The titles selected for reading at the Experimental Fiction group (XFX) during the Fourth Quarter of 2013 have been selected and are now posted on the XFX section of this website. To make things easier, however, I have copied them below and added a few words of encouragement.
10-15 - The Water Thief – Nicholas Lamar Soutter
This is not a super literary novel by a great author, but it is an easy and fun read which underneath it all is a spot-on satire of the direction this country (USA) and much of the world is heading as the forces of Corporatism (Fascists) take over the world. A must read.
11-01 - The Blue Fox – Sjón
Short but powerful; evocative, enigmatic, excellent. See the fox; be the fox; read the book.
11-15 - Dubliners – James Joyce
Joyce redefined the short story with this collection. Read it over and over again.
12-01 - Dublinesque – Enrique Vila-Matas
An imaginative journey connecting the worlds of James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, and all they symbolize.
12-15 - Barfly — Charles Bukowski
The underside of life in L.A. by an author that lived it.
[Note: 12-15 title is a correction to avoid duplicate reads.]
A Celebration of Reading 
Well, I’ve read The Blue Fox one time and Dubliners twice and thoroughly enjoyed them both. I’m sure I saw the movie of Barfly, but don’t remember a whole lot except it was a pretty good film.
So I guess I’ll have to add The Water Thief and Dublinesque to ye olde wish list – I’ve heard good things about the latter in other places.
Thanks for the list –
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The Blue Fox is a good title for Sjón but I might suggest reading From the Mouth of the Whale or The Whispering Muse … all very unique and quite different from each other. Thinking about it, perhaps Sjón compares to many of the works of Naguib Mahfouz.
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Yes, I was thinking I’d like to read more Sjón. I’ve actually got the sample of the ebook version of From the Mouth of the Whale. I’ve not read anything by Mahfouz other than The Cairo Trilogy which I loved but I don’t see a lot of similarity to Sjón there. Which Mahfouz are similar and to which of Sjón?
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Mahfouz is well known for his realistic novels, like The Cairo Trilogy, but he has many delightful novels that might be straight out of the Arabian Nights, full of fantasy and the fantastic. Try Midaq Alley, Children of the Alley, Arabian Nights & Days, The Harafish.
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