what I’ve been reading lately:
-
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,
-
Underground by Will Hunt
In the nine chapters of Underground, Will Hunt talks about his personal fascination with underground spaces and their larger historical/cultural significances in various places and times through history, from caves where Paleolithic people painted images or created sculptures to NYC subway tunnels and the people who explore them and/or write graffiti in them. He travels
-
The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street by Karina Yan Glaser
I’d been meaning to read The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street since it came out in 2017, but somehow hadn’t gotten around to it, despite the fact that this style of middle-grade novel is totally my jam. If you like Elizabeth Enright’s books about the Melendy family, or Jeanne Birdsall’s books about the Penderwicks, you will
-
The Wheel of Doll by Jonathan Ames
Early in this book, our narrator (Happy Doll, an ex-cop turned private investigator/security specialist) notes that he’s “become an armchair Buddhist,” which relates to the book’s title (which relates to the wheel of dharma). Happy thinks about karma and dharma and samsara, and co-exists with the ants in his sink rather than killing them, but
-
A Man Named Doll by Jonathan Ames
Noir isn’t generally my genre, but my husband read this and loved it and I’m glad I read it too. The narrator is an ex-cop private investigator who finds himself trying to solve a crime that hits close to home while he’s also high on prescription painkillers and pot; in doing so he makes a
-
Savage Gods by Paul Kingsnorth
Savage Gods is a book about writing and a book about being stuck and a book about trying to figure things out. Kingsnorth writes about how he and his wife, Jyoti, bought a house and some land in Ireland because he wanted to feel connected to a place, and because he thought “that the work
-
Nineteen Reservoirs by Lucy Sante
Before reading Nineteen Reservoirs, I knew a little about the Croton reservoir system that brings some water to New York City—I knew there used to be a reservoir where the New York Public Library at Bryant Park is now, and I’ve walked up the spiraling stairs of the High Bridge Water Tower (and across High
-
The Divorce by César AiraTranslated by Chris Andrews
In her introduction to the English translation of this book, Patti Smith writes that The Divorce “outlines the process for those wishing to comprehend or to experience the expansive possibilities of a single moment” (viii). That is a perfect description of this book, though it wasn’t exactly what I was expecting when I first picked
-
Companion Piece by Ali Smith
Companion Piece begins and ends with “hello”, or some variation thereof, and that word, one we use all the time without necessarily thinking about the different ways we use it, comes up a lot in the book, most explicitly in a great section toward the end of the book about its possible etymologies and uses
-
Meet Us by the Roaring Sea by Akil Kumarasamy
The protagonist of Meet Us By the Roaring Sea lives in Queens in the not-too-distant future: far enough from now that a building built in the early 2000s is described as old, but not so far from now as to be unrecognizable. The protagonist works in AI and technology has advanced—people’s consumption patterns are monitored