Tag: fiction

• August 18, 2025

  “The Snowflake Effect: How the Self-Esteem Movement Ruined a Generation”

  Just reading the contents page, I had the feeling this could be a good read and I wasn’t disappointed. In this punchy little book, Trey Willis makes logical, well-researched and largely convincing arguments for why his own Generation Y is essentially selfish, especially when compared to previous generations of North Americans. He looks at popular…
• August 22, 2024

  Short video of a short story: What’s it like being a piece of furniture?

  The boy ran his slim fingers along the chest of drawers. His eyes passed across the garish green lacquered wood. The world of things. He wanted to be this thing. To have objects put inside him, to stay there. The boy was entering a different world by being here with an adult thing like this.…
• August 14, 2024

  The Cape and Other Stories from the Japanese Ghetto

  My brief review of Kenji Nakagami’s noir masterpiece [Parts of this review were first published in an edition of Kansai Scene in 2002.] Kenji Nakagami is a writer whose work opens up a side of Japan usually well-hidden from the foreign eye. And for that matter, from many other Japanese people. He once said that…
• January 3, 2024

  Barcelona’s cannibal restaurant and murderous barber

  Legend has it that a certain inn was known for the quality and cheapness of its meat dishes. (Please note: No AI was used in my translation of this article.) There are two old mansions on a Barcelona street named Pou de la Figuera. They seem to stand somewhat isolated among the many modern buildings…