KeithMar 10
The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster. I really enjoyed Baumgartner, which in retrospect was a love letter to his wife before he died in 2023. These books are sort of detective novels. But it's the descent into madness that runs through them. Writing that is both really clever and very readable. @bookstodon #bookstodon #KeefsReads
Show threadKeithJul 11, 2025

Just read Gabriel's Moon by William Boyd. Load of old cobblers. Easy reading cobblers. But cobblers. #LiteraryCriticism #KeefsReads

@bookstodon

KeithJun 23, 2025
My long thread of books I've read got broken. Possibly through inactivity. Anyway, I read Trust by Herman Diaz. Or possibly reread. All a little familiar. Fours books within a book. What's it about? Not sure. Made me think about unreliable narrators and ownership of the truth. @bookstodon #bookstodon #KeefsReads
Show threadKeithMay 12, 2024
I read The Nix by Nathan Hill. And after a few pages I realised I'd already read it and forgotten about it. Doh! But perhaps the moment to pick it up was well timed. It centres on student protests in Chicago in 1968. It feels like we've learnt precisely nothing along the way. If you like John Irving's work you'll get along with this. #keefsreads @bookstodon
Show threadKeithApr 4, 2024
Am I the last person on earth to read The Bee Sting by Paul Murray? A proper book. Grabs you, shakes you up, gives you a bit of a kicking, drops you in a heap. #bookstodon.#keefsreads @bookstodon
Show threadKeithMar 23, 2024
Baumgartner by Paul Auster, a short book about love and loss. It's very good on both. There's a feeling of melancholy hanging over it that feels like an authentic by-product of growing old. A stock take I guess. But it doesn't really go anywhere. Perhaps it doesn't need to. #KeefsReads #bookstodon @bookstodon
Show threadKeithFeb 25, 2024
If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery: a very readable collection of connected short stories through about 30 years. Particularly taken with 'Splashdown' which gently draws you in and...well. A story of an American family with Jamaican roots mainly told through the youngest son. Life often just happens rather than is lived. Humans mess up of course. #bookstodon @bookstodon #KeefsReads
Show threadKeithFeb 18, 2024

Having enjoyed Swan Song by Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott a while ago, couldn't resist Capote's Women by Laurence Leamer (h/t @Hey_Beth who's been immersed in the Capote world recently).

Privilege and entitlement means it's hard to empathise with the swans; but they landed then married detached sometimes cruel men. I thought about Larkin's words on parenting a few times.

Capote comes across as vain and narcissistic. It's pretty unedifying but very readable. @bookstodon #bookstodon #keefsreads

Show threadKeithFeb 10, 2024
#Warhol after Warhol by Richard Dorment. The story of the charlatans and grifters who ended up deciding what is and is not a Warhol. But given the artist's rather hands-off approach to his work perhaps it is fitting it ended up like this. A real page-turner. Can't remember the last time I read a book in a day. #bookstodon #KeefsReads @bookstodon
Show threadKeithFeb 9, 2024
Given I enjoyed Okwiri Oduor's short story in that collection so much I read her novel Things They Lost. A story of dysfunctional families and love between two girls (Mbiu Dash from the short story is one of them.) Set in a strange shifting world inhabited by wraiths. Feels like visiting a strange dream. #keefsreads #bookstodon @bookstodon