what I’ve been reading lately:
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The Summer Book
(by Tove Jansson, translated by Thomas Teal) I’d been vaguely meaning to read this book since 2011 (!), when my then-boyfriend read it. More recently, Nina MacLaughlin’s mention of it in Summer Solstice (which I read this June) finally prompted me to get it from the library, and my interest was further piqued when someone…
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Into Thin Air
(by Jon Krakauer) Disaster/survival nonfiction is not generally my genre—in fact, I think this book may be the only one of its sort that I’ve ever read. This is an account of a 1996 guided expedition to climb Mount Everest that the author was on that ended in tragedy, with multiple people dying on the…
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The New York Trilogy
(by Paul Auster) Detective stories are generally about a protagonist figuring something out: a detective solving a crime, catching a criminal, figuring out the “how” or “why” of some mysterious event. But the three novellas in The New York Trilogy aren’t that kind of detective story: indeed, only one of them features a protagonist who…
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The Details
(by Ia Genberg, translated by Kira Josefsson) Each of the four sections of this novel is a memory piece, the story of the narrator’s relationship with someone who was once in her life but isn’t anymore (two lovers, a friend, her now-dead mother). Based on the story’s timeline, it’s clear that the virus the narrator…
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the art and craft of approaching your head of department to submit a request for a raise
(by Georges Perec, translated by David Bellos) As David Bellos explains in his introduction, “Around 1968, a French computer company set itself the challenge of finding artists willing to have a go at using the machines that it made.” In this case, Perec “accepted the challenge to write as a computer functions,” and this delightful…
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Rose/House
(by Arkady Martine) I picked this one up randomly at the library and am glad I did: this turned out to be a thoroughly enjoyable read for me. One of the epigraphs is a quote from this New Yorker article by Alice Gregory about the architect Luis Barragán, and I’d recommend reading the article as…
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Among the Thugs
(by Bill Buford) I definitely groaned when I saw that this book was my non-fiction book club’s choice for June—I wasn’t sure I wanted to read about English football hooligans in the 1980s. But as it turned out, I actually liked this one. Buford’s writing is very good, and I like how the structure and…
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Summer Solstice
(by Nina MacLaughlin) There are, for sure, things I like about summer: evening walks, swimming in the ocean, stepping out the door without having to think about whether I’m wearing enough clothing. But also, this is not really my season. I’m a pale redhead who requires lots of sunscreen; heat and humidity are challenging for…
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Gliff
(by Ali Smith) I will read anything by Ali Smith but dystopias are generally not my thing, and reading about a near-future dystopia feels especially rough right now. But there’s a horse in it (the horse is the title character, in fact) and in the end I think there were more things I liked about…
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Gotham
(by Nick Earls) Having recently read the second book (Venice) in this series of five linked novellas, I wanted to go back and read this one, which is the first. While Venice was set in Australia, this one features an Australian abroad: our narrator, Jeff, is in New York partly for work and partly for…