what I’ve been reading lately:
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The Wolves by Sarah DeLappe
It was fun to read The Wolves after the last two books I read, because it felt like there were some commonalities, while all three are also very different works. Each act of The Wolves is set at an indoor soccer field, where we see a team of teenage girls warming up before their weekly
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The New Me by Halle Butler
The short chapters of The New Me are a mix of first-person narration by Millie, who’s thirty and working as a temp in Chicago, and third-person narration about various people whose lives intersect with hers—her supervisor at work, other women at the office, her downstairs neighbor. Nearly all the characters are female: there’s some conversation
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State of the Union by Nick Hornby
I like the premise of State of the Union: A Marriage in Ten Parts a whole lot: in ten short chapters, set over the course of ten weeks, we see a married couple, Louise and Tom, having a drink at a pub before their weekly couples’ therapy appointment. They’re both in their forties; they have
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Fox 8 by George Saunders
I read Fox 8 over the course of a single day, starting it on my morning commute and finishing it on my evening commute, and aw, what a sweet/funny/sad/hopeful little book this is. It’s a fable narrated by a fox who has learned human language by listening to a woman read bedtime stories to her
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The Philosopher in the Kitchen by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
I expected this book about food (which was published in 1825, and whose author was born in 1755) to be much drier and less funny than it actually was. In her introduction, Anne Drayton (who translated the book) describes it as “a unique combination of recipes and aphorisms, reflections and reminiscences, history and philosophy,” and
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Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper
It’s been fourteen years since I last read this book, the first in Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising sequence, so I figured I was due for a re-read. It’s set in Cornwall on the Drew family’s August summer holiday, so it’s a summery book in that sense—there’s a seaside carnival and beach excursions and
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The Future of Ice by Gretel Ehrlich
In her introduction to this book, whose subtitle is “A Journey into Cold,” Ehrlich describes it as “a book about winter and climate change” and also as “a six-month chronicle of living with cold” (xi). It’s a mix of personal narrative/travelogue and facts about melting glaciers and Arctic pollution and disturbed ecosystems, a mix of
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Turtles All the Way Down by John Green
At the start of Turtles All the Way Down, Aza Holmes’s best friend, Daisy Ramirez, is talking about a news story: a local billionaire was about to be arrested on bribery-related charges, but he disappeared just before the raid. Aza, it turns out, used to be friends with one of the missing guy’s two sons:
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Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian
The first chapter of Master and Commander is such a total delight. It’s 1800, and there’s a concert happening in a fancy house on Menorca. A Navy lieutenant named Jack Aubrey is thoroughly enjoying the music, tapping the beat on his leg without realizing it; his enjoyment is spoiled when the man sitting next to
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The Door in the Wall by H.G. Wells
My boyfriend often teases me about how I like really little books, and I always protest that I like books of varying lengths/sizes, but there is something appealing about a little book that’s easy to slip into a purse. The Door in the Wall by H.G. Wells is a Penguin Mini Modern Classic, and it’s