January 2012
16 posts
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“And I believe few things are as despicable and dishonest as faking an obsession....”
– Dana Spiotta, Stone Arabia
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Bossypants!
As a total Tina Fey fangirl, I was surprised I hadn’t read Bossypants yet, and when my mother-in-law found out, she bought it and sent it to me right away. She loves Tina Fey too, and we’ve talked about how we both wanted to be her when we grew up. Only neither of us could really explain exactly what this would have sounded like if we had mentioned it back in the day. And now we...
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The Flame Alphabet - NYT review →
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MOONDOGS - Alexander Yates
Moondogs, by Alexander Yates, is fantastical and adventurous, but it also contains some truth about human nature within it’s “mystical realist” pages. Even though you’re reading about a seemingly super-powerful rooster, a magical posse of men, and an earthquake-causing lady, you’ll also be witnessing some human emotion that normally does not coexist with such fantasy...
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WHAT WAS JD SALINGER WORKING ON? →
“Suppose Salinger completed a dozen books while holed up in Cornish and left them for his heirs to sort through upon his death. If they all consist of “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” then Salinger’s reclusion will be viewed as a selfish act, void or even destructive of creativity, and he will retain his reputation as having been an eccentric recluse.”
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THE FLAME ALPHABET - Ben Marcus
We are all going to hear a lot about The Flame Alphabet and its author Ben Marcus in the coming months, which in my opinion is very good. Because this is the kind of book that gets hotly debated in bars. I anticipate controversial reviews. Not unlike those of one of the authors whose blurb graced the back cover of the very beautiful jacket, Thomas McCarthy. McCarthy’s Remainder and C...
hold-en asked: you know the nineteen eighty four you have? The beautiful copy you posted a picture of? What is the front cover like and where did you buy it? :) xoxo
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“How are they to be figured, this man and he? As master and slave? As brothers,...”
– J.M Coetzee, 2003 Nobel Prize Lecture, “He and His Man”
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LOVE AND SHAME AND LOVE
Peter Orner’s Love and Shame and Love is one of the prettiest books you’ll find at the bookstore, and reading it is pure pleasure not only because of the way it feels and looks (it’s the best trim for a book I’ve ever seen!) but because of the prose. The prose feels weightless and effortless and flowing, but it’s meticulous, crafted, and careful.
The first chapter...
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FUTURE BOOK ALERT!!!!
NYT bestselling author of HOUSE OF HOLES and HUMAN SMOKE Nicholson Baker’s next novel and a work of nonfiction, moving to David Rosenthal and Sarah Hochman at Blue Rider Press, for publication in 2013 and 2014 respectively, by Melanie Jackson at Melanie Jackson Agency (NA).
(From Publisher’s Marketplace.)
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Artemisia - Anna Banti
I read Artemisia because of an essay of Susan Sontag’s, which happens to also be this edition’s introduction. It’s a good introduction, indeed, how could it have been better if it made me want to read the book? Even so, I wasn’t prepared for the loveliness that was Anna Banti’s Artemisia.
Banti has written an homage to this historically significant character,...
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I just got back from vacation and read so much while I was away! I have a bunch of reviews to write, but in the meanwhile, I’m so thankful to everyone who reads and interacts with BooksIJustRead. Thank you so much for making my literary life a full and happy one! I’ve expanded my reading horizons thanks to you, and am proud and excited for every note, comment, and email I receive. I...
December 2011
21 posts
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“We’ve tried to build our love beyond each individual moment, yet we can...”
– Simone de Beauvoir, She Came to Stay
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House of Holes
House of Holes was an amazing, raucous, funny, and titillating read. I’m going to dissect why each of these adjectives are perfect descriptors of Baker’s Book of Sex.
Amazing - the writing here is incredible. Baker’s usual fine-tooth adjectives and methods for description were turned on their heads, yet stayed intact. Instead of an intensely introspective word garden, Baker...
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My 11 favorite books of 2011!
Here are the 11 books I read in 2011 and liked best in alphabetical order by author:
THE MASTER AND MARGARITA - Mikhail Bulgakov
STET - James Chapman
THE MARRIAGE PLOT - Jeffrey Eugenides
PORNOGRAFIA - Witold Gombrowicz
TICKNOR - Sheila Heti
NEVER LET ME GO - Kazuo Ishiguro
GRAVITY’S RAINBOW - Thomas Pynchon
HOME - Marilynne Robinson
SWAMPLANDIA! - Karen Russell
SANATORIUM UNDER...
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Here is an audioclip of THIRD REICH by Roberto...
Margaret Atwood Interview with Deborah Treisman →
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Who Will Be the Literary Legends of Our Era? →
David Foster Wallace
Marilynne Robinson
Jonathan Franzen
Cormac McCarthy
To name a few…
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“He had often wondered what difference it would make. But the emptiness in place...”
– Alice Monro - ”Leaving Maverley”
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“I have withdrawn, to be sure, and refuse to fight. But within the safety of my...”
– The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery (I posted this quote a long time ago, but still love it.)
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“Then came a new resident, a musician in his 80s with a touch of forgetfulness...”
– A beautiful, beautiful paragraph from this story in The New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/09/us/an-aging-jazz-pianist-finds-a-new-audience.html?emc=eta1
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“My fiction is simply something that goes on between my mind and the page.”
– The Situation in American Writing: Marilynne Robinson
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ToBS R1: hating on Jonathan Franzen vs. hating on... →
LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS.
I should write a follow-up: people nagging you to read FREEDOM vs people insisting INCREDIBLY LOUD is fine fiction.
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State of Wonder - Ann Patchett
State of Wonder is a lush and living novel about Marina, a scientist, who travels to Brazil. She’s chasing two phantoms- the story about the death of her colleague, Anders, and the woman he was chasing, a scientist whose lab, in the depths of the rainforest, is developing a drug for the company Marina works for. She’s caustic, selfish, and disdains interption. In a way, Marina is...
“Some time has passed since I last raised my voice to the multitude, and whereas...”
– Harper’s Magazine, On Simple Human Decency, Ben Metcalf
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“Friendships, like friends, all die. All those gone nights of witty...”
– Peter Orner, Love and Shame and Love
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“Even when I talk about the book it’s always like “if you had an aerial picture...”
– Karen Russell, at this awesome AWL interview!
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Good Reads 2011 Cheat Sheet →
People thought Swamplandia! was derivative?!
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The Literary Cubs - The New Inquiry in the New... →
This is an interesting article, and at first I was WAY into The New Inquiry (as per this article, since I’d never heard of it before) and what they seem to be doing. Then I just got really bummed, because they seem to be perpetrating all the ills they rail against: elitism, isolation, etc. They all seem to come from some sort of privilege, and the result of that is a profile in the NYT. ...
November 2011
14 posts
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“This is probably the sincerest, most biased account of ‘Best” your...”
– David Foster Wallace in his Introduction to the 2007 edition of The Best American Essays, for which he was Editor, or as he called it, “Decider.”
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Ayana Mathis: The Absence of Joy →
“I’m all for a good dose of literary misery, but I can’t help wonder if there aren’t additional meaningful, and dramatically potent, channels into the heart of the human experience…”
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Reasons not to self publish - The Millions →
My favorite point on this list is, “I GUESS I’M NOT A HATER.”
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Third Reich - Roberto Bolano
I’ve had the feeling I had when I started reading Third Reich a few times, brought on by the opening pages of The Lord of the Rings, my first Hemingway book, and Tulips by Sylvia Plath, for example. It was the feeling of reading something I knew I’d remember and love my whole life, the feeling of being excited to explore a writer new to me, the feeling of wanting to immediately...
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Future Book Alert!
Author of ROOM, in its 23rd consecutive week on the NYT bestseller list with more than a million copies sold, Emma Donoghue’s ASTRAY, a set of stories spanning centuries and continents, returning to her roots in historical fiction.
(From Publisher’s Marketplace, and I should really really read ROOM already.)
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The Top 25 - Kirkus Review's Best Fiction of 2011 →
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MRS NIXON - Ann Beattie
A book like this, the perfect marriage of fiction and meditation on fiction, comes along rarely, and I feel like I’ve only read one other, The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. Ann Beattie has created a tender, delicate, and at times judgmental portrait of both Pat Nixon and the pen-wielding goliaths other wise known as writers.
The subtitle, “A Novelist Imagines A...
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“They were sorry, they were saying with their bodies, they were accepting each...”
– George Saunders, Tenth of December
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The Art of the Novel - Geoff Dyer →
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Richard Yates - Tao Lin
You know how people say you can’t understand a relationship you’re not a part of? I feel like RICHARD YATES by Tao Lin is all about that idea. It’s like Lin was like, well, here’s a relationship, here’s a fucked up relationship. And now he wants the readers to argue over who’s to blame for the callousness, the disfunction. The writing of RICHARD YATES seems...
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The lovely people at Farrar, Straus, & Giroux...