what I’ve been reading lately:
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The Last Bogler by Catherine JinksHoughton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016
This book is the third in a middle-grade historical fiction/fantasy trilogy, and I found it a pleasing conclusion to the story of Alfred Bunce, who kills monsters (bogles) for a living, and his various young friends/apprentices. Each book focuses on a different one of the kids, and at the center of this one is Ned
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Slade House by David MitchellRandom House, 2015
If I’d known beforehand that Slade House is a kind of companion to The Bone Clocks (which I haven’t read—James Wood’s New Yorker piece about it made me unsure if I wanted to), I’m not sure I would have picked it up. But I think it works as a standalone piece, and, I don’t know,
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All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane AndersTor, 2016
All the Birds in the Sky is the kind of crossover genre book, like, say, Lev Grossman’s Magicians books, that I can really get into. It’s smart and funny, and self-consciously places itself in/plays with genre conventions (quest narratives, saving-the-world stories, stories of outcast geniuses) and other literary conventions (star-crossed lovers, a sort of fairy-tale
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The Wright 3 by Blue BalliettScholastic, 2007 (Originally 2006)
Lately I seem to be alternating between reading The New Yorker and reading middle-grade fiction, which is pretty satisfying. (The April 11th issue of The New Yorker was amazing! It had zero long articles about politics or economics, but had long articles about: an Icelandic artist, a walk in the Alps, a motel owner/voyeur, and
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A Plague of Bogles by Catherine JinksHoughton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015
This is the sequel to How to Catch a Bogle, and like that book, it’s middle grade historical-fiction/fantasy: Victorian London, with child-eating monsters called bogles. Birdie McAdam was the child protagonist of that book, and she’s still present in this one, but now her acquaintance Jem Barbary takes center stage: Birdie is no longer an
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The Global Soul by Pico IyerVintage, 2001 (Originally Knopf, 2000)
This was a slow read for me, and mostly not because I was savoring it. I don’t know, maybe I wasn’t in the right mood, or maybe this just isn’t the book for me: maybe I wanted a travel book more than I wanted a book about globalization and multiculturalism, or maybe the ways things
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Code Name Verity by Elizabeth WeinDisney-Hyperion, 2012
Code Name Verity is one of those books I had sort of put off reading, and I’m not sure why. Because there was a lot of hype about it? Because historical fiction set in WWII isn’t necessarily my thing (with the exception of Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis)? I don’t know: it never
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Drama by Raina TelgemeierGraphix (Scholastic), 2012
This graphic-novel featuring a middle-school theater production and its cast and crew is a fun and quick read: its characters are in seventh and eighth grades, and it’s written for a middle school/junior high audience. Callie, the pleasingly-purple-haired protagonist, is the set designer for her school’s spring musical: she’s loved musicals since she was little,
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How to Catch a Bogle by Catherine JinksHarcourt Children’s Books, 2013
How to Catch a Bogle, which is set in London circa 1870, is a fun middle-grade novel that’s part fantasy, part historical-fiction: the setting of Victorian London feels very real, aside from the fact that the protagonists spend their days hunting child-eating monsters (bogles). Birdie, who’s ten, is a bogler’s apprentice/bait: she sings to lure
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American Gods by Neil GaimanWilliam Morrow (HarperCollins), 2001
I don’t know what to say about American Gods, other than that I quite liked it, despite feeling like some parts of it lagged. (This may have been partly due to circumstances: while I was reading this book I got a cold, and when I have a cold I tend to be a bit grumpy