I’m speaking metaphorically here, in some cases. There’s certainly some geography involved here, and more than a little time, but either way: the trio of books I’m discussing today all veer in on a particular place, sometimes in time, sometimes not. And that sense of place is indeed neatly captured and relayed via the page in all three cases, with impressive results.
Continuing in my read-through of Harry Mathews’s body of work, I recently delved into his novel The Conversions. It begins in a recognizable fashion: the narrator is invited to the home of a wealthy man, where he takes part in a competition; winning it, he’s given a mysterious adze. As the novel continues, the narrator must delve into the adze’s history in order to answer three fairly surreal questions. And while this might seem like the framework for an adventure story, […]
Last week’s column involved some talk of landscapes. At around that time, I’d been reading Walden for WORD’s Classics Book Group–in this case, the edition with annotations by Bill McKibben. This is, somewhat inexplicably, the first time I’ve read it; I am apparently a bad reader of the Transcendentalists. (Really need to work on that.) What struck me–among the things that struck me, really, as there were plenty–was how accessible it still felt. Some works written in the 19th century seem […]
Tracey Thorn’s discography is a laudable one: the groups Everything But the Girl and Marine Girls, collaborations with Massive Attack, and a group of acclaimed solo albums. Her memoir, Bedsit Disco Queen, delivered a lot of what I was expecting: there’s plenty of detail about Thorn’s creative process, and how it evolved through the years; there’s also plenty about her own personal aesthetics, and how they developed over time.
I’ve had Tiphanie Yanique’s memorably-titled How to Escape from a Leper Colony on my to-read shelf for a while now. I’ve heard good things about Land of Love and Drowning, the novel she has due out later this year, and figured that it might be the right time to check out the collection in question. Spoiler alert: it totally was. Secondary spoiler: season two of #tobyreads is all about me building a time machine to find my younger self and convincing […]
I’ve always had a fondness for narratives in which a character gradually comes to understand a culture that’s initially alien to them. This might stem from coming to reading via science fiction and fantasy, where such a thing can be handled literally, but I’m happy to see these wherever they may come: realistic or fantastic, literal or metaphorical. The title of Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria tells you, on one level, what to expect: there’s a place called Olondria, and the […]
Earlier in the month, I came across Jo Walton’s glowing review of Angelica Gorodischer’s Kalpa Imperial. (The English translation is by Ursula K. Le Guin.) Then I read Sofia Samatar’s write-up of the same book, and realized that I should probably give it a proper read, as it had been glaring at me from my to-read shelf for a while. And, sure enough, I found it to be terrific. Largely organized as a storyteller recounting the long history of an empire, […]
Writing this column poses something of a conundrum, as nearly all of the reading I’ve done this week has been for upcoming freelance assignments. So expect to see more of a focus on shorter works this time out: stories and essays I’ve encountered in publications in print and online. Plus one novel about attraction, a declining Iowa town, and giant bugs.