What We're Reading – April 2019

Her Body and Other Parties, by Carmen Maria Machado I've absolutely loved this collection of short stories, which floats between the weird and the queer, passing horror, black comedy and feminism along the way. Doubles and others are especially important: a wife enters her wife’s dream when they are apart; a girlfriend fades until her girlfriend accidentally falls through her in bed. Most noticeably, in the magnificent story ‘Especially Heinous’, detectives Stabler and Benson from Law & Order: SVU meet Abler and Henson, who always get to the crime scene first but do nothing about the beautiful murdered girls whose deaths fuel most episodes of Law & Order: SVU. Machado’s stories are direct, fast-paced, and funny, yet there’s always a slow-moving malevolence to them, a hidden seriousness, a careful confusion, and a sense of meaning that’s just out of reach for the characters. I can’t wait for her second book – a memoir – to be published later this year. Swithun Cooper, Research and Information Manager Ordinary People, by Diana Evans Just shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize. Ordinary People is the story of two couples in the second flush of marriage, wondering about where their lives together are going and what compromises they’ll have to make along the way. It’s also a love-letter to London, and to the music of John Legend. I’m enjoying Diana Evans’ lyrical writing style and in depth exploration of her characters inner lives, their frustrations and complex... Continue reading at 'British Council global'

[ British Council global | 2019-04-11 08:49:28 UTC ]

Other news stories related to: "What We're Reading – April 2019"

Open the Portal: A Conversation with Patricia Lockwood

READING PATRICIA LOCKWOOD’S first novel feels a lot like having your brain poisoned by the internet — or at least like having that particular contemporary condition understood. No One Is Talking About This is a searing entry into the rapidly emerging pantheon of digital culture literature, told... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books

[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2021-02-16 16:00:53 UTC ]
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Unseen work by Proust announced as ‘thunderclap’ by French publisher

The Seventy-Five Pages, out next month, contains germinal versions of episodes developed in In Search of Lost Time and opens ‘the primitive Proustian crypt’For everyone who decided to bite the madeleine and read all 3,000-odd pages of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time during lockdown,... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2021-02-16 15:21:36 UTC ]
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‘Blindfold: A Memoir of Capture, Torture, and Enlightenment,’ by Theo Padnos: An Excerpt

An excerpt from “Blindfold: A Memoir of Capture, Torture, and Enlightenment,” by Theo Padnos Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2021-02-16 13:32:26 UTC ]
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Held Hostage in Syria, a Reporter Tells What It Took to Survive

“Blindfold” is the American journalist Theo Padnos’s memoir of his nearly two years in captivity and a meditation on resilience. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2021-02-16 10:00:06 UTC ]
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Was ‘60 Minutes’ TV’s Most Toxic Workplace?

“Ticking Clock,” a new memoir by Ira Rosen, a former producer for the show, recounts the newsmagazine’s pathbreaking journalism and its culture of harassment and abuse. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2021-02-16 10:00:05 UTC ]
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Review: A survivor's memoir on sickness and health — 'we are all terminal patients on this earth'

In 'Between Two Kingdoms,' young cancer survivor Suleika Jaouad writes with fierce honesty about the false divide between the sick and the well. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times

[ Los Angeles Times | 2021-02-15 15:00:38 UTC ]
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Headline pre-empts memoir from Luna Lovegood actress Lynch

Actress and activist Evanna Lynch is publishing a "raw and compelling" memoir with Headline, exploring eating disorders and "the battle between perfection and creativity". Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2021-02-15 11:29:21 UTC ]
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The French #MeToo Memoir That Ensnares the Abuser in His Own Trap

Vanessa Springora’s memoir, Consent, electrified the French literary world. American readers will find it exhilarating. Continue reading at Slate

[ Slate | 2021-02-15 10:50:00 UTC ]
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Lit Hub Weekly: February 8 – 12, 2021

“Still, the best, most generative conversations mostly happen out of the public eye.” Wayne Miller on the hazards of talking poetry on social media. | Lit Hub As Gabriel Byrne watches his father’s decline, he wonders if it’s ever possible to be truly honest with himself. | Lit Hub Memoir “It... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2021-02-13 11:30:54 UTC ]
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From an Artist’s Life in Brooklyn to North Dakota’s Oil Fields

Michael Patrick F. Smith’s “The Good Hand” is a memoir about grinding work in the last days of the Bakken oil boom. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2021-02-12 10:00:02 UTC ]
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to publish memoir about her father's death

Notes on Grief will recount the life of ‘a remarkable man of kindness and charm’ and the author’s struggle to absorb his loss during lockdown last yearChimamanda Ngozi Adichie has written a memoir about the sudden death of her father in lockdown last year. Notes on Grief, by the Orange... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2021-02-11 14:18:53 UTC ]
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Here’s the cover of Jonathan Franzen’s next novel.

On October 5, this timeline will be blessed/cursed by Jonathan Franzen’s first novel since 2015: Crossroads, or, if you’re not abbreviating, Crossroads: A Novel: A Key to All Mythologies, Volume 1. It’s the first novel of a trilogy, A Key to All Mythologies, which, yes, nods to the doomed... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2021-02-10 17:59:29 UTC ]
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Toeing the Trap

TOVE DITLEVSEN’S first novel, A Child was Harmed, was sent back from the publisher with the accusation that she had “been reading too much Freud.” But Ditlevsen says she didn’t know who Freud was, a declaration that, 200-plus pages into her three-part memoir — a clear-eyed exploration of the... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books

[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2021-02-10 13:30:35 UTC ]
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She’s Ready to Discuss Just About Anything

Patricia Lockwood followed up on her memoir “Priestdaddy” with “No One Is Talking About This,” a novel that explores the chaotic feel of the internet and the pain of personal loss. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2021-02-10 10:00:17 UTC ]
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Danny Trejo’s memoir is hitting shelves (extremely hard) this summer.

Beloved Mexican-American actor and restauranteur Danny Trejo’s first memoir, Trejo: My Life of Crime, Redemption, and Hollywood—which details Trejo’s path from drug addiction and incarceration in some of America’s most notorious prisons (including San Quentin, Folsom, and Soledad), to unexpected... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2021-02-09 21:03:44 UTC ]
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‘Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted,’ by Suleika Jaouad: An Excerpt

An excerpt from “Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted,” by Suleika Jaouad Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2021-02-09 16:17:10 UTC ]
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15 Nonfiction Black History Books to Read This Month

A list of nonfiction Black history books you can read this month to learn more about the history of racism and being Black in the U.S., including Men We Reaped: A Memoir by Jesmyn Ward. Continue reading at Book Riot

[ Book Riot | 2021-02-09 11:31:00 UTC ]
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A Memoir About Queer Identity, Told One Gay Bar at a Time

In his new memoir, “Gay Bar,” Jeremy Atherton Lin documents his personal history and the history of queer identity by exploring gay bars around the world. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2021-02-09 10:00:09 UTC ]
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Priyanka Chopra Jonas dishes on the director who said she needed plastic surgery

In her new memoir coming out Tuesday, actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas recalls the pressure she felt to conform to the film industry's beauty standards. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times

[ Los Angeles Times | 2021-02-08 23:44:01 UTC ]
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