Monthly Archives: April 2024

Recommended to me by one of my students, this book was so lovely. A boy and his mother read each other fairy tales — for her, they trigger memories of being a refugee, for him, of his crush on a boy at school. Meanwhile, she worries about her mother in Vietnam, and he worries aboutContinueContinue reading “The Magic Fish, by Trung Le Nguyen”

This moved up on my to-read list after I heard a terrific lecture by my colleague Zohre Soltani on the visual iconography of the Azadi Tower over the years. The book is a collection of comics about contemporary Iran — the protests, the crimes of the State, life among the diaspora. A few pieces alsoContinueContinue reading “Woman, Life, Freedom, edited by Marjane Satrapi”

I happened to be reading these two books at the same time, and though they’re very different from each other, there’s a lot they have in common, not least of which is sheer charisma. Both authors just seem incredibly badass and cool. But they also further fed my ongoing rumination on the essay form, andContinueContinue reading “Creep, by Myriam Gurba & The Utopia of Rules, by David Graeber”

If you love books and the book world, read this. It’s a powerfully informative look at the ecosystem of bookselling and publishing, as well as being a very winsome and enjoyable read. And a quick one at that — the perfect bite-size book! Written in the form of an interview, it starts off as aContinueContinue reading “Reading the Room: a Bookseller’s Tale, Paul Yamazaki”

I saw this on the new book shelf in the youth graphic novel section at the library and read it between MarioKart turns (our library has a Nintendo Switch in the kid’s section; a wonderful community resource). It was really great — a charming and clever story about a young woman who applies to beContinueContinue reading “Baba Yaga’s Assistant, Marika McCoola & Emily Carroll”

Lovable feels like the wrong word for this novel, which is about an anxious and rather beset-upon 40-something-year-old woman who is taking driving lessons, and enjoyable isn’t quite it either, because it is mostly a minute recounting of the small humiliations, petty misogynies, and various unpleasantries about being an older woman in the world today.ContinueContinue reading “Mirror, Shoulder, Signal, Dorthe Nors, tr. Misha Hoekstra”

There’s a kind of Sebaldian quality to this book: maybe it’s the interspersing of photographs, and the sense of history as unbearable, along with this aching desire one feels to protect the beautiful faces in the images. Maybe also the feeling that everything seems Very Serious and Important, but you’re not always clear on theContinueContinue reading “Ordinary Notes, Christina Sharpe”