what I’ve been reading lately:
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Turning Japanese by MariNaomi2dcloud, 2016
In general, I tend to enjoy graphic memoirs, so when I saw this on the New Books shelf at the library, I clearly had to check it out. Turning Japanese is about being young and adrift—between cities, between jobs, between cultures, and in various personal situations, family-wise and relationship-wise. It’s set in 1995, when MariNaomi
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The Uncommercial Traveller by Charles Dickens, edited by Daniel TylerOxford University Press, 2015
The 37 pieces in this book were written in the 1860s, published in a weekly magazine/journal that Dickens ran, and later collected and printed in book form. They range fairly widely in theme and tone, but as Daniel Tyler argues in his introduction to the edition I read, they can be seen to make up
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We Love You, Charlie Freeman by Kaitlyn GreenidgeAlgonquin Books, 2016
At the start of We Love You, Charlie Freeman, the Freemans (Laurel, Charles, and their daughters—Charlotte, who’s 14, and Callie, who’s 9) are in a shiny new car, driving from Dorchester to the Berkshires, where they’re going to be living at the Toneybee Institute and participating in a research experiment. The Toneybee Institute studies apes,
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Hildafolk by Luke PearsonNobrow Press, 2013 (Originally 2010)
Hildafolk is a quick and sweet graphic novel for kids that made me want a backyard and a tent and a rainstorm. At the start, we see the little red cottage where Hilda lives with her mother: it looks very cozy, with yellow-lit windows and smoke coming out of a chimney, a spot of warmth
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The Odd Woman and the City: A Memoir by Vivian GornickFarrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015
The Odd Woman and the City is a memoir in the form of a collection of vignettes, some of which are just a few sentences each, and others of which span several pages. Gornick writes about New York, about moving through the city alone or with friends, observing and overhearing, and she writes about books
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Lagoon by Nnedi OkoraforSaga Press, 2015 (Originally Hodder & Stoughton, 2014)
In the prologue of Lagoon, we see a swordfish swimming through the waters off Lagos, where something extraordinary is happening. The fish hears the loudest sound she’s ever heard, and then looks down and sees “something large and glowing” in the water: it’s a giant spaceship (5). “When a golden blob ascends to meet her,
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The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel JoyceRandom House, 2013 (Originally 2012)
I kind of enjoyed The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry despite feeling somewhat resistant to it, and I don’t really know what to say about a book that I found overly sentimental at times, but that also totally made me teary-eyed on the subway one day. OK, so, the premise: Harold Fry is 65, recently
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The Duel by Joseph ConradMelville House, 2011
As I was reading this book (which was originally published in 1908, but is set during the Napoleonic Wars), I kept thinking about Hamilton, probably not surprisingly. Specifically, I kept thinking about the part of The Ten Duel Commandments that goes like this: [BURR] Can we agree that duels are dumb and immature? [HAMILTON] Sure
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The Dirty Dust (Cré na Cille) by Máirtín Ó CadhainTranslated by Alan TitleyYale University Press, 2016
The key things to know about this book, which was originally published in Irish in 1949, are explained by Alan Titley in his Translator’s Introduction. First: “In The Dirty Dust everyone is dead” (vii). And next: “It is a novel that is a listening-in to gossip and to backbiting and rumours and bitching and carping