what I’ve been reading lately:
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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,
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Talismano by Abdelwahab MeddebTranslated by Jane KuntzDalkey Archive Press, 2011
Talismano, which was originally published in French by Éditions Sindbad in 1987, must have been quite a lot of work (and perhaps also quite a lot of fun) to translate. In her introduction, Jane Kuntz calls the book “willfully cryptic” and talks about how Meddeb’s language is a French inflected by Arabic, and not just
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Wabi Sabi by Mark ReibsteinArt by Ed YoungLittle, Brown and Company, 2008
Wabi Sabi is a seriously gorgeous book. It’s big (the pages are 11 by 11 inches) and when you have it closed, the spine’s at the top—so you open it like a wall calendar, and it’s made up of a series of two-page spreads. The art, by Ed Young, is lovely: his collages, made of
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Upstaged by Jacques JouetTranslated by Leland de la DurantayeDalkey Archive Press, 2011
True story: my high school had (and for all I know, still has) a tradition of having a “freshman play”: the first play of the school year, during my high school career, was put on by the whole freshman class, and only the freshman class (with some advice and assistance from the drama teacher and