Issue #240

• Joy of joys. >>Orbital.

• Not a book, except by its necessary containment in a physical form. >>Whaea Blue.

• Not so far apart. >>Unfinished and Far Far Away.

• Why the novel matters. >>The Position of Spoons.

• Anarchism and principle of play. >>The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World.

• Predicament. >>Future Jaw-Clap.

• The punks of jazz. >>Future Jaw-Clap.

• The reverse bug. >>An Absence of Cousins.

• Translating Japanese’s many words for ‘I’. >>The City and Its Uncertain Walls. >>An I-Novel.

• The unbearable ennui of office life. >>Bullshit Jobs.

• A book for every year of your life: 0—30. >>Build the bookcase.

• The art of watching and the art of being watched. >>The Sleepers.

• According to Alice.

• Kafka’s screwball tragedy. >>Investigations of a Dog.

• What does a translator do?

• Under the radar. >>An incisive submission.

• On Nietzsche Mountain.

• Chronic illness and creative recuperation. >>Enacting the disease.

• With Clarice in Washington. >>Books by Clarice Lispector.

• Books that exist only in books.

• Our film recommendation this week: Janet Planet.

• Creating the perfect library.

Support The Interesting Times by buying the interesting books!

Issue #239

• Other Intimacies. >>The Position of Spoons.

• Sounds in the house. >>On the Calculation of Volume, Book I and Book II.

• Day 121. >>On the Calculation of Volume, Book I and Book II.

• The Angel of Death has some reservations about his job. >>Concerning the Future of Souls.

• Uncanny the singing that comes from certain husks. >>Concerning the Future of Souls.

• Haunting/haunted. >>The Royal Free.

• First a farce, then a tragedy. >>The Life and Opinions of Kartik Popat.

• Unashamedly political. >>The Life and Opinions of Kartik Popat.

• An ex-columnist! >>The Life and Opinions of Kartik Popat.

• Zebra power! >>Slender Volumes.

• Female rage and agency. >>Rhine Journey.

• Weeping for Babylon. >>Three Worlds.

• New ground. >>Juice.

• Reframing Māori art. >>Toi te Mana.

• Redeeming time. >>Second Chances.

• Disintegrating worldviews. >>Ghost Pains.

• Insecurity as a defining emotional register. >>Ghost Pains.

• An interview with Fady Joudah. >>[…]

• Behind the scenes. >>Giant.

• Love and silence. >>Traces of Enayat.

• Looking to learn. >> A Handbook of Basic Facts.

• Critical. >>Submit!

• No illusions intact.

• On lists.

• Can poets drive?

• Our film recommendation this week: A Mistake. >>Read the book!

• To be read.

Support The Interesting Times by buying the interesting books!

Issue #238

• Obsessive. >>Episodes.

• The superb Mr Shuker. >>The Royal Free.

• Disintegrating fabric. >>The Royal Free.

• Hope for the future. >>Gliff.

• Seven-line stories. >>Slender Volumes.

• The laughing stock. >>The Life and Opinions of Kartik Popat.

• The purpose and reward of reading. >>Creation Lake.

• From the same imagination. >>McGlue.

• The Carnegie Libraries. >>As You Will.

• The limitations of the mind. >>Alphabetical Diaries.

• Not really a vegetable. >>Shattered.

• Wholly insightful. >>Birnam Wood.

• What he wants you to know. >>Forest of Noise.

• A Masterclass. >>New Stories.

• The library of Ralph Hotere.

• Lots (and lots) of cats.

• Is the 20th century novel a genre?

• Submit!

• In search of the Moomins in Helsinki.

• For the health of your democracy.

• A history of America!

• We still have small joys. >>Watch something!

• Witch Way?

Support The Interesting Times by buying the interesting books!

Issue #237

• The winner is… you, the reader. >>The Booker books.

• What might we use literature for? >>Pretty Ugly.

• A compelling collection of contradictions. >>Pretty Ugly.

• Turning the world inside out. >>Parade.

• It does not have to be this way. >>The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World.

• Escaping expectations. >>Poorhara.

• A writer in the age of angst. >>There Are Rivers in the Sky.

• It’s academic. >>Violent Faculties.

• A discovery and a revelation. >>Leslie Adkin, Farmer photographer.

• Where we begin and end. >>Morning and Evening.

• True dreams. >>Marlow’s Dream.

• Disintegration is ineluctable. >>Herscht 07769.

• Solar sacrifice.

• Viewing the world afresh.

• Our film recommendation this week: Romeo & Juliet: A love song.

• The narrator.

Buying the interesting books will make The Interesting Times even more interesting.

Issue #236

• A grifter on the block. >>The Life and Opinions of Kratik Popat.

• Death-cleaning, ageing, and loss. >>Delirious.

• Death is too terrible, so real estate is where we let ourselves feel. >>Delirious.

• Maybe she was just messing with me. >>Delirious.

• A world without dogs. >>Invisible Dogs.

• Observations that hit like a truck. >>Poorhara.

• Quick chats. >>The Booker short list.

• Aftermath. >>A Leopard-Skin Hat.

• Self-portrait with toaster. >>Final Cut. >>Watch the trailer.

• The men are not OK. >>Blue Ruin.

• Prawns his sirens. >>I Will Crash.

• The value of your body. >>Gifted.

• Sticky velvet wings. >>Stone Yard Devotional.

• Aliens in their swanky robes. >>Turncoat.

• A wry dissection of privilege. >>The Coin.

• Gothic horror with a twist. >>A Sunny Place for Shady People.

• The right kind of doll. >>My Good Bright Wolf.

• A strange, sad obsession. >>Books by Tusiata Avia.

• Are you a font expert?

• “I can’t help the world heal.”

• Iwi, kiwi, and te Tiriti.

• Early modern maths.

• The way to go.

• Our film recommendation this week: Martha : A picture story.

• 17th century death roulette.

• The literary scene.

If you enjoy The Interesting Times, buy the interesting books!

Issue #235

• Making it work. >>Episodes.

• Without moving her lips. >>The Remarkables.

• Some kind of reversal. >>Creation Lake.

• Loving the limitations of the novel. >>Intermezzo.

• Glimpses of Utopia. >>Intermezzo.

• A good fit. >>He Kupu nā te Māia.

• The archive as potter’s field. >>The Last Sane Woman.

• I want to read about women who can’t make things. >>The Last Sane Woman.

• A razor blade in a peach. >>Fleur Adcock’s Collected Poems.

• Artemis Victor vs. Andi Taylor. >>Headshot.

• A different kind of speech act. >>Recognising the Stranger.

• Not a fixed position. >>rock flight.

• A mysterious business.

• Radical hope. >>History for Tomorrow.

• Unflinching acceptance. >>The Architecture of Modern Empire.

• Reading as resistance. >>Forms of Freedom.

• Celebrating Māori hospitality. >>From the maunga to the moana.

• Losing a sister to forced separation. >>Women Holding Things. >>Still Life with Remorse.

• Arresting originality. >>Edith Collier.

• The postures of the mouth.

• Between agency and fate.

• The kiss of death.

• The real wreckers of art. >>Books by Thomas Bernhard.

• From Beowulf to Foucault. >>Books by Cormac McCarthy.

• “I became besotted.” >>Books by Gavin Bishop.

• Buy books not meth.

• Precubism.

• Conflict in literature.

Support The Interesting Times by buying the interesting books!

Issue #234

• The Booker short-list films. >>Find out about the books!

• Stitches, stems and pockets. >>Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other.

• Bad subsidence. >>All My Precious Madness. >>Read an extract.

• Sardines in space. >>Orbital.

• Palpable empathy. >>Books by Han Kang.

• Sibling torment. >>I Will Crash.

• Everything in the physical world emerges through the world of fiction and imagination. >>The Great When.

• Absence, presence and disappearance. >>The Book of Disappearance.

• A prisoner writes. >>The Tale of a Wall.

• Behind all the plaster. >>Scaffolding.

• On the way to a funeral. >>The results of inspiration.

• Kiwi adolescence. >>Tsunami.

• On the Road on its head. >>Tripticks.

• Hope and despair. >>A Leopard-Skin Hat.

• The next chapter.

• The usual story.

Support The Interesting Times by buying the interesting books!

Issue #233

• Asylum dreams. >>The Edge of the Alphabet.

• Janet Frame at 100. >>The Edge of the Alphabet.

• Space pastoral. >>Orbital.

• The good hacker. >>Plurality.

• We were not always Indigenous. >>This Mouth Is Mine.

• Experimental writing and transformative politics. >>Vehicle.

• Violence and misogyny as some sort of constant illness. >> The Empusium.

• The breath out. >>Kataraina.

• On (not) reading Anne Frank. >>The Safekeep.

• Scathing. <<All My Precious Madness.

• Deprivation exercises. >>I Don’t Care.

• What if there’s just no solution? >>Future of Denial.

• Backwards is North. >>Wrong Norma.

• Male anxiety and the global crisis. >>Self-Esteem and the End of the World.

• Our ghosts are wandering around. >>The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida.

• The breathing author. >>Books by Gerald Murnane.

• Labouring away. >>Books by Imre Kertesz.

• Trauma as a weapon of war. >>Doppelganger.

• Unit One.

• Behind the curtain.

• Escapes.

• Playing pool.

• The Bayeux Animation.

Support The Interesting Times by buying the interesting books!

Issue #232

• Voyage into delusion. >>The Edge of the Alphabet.

• Midlife realisations and rebellions. >>Lioness. >>Do You Still Have Time for Chaos?

• At least in theory. >>On Freedom.

• An ode to the power of cinema. >>Seeing Further.

• On returning to and reinterpreting the classics. >>The Empusium.

• Making a splash. >>The Mermaid Chronicles.

• Won at auction. >>You can order The Book of Guilt now!

• The American sentence. >>Three Lives.

• The analyst and the bard. >>Second Chances.

• From Pesoa.

• The connection between writing and dreams.

• Core demands.

• Try upstairs!

• New Zealand Police acronyms you need to know.

Support The Interesting Times by buying the interesting books!

Issue #231

• A health resort horror story. >>The Empusium.

• More than just TB. >>The Empusium.

• Wandering fragments. >>Praiseworthy.

• Bill Direen’s dustbin of empathy. >>100 Years of Darkness.

• ‘With My Back to the World, 1997.’ >>With My Back to the World.

• Narrative sovereignty. >>Audition.

• Radiant nothingness. >>The Passion According to G.H.

• Dreaming within the text. >>Moby-Dick.

• Obliterations or substitutes? >>Enacting the disease. >>Performance.

• The PANZ Book Design Award winners.

• Sometimes-food or daily bread?

• Crayon processes.

• Populists, frauds, and flip-phones.

• What is the point of literature in a democracy?

• Surrealism at 100.

• Community and connection.

• Retyping as close reading.

• Kei tāku īmēra i mua.

• lol.

• Almost ready to write.

Support The Interesting Times by buying the interesting books!

Issue #230

• A curated tour. >>Modern Women.

• A genius in pink jandals. >>Rewi.

• All in a drop. >>The Are Rivers in the Sky.

• Transformational. >>The Invasion of Waikato.

• Life is not fair. >>Wrong Norma.

• The obscene excess of the literary. >>Verdigris. >>You, Bleeding Childhood.

• What would you add?

• She wrote about all her lovers. >>Secret Voices.

• Ulysses and its wake. >>Ulysses.

• Crown Heights North.

• Illustrator to illustrator.

• George Saunders’s writing education.

• From Kafka’s window.

• A pretty good life.

• What to do with a book.

Support The Interesting Times by buying the interesting books!

Issue #229

• A philosophical spy novel for an age of environmental anxiety. >>Creation Lake.

• “I never told my husband I was a novelist.” >>Mina’s Matchbox.

• Language as a living thing. >>Spontaneous Acts a.k.a. Paul Celan and the Trans-Tibetan Angel.

• Celan reads Japanese.

• The writing life. >>Elkin. >>Levy. >>Darrieussecq.

• The good hacker. >>Plurality.

• Love and trauma. >>The Echoes.

• Butting heads. >>The Fight for Freshwater.

• Ta rē Moriori revival. >>Ten Nosey Weka.

• Why A.I. isn’t going to make art. >>Stories of Your Life and Others.

• “I never had the intention to be an author.” >>Books by Jon Fosse.

• The supreme conradictions of Simone Weil. >>Books by or about Simone Weil.

• The long view.

• The power of picture books.

• Humanity’s strangest language.

• The seven kinds of friendship you find in literature.

• No one’s going to fund two old men. >>The Street of Crocodiles and the Sanatorium under the Hourglass.

• A word about a word addressed to a word.

• Samuel Beckett’s objection to Franz Kafka.

• The universal board.

• Shock without awe.

• Our film recommendation this week: Beyond the Hills.

Support The Interesting Times by buying the interesting books!