what I’ve been reading lately:
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Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna ClarkeBloomsbury, 2004
The back cover quotes a review in the Washington Post proclaiming that this book is one of those that “are meant to be lived in for weeks.” It’s true, and not just because the hardcover edition is 800 pages. Clarke’s writing is urbane and beautiful and descriptive, very British and very wonderful. This book has…
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Plastic Angel by Nerissa NieldsOrchard, June 2005
(I read an advance copy of this several months ago, but didn’t want to write about it ’til it was actually out there to be read.) This book is really lovely, never strained or cheesy or simplistic or didactic or any of the bad things that young adult books can sometimes be. It’s filled with…
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The Misfits by James HoweAladdin, 2003 (originally 2001)
Sometimes this book is annoyingly meta-textual, like when the narrator refers to things that are going to happen, or calls other characters “characters,” but mostly it’s a quirky and cute story about a group of seventh-grade kids who are the class outcasts. I like how matter-of-factly everything is handled, how having divorced parents or a…
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Rainbow Boys by Alex SanchezSimon Pulse, 2003 (originally 2001)
Rainbow Boys is about being young and queer and confused: it’s the story of three high school guys in various stages of the process of coming out. Jason is the popular jock with a girlfriend, Kyle’s the quiet swimmer with a crush on Jason, and Nelson’s the flamboyant school fag who’s Kyle’s best friend, but…
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When a Woman Loves a Man by David LehmanScribner, 2005
Poems with forms, poems without forms, poems about love and music and literature and poetry. Sestinas, pantoums (a circle of a poem, ending with the opening line), an abecedarius or two, a villanelle made up entirely of anagrams of W.H. Auden’s full name. Many of these poems are funny; others are simply beautiful.
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Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. RowlingScholastic, 2003
Oh, adolescent grumpiness & magic & adventure! I couldn’t put this book down (reading on the subway, despite its massive size) and now I’m all excited for the release of the next one.
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Campo Santo by W.G. SebaldTranslated by Anthea BellRandom House, 2005
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…
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Return to the City of White Donkeys by James TateEcco, 2004
A book of poems that uses plain language to describe a surreal world in which police officers appear at a man’s front door for no apparent reason, asking about 40-year-old alibis or whether there’s too much happiness in the house. Body parts talk, and if you set out in a car or bus, there’s no…
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School of the Arts by Mark DotyHarperCollins, 2005
Time and age and beauty and art. Color and light, illumination. Consciousness as attention, the focused outward gaze that takes the world in. Several “Heaven for _____” poems, all beautiful. Heaven for Stanley, Heaven for Arden, Heaven for Paul. This is a book that I am glad to own, that I know I will enjoy…
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Time’s Magpie: A Walk in Prague by Myla GoldbergCrown Journeys, 2004
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,…