what I’ve been reading lately:
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Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green & David LevithanDutton Books (Penguin), 2010
Will Grayson, Will Grayson is the story of two teenagers named, yes indeed, Will Grayson: both live in the suburbs of Chicago, and end up meeting one night. Their story’s told in alternating chapters, with Green narrating from the point of view of one Will Grayson, and Levithan writing from the point of view of…
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The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag by Alan BradleyDelacorte Press, 2010
The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag picks up a little more than a month after The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie leaves off, so it was good to read them consecutively. It’s summer in Bishop’s Lacey, the little village outside of which eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce lives with her father and two…
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The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan BradleyDelacorte Press/Bantam Dell (Random House), 2009
I don’t normally read mysteries, and I forget where I first heard about this one: I know that Danielle over at A Work in Progress mentioned it last year, but I feel like I read about it elsewhere as well. No matter: I finally got around to placing a hold on it at the library,…
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Blackout by Connie WillisSpectra (Random House), 2010
The premise of this book is excellent: it’s 2060 and we’ve figured out time travel, so historians, instead of just spending their time in libraries and archives and museums, head back to the past to witness history first-hand. Of course, there’s the usual time travel question: can they influence events, and what’s to stop them…
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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…