Category Archives: Uncategorized

I discovered this book in a very roundabout way — because Danica Novgorodoff, whose work I’m always on the lookout for, illustrated the graphic novel version. But when I ordered a copy, I got the actual book instead. Flipping through it, I was immediately intrigued, because it’s a novel in verse. And it’s really good!ContinueContinue reading “Long Way Down, Jason Reynolds”

My kid is thisclose to being able to actually swim independently enough that I don’t need to be hovering nearby in case the lifeguards are not at their most attentive, and I might actually be able to spend some time on a lounger with a good book, which feels like an appropriate occasion to writeContinueContinue reading “The House of Doors, Tan Twan Eng”

It’s hard to find good books for first-graders that address slavery and racism in ways that are informative but not terrifying. Obviously, the history is terrifying, but I am not persuaded that it’s useful to convey the depths of that trauma to a 6-year-old who is only just starting to learn about these topics. NorContinueContinue reading “Juneteenth for Mazie and Juneteenth, Our Day of Freedom”

This book was fascinating to me, because it approached a topic that I have read a fair amount about — second-generation memories of the Holocaust — from a perspective that was totally new to me, that of an Israeli Jew traveling to his family’s village in Poland. This is a protagonist for whom Poland isContinueContinue reading “Poland, a Green Land, by Aharon Appelfeld, tr. Stuart Schoffman”

I heard about this book from one of my favorite Substacks, The Biblioracle Recommends, by John Warner. It was in a post of Pulitzer Prize predictions (sidenote: these turn out to be very fun to read, because the awards are often curveballs, and totally shrouded in secrecy, so the guesses have to be broad), andContinueContinue reading “Dayswork, by Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel”

It seems impossible that Beckett didn’t read this slender, strange text, but I have no idea if he actually did (a brief internet search only reveals that other people have compared the two). It’s a semi-comic, semi-melancholic story of two men who are trying to go up a mountain, told mostly through dialogue, and itContinueContinue reading “The 210th Day, Natsume Sōseki”

I read this book awhile ago when the author came to speak at Cornell, and enjoyed it so much that I made my book club read it, and therefore reread it myself last week. What I think is so cool about it is that it combines three related genres — the coming of age story,ContinueContinue reading “Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion, Bushra Rehman”

I may be somewhat biased, because Raul is my colleague and I like him a lot, but I enjoyed this novel so much. It’s the story of a guy named Hugo who lives in Miami and works as a spiritualist without really believing in what he practices, and who is being eaten away by debt,ContinueContinue reading “A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens, Raul Palma”

Some time ago, I read The Marzipan Pig with my 6yo, and absolutely LOVED it. I read it over and over, and read passages out loud to my partner, and when I posted about my love for it on facebook, and my intention to track down all of his other books,* people mentioned that heContinueContinue reading “Her Name was Lola, Russell Hoban”

I discovered the existence of this book when, before class, I was hastily googling to find the page number in Maus where Spiegelman mentions his daughter’s birth in a footnote. I found it, but I also found something entirely unexpected: her book! I glanced through some reviews that reassured me that this was not justContinueContinue reading “I’m Supposed to Protect You From All This, Nadja Spiegelman”