World Ends (about the supply chain and hacking/internet security respectively.) for a peak into our modern lives told by very good story tellers in ways that are far from boring.

I could go on and on about Fleishman is in Trouble (and have in person to so many). The story of two women trojan horsed through the tale of one very mid man. The series on Hulu is also good and an incredibly accurate representation of the book.

Status and Culture! I'm still reeling from this book. Marx is so direct when looking at how and why we like the things we like it almost makes you uncomfortable. i don't think i have ever underlined, astricked, exclamation pointed so much in the margins of a book.

The Golden Spur, They, Bliss Montage, Astragal, How Should A Person Be?, Laserwriter ii, Night Boat to Tangier, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead are all well worth reading also. Honestly, I was blown away by almost everything i read this year minus two big exceptions.

I hated The Buried Giant. Read it for a book club. I'm not a fantasy girl. I get what he was trying to do with the language, but i couldn't get into it, it felt like a bad translation. Which is really saying something for a book written in English. If he called her Princess one more time, I can't.

1Q84 I really wanted to love, (my first Murakami, somehow.). I really liked the first section, but it just didn't add up for me in the end and there were so many loose ends for such a long book.

I have found so many of the books that i loved this year on the podcast Backlisted. Two British guys have on two guests to discuss an old, out of print, or a newer book that isn't as popular. They are charming, it's very nerdy. But they have incredible taste and i put at least 5 books into my Thriftbooks cart during every episode. n+1 also did a fundraiser quiz that gives you 10 book recos. i was very excited about all of them and most of them i'd never heard of. Haven't read any yet, but many are sitting in the same shopping cart. Just checked and they aren't doing it anymore, but look for it next year!