Category: Nonfiction

Sebald writes about art and literature and memory, both personal and national. He also writes, compellingly, about the threads that run through life and thought, that occasional tantalizing feeling that nothing is quite coincidence, everything’s connected, and some things are inescapable. (His strings of associations prompt the reader to do the same: I’d been listening…

This is the kind of book that’s perfect to read in one day, start to finish: on the subway to work, waiting for the elevator, over lunch, at home, before cleaning or having dinner or opening the mail. Small and lovely, well-chosen stories of a city, wonderfully accompanied by Ken Nash’s illustrations (perfectly drawn buildings,…

Amazing book, filled with grief and love and beauty and joy and Doty’s distinctive gorgeous prose, way of seeing, eye for detail. On the back cover, a blurb from Michael Cunningham: “During the time I was reading Heaven’s Coast I found myself wanting to call everyone I knew and say, ‘Stop whatever you’re doing and…

A year in books, books re-read, musings on why certain stories resonate, theories on literature, on authors, on characters, wide-ranging references and quotations, lists, personal details of day-to-day living (travel, the weather, Manguel’s home in France). This book is a lovely hodge-podge of all of these things, and it makes me want to go read…

Brooks describes himself as a “comic sociologist,” and the best parts of this book, I think, are the humorous ones, the amusingly exaggerated descriptions of suburban America and what you find there: price clubs and other big-box mega-retailers, chain restaurants, softball teams, competitive mothers. Brooks’s primary argument, which is that middle America actually has unplumbed…