what I’ve been reading lately:
-
Anastasia, Absolutely by Lois Lowry
I like the way that Lois Lowry’s middle-grade books about Anastasia Krupnik (who is in eighth grade in this final book in the series) keep the reader’s interest by combining multiple plot threads. In this one: 1) Anastasia has just gotten a dog 2) she’s taking a Values class at school 3) her dad has…
-
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
I somehow never had to read this book in junior high, high school, or college, so I don’t know if I would have disliked it as much as Tom Perrotta (who wrote the foreword to the edition I read) did when he first read it. Perrotta talks about how he “found the book strange and…
-
Quiet by Susan Cain
Susan Cain covers a lot of ground in Quiet (whose subtitle is “The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking”). After starting with the idea that “where we fall on the introvert-extrovert spectrum” might be “the single most important aspect of personality,” she goes on to explore what she calls “the Extrovert…
-
Coal to Diamonds by Beth Ditto with Michelle Tea
I wasn’t aware of the existence of this book until I found a copy in a little free library near home, and as far as memoirs by musicians go, Carrie Brownstein’s is still my favorite, but I’m glad to have read this too. Beth Ditto talks about her childhood in small-town Arkansas, and growing up…
-
Austerlitz by W.G. SebaldTranslated by Anthea Bell
I think I bought this book my senior year of college and started reading it for a class I ended up dropping: I opened the book to find that I’d underlined/taken notes in the margins up to page 29, at which point I found a ticket stub for a student ticket to the ballet ($10!)…
-
Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski
I’d been vaguely meaning to read this book since it first came out in 2015, and only recently learned that an updated edition was released in 2021; I figured I might as well finally check it out. This book is maybe more firmly in the self-help genre than I was expecting, and some of the…
-
Otto: A Palindrama by Jon Agee
Although Otto is published by Dial Books for Young Readers, I think this “palindromic graphic novel” would be fun for readers of all ages who like wordplay. As others have mentioned, most of the book is a kind of daydream/reverie/fantasy journey, which means the plot doesn’t have to make a ton of sense, but that…
-
The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
In her introduction to the edition that I read, Anne Perry captures the appeal of the setting of this book, which takes place in the cavernous Palais Garnier, aka the home of the Paris Opera at the time the novel was written: “There are rooms beyond rooms, passages under and over other passages, and endless…
-
Like Animals by Eve LemieuxTranslated by Cayman Rock
Like Animals makes me think of the Marina and the Diamonds song called “Savages”, though the vibe of Eve Lemieux’s book is more gritty and raw than the song. Like Animals tells us the story of Philomena, or Philly, in short dated chapters, which aren’t in chronological order: we start in 2019, jump to 2016,…