Luis Panini
@luispanini.bsky.social
Reader / Writer / Architect. Major mottoes: "I would prefer not to," "yes I said yes I will Yes," "I can't go on, I’ll go on."
Two tomes were acquired. Two.
October 29, 2025 at 8:13 PM
Two tomes were acquired. Two.
Rewatched Béla Tarr’s The Turin Horse. I understand why so many abhor this film, but if you’re willing to abandon all hope, surrender to its grueling monotony, and be governed by its sepulchral atmosphere you’ll have one of the most transcending cinematic experiences of your life.
October 22, 2025 at 4:23 PM
Rewatched Béla Tarr’s The Turin Horse. I understand why so many abhor this film, but if you’re willing to abandon all hope, surrender to its grueling monotony, and be governed by its sepulchral atmosphere you’ll have one of the most transcending cinematic experiences of your life.
Masterpiece! Camus turns the book into a confessional and the reader into a priest. It features one of the darkest, most reprehensible narrators (thankfully). If I ever dare to write a Top 20 of the best novels I’ve read, it wouldn’t surprise me to see this one on that list.
October 16, 2025 at 11:28 PM
Masterpiece! Camus turns the book into a confessional and the reader into a priest. It features one of the darkest, most reprehensible narrators (thankfully). If I ever dare to write a Top 20 of the best novels I’ve read, it wouldn’t surprise me to see this one on that list.
Fresh from the press and my latest addition to the Gertrude Stein pile. Probably the 113th book in my home library written by (or about) the matriarch of Modernism.
October 12, 2025 at 5:57 PM
Fresh from the press and my latest addition to the Gertrude Stein pile. Probably the 113th book in my home library written by (or about) the matriarch of Modernism.
Come on board the Kraszna train, darlings. You won’t regret it.
October 9, 2025 at 7:35 PM
Come on board the Kraszna train, darlings. You won’t regret it.
Worked all day. Went to a bookstore. Both titles were sold out. Drove to another. Found them a few minutes ago. Can’t read them now. Still happy to have them.
October 8, 2025 at 3:44 AM
Worked all day. Went to a bookstore. Both titles were sold out. Drove to another. Found them a few minutes ago. Can’t read them now. Still happy to have them.
Pausing the Dostoevsky read through I started at the beginning of the year (I need a short break from his voice). Up next: the complete fiction of Albert Camus.
October 4, 2025 at 10:29 PM
Pausing the Dostoevsky read through I started at the beginning of the year (I need a short break from his voice). Up next: the complete fiction of Albert Camus.
How does one engage with a writer whose body of work seems to represent the epitome of solipsistic creation? His purported novels are no more than countless vignettes conjoined in a universe of hopelessness, solitude, and total indifference. Award the Nobel Prize to Botho Strauß.
October 4, 2025 at 4:06 PM
How does one engage with a writer whose body of work seems to represent the epitome of solipsistic creation? His purported novels are no more than countless vignettes conjoined in a universe of hopelessness, solitude, and total indifference. Award the Nobel Prize to Botho Strauß.
She’s recorded in a tongue on the verge of collapse a litany of transposable voices and disjointed perspectives that reject Manichaean dualities, all to create the foundations of refurbished identities that can neither be named nor described. Award the Nobel Prize to Chus Pato.
October 3, 2025 at 3:49 PM
She’s recorded in a tongue on the verge of collapse a litany of transposable voices and disjointed perspectives that reject Manichaean dualities, all to create the foundations of refurbished identities that can neither be named nor described. Award the Nobel Prize to Chus Pato.
In his exceedingly long poetic sequences –always epic in scale– polyphony can turn into a cacophony of everyday voices as he renders, in a most accessible way, a peculiar migrant experience while expanding the possibilities of the poem. Award the Nobel Prize to Π.O. (Pi O).
October 2, 2025 at 3:12 PM
In his exceedingly long poetic sequences –always epic in scale– polyphony can turn into a cacophony of everyday voices as he renders, in a most accessible way, a peculiar migrant experience while expanding the possibilities of the poem. Award the Nobel Prize to Π.O. (Pi O).
Yesterday’s purchases… I had read everything by Olga Tokarczuk available in English translation before she got the big prize, but nothing that was translated after it, so I need to remedy that. And The Sea, the Sea has been on my radar for many years. It’ll be my first Murdoch.
September 7, 2025 at 3:14 PM
Yesterday’s purchases… I had read everything by Olga Tokarczuk available in English translation before she got the big prize, but nothing that was translated after it, so I need to remedy that. And The Sea, the Sea has been on my radar for many years. It’ll be my first Murdoch.
Did I drive like a maniac to my local bookstore upon learning that Eimear McBride’s latest novel hit the shelves on this side of the Atlantic?
Is the night dark and full of terrors?🙄
Is the night dark and full of terrors?🙄
September 6, 2025 at 6:07 PM
Did I drive like a maniac to my local bookstore upon learning that Eimear McBride’s latest novel hit the shelves on this side of the Atlantic?
Is the night dark and full of terrors?🙄
Is the night dark and full of terrors?🙄
His intellectually rigorous novels —mental abodes of a late Modernist that may produce in the reader a permanent feeling of vertigo—, masterfully explore the complexities of entropic realities, even through the consciousness of a disembodied entity. Award the Nobel Prize to Joseph McElroy.
September 4, 2025 at 4:00 PM
His intellectually rigorous novels —mental abodes of a late Modernist that may produce in the reader a permanent feeling of vertigo—, masterfully explore the complexities of entropic realities, even through the consciousness of a disembodied entity. Award the Nobel Prize to Joseph McElroy.
Jacinta, the love of my life, left this world on Aug 1 at 2:59PM, shortly after turning 19 y.o. She passed away peacefully, in my arms (my request to the vet), while I whispered words of goodbye and gratitude, kissed her beautiful face, and rocked her gently, like the sweet baby she always was.
August 15, 2025 at 4:50 PM
Jacinta, the love of my life, left this world on Aug 1 at 2:59PM, shortly after turning 19 y.o. She passed away peacefully, in my arms (my request to the vet), while I whispered words of goodbye and gratitude, kissed her beautiful face, and rocked her gently, like the sweet baby she always was.
McElroy's language is a sort of liquid. His subordinate clauses, liberated from commas, constantly bleed into the main sentence. Highly ciphered, awe-inspiring, unequivocally dumbfounding novels you don’t need to fully decrypt to appreciate. Literary titans are almost extinct. Almost.
July 24, 2025 at 6:09 PM
McElroy's language is a sort of liquid. His subordinate clauses, liberated from commas, constantly bleed into the main sentence. Highly ciphered, awe-inspiring, unequivocally dumbfounding novels you don’t need to fully decrypt to appreciate. Literary titans are almost extinct. Almost.
Two translations of Dante’s Paradiso are set to come out in the year of our Lord 2025. Come July we’ll get Mary Jo Bang’s "irreverent” conclusion, published by Graywolf Press, and in August NYRB will give us D. M. Black’s second installment (anyone knows if he plans on translating Inferno?).
May 31, 2025 at 10:20 PM
Two translations of Dante’s Paradiso are set to come out in the year of our Lord 2025. Come July we’ll get Mary Jo Bang’s "irreverent” conclusion, published by Graywolf Press, and in August NYRB will give us D. M. Black’s second installment (anyone knows if he plans on translating Inferno?).
One of the first books that comes to mind when asked the anxiety-inducing question “What’s the best novel you’ve read?” / Uno de los primeros libros que me viene a la mente cuando me hacen esa pregunta que invariablemente detona ansiedad: "¿Cuál es la mejor novela que has leído?"
May 29, 2025 at 8:05 PM
One of the first books that comes to mind when asked the anxiety-inducing question “What’s the best novel you’ve read?” / Uno de los primeros libros que me viene a la mente cuando me hacen esa pregunta que invariablemente detona ansiedad: "¿Cuál es la mejor novela que has leído?"
After receiving Michael Brodsky’s Invidicum (considered to be his magnum opus: 1,190 pages, 20 years in the making) and thoroughly sampling it, I had to ransack my public library bookshelves to figure out if I’ve just started reading the King of Maximalists… Seems like it.
May 16, 2025 at 8:49 PM
After receiving Michael Brodsky’s Invidicum (considered to be his magnum opus: 1,190 pages, 20 years in the making) and thoroughly sampling it, I had to ransack my public library bookshelves to figure out if I’ve just started reading the King of Maximalists… Seems like it.
A reviewer once wrote that John Barth’s Giles Goat-Boy was “a novel to offend everyone.” This can be said about D. Keith Mano’s Take Five, which is brilliant and one of the best kept secrets in American literature. It transcends its own mean-spiritedness through lavish verbiage and caustic humor.
May 2, 2025 at 5:48 PM
A reviewer once wrote that John Barth’s Giles Goat-Boy was “a novel to offend everyone.” This can be said about D. Keith Mano’s Take Five, which is brilliant and one of the best kept secrets in American literature. It transcends its own mean-spiritedness through lavish verbiage and caustic humor.
I watched this last night. Andrei Tarkovsky’s first feature film reaches the level of perfection, cinematic artistry and rigorous composition most filmmakers dream of. Never have I seen a more attuned dialogue between foreground and background sustained through an entire film.
February 26, 2025 at 5:22 PM
I watched this last night. Andrei Tarkovsky’s first feature film reaches the level of perfection, cinematic artistry and rigorous composition most filmmakers dream of. Never have I seen a more attuned dialogue between foreground and background sustained through an entire film.
A thing of beauty: the "animal novels" of Günter Grass.
January 28, 2025 at 7:13 PM
A thing of beauty: the "animal novels" of Günter Grass.
Arrived: the complete novels of Henry Green, a “late modernist” admired by major figures of the literati (Updike, Isherwood, Welty, Auden). These are the British editions, but you can find 8 of his novels in NYRB’s catalog (a.k.a. the literary counterpart of the Criterion Collection).
January 24, 2025 at 7:35 PM
Arrived: the complete novels of Henry Green, a “late modernist” admired by major figures of the literati (Updike, Isherwood, Welty, Auden). These are the British editions, but you can find 8 of his novels in NYRB’s catalog (a.k.a. the literary counterpart of the Criterion Collection).
At the rate of one book per month, this year I will also tackle the complete works of Jane Austen. I’m just not sure if I should start with Sense and Sensibility, her first novel (The Watsons is unfinished), or her juvenilia (some of the material dates back to 1787, when she was 11!).
January 18, 2025 at 7:26 PM
At the rate of one book per month, this year I will also tackle the complete works of Jane Austen. I’m just not sure if I should start with Sense and Sensibility, her first novel (The Watsons is unfinished), or her juvenilia (some of the material dates back to 1787, when she was 11!).
David Lynch (1946-2025).
Sir, you will be terribly missed.
Sir, you will be terribly missed.
As good a time as any to remember that Mr. Lynch has given us one of the most creative and intellectually stimulating bodies of work in the history of cinema (even when all we can do is scratch our heads), including a masterpiece: The Elephant Man. Few can reach that level of cinematic perfection.
January 16, 2025 at 7:30 PM
David Lynch (1946-2025).
Sir, you will be terribly missed.
Sir, you will be terribly missed.