what I’ve been reading lately:
-
An Age of License by Lucy KnisleyFantagraphic Books, 2014
I like Lucy Knisley’s work a whole lot, and this was a quick and fun read. It’s a travelogue/graphic-memoir of a trip to Europe that Knisley took in 2011, when she was 27, and includes her travels to/in Norway (Bergen), Sweden (Stockholm), Germany (Berlin) and France (Beaune, Angoulême, Royan, and Paris). The trip is partly
-
Enchanted Glass by Diana Wynne JonesGreenwillow (HarperCollins), 2010
Near the start of Enchanted Glass, Andrew Hope, a thirty-something-year-old academic, finds out his grandfather has died, which means he’s inherited the family home, Melstone, where he spent happy weeks on school holidays when he was a kid. Andrew Hope’s grandfather, Jocelyn Brandon, was a magician, so Andrew has also inherited his field-of-care—a magical area
-
The Laws of Murder by Charles FinchMinotaur (St. Martin’s Press), 2014
At the start of The Laws of Murder, Charles Lenox is optimistic: it’s the start of the year (1876) and he’s in the midst of helping Scotland Yard catch a murderer. The new detective agency he’s set up with his friend and protégé, Dallington, along with two other detectives, is about to open, and he’s
-
The Pedestrians by Rachel ZuckerWave Books, 2014
I picked this book up at the library several months after reading Dan Chiasson’s piece in the New Yorker about Zucker’s work. I think it was Chiasson’s characterization of Zucker as a city poet that made me want to read her: he compares her to Frank O’Hara, and says this: “A city poet is a
-
Love Is the Higher Law by David LevithanBorzoi (Alfred A. Knopf), 2009
I’d been sort of resistant to reading Love Is the Higher Law, because as the cover photo of the Tribute in Light makes clear, it’s David Levithan’s “9/11 book,” and I wasn’t sure I wanted to read a 9/11 book. But, well, it’s David Levithan, and I love how he writes, and I love how
-
Goings On About Town: Photographs for the New Yorker by Sylvia PlachyAperture/The New Yorker, 2007
This book of photographs, with a foreword by Mark Singer and an afterword by Elisabeth Biondi, consists of eighty pictures that were taken while Plachy was the photographer for The New Yorker‘s “Goings On About Town” section, plus one that wasn’t. The pictures are a mix of color and black & white, and are mostly
-
My Body Is a Book of Rules by Elissa WashutaRed Hen Press, 2014
My Body Is a Book of Rules is a memoir in essay form, but these essays aren’t just straight essays: there’s one (A Cascade Autobiography) that’s broken into sections and interspersed with other pieces; another is an academic paper about the use of the phrase “hooking up” by college-aged men and women, annotated after the
-
Railsea by China MiévilleDel Rey, 2013 (Originally 2012)
The style of Railsea, the language and syntax, won me over at the start. Plot-wise, Miéville is playing with Moby-Dick crossed with Treasure Island, with some nods to Robinson Crusoe and the Odyssey, but weird, because this is China Miéville. Our protagonist is Sham, or, really, Shamus Yes ap Soorap, and when the book opens
-
Eleanor & Park by Rainbow RowellSt. Martin’s Griffin, 2013
I liked Eleanor & Park, but not nearly as much as other people seem to have liked it, and I’m not sure why. It’s a YA love story set in Omaha in 1986, in which the two “star-crossed sixteen-year-olds,” as the flap-copy puts it, meet on the school bus and fall for each other without