When it comes to fiction writers you read, which countries are most of them from? Why do you focus on literature from those countries? And what are your favorite books from outside your geographic comfort zone?

My first "HuffPost Books" piece was posted a year ago this month, and I'd like to use that trivial anniversary to thank commenters for introducing me to many authors and novels I had never read before.

Nineteenth-century French novels have a lot to say about our 21st-century world. And I'm not just talking about Jules Verne books that predicted some of today's technological advances.

Dennis Cooper's fiction has always been unshakable, with every spare word counting -- and bruising -- but his new novel The Marbled Swarm pushes a lush complexity to the front of the work.

Equal parts lit crit, biography, linguistic anthropology and social history, Rimbaud in Java: The Lost Voyage examines the remaining mysteries about Arthur Rimbaud as a fugitive from justice.