what I’ve been reading lately:
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The Bone People by Keri HulmePenguin, 2010 (Originally Spiral/Hodder & Stoughton, 1984)
The Bone People is another book that was recommended to me as pre-New-Zealand reading, and I spent the past week finding it pretty hard to put down, to the point (well, actually, this isn’t so unusual for me) where I was reading it while walking down the hallway between the elevator and the door to
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Hicksville by Dylan HorrocksDrawn & Quarterly, 2010 (Originally Black Eye Books, 1998)
Two things that are relevant to my reading of this book: 1) I’m going on vacation to New Zealand at the start of April! I’m very excited. One of my favorite people has lived in Auckland for several years now and has kept telling me I should come visit and I finally am going to.
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Sprig Muslin by Georgette HeyerSourcebooks Casablanca, 2011 (Originally William Heinemann Ltd., 1956)
I don’t generally read romance novels (semi-exception: I did have fun with Gail Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate books, though after the first one they didn’t feel that romance-y) and when I started this one I wasn’t sure I was going to be into it. And I do sort of think that if I were to want
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Empty Streets by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew OaklandDalkey Archive Press, 2016
Empty Streets, which was originally published in Czech in 2004, is the third of Michal Ajvaz’s novels to be published in English translation by Dalkey Archive Press, and the third that I’ve read and enjoyed. This one is set in Prague in the summer of 1999: when it opens we meet our unnamed narrator, a
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The Luck Uglies by Paul DurhamHarperCollins, 2014
The Luck Uglies is a pleasing middle-grade fantasy novel, the kind that starts with a charmingly-drawn map of the place where the book is set, which in this case is a village called Drowning, though really it’s “more of a sprawling town than a village, one built on a foundation of secrets, rules, and lies,
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Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts 1 & 2 by Jack ThorneArthur A. Levine Books (Scholastic), 2016
I wasn’t necessarily planning to read Harry Potter and the Cursed Child—I mean, I like the Harry Potter universe and I’ve read all the books but, eh, a play written by someone other than J.K. Rowling, based on a story that she co-wrote with him and another guy? I don’t know; I wasn’t convinced I’d
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The Seed Collectors by Scarlett ThomasSoft Skull Press (Counterpoint), 2016 (Originally Canongate, 2015)
The Seed Collectors is the sort of book that starts with a family tree, which signals that it’s probably going to be a sprawling family drama, which is not generally my favorite kind of book. And it is a sprawling family drama, sort of, with emphasis on the drama and a darkly satirical mood, but
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Today Will Be Different by Maria SempleLittle, Brown and Company, 2016
Today Will Be Different was not quite, for me, the complete delight that Where’d You Go, Bernadette was, but that’s setting the bar pretty high: I still liked this a whole lot. It starts off really funny (the day I started reading it, I kept interrupting my boyfriend to read him passages I found hilarious)