what I’ve been reading lately:
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The Difference Between You and Me by Madeleine GeorgeViking (Penguin), 2012
The Difference Between You and Me is a queer high school story that isn’t a coming-out story: Jesse Halberstam is a sophomore, and she’s already been out as a lesbian for a year. She gets harassed at school because she’s out and gay and butch and wears big clompy rubber fisherman’s boots all the time.…
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This Isn’t the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You by Jon McGregorBloomsbury, 2012
This Isn’t the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You is a collection of short stories: 30 stories, of varying lengths (one is just one sentence; one is thirty pages) and varying styles (1st-person, 2nd-person, and 3rd person narration are all used; one story is in the form of a numbered list of…
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Lost New York by Marcia ReissPavilion Books, 2011
I’ve been living in NYC for twelve-ish years now: I came for college and didn’t leave. (During college I stayed in the city in the summers, mostly, though I did go to my mom’s house in Georgia for a stretch of one summer, and spent most of another summer living in Cambridge, MA.) I’ve finished…
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Savage by Jacques JouetTranslated by Amber ShieldsDalkey Archive Press, 2009
I read and liked Jacques Jouet’s Upstaged last year, so I was excited to happen upon another book by him at the library. But where I found Upstaged smart and funny and engaging, I found Savage odd and distant. There were moments of humor, and moments of beauty, but when I finished reading I wished…
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The Uncommon Reader by Alan BennettFarrar, Straus and Giroux (originally Faber and Faber), 2007
The Uncommon Reader is short and sweet, charming and funny. I feel like every book blogger other than me read this one years ago, so you probably already know the premise, but if you don’t, here it is: the Queen of England (yes, the current one) happens upon a mobile library parked outside Buckingham Palace.…
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NW by Zadie SmithThe Penguin Press, 2012
NW is about the intersecting/intertwined lives of four Londoners (two women and two men) who grew up on the same housing estate in the northwest part of the city. Leah and Natalie, who have been best friends since childhood (back when Natalie was called Keisha: she renamed herself when she left for university) are the…
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Mokie & Bik Go to Sea by Wendy OrrIllustrations by Jonathan BeanHenry Holt and Company, 2010
The art was my favorite thing about Mokie & Bik (which I wrote about here)—it was crisp and fleshed out. In this book, the art (some of which you can see on Jonathan Bean’s website) is in pencil rather than pen, and it’s sketchy, looser. Sometimes this works for me—I love the opening spread, with…
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Mokie & Bik by Wendy OrrIllustrations by Jonathan BeanHenry Holt and Company, 2007
Mokie and Bik are fraternal twins who live on a boat with their mom, their nanny, and some pets, which is just as exciting as it sounds. The art, by Jonathan Bean, is great: the cover, with Mokie swinging from a rope, pigtails flying, sets the tone of mischievousness and charm, and the endpapers—one of…
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The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel BarberyTranslated by Alison AndersonEuropa Editions, 2008 (Originally published in French in 2006, by Editions Gallimard)
Renée, who’s 54, has been the concierge of a luxury apartment building in Paris for the past 27 years. She’s a widow, and lives alone with her cat (because, you know, all lady concierges have cats). She does her job competently, and counts on people not really seeing her (because people only ever see what…
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Swimming Studies by Leanne ShaptonBlue Rider Press (Penguin), 2012
In the last of the thirty pieces (some all text, some all images, some a mix of both) that make up Swimming Studies, Leanne Shapton writes this: I think about loving swimming the way you love somebody. How a kiss happens, gravitational. About compromise, sacrifice, and breakup. […] I think about loving swimming the way…