what I’ve been reading lately:
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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
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The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie KondoTranslated by Cathy HiranoTen Speed Press, 2014
This book (which was originally published in Japan in 2011) came out in the US in 2014, and I’ve been meaning to read it since then—prompted partly by this NY Times piece, and then by friends who read it before I did. The main idea of the book appears on the first page: the idea
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The Diamond Age by Neal StephensonSpectra (Bantam), 2008 (Originally 1995)
Two things that are true: 1) I don’t read that much SF. 2) When I do, I sometimes get a little impatient with world-building. I don’t know if there’s a cause/effect relationship between those two things, and if there is, I don’t know which is the cause and which is the effect, but I did
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The Wander Society by Keri SmithPenguin Books, 2016
In some ways, I feel like I’m the ideal audience for this book: I’ve read Keri Smith’s blog for years and I like her art, and I like walking, and I like art about walking. Five years ago I took part in a learning experience called the Walk Study Training Course, which involved reading about