what I’ve been reading lately:
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In Utopia by J.C. HallmanSt. Martin’s Press, 2010
“Utopia is in a bad way,” this book starts, then follows with this definition: “Utopia can be broadly defined as any exuberant plan or philosophy intended to perfect life lived collectively” (3). Not many pages later, Hallman lets us know where he stands, which is in favor of this exuberance: “the utopian flame should not…
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“Chester” by Henry James(in English Hours, Oxford University Press, 1982, originally Houghton Mifflin & Co., 1905)
James doesn’t only write, in the essays in English Hours, about the physicalities of a place: he’s also writing about culture and history, about the American temperament and the English temperament (or at least, about an American’s impression of them), about the majesty of Anglican services and American twinges of jealousy at all the richness…
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“London” by Henry James(in English Hours, Oxford University Press, 1982, originally Houghton Mifflin & Co., 1905)
Henry James is one of my favorite writers: I love his long sentences, the way the make me slow down when reading: both in the sense that I often have to slow down, because of their length and twistiness, and in the sense that I want to slow down, to better savor the way they’re…
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Norwegian Wood by Haruki MurakamiTranslated by Jay RubinVintage Books, 2000
Picking a book to bring along on vacation—especially a vacation where I was traveling alone and traveling light—was tricky: I was busy making a packing list and rolling up my clothes to make them fit in my backpack, and I wasn’t finding the process very conducive to reflecting on what I wanted to read next.…
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Witch’s Business by Diana Wynne JonesGreenwillow Books (HarperCollins), 2002 (Originally published as Wilkins’ Tooth, Macmillan London, 1974)
“Frank and Jess thought Own Back Ltd. was an excellent idea when they first invented it. Three days later, they were not so sure” (1). That’s how this book starts, and reading those sentences, you know you’re in for a lesson-learning sort of book, but this being Diana Wynne Jones, it’s not too heavy-handed. Own…
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The Locavore’s Handbook: The Busy Person’s Guide to Eating Local on a Budget by Leda MeredithLyons Press, 2010
Leda Meredith, when she talks about eating local food, speaks from experience: in 2007-2008 she embarked on “The 250”: a year of eating, “almost exclusively foods grown or raised within a 250-mile radius” of her apartment (1). I’m impressed. My own six-day attempt at eating foods from within a radius of about 200 miles from…
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Waiting for the Weekend by Witold RybczynskiViking, 1991
Despite the title, and despite the fact that much of this book tells the story of how the weekend as we know it came into being, Waiting for the Weekend isn’t just about Saturday and Sunday and how they got that way. It also examines larger questions of leisure: what is leisure, anyhow? And how…