Category: Fiction
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Autumn by Ali SmithPantheon Books, 2017(Originally Hamish Hamilton, 2016)
I was recently talking with someone about what I was currently reading, which was this novel, and he asked what else I had read by Ali Smith and then asked if she’s an author where I feel like I want to read every book she writes/has written, and I realized that the answer to that…
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Pond by Claire-Louise BennettRiverhead Books (Penguin Random House), 2016 (Originally Stinging Fly Press, 2015)
I don’t know whether to call Pond a novel or a collection of linked stories: it consists of named pieces of varying length, all but one of which are first-person narrations, with the same narrator. A novel with a shift at the very end? Whatever it is, I found myself alternately enjoying it and not.…
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Norse Mythology by Neil GaimanW. W. Norton & Company, 2017
I’m sure I’m not the only person to have the problem of always packing too many books when I go on vacation, right? I mean, I read a lot when I’m at home, surely I’ll read a lot elsewhere, too? I’m on vacation! I’m not going to be cooking or cleaning or doing laundry, so,…
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Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuireTor/Tom Doherty Associates, 2016
Every Heart a Doorway, set at Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children, is a novel (novella?) that I felt was more about the allegory than the story, though Cory Doctorow feels that it’s the other way around. Not that I didn’t like this (beautifully-written) book: I did, a whole lot. It just felt less about…
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The Chimes by Anna SmaillQuercus, 2016 (Originally Sceptre, 2015)
For years, until it stopped happening, my favorite thing to do on New Year’s Eve was to go to the Pratt campus here in Brooklyn, which has a steam-powered electricity-generating power plant. On New Year’s Eve, the chief engineer would rig up his collection of historic steam whistles outside: there was a steam calliope, and…
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Attachments by Rainbow RowellPlume, 2012 (Originally Dutton, 2011)
Attachments is not my favorite Rainbow Rowell novel, but it was a quick read, and I was in the mood for something light, and it was fun enough that I was willing to overlook its flaws. The books starts with an email exchange between two women who are best friends and work at a newspaper:…
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When Watched: Stories by Leopoldine CorePenguin Books, 2016
Despite it coming highly recommended from a close friend, I found myself feeling sort of resistant to this book of 19 short stories at first. I think partly it was that I’d just read another collection of stories (Public Library and Other Stories by Ali Smith) and had very much enjoyed their mostly-first-person narratives, and…
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Public Library and Other Stories by Ali SmithAnchor Books, 2016 (Originally Hamish Hamilton, 2015)
When I finished reading Public Library and Other Stories by Ali Smith, I immediately went back to the beginning and started it again, which is something I’ve done before with books of poems but not so much with collections of short stories, but for some reason with this one I felt like I should, and…
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Crosstalk by Connie WillisDel Rey, 2016 (Originally Gollancz, 2016)
When I was about thirty pages into this book, I told my boyfriend I felt like it was going to be an unsubtle comedy, and I think it pretty much was, but that was totally what I was in the mood for. I wanted a fast-paced and plot-driven book that I was going to be…
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The Bone People by Keri HulmePenguin, 2010 (Originally Spiral/Hodder & Stoughton, 1984)
The Bone People is another book that was recommended to me as pre-New-Zealand reading, and I spent the past week finding it pretty hard to put down, to the point (well, actually, this isn’t so unusual for me) where I was reading it while walking down the hallway between the elevator and the door to…