what I’ve been reading lately:
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Ruby and the Stone Age Diet by Martin MillarSoft Skull Press, 2010 (originally Fourth Estate, 1989)
I hadn’t read anything by Martin Millar before, but picked this book up because the cover was well-designed and because everyone seems to love Lonely Werewolf Girl. But once I started reading, I wasn’t sure I’d keep going. Here’s the first two sentences: “Living in Battersea I one day arrived home in the early morning
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Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy by Keith WaldropUniversity of California Press, 2009
This book, the first I’ve read of Keith Waldrop’s work, felt difficult, both allusive and elusive, and more abstract than the poetry I tend to prefer. It won the National Book Award for Poetry last year, but somehow I hadn’t heard of it until it caught my eye at the library, and I picked it
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Don Juan: His Own Version by Peter HandkeTranslated by Krishna WinstonFarrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010
There is something really appealing about this book, about the style of Handke’s writing and Winston’s translation. The story is at once straightforward and surreal, and from the very first page everything’s shifty, unreliable, the story casting doubt on itself. Here’s how the book starts: “Don Juan had always been looking for someone to listen
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The Mansion of Happiness by Robin EkissThe University of Georgia Press, 2009
The Mansion of Happiness is a board game from 1843. I remember having a reproduction of it when I was a kid: I must have had that whole three-game set, but The Mansion of Happiness is the only one I have any memory of, the decorations in the corners of the board, the path from
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Cloudstreet by Tim Winton
I heard about this book from Danya, who quoted the first sentences, which made me grin. Here’s how the book starts: Will you look at us by the river! The whole restless mob of us on spread blankets in the dreamy briny sunshine skylarking and chiacking about for one day, one clear, clean, sweet day
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Eating for England: The Delights & Eccentricities of the British at Table by Nigel SlaterFourth Estate (HarperCollins), 2007
I bought this book in a Whole Foods in London a few years ago, but hadn’t gotten around to reading it ’til now. I love Nigel Slater’s Kitchen Diaries for the really vivid and satisfyingly descriptive way he writes about food. This book has some of that, like when, at the very beginning, he describes
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The Great Brain by John D. FitzgeraldYearling (Dell), 1971 (originally The Dial Press, 1967)
I thought I was in the mood for something other than a kids’ book, but I was, perhaps, wrong. I just moved on Sunday: not far, just four blocks, from one apartment to another within the same neighborhood. As moves go, in the grand scheme of moving possibilities, it was an easy one. But it’s
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The Letter, the Witch, and the Ring by John BellairsPuffin Books, 2004 (originally The Dial Press, 1976)
This is the third of the Lewis Barnavelt mysteries, after The House with a Clock in Its Walls and The Figure in the Shadows, though the star of this one is really Lewis’s friend Rose Rita Pottinger. It’s summertime and Lewis is off to boy scout camp, and Rose Rita wishes she could go along
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The Figure in the Shadows by John BellairsPuffin Books, 1993 (originally The Dial Press, 1975)
I seem to be on a kids’ books kick at the moment, or maybe just a John Bellairs kick. This book is the sequel to The House with a Clock in Its Walls (though sadly, it’s not illustrated by Edward Gorey like the first one was) and introduces us to Lewis Barnavelt’s friend, Rose Rita