Month: June 2007
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A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines by Janna LevinAlfred A. Knopf, 2006
Loosely interwoven stories: Alan Turing, Kurt Gödel, a nameless narrator. Areas of overlap: the Liar’s Paradox, a fortune-telling gypsy woman, a vivid blue, Snow White. I wanted to like this book so much more than I did, though I enjoyed the parts about Turing, maybe because his strangenesses aren’t as off-putting as Gödel’s paranoia, maybe…
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What Becomes You by Aaron Raz Link & Hilda RazUniversity of Nebraska Press, 2007
I first read about What Becomes You in a post on the University of Nebraska Press blog back in April, and was pleased to find that the Brooklyn Public Library had ordered a copy. It’s a smart, well-written book, a memoir in two parts: the first part by Aaron, born Sarah, and the second by…
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The Testament of Yves Gundron by Emily BartonFarrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000
“Imagine the time of my grandfather’s grandfather, when darkness was newly separated from light.”—thus begins Yves Gundron’s “treatise on the nature of change.” Yves lives in a village called Mandragora, a village nestled below mountains, not far from a city called Nnms. Yves and his neighbors are farmers; Yves is also an inventor, and his…
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Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha PesslViking, 2006
“Gotta tell us if we’re in a comedy or a mellow drama or a whodidit or what they call a theater of the absurd,” drawls a convenience store employee toward the middle of this book, continuing: “Ya can’t just leave us standin’ on stage with no dialogue.” […]”It’s a whodunit,” Blue van Meer answers, asks…
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The Sea, the Sea by Iris MurdochPenguin Books, 2001 (originally Chatto & Windus, 1978)
“Now I shall abjure magic and become a hermit”: this on the second page of this book, and of its narrator’s diary, but of course nothing goes as planned. Charles Arrowby, fancying himself Prospero, can’t really give up power (or the illusion of it): the playwright-director can’t stop scripting scenes, moving people one way and…