what I’ve been reading lately:
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Embers by Sándor MáraiTranslated by Carol Brown JanewayVintage International, 2002
This book, which was originally published in Hungarian in 1942, is very much about the ends of things, the passing of time: the end of the Austro-Hungarian empire, the end of the nineteenth century, the end of a friendship, the end of a marriage, the end of an affair. Henrik, the reclusive General, lives alone…
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Curriculum Vitae by Yoel HoffmannTranslated by Peter ColeNew Directions, 2009
This book and I didn’t totally click, and I’m not sure I can articulate why. The back cover describes it as “part novel and part memoir,” and its 100 short sections tell the story of a life: childhood, marriage, parenting, travel. It’s set mostly in Israel, with bits elsewhere (primarily Japan), and it sometimes reads…
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An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 1988-1991 by Adrienne RichW.W. Norton & Company, 1991
I think Adrienne Rich was the first poet I really enjoyed reading: I read “Diving into the Wreck” in a high school English class, then bought The Fact of a Doorframe later in high school and read and re-read my way through that book in late high school and early college. I haven’t read so…
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Orion You Came and You Took All My Marbles by Kira HenehanMilkweed Editions, 2010
The back cover blurb mentions the “off-kilter world” of Finley, our narrator: that’s an understatement. This book is a detective story but not really, or rather, it’s a detective story about finding oneself. It’s set in a world that is almost our own but not quite, or maybe it is our world and all the…
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The New Brooklyn Cookbook by Melissa Vaughan and Brendan VaughanWilliam Morrow (HarperCollins), 2010
This book’s subtitle is “Recipes and Stories from 31 Restaurants That Put Brooklyn on the Culinary Map:” I’ve lived in Brooklyn for coming up on seven years now, and of those 31 restaurants, I’ve been to exactly three: applewood (literally down the block from where I lived for five and a half years, great food,…
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Shopgirl by Steve MartinHyperion, 2000
After I finished reading Travels in Siberia, I found myself in a sort of critical reading mood—unsure what to read next, and fearful that whatever I read wouldn’t live up to the intelligence, humor, and range of Ian Frazier’s book. I decided that something short, light, and fictional was the way to go, and so…
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Travels in Siberia by Ian FrazierFarrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010
Siberia: you think “big,” you think “cold,” you think “isolation,” maybe you think “exile” or “gulag.” You probably don’t think “place I’d like to travel across by car,” but Ian Frazier did. He actually took five trips to Siberia over the course of sixteen years, not just the trans-Siberian drive he writes about in the…
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Cooking Interlude: The Food Matters Cookbook by Mark Bittman
The idea of The Food Matters Cookbook is simple: eat fewer animal products and processed foods; eat more whole grains, nuts, legumes, fruits and vegetables. There are lots of reasons you might want to eat this way, and Bittman mentions a few in his introduction (health, ethics, environment), but this really is a cookbook, not…
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Dogs by Emily GravettSimon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2010 (Originally Macmillan Children’s Books, 2009)
Several years ago, Megan and I read a picture book called Wolves by Emily Gravett, and were struck by how funny and clever and all-around excellent it was. So when I saw Dogs while wandering through Barnes & Noble in search of a page-a-day calendar, I was really excited: Emily Gravett, yay! And I love…
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White Teeth by Zadie SmithVintage International, 2001 (Originally Hamish Hamilton, 2000)
I’ve been meaning to read this book for approximately a decade now, and am glad I finally did. On the most basic level it’s the story of two friends—Archibald Jones and Samad Miah Iqbal, who met when they served in WWII together—and their families. But it’s also about families in general, and culture and history…