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When I was in Warsaw last summer, I noticed, perhaps for the first time, a monument smack dab in the middle of city center, across the street from a giant mall. What was so striking to me about it were the various layers of meaning: firstly, that it marked a spot where 102 people hadContinueContinue reading “Porcelain War”

I guess this was my subconscious way of going to New Orleans, since I’m missing MLA this year. This is a strange little novel — it’s a really cool invocation of place (19C NOLA), but not via sensory detail. It’s more like someone arriving to a new place and looking around and noticing all theContinueContinue reading “Season of the Swamp, Yuri Herrera, tr. Lisa Dillman”

The first section of this book held me completely in its thrall: it’s stunningly good; narrating the experiences of an injured soldier in the First World War and flashing between past, present, and future with dazzling fluidity. It should be confusing but you’re so utterly in it that it feels completely natural. The prose isContinueContinue reading “Held, Anne Michaels”

I’m running out of ND Storybooks, which is a problem, because they’re such a perfect little treat for holidays (like New Year’s Day). This one is especially fun because it’s a collection of three stories that are interestingly different from each other — each with a slightly different tone and worldview, though they seemingly followContinueContinue reading “Early Light, Osamu Dazai”

I love Best Of lists, and when they start coming out in December I feel a strong compulsion to go read a bunch of the things listed to decide if it belongs on my list. In the past, I’ve managed this stress by making a Top 10 Books that I am looking forward to readingContinueContinue reading “Best of 2024”

I loved the mass and heft of this book — square, fat, heavy, thick paper densely covered in swirls of black ink. It feels like the labor of love that it clearly is — a memoir, a family history, and an often arduous effort to understand and connect to a complicated past. Tessa Hulls’ grandmotherContinueContinue reading “Feeding Ghosts, Tessa Hulls”

I love the strangeness of Téa Obreht’s work; her play with genre; the way she surprises you at every turn. Right when you think you have a sense of what the novel is doing, it wriggles away into some totally unexpected direction. The Morningside might be the strangest of her books, and maybe the leastContinueContinue reading “The Morningside, Téa Obreht”

I listened to this on audiobook, which is a great way to do it, because you get the wonderful texture of the accent, and bits of Welsh, and most importantly — you get to actually hear the snippets of songs, which are incredible. I don’t know if you, like me, have occasional geographically specific readingContinueContinue reading “Whale Fall, Elizabeth O’Connor”

It’s been a minute since I read a motherhood memoir (when I first became a mother, I devoured them), but this one truly exemplifies all the best qualities of the genre. It demonstrates so beautifully how the experience of parenting, though it so often feels tremendously isolating, also seems to connect you, intellectually, to theContinueContinue reading “I Cannot Control Everything Forever, Emily Bloom”

I read Nuking Alaska today while giving a final exam — it’s quite good. Very upsetting, as you might imagine, being all about how the process of testing nuclear weapons in Alaska happened against the wishes of, and indifferent to the potential harms to, the inhabitants (both human and animal), facilitated by brazen lies andContinueContinue reading “Nuking Alaska, Peter Dunlap Shohl, and Unretouchable, by Sofia Szamosi”