what I’ve been reading lately:
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Standard Deviation by Katherine HeinyAlfred A. Knopf (Penguin Random House), 2017
Standard Deviation is a novel about married life and parenting, but also about life in general: it’s full of “all that stuff you do every day that sometimes seems pleasurable and sometimes seems pointless but never seems to end” (259). Those everyday moments, particularly the ones that are on the edge of ridiculous, are a…
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Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Louis SacharHarperTrophy, 2003 (Originally published in 1978)
I know I read and liked at least the first two of Louis Sachar’s “Wayside School” books when I was a kid, but I hadn’t thought of them in ages. Then I read this piece by Jia Tolentino on the New Yorker website, in which she describes the first one, Sideways Stories from Wayside School,…
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The Dark is Rising by Susan CooperCollier Books (Macmillan), 1986 (Originally 1973)
The last time I read The Dark Is Rising was more than ten years ago, in summer, and while I always love this book, there’s an extra magic in reading it during the time of year in which it’s set, in the dark and cold days of midwinter, with the festive pleasures of Christmas all…
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The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann WyssTranslated by William H.G. KingstonPuffin Books, 2009
The Swiss Family Robinson was originally published in German in 1812; the English translation I read is from 1814, but (as I learned from a “Did You Know?” section at the back of the book) some of it is based on sections added by the French translator, Baroness Isabelle de Montolieu: one of the most…
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All the Dirty Parts by Daniel HandlerBloomsbury, 2017
All the Dirty Parts was an extremely fast and extremely fun read for me. The day I started it, I was reading it on the elevator en route to work, and a woman who I don’t know/who works elsewhere in the building asked what I was reading and how it was. I think I said…
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Everywhere I Look by Helen GarnerText Publishing, 2016
I picked up Everywhere I Look at the library on the strength of its really lovely/well-designed cover: the author’s name in bold black sans serif, the title beneath in the same font but smaller and red, and then a color photo that spans the front, spine, and back: the author in the center, looking at…
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Startup by Doree ShafrirLittle, Brown and Company, 2017
I’m not sure I would have enjoyed Startup as much as I did if I didn’t a) live in NYC and b) know people who work in tech, but I found it to be a very fun, funny, and quick read, even though none of the characters are particularly sympathetic. There’s Mack McAllister, the 28-year-old…
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Made for Love by Alissa NuttingEcco (HarperCollins), 2017
I saw Alissa Nutting read from Made for Love at Brooklyn Bridge Park over the summer: the scene she read is a hilarious bit where the protagonist, Hazel, who has moved in with her septuagenarian father after leaving her evil-tech-genius-billionaire husband, gets her arm stuck in the mouth of her dad’s new purchase, a highly…
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Arbitrary Stupid Goal by Tamara ShopsinMCD (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), 2017
I loved Tamara Shopsin’s Mumbai New York Scranton when I read it a few years ago, so I was super-excited when I learned she had a new book out this year, and Arbitrary Stupid Goal did not disappoint. It’s an illustrated memoir that’s more a series of vignettes, but with some unifying elements; a lot…