what I’ve been reading lately:
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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)
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Margaret the First by Danielle DuttonCatapult, 2016
As this New Yorker blog post by Lucy Ives points out, Margaret the First by Danielle Dutton is not exactly “conventional” historical fiction: it’s not full of “period intrigue,” to use Ives’s phrase, and it’s not particularly plot-driven or even, necessarily, character-driven, though the book does have a pretty tight focus on its title character,
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Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal by Amy Krouse RosenthalDutton (Penguin Random House), 2016
I don’t exactly remember, but I think I heard about Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal because some publishing-related newsletter I subscribe to for work reasons linked to this article about the way this book lets readers interact via text message and via its website. When I saw it at the library, it seemed like it would
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Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope MirrleesCold Spring Press, 2005 (Originally W. Collins and Sons, 1926)
My boyfriend wanted to read Lud-in-the-Mist after hearing that Neil Gaiman had said he thought that Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell was “the finest work of English fantasy written in the past 70 years,” and that “the only thing it could be compared to was Hope Mirlees’s novel Lud-in-the-Mist (see this piece in the Guardian).
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Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna ClarkeBloomsbury, 2005 (Originally 2004)
I’ve been quiet for the last, um, month, but it’s not that I haven’t been reading. It’s that I’ve been (re)reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which has been totally excellent, but wow it’s a long book. I first read it in July 2005, and remember being delighted to be immersed in its world. More
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Rising Ground by Philip MarsdenUniversity of Chicago Press, 2016 (Originally Granta Books, 2014)
This book, which is subtitled “A Search for the Spirit of Place,” is part memoir/travel writing, part history, and overall pretty pleasing. In Chapter 2, Marsden and his wife and kids move from a seaside house in Cornwall to farmhouse by a creek, farther inland, and the house and the land around it, combined with
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Hilda and the Bird Parade by Luke PearsonFlying Eye Books, 2013 (Originally 2012)
As I make my way through Luke Pearson’s “Hilda” graphic novels for kids, I find myself liking each one more than the last. The art is consistently excellent—I like the colors, the clean lines, and how it rewards attention to detail—and the stories keep getting better. This one opens with a scene from Hilda’s life
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Anastasia Has the Answers by Lois LowryHoughton Mifflin Harcourt 2016 (Originally 1986)
At the start of Anastasia Has the Answers, we learn that Anastasia (who is 13 now) has decided she wants to be a journalist, which helps to give a pleasing structure to the book. She’s learned that journalists should think about the “Who, what, when, where, and why” of the situation behind the piece they’re