what I’ve been reading lately:
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The Canal by Lee RourkeMelville House, 2010
In this interview Lee Rourke says that The Canal is about boredom “and the fetishisation of modern culture and violence (especially the kind of violence that is deemed by its perpetrators to have a ‘just cause’: terrorism is a good example of this). It is also about the Regents Canal in London; a bench; a…
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Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere by André AcimanFarrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011
I suspect that Alibis is the sort of book whose pleasure it would be good to prolong, the kind of book where it would be satisfying to read an essay a day and reflect on each one, because there is without doubt lots to reflect on here. That isn’t what I did—I started reading slowly,…
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Timeless by Gail CarrigerOrbit (Hachette), 2012
Despite what I said in my post about the previous book in this series, I hadn’t actually sought this fifth and final book out. But then there it was sitting temptingly on the shelf of free-to-take books in the kitchen at work. So I took it. I didn’t read it immediately, and wasn’t even that…
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Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette WintersonGrove Press, 2011 (Originally Jonathan Cape)
I saw Jeanette Winterson read excerpts from this book back in March, and it was satisfying to recognize certain passages—like the part where she talks about how Mrs Winterson, her adopted mother, read Jane Eyre aloud but bowdlerized the ending, improvising in the style of Charlotte Brontë. Mrs Winterson figures large in this book, as…
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Mockingjay by Suzanne CollinsScholastic, 2010
I should start by saying: It’s hard to write about the last of the Hunger Games books in a in a non-spoilery way, so if you haven’t read this book yet, you might want to stop reading now. In Catching Fire, Katniss Everdeen unwittingly inspired revolution: now, in Mockingjay, the Districts are in full-out war…
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Catching Fire by Suzanne CollinsScholastic, 2009
I liked The Hunger Games, but I wasn’t sure how much I was going to like Catching Fire. The early pages felt clunky; I couldn’t find or get into the rhythm of the narration. But then the plot got going and I didn’t care about the quality of the prose at all, I just cared…
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Winter: Five Windows on the Season by Adam GopnikHouse of Anansi Press, 2011
Summer is my least favorite season: I don’t do so well with heat and humidity, which are pretty much the defining characteristics of summer in New York. Meanwhile, stores and office buildings and subway cars are over-air-conditioned in over-compensation, so I feel like I spend my time either sweltering or freezing. Summer has its pleasures,…
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You Deserve Nothing by Alexander MaksikEuropa Editions, 2011
I was fairly delighted, about a hundred pages into You Deserve Nothing, to see the squiggles from the cover image near the top of the page, presented as an excerpt from the notebook of one of the book’s narrators. Gilad Fisher has just moved to Paris, and is a senior at the International School of…
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Dogma by Lars IyerMelville House Publishing, 2012
Dogma is the sequel to Spurious, which I read last year and wrote about here. Like the last book, this one follows the meanderings of Lars and W., two English academics who share a tendency toward the apocalyptic and a fondness for gin. As in the last book, there is a lot of angst: about…
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The Chemistry of Tears by Peter CareyAlfred A. Knopf, 2012 (Originally Faber and Faber)
Catherine Gehrig has lost her lover of thirteen years: he died suddenly, and because their affair was a secret (he was married), she’s unable to grieve publicly. Except their affair wasn’t entirely a secret: Catherine’s lover worked at the Swinburne Museum, as she also does, and was a close friend of her boss. Knowing she…