Book notes

what I’ve been reading lately:

  • Built by Roma Agrawal

    In the fourteen sections/chapters of Built, Roma Agrawal explores various aspects of structural engineering and the built environment, sometimes from a personal perspective and sometimes from a more historical one. Early in the book, Agrawal describes her background: she initially went to university to study physics, then fell in love with engineering and became a…

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  • An I-Novel by Minae MizumuraTranslated by Juliet Winters Carpenter

    I heard about An I-Novel thanks to Rebecca Hussey’s Reading Indie email newsletter, in which Rebecca described this as “an autobiographical, autofictional novel that takes place in one day and is thinky, contemplative, and formally innovative” – which a) is a great description of this book and b) really made me want to read it.…

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  • The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas

    In the first chapter of The Psychology of Time Travel, we’re introduced to “four young scientists” (Margaret, Lucille, Grace, and Barbara) who have been working in an isolated laboratory and who manage, in 1967, to build a working time machine. The technology can’t take people back to any point prior to its own invention, but…

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  • Scattered All Over the Earth by Yōko TawadaTranslated by Margaret Mitsutani

    I didn’t realize until the end that Scattered All Over the Earth is the first volume of a trilogy, but now I am very excited at the prospect of seeing where the story will go next and what the structure of the next two books will be. This one is told in alternating first-person narration…

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  • Invisible Ink by Patrick ModianoTranslated by Mark Polizzotti

    This is the second book by Modiano I’ve read, and I liked this one more than The Black Notebook, though maybe I’m just more in the mood for this kind of atmospheric novel at the moment. The themes (and plots) of the two books are similar, and I get the impression this Modiano’s thing: a…

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  • Assembly by Natasha Brown

    My experience of reading Assembly felt a bit like my experience of reading little scratch last year, in that I picked it up because I’d heard it was inventive in form/structure, but didn’t realize ahead of time that it was also going to be pretty bleak. This, from page 3 of Assembly, gives a sense,…

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  • Bibliolepsy by Gina Apostol

    Bibliolepsy is one of those novels where I loved the beginning and loved the end, but found my attention flagging a bit in the middle—which I think is probably more due to my life/schedule in general right now than to any flaws of the book itself—though maybe it was also because I paused a lot…

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  • Winter in Sokcho by Elisa Shua DusapinTranslated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins

    Winter in Sokcho is the kind of book I very much enjoy: the chapters are small vignettes, the language is simultaneously spare and atmospheric. It’s also sometimes a bit uncomfortable, edging on grotesque, with a mysterious ending, but I think it all works. At the start of the book we meet the unnamed narrator, who’s…

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  • Women, Race & Class by Angela Y. Davis

    In Women, Race & Class, Angela Y. Davis looks at US history from colonial times onwards and highlights the many moments when sexism, racism, classism, or some combination of all three prevented various progressive social movements from reaching their full potential. With solidarity, Davis argues, societal transformation is possible; without it, things only get so…

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  • Brief Notes on the Art and Manner of Arranging One’s Books by Georges PerecTranslated by John Sturrock

    I didn’t realize when I requested this slim book of essays from the library that all nine pieces in it are also in Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, which I’ve been meaning to read since, um, 2013 but haven’t yet, but that’s OK: Perec is great, and I find small books like this charming.…

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