Currently reading
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
Death of a Red Heroine
Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee
Fire Logic: An Elemental Logic Novel
The Ghost Soldiers
Emma Tupper's Diary
Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding
Ninety-Five: Meeting America's Farmed Animals in Stories and Photographs
Twin Spica: Volume 12
Horse of a Different Color: Stories
Bleak
Well, what else could it be? This is a book about a guy who hasn't really grown up, who's smart but unaware of himself, and who does two tours in Afghanistan with his brother. It's about the shitty years in his life when nothing is clear and his eyes are down and he can't figure out where he's going. He hides from himself and everyone around him even as all his lies, omissions, and half-truths comes to light. A tough read, but maybe a must read.
Wicked Gentlemen
The body count was too high for me, but it's the page turner everyone said it would be. I'm impressed with how sympathetic Hale shows the unsympathetic characters to be.
 - Ginn Hale)
The Fortunes Of Wangrin
Fascinating and fun and completely unlike most books I've read. Oral history? Novel? Creative nonfiction? Who knows. Odd to read it against the backdrop of contemporary events in Mali. It's very rich, so I picked it up and put it down and picked it up again over some weeks. Every time I went back to it I was immediately immersed. Full of historical asides. Fab.
Underground America: Narratives of Undocumented Lives (Voice of Witness)
Do you have your papers? Fabulous, thought provoking book. Made me wish I was on one of those nominating committees for the book that first year college students should read, or the whole town (country!) reads a book. Oral history of recent (and not so recent) immigrants some of whom came legally, some illegally, and how they manage to live. It is not particularly pretty. This country is pretty dystopic if you don't have your papers.
 - )
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is one of the best books I read this year. I have been telling people not to read the description, just to read the book. The stories of the shattered and scattered family are heart-breaking, provocative, and true.
The Best of All Possible Worlds
Very enjoyable tour around a planet with a woman who does not know how limited she is, and a man whose culture sets store by how careful they are with themselves and one another. The two of them work together as part of a team of anthropologists and face challenges together, experience the depths of strangeness in one another, discover secrets of their planet and the universe, and come to regard each other . . . very highly. Also, interviewed the author for BookPage.
A strange, sometimes lovely, sometimes horrifying but very different post apocalyptic story that ends up in quite a hilarious spot.
A Crying Shame
Bought at this shop and read while visiting the Netherlands. Fair warning: the first few chapters are a bit rough, full of all kinds of childhood trauma triggers. I'm not a fan of kids-in-danger books so I was rushing a bit through this. I'm glad I did as I enjoyed the rest of the bookThe three main characters, two kids and an elderly Dutch woman, Agnes Stam, are all fascinating and worth following. Their not-quite-idyllic time together on the island of Mull—interspersed with Agnes's memories of her life with her four brothers—was dangerous but lovely, too. The end is surprisingly loose. Does this happen? Don't know. Does that? Also unknown!
Red Shift (New York Review Books Classics)
I may have read this a long time ago. Or maybe I am imagining it. I've loved Alan Garner's books since I was a kid so it makes sense that at some point I might have tracked this down and read it. But the book is all about how unreliable reality is, so is it just my head messing with me? Maybe. The people here are not very nice and I am happy pretending that if he wrote it now there might be a more pleasant section of the book. But that is just dreaming, as we all are, dreaming this world into being every day. Ignoring the lives after lives after lives that have come before us and may come after. Alan Garner walks through them all and the weight tells upon his stories.
Familiarity Is the Kingdom of the Lost
A very odd book which purports to be autobiographical but then cuts away from that in the extra textual materials. Fiction or nonfiction, it makes for fascinating reading about life in South Africa in the mid-part of the last century: it's all about having or getting the right government papers and trying to stay out of jail.
Same Difference
Regrets from high school get refreshed and washed away during painful post-adolescent years.
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase
I read this on the fiftieth anniversary of publication—although what I really wanted to do was listen to the audio edition read by Joan's daughter, Lizza. But I didn't have that to hand, so the book had to suffice. Which of course it did. It is a ton of fun! Bonnie's parents, Lord and Lady Willoughby, go off on a rest cure for Lady W. leaving Bonnie and her cousin Sylvie under the eye of a new governess, Ms. Slighcarp. Who is as is described. Soon Bonnie and Sylvie escape and have a series of adventures across England until they can right the wrong done to their family.It's hard not to just write a big plot spoilery summary of the plot, but they are so rich and enjoyable that I don't want to spoil them for any readers lucky enough to be coming to the book for the first time. I read this book as a kid so only parts here and there were familiar. Recommended for readers of all ages.
