Attention Span 2011 | Amina Cain

Bhanu Kapil | (a poem-essay, or precursor: NOTES: for a novel: Ban en Banlieues) | Belladonna* | 2011

Because lying in the street for a long time is beautiful and necessary and also violent.

Matthew Goulish | 39 Microlectures | Routledge | 2000

“Do whatever you need to with this book, and, if possible, do not let it damage your thoughts.”

Pamela Lu | Pamela: A Novel | Atelos | 1998

It took me a long time to get to this, and now I need to get to the next one, but I loved its intimacy and searching.

Octavia Butler | Kindred | Doubleday | 1979

This novel is amazing in its movement through time and in its narrative voice, which is crystalline.

Amanda Ackerman | The Seasons Cemented | Hex Presse | 2010

Like paying attention to a single line in a highly ornamental design, and then the next one, and then the next. Empty space is there too.

Violette Leduc, trans. Derek Coltman | The Lady and the Little Fox Fur | Peter Owen | 1967

There is pleasure in this short novel, for a character and for a reader, even when it seems as if a word like ‘pleasure’ should have gone missing.

Ronaldo Wilson | Poems of the Black Object | Futurepoem | 2009

Dreaming until it takes shape. And then achingly clear.

Marguerite Duras, trans. Eileen Ellenbogen | The Vice-Consul | Pantheon | 1968

A “sequel” of sorts to The Ravishing of Lol Stein, there’s a humor in this novel I haven’t found in other works by Duras.

Renee Gladman | TOAF | Atelos | 2008

The kind of book that makes one want to write; I would follow this narrative voice wherever it took me.

Danielle Dutton | Sprawl | Siglio | 2010

The accumulations become more and more addicting and so do the shining singularities.

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Amina Cain is the author of I Go To Some Hollow (Les Figues, 2009). She lives in Los Angeles.

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