what I’ve been reading lately:
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Pond by Claire-Louise BennettRiverhead Books (Penguin Random House), 2016 (Originally Stinging Fly Press, 2015)
I don’t know whether to call Pond a novel or a collection of linked stories: it consists of named pieces of varying length, all but one of which are first-person narrations, with the same narrator. A novel with a shift at the very end? Whatever it is, I found myself alternately enjoying it and not.
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Calamities by Renee GladmanWave Books, 2016
The essays in Calamities all start, until the final fourteen pieces, with the phrase “I began the day,” and I like how that phrase (depending on what follows it) is sometimes grounding/grounded, sometimes disorienting, which is maybe also how I felt about the book as a whole. These pieces sometimes feel like more or less
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Norse Mythology by Neil GaimanW. W. Norton & Company, 2017
I’m sure I’m not the only person to have the problem of always packing too many books when I go on vacation, right? I mean, I read a lot when I’m at home, surely I’ll read a lot elsewhere, too? I’m on vacation! I’m not going to be cooking or cleaning or doing laundry, so,
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Bleaker House: Chasing My Novel to the End of the World by Nell StevensDoubleday Books, 2017
Apparently Bleaker House was just what I was in the mood for right now: it’s a travel/writing memoir with a playful form and a mix of nonfiction and fiction (Stevens includes a few short stories in the text, as well as excerpts from an unfinished novel) and I kept finding myself looking forward to the
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Ofrenda: A Zine Anthology by Celia C. PérezSweet Candy Press, 2014
This book, which is made up of portions from selected zines that Pérez created from 1994-2014, was a pleasing read to immerse myself in over the course of several commutes and evenings. I don’t think that I’ve read a single-author zine anthology before and there’s definitely something satisfying about it, in terms of being able
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Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuireTor/Tom Doherty Associates, 2016
Every Heart a Doorway, set at Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children, is a novel (novella?) that I felt was more about the allegory than the story, though Cory Doctorow feels that it’s the other way around. Not that I didn’t like this (beautifully-written) book: I did, a whole lot. It just felt less about
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Such a Lovely Little War: Saigon 1961-63 by Marcelino TruongTranslated by David HomelArsenal Pulp Press, 2016
In this graphic memoir, which was originally published in French in 2012, Marcelino Truong writes about his family’s move to Saigon early in his childhood, during the earlier part of the Vietnam War: they lived there from 1961 to 1963. Truong was born in Manila, after which his family lived in the DC suburbs, which
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Manners & Mutiny by Gail CarrigerLittle, Brown and Company, 2016 (Originally 2015)
I’ve been making my way through Gail Carriger’s Finishing School series over the past four years, picking one up when I found myself wanting something light and fun, and this fourth and final book was probably my favorite. As with the others, we’re in steampunk/paranormal alternate England in the 1850s; our heroine, Sophronia, is a
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The Chimes by Anna SmaillQuercus, 2016 (Originally Sceptre, 2015)
For years, until it stopped happening, my favorite thing to do on New Year’s Eve was to go to the Pratt campus here in Brooklyn, which has a steam-powered electricity-generating power plant. On New Year’s Eve, the chief engineer would rig up his collection of historic steam whistles outside: there was a steam calliope, and
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Attachments by Rainbow RowellPlume, 2012 (Originally Dutton, 2011)
Attachments is not my favorite Rainbow Rowell novel, but it was a quick read, and I was in the mood for something light, and it was fun enough that I was willing to overlook its flaws. The books starts with an email exchange between two women who are best friends and work at a newspaper: