what I’ve been reading lately:
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Bright Lines by Tanwi Nandini IslamPenguin Books (Penguin Random House), 2015
Bright Lines is more of a sprawling family novel than what I usually read, and I think that fact hindered my enjoyment of it in some places: I wanted it to be more tightly focused on a single character than it is. Instead, we get bits and pieces focused on the various inhabitants of a
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Hold Me Closer: The Tiny Cooper Story by David LevithanDutton Books (Penguin), 2015
In Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan, one of the title characters is best friends with a guy named Tiny Cooper, who’s a self-described “loud and spectacular” gay football player who has written a musical about his life (1). This is that musical: as the title page puts it, it’s “A
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The Shepherd’s Life by James RebanksFlatiron Books, 2015
A sheep that has been hefted has “become accustomed and attached to an area of upland pasture,” to quote from the definition near the start of this book, but that definition clearly applies, in a way, to James Rebanks as well. The Lake District is his home and his family’s home; he grew up watching
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Shadow Castle by Marian CockrelliUniverse, 2000 (Originally Whittlesey House, 1945)
My mom remembered having read Shadow Castle when she was a kid, and was tickled to see it back in print, so I got it for her for Mother’s Day, and then borrowed it when I was visiting her for Christmas. I was bothered by a line or two of casual racism (e.g. “This was
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We Were Liars by E. LockhartDelacorte Press, 2014
At the start of We Were Liars, the narrator, Cadence Sinclair Eastman, describes her family, the “beautiful Sinclair family,” like this: “The Sinclairs are athletic, tall, and handsome. We are old-money Democrats. Our smiles are wide, our chins square, and our tennis serves aggressive” (3). But it’s clear from the start that appearances aren’t the
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Dryland by Sara JaffeTin House Books, 2015
Dryland is an atmospheric coming-of-age novel with an interesting narrator and tone. This review by Megan Milks on Goodreads points out the way that the novel “defies expectations of coming of age narratives,” and I think that’s right on, and is one of the satisfying things about the story. The narrator, Julie Winter (who’s a
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Pondlife: A Swimmer’s Journal by Al AlvarezBloomsbury, 2015 (Originally 2013)
Pondlife is a book made of journal entries that Al Alvarez wrote between 2002 and 2011, a period of time covering much of his seventies and reaching into his eighties. It’s about swimming (which Alvarez was doing year-round, outdoors, mostly in the ponds at Hampstead Heath) and also about aging (increasingly so as the book
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Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison BechdelMariner Books, 2007 (Originally Houghton Mifflin, 2006)
I’m not sure why it took me so long to get around to reading Fun Home, given that I tend to like graphic memoirs, but I’m pleased that my boyfriend had it checked out of the library and finished it before it was due, which gave me time to read it, too. It’s an engrossing
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The Deep Zoo by Rikki DucornetCoffee House Press, 2015
I liked this collection of fifteen short essays, but probably would have liked it more if I were more familiar with some of the subjects Ducornet is writing about. (I haven’t seen any David Lynch films, for example, and while I appreciated the language and images of “Witchcraft by a Picture,” I also felt a