This book is an interesting narrative overview of the most important junctures in Iraqi life over three decades.

The two most memorable things I read in 2017 were text messages.

If democracy dies in darkness, then dispense with the dreaming. Just give me the facts.

Nothing, not even cultural evolution, can stamp out beautiful writing.

Our current condition of ambient despair gets an excellent portraiture in Evelyn Hampton’s The Aleatory Abyss.

By our crude estimate, the series featured some 500 books.

Old books remind you that we have been through bad things before, and will go through bad things again, and we will live through the tiny interstitial moments of joy that we get in dark times. Not because it is fair, but because we have to.

More suspenseful than any novel I read this year, more haunting than any poetry I read this year, more illuminating than any academic take on the political landscape in Libya or anyplace else, 'The Return' is a treasure.

If Ishiguro’s historical novel (about WWII, the opium wars, and the golden age of detective fiction) could speak, it would ask, 'Girl, why you so obsessed with me?'

If I’m not reading at least two books at a time I’m failing somehow.

Elizabeth Bishop is inspired. I read her when I feel uninspired.