what I’ve been reading lately:
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Binary Star by Sarah GerardTwo Dollar Radio, 2015
Sarah Gerard’s Binary Star is often an uncomfortable read, but it should be: its narrator is an astronomy grad student with an eating disorder, and she’s in a long-distance relationship with a guy dealing (or rather not dealing) with alcoholism. The binary star of the title is the book’s metaphor for their relationship—two stars orbiting
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The Empathy Exams by Leslie JamisonGraywolf Press, 2014
The eleven essays in this book all explore pain, in one way or another (or sometimes in several ways). All are well-written, some are structurally interesting, and I really liked some of them. The title essay, which is partly about Jamison’s job as a medical actor (presenting the symptoms of a disease/the story of a
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The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere by Pico IyerTED Books/Simon & Schuster, 2014
I think I’m probably not the ideal audience for Pico Iyer’s very short TED book, The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere. That isn’t to say I didn’t find things to like in it, but I think it might have been better for people who haven’t tried any sort of sitting-in-silence practice at all
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Satin Island by Tom McCarthyAlfred A. Knopf, 2015
Tom McCarthy’s Satin Island reminded me a bit of Ben Lerner’s 10:04, in that they both feature writer-narrators engaged in a project of writing/observation whose result, basically, is the book you’re reading. I liked 10:04 a bit more, because it’s got more New York in it and is more lyrical and optimistic, but I liked
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Exodus by Lars IyerMelville House, 2012
I mostly read Exodus because I’m a completist—it was bugging me that I’d read the first two books of this trilogy about, as the back cover puts it, “the two preposterous philosophical anti-heroes,” Lars and W., but hadn’t read the third. This third book is more of the same, which is mostly a good thing,
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Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale by Marina WarnerOxford University Press, 2014
The subtitle is no joke: this book is short, just 201 pages including the index and an extensive list of books for further reading, and its length was part of what made me pick it up, but may also have kept me from totally loving it. The thing is, Warner isn’t writing primarily about the
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We Are Pirates by Daniel HandlerBloomsbury, 2015
“Where does trouble come from? How do you get into it?” (9). For fourteen-year-old Gwen Needle, the trouble, and also the adventure, starts on Memorial Day, when she’s caught shoplifting at a drugstore. She also has a falling out with her mean-girl best friend, quits the synchronized swimming team she’s been on (partly because of
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The First Bad Man by Miranda JulyScribner (Simon & Schuster), 2015
I was worried, at first, that The First Bad Man was going to be weird for the sake of weirdness, and awkward/uncomfortable without any sort of payoff for it. But while the book is plenty weird and awkward and uncomfortable, it’s also funny and readable and sometimes surprisingly sweet. The narrator is Cheryl Glickman, who
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The Penderwicks in Spring by Jeanne BirdsallKnopf, 2015
The Penderwicks in Spring might be my favorite book so far in this series, and not just because it centers on Batty, who’s been my favorite of the Penderwick siblings from the first book, when she was a sweet and shy four-year-old wearing butterfly wings. When this book opens she’s ten, almost eleven, and still
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The Penderwicks at Point Mouette by Jeanne BirdsallYearling, 2012 (Originally Knopf, 2011)
I recently re-read The Penderwicks, and enjoyed it, though I don’t feel like I have anything to say that I didn’t already say when I wrote about it in 2008, except that this time around one chapter totally made me teary-eyed on the subway. And then I re-read the sequel, The Penderwicks on Gardam Street,