what I’ve been reading lately:
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Hyperbole and a Half by Allie BroshTouchstone (Simon & Schuster), 2013
I don’t know why it has taken me so long to read this book. I was a fan of Allie Brosh’s blog before the book was published, which may be part of it? I mean, partly it felt like there wasn’t any urgency because I’d already read a lot of these pieces in blog-post form,
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Graduates in Wonderland by Jessica Pan and Rachel Kapelke-DaleGotham Books (Penguin), 2014
After they graduated from Brown in 2007, Jessica Pan and Rachel Kapelke-Dale promised they’d keep each other updated about their lives via email. They did, over the course of at least three years, and the result is this book, which is an epistolary memoir of their friendship during a period when they were living across
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Chu’s First Day of School by Neil Gaiman & Adam RexHarper Collins Children’s, 2014
My boyfriend checked Chu’s First Day of School out of the library because he really likes Neil Gaiman, and we read it together because I like picture books. Apparently this is the second book (with text by Gaiman and illustrations by Rex) about a young panda named Chu, and it’s slightly mystifying as a standalone
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The Egyptologist by Arthur PhillipsRandom House, 2005 (Originally 2004)
In a section of The Egyptologist that’s presented as a piece of scholarly writing to be included in a forthcoming book that one of the (unreliable) narrators is planning to write about his (yet-to-be-realized) discovery of a tomb of an (apocryphal) Egyptian monarch who (perhaps) wrote a text called the Admonitions, we get this: The
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A Walk in the Woods by Bill BrysonAnchor Books (Random House), 2007 (Originally Broadway Books, 1998)
I don’t think I’m likely ever to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail. I like walking, and I sometimes like walking distances that are somewhat outside the ordinary (I’ve finished the Great Saunter, an annual 32-mile walk around Manhattan, 5 times). But I’d generally rather walk in a city than in the woods, and I have basically
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Sharp Teeth by Toby BarlowHarperCollins, 2008
I didn’t necessarily expect to really really like an epic poem/novel in free verse about rival werewolf gangs/packs in Los Angeles, but I really really liked Sharp Teeth. It starts with a nod to a Homeric invocation of the muse, but modern, and slips in at least one nod to “rosy-fingered dawn” that I caught,
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The Book of the City of Ladies by Christine de PizanTranslated by Earl Jeffrey RichardsPersea, 1998
My personal rule for the TBR Triple Dog Dare is basically just: no library books. If it’s on my shelves, it’s fair game. This means that I’m fine with re-reading things during the time of the Dare, especially if I think that after a re-read, I might decide to give a book away and free
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Getting the Girl by Markus ZusakArthur A. Levine Books (Scholastic), 2003 (Originally Pan Macmillan Australia, 2001)
At the start of Getting the Girl, Cameron Wolfe is alone and lonely: he’s never had a girlfriend, and he doesn’t really have any friends outside his family. His best friend is his older brother Rube, and he’s friendly with his oldest brother, Steve, as well, but he’s also overshadowed by them: he’s not a
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Lament by Maggie StiefvaterScholastic, 2011 (Originally Flux, 2008)
Deirdre, the sixteen-year-old narrator of Lament, plays the harp, and plays it very well. But she has an overbearing mother and a major case of stage fright, and she feels pretty much invisible at school: she has a best friend, James, who’s also a musician, but that’s basically it. But the summer between her sophomore
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The Golden Globe by John VarleyAce (Penguin), 1999 (Originally 1998)
At the start of The Golden Globe, our narrator, Kenneth Valentine, aka Sparky, aka various aliases, is in a production of Romeo and Juliet somewhere out past Pluto. He’s playing Mercutio; the actress playing Juliet is indisposed. He convinces the director to let him play Juliet and Mercutio for this performance, which works out nicely: