what I’ve been reading lately:
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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,…
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Wittgenstein Jr by Lars IyerMelville House, 2014
Like Lars Iyers’s Spurious trilogy (which I’ve only read two-thirds of, though I do plan to rectify that), Wittgenstein Jr is a funny book, and by funny I mean amusing and also strange. It’s partly a satire of academia, and partly a coming-of-age story, but saying that doesn’t give a proper sense of Iyers’s distinctive…
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Green Girl by Kate ZambrenoHarper Perennial, 2014 (Originally Emergency Press, 2011)
I wonder how I would have felt about Green Girl if it had been around for me to read when I was in college, when I was in my late teens or early twenties. I wonder how much Ruth, the main character, would have felt relatable: “I am a mess, mess, mess she thinks,” on…
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Wolf in White Van by John DarnielleFarrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014
Wolf in White Van is weird and claustrophobic and alternately beautiful and bleak. Its narrator, Sean Phillips, is the creator of Trace Italian, a text-based game played through the mail. Sean doesn’t go out much: he suffered a disfiguring injury when he was seventeen, in which he almost died but didn’t, and his reconstructed face,…
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Dept. of Speculation by Jenny OffillAlfred A. Knopf (Random House), 2014
I don’t think I can write about this book without talking about a significant plot-point that isn’t revealed until partway through it. So if you’re spoiler-averse, you might want to stop reading now. So, right: I was really really enjoying Dept. of Speculation. The beginning of the book is such a delight: interesting form, humor,…
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As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust by Alan BradleyDelacorte Press (Random House), 2015
This is the seventh Flavia de Luce mystery, and while I still like this series featuring the young chemistry prodigy/sleuth, this book is not my favorite. I enjoyed it, but Flavia is set adrift in this book, and, as a reader, I felt like I was too. It’s hard to write about this book without…
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The Hollow Land by Jane GardamEuropa Editions, 2014 (Originally 1981)
The Hollow Land appears under the heading “For Children” on the list of Jane Gardam’s work at the start of the book, but these nine linked stories read perfectly well as grown-up literature, too. The stories are mostly centered around a pair of children (Bell Teesdale, who’s eight when the book opens, and who narrates…
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It’s Only Stanley by Jon AgeeDial Books for Young Readers (Penguin), 2015
I hadn’t heard of this rhyming picture book, but when I saw it at the library, the front cover made me want to pick it up: a solid-looking dog on a ladder, adjusting a mysterious contraption made of pots and pans and colanders and whisks and wires, in front of an old TV that seems…