Month: May 2007
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Prep by Curtis SittenfeldRandom House, 2005
I read this book quickly, both because it was pleasing and because it made me a little anxious: knowing that something would go wrong, feeling, along with the narrator, the potential for embarrassment around every corner. As much as the phrase “in this moment” (or “in that moment”) is used (and it’s used a lot),…
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Gone to New York: Adventures in the City by Ian FrazierPicador, 2006 (Originally Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005)
Frazier’s observations of New York are detailed and rich: the long essay on Canal Street (the candy-factory-turned-loft that Frazier lived in, the army-navy surplus store his landlord ran, the sounds of car horns and the colors of the sunset) is especially excellent, as are the essays about Queens and Brooklyn. Part of what I like…
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Sea Room by Adam NicolsonNorth Point Press (FSG), 2002 (Originally HarperColllins, 2001)
In this pleasingly broad book, Nicolson delves into the geological, natural, and social history of the Shiant Isles, 600 acres of rock and sheep-grazing grass in the Outer Hebrides that Nicolson inherited from his father, who purchased them after his mother (Vita Sackville-West) noticed an ad for them in the newspaper. The Shiants are not…