Why am I passionate about this?

I am an author, poet, and visual artist. These interests converge in my approach to literature. I think that visual and psychological descriptions of environments and circumstances are essential to enlivening the narrative and setting its tone. Often in modern literature this is diluted in favor of straightforward accounts. I believe that a story is never told with any complete objectivity but has a psychological context that must be highlighted. In addition, vivid visual descriptions greatly assist the reader in inhabiting the world of the story as seen from the characters’ points of view.


I wrote

Arsalan the Magnificent

By J.E. Tolbert,

Book cover of Arsalan the Magnificent

What is my book about?

Arsalan the Magnificent is a lighthearted but poignant novel of historical fantasy fiction. In Europe and the Ottoman Empire of…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Plains

J.E. Tolbert Why did I love this book?

Gerald Murnane describes the flat, boring landscape of Victoria, Australia and its minute variations with such crystalline clarity and sublime meaning that it resembles a dreamlike fiction, or a landscape viewed through a clear prism.

Murnane probes the boundaries between life and fiction, between landscape and mind. In between, he finds a membrane, a shimmering spiritual essence purer than either real life or fiction.

This book taught me that if one stares at the mundane world with enough hard objectivity, it can look more alien and beautiful than any amount of fanciful embellishment. It also demonstrates how a story can be told with no dialogue, no character names, and hardly any resolution, and yet can be as compelling as a conventionally written story.

By Gerald Murnane,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Plains as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

On their vast estates, the landowning families of the plains have preserved a rich and distinctive culture. Obsessed with their own habitat and history, they hire artisans, writers and historians to record in minute detail every aspect of their lives, and the nature of their land. A young film-maker arrives on the plains, hoping to make his own contribution to the elaboration of this history. In a private library he begins to take notes for a film, and chooses the daughter of his patron for a leading role. Twenty years later, he begins to tell his haunting story of life…


Book cover of Balcony In The Forest

J.E. Tolbert Why did I love this book?

In the forests of France near the Belgian border during World War II, a French soldier is stationed in a bunker with his squad members.

They are ordered not to leave their posts and to be on the lookout for German tanks. Nothing happens for months except a long, snowy winter. The protagonist experiences a sense of liberation in this rural isolation that he relishes. His environment appears timeless, forever suspended in a gray, benevolent limbo filled with snow, mist, and conifers. He wishes his post would never end.

I love this book because it describes an introvert’s ideal environment: ensconcement, privacy, silence, freedom from larger society, and nature. It contains some of the most unique descriptions of splendid aloneness in the woods I have ever read.

By Julien Gracq,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Balcony In The Forest as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the Ardennes Forest on the Begian border the French guns point north-east, awaiting the German onslaught. One reinforced concrete blockhouse in the heart of the forest is manned, this winter of 1939/40, by Lieutenant Grange with three men, who live in a chalet built over it. cut off from the rest of the world, their senses heightened to capture the sounds and smells of the forest, the men create their own security as autumn turns to winter. Later, though, when winter turns to spring, when the sap rises and the panzer divisions attack, Lieutenant Grange meets the fate he…


Book cover of The Trial

J.E. Tolbert Why did I love this book?

The starkly monochrome world described by Kafka is a troubled nightmare of our own.

It is a grim, mazelike metropolis populated with characters lacking compassion or bravery. The protagonist, Herr K., is accused of an unnamed crime by a distant and inaccessible legal body, and he is forced to defend his innocence by using scant means that prove increasingly futile.

I am fascinated by the horrifying cartoon world that Kafka weaves. Bureaus and departments physically merge according to no discernable logic. All the characters are driven by fear, ignorance, and self-interest, and Kafka’s surface-level descriptions of their appearances and behaviors highlight the characters’ absurdity.

The Trial is the literary equivalent of a set of German Expressionist charcoal drawings and may serve as the most sophisticated horror story ever written. 

By Franz Kafka,

Why should I read it?

11 authors picked The Trial as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested." From its gripping first sentence onward, this novel exemplifies the term ""Kafkaesque." Its darkly humorous narrative recounts a bank clerk's entrapment — based on an undisclosed charge — in a maze of nonsensical rules and bureaucratic roadblocks.
Written in 1914 and published posthumously in 1925, Kafka's engrossing parable about the human condition plunges an isolated individual into an impersonal, illogical system. Josef K.'s ordeals raise provocative, ever-relevant issues related to the role of government and the nature of…


Book cover of The Return of the Native

J.E. Tolbert Why did I love this book?

Of all the elements of this story, I feel the love triangle between Eustacia, Wildeve, and Clym is of secondary interest to the environment in which it takes place, which is the weird and lugubrious heathlands.

Perhaps I am unfamiliar with heaths; as far as I know, we don’t have any in the U.S. Hardy describes the British heathlands like the landscape of another planet. Largely flat with shallow hills and vales, it sometimes bursts with floral color, and depending on the weather, it can be beset with raking orange sunlight or gloomy palls of mist.

The locals are fond of lighting evening bonfires, and Hardy’s descriptions of the firelight dancing on their faces are mesmerizing and compellingly suggests an unbroken cultural link with Britain’s pagan past.    

By Thomas Hardy,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Return of the Native as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

One of Thomas Hardy's most powerful works, The Return of the Native centers famously on Egdon Heath, the wild, haunted Wessex moor that D. H. Lawrence called "the real stuff of tragedy." The heath's changing face mirrors the fortunes of the farmers, inn-keepers, sons, mothers, and lovers who populate the novel. The "native" is Clym Yeobright, who comes home from a cosmopolitan life in Paris. He; his cousin Thomasin; her fiancé, Damon Wildeve; and the willful Eustacia Vye are the protagonists in a tale of doomed love, passion, alienation, and melancholy as Hardy brilliantly explores that theme so familiar throughout…


Explore my book 😀

Arsalan the Magnificent

By J.E. Tolbert,

Book cover of Arsalan the Magnificent

What is my book about?

Arsalan the Magnificent is a lighthearted but poignant novel of historical fantasy fiction. In Europe and the Ottoman Empire of the early 19th century, a profession of wizards known as magical architects have achieved wealth and fame as builders of fantastical structures. Facing disgrace after his newest and greatest work collapses, Arsalan Ozdikmen, a renowned Ottoman magical architect in the prime of his career, is exiled to the Balkans. There, he undergoes a journey of reckoning and recovery, and finally redemption, when he is called to the aid of a young Bavarian princess.

Book cover of The Plains
Book cover of The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories
Book cover of Balcony In The Forest

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Not So Little Things

By Kyle Ann Robertson,

Book cover of Not So Little Things

Kyle Ann Robertson Author Of White Picket Fences

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Why am I passionate about this?

Author

Kyle's 3 favorite reads in 2024

What is my book about?

Not So Little Things by Kyle Ann Robertson unravels the meticulously crafted life of Tina, an artist engrossed in the intricate world of historically accurate miniatures. As she dutifully honors her deceased father's desire for her to follow in his artistic and historical footsteps, Tina's controlled existence is shaken by the emergence of long-buried secrets when she takes a commission to build a replica of Jake Martin’s family mansion.

Robertson navigates the delicate balance between Tina's devotion to her father's wishes and the disruptions caused by revelations from the past. The novel beautifully explores the complexity of familial expectations and…

Not So Little Things

By Kyle Ann Robertson,

What is this book about?

Tina Edwards loved her childhood and creating fairy houses, a passion shared with her father, a world-renowned architect. But at nine years old, she found him dead at his desk and is haunted by this memory. Tina's mother abruptly moved away leaving Tina with feelings of abandonment and suspicion. Raised by her loving, wheelchair-bound Aunt Liddy, her father's sister, 33 year old Tina has become a miniature room artist and cherishes the control she has over her life in Northeast Georgia as she works hard to please her beloved dead father's wishes of following in his footsteps in art and…


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