what I’ve been reading lately:
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I Am Half-Sick of Shadows by Alan BradleyDelacorte Press (Random House), 2011
Oh, Flavia. Flavia de Luce, heroine of this book and of three others by Bradley, is the best eleven-year-old sleuth/narrator ever. When the book opens, she’s dreaming about ice-skating in an indoor rink at Buckshaw of her own making. (In the dream, she’s flooded the portrait gallery, which is in the unheated wing of the…
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Poet’s Pub by Eric LinklaterJonathan Cape, 1963 (Originally 1929)
Saturday Keith (his parents’ seventh son, named after the day of his birth) is a poet, but he’s feeling glum after some less-than-flattering reviews of his latest book. He’s quit his job at a shipping/exports company, and ends up getting set up as manager of a fancy pub/inn owned by the mother of one of…
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Nocturne: A Journey in Search of Moonlight by James AttleeThe University of Chicago Press, 2011
In Nocturne, James Attlee really pleasingly tells the stories of his various moon-focused journeys. He’s interested in exploring the role of moonlight in art/culture/life, both historically and now, in a time when light pollution means people in general see less of the moon and are probably less aware of the moon than in the past.…
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The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha ChristieModern Library (Random House), 2003 (Originally John Lane, 1920)
In Howards End is on the Landing, Susan Hill mentions The Mysterious Affair at Styles as part of a list of books with good titles, and it reminded me that I haven’t read much by Agatha Christie. Before this, I’d only read Murder on the Orient Express, and I liked detective Hercule Poirot in that…
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Light, Grass, and Letter in April by Inger ChristensenTranslated by Susanna Nied; drawings by Johanne FossNew Directions, 2011
I read Inger Christensen’s it back in 2007 and don’t remember it very well: I just remember it being difficult, prickly. I picked up this new volume, which is really three volumes in one, as much because of the cover image as anything else. Light and Grass were Christensen’s first books, from 1962 and 1963;…
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The Night Circus by Erin MorgensternDoubleday (Random House), 2011
New York, 1873: We meet a man who performs as Prospero the Enchanter; he meets his five-year-old daughter, Celia. London, 1874: Prospero the Enchanter performs: the theater is crowded and hot, the women in the audience fan themselves. Another night, another illusionist. Except not exactly, because Prospero’s magic is real: “At one point in the…
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Howards End is on the Landing: A Year of Reading from Home by Susan HillProfile Books, 2010 (originally 2009)
Mm, books. Like, apparently, a lot of other people, I have a habit of acquiring books and then letting them sit on my shelves, unread, while I read something else. I don’t actually buy a ton of books—I do buy some that I’m particularly excited about, and I’m definitely guilty of, say, buying paperbacks at…
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The Sextine Chapel by Hervé Le TellierTranslated by Ian MonkDalkey Archive Press, 2011
The back cover of The Sextine Chapel (originally published in French in 2005) says that it “harken[s] back” to Singular Pleasures by Harry Mathews, who, like Le Tellier, is a member of Oulipo. (Indeed, Le Tellier dedicated the book to Mathews, including a nod to Singular Pleasures in the dedication.) I haven’t read Mathews’s book…
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The Cows by Lydia DavisSarabande Books, 2011
The front cover of this chapbook features a cow in a field, looking stolid and a little bit curious: ears wide apart and forward, one front hoof planted a little ahead of the other. The grass is green, and so are the trees behind it. The back cover is a continuation of the same picture,…