"I loved the pair of Gwendoline Riley novels NYRB put out last year, "My Phantoms" and "First Love." I enjoy reading about awful, sickening people, and these books are filled with them."
"It's nothing like a masterpiece, but it's well and sensibly told, the story drawn in a pleasing, plain tone. Especially memorable are the passages where Hoffman describes the outsize role of Luck in the life of a gambler."
"I read "Easily Slip Into Another World," by Henry Threadgill and Brent Hayes Edwards, and learned that in the 1950s the Sun Ra Arkestra rehearsed after hours in a wild game meat market in Chicago."
