what I’ve been reading lately:
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French Milk by Lucy KnisleyTouchstone (Simon & Schuster), 2008 (originally Epigraph Publishing, 2007)
In December 2006/January 2007, Lucy Knisley took a six-week trip to Paris with her mother to celebrate her mother’s fiftieth birthday and Lucy’s twenty-second. French Milk is Knisley’s travel journal from that trip, and it’s a pleasing combination of photos, text, and drawings (Knisley is a cartoonist). I love all the Parisian details of this
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Blameless by Gail CarrigerOrbit (Hachette), 2010
(Spoiler alert: it’s hard to talk about this book without mentioning some key plot points both from this book and the previous one, Changeless. So if you haven’t read this series and want to be surprised if/when you do, you might want to stop reading now.) At the start of this book, Alexia Maccon, newly
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A Far Cry from Kensington by Muriel SparkNew Directions, 2000 (Originally Houghton Mifflin, 1988)
1954: Mrs Hawkins, 28, is a young war widow, who lives in a South Kensington rooming-house and works as a proofreader and “literary adviser” at a small publishing house. The publishing house is barely hanging on; when secretaries and clerks leave they’re not replaced, and everyone who’s left is doing multiple jobs. And it’s not
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Changeless by Gail CarrigerOrbit (Hachette), 2010
Changeless is the sequel to Soulless (which I wrote about here), and it starts out much better than that book did. The dialogue’s much smoother (fewer clunky surrounding phrases like “she stated”) and I grinned right away at the opening scene. Alexia, our sleeping heroine, wakes up to the sound of her husband shouting, and
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Soulless by Gail CarrigerOrbit (Hachette), 2009
I first read about this book in the Goodreads newsletter last November; I was reminded of it again in the spring by this post over on A Work in Progress, but it’s taken me until now to get around to actually reading it. Before starting, my impressions of things it had going for it were
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Witch Grass by Raymond QueneauTranslated and with an Introduction by Barbara WrightNew York Review Books, 2003(Originally published in French by Librairie Gallimard, 1933)
When I saw Carol’s post about NYRB Reading Week, hosted by The Literary Stew and Coffeespoons, I thought it might be a good time to read Witch Grass, which is a New York Review Book that also happens to be on my languishing TBR Challenge list. The price-sticker on the back of my copy of
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Bitter in the Mouth by Monique TruongRandom House, 2010
I read and loved Monique Truong’s first novel, The Book of Salt, back in 2004, so I was excited to hear that she had a new novel out this year. The narrator of this one, Linda Hammerick, is a quirky person from a quirky family, which could be annoying but which I found pretty charming.
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The Homeward Bounders by Diana Wynne JonesGreenwillow Books (HarperCollins), 2002 (Originally Macmillan, 1981)
I heard about The Homeward Bounders thanks to this post during this summer’s Diana Wynne Jones Week over at Jenny’s Books, and decided to pick it up at the library. Jamie Hamilton, the narrator of this book, looks thirteen but isn’t really. He should be thirteen. His life is quite ordinary until he’s twelve: he
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The Magic City by E. NesbitSeaStar Books, 2000 (Originally Macmillan, 1910)
Philip Haldane’s parents are both dead, so Philip, who is ten, has been raised by his older half-sister, Helen. She’s the only family he’s had or wanted, and has always been a kind and caring (and fun!) parent. But now she’s getting married to her childhood sweetheart, whose first wife died, and Philip is none
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A Week at the Airport by Alain de BottonVintage Books, 2010 (Originally Profile Books, 2009)
This short but satisfying book, which features (really pleasing) photographs by Richard Baker, is the story of de Botton’s week as “writer-in-residence” at Heathrow’s Terminal 5. He explores the airport and its environs, from the Sofitel hotel where he’s staying for the week to the office of the CEO of British Airways, and talks to