Tag: death
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The Seventh Mansion by Maryse Meijer
I loved this book desperately. The main character, Xie, is a 15-year-old vegan who’s gone to live with his dad. He’s in trouble after a direct action involving a local mink farm. He’s tentative friends with two queer girls who are part of a local environmentalist group. Wandering through the birch woods near his house,…
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Just Finished: Silver Repetition
After an extremely tough start with terrible metaphors and aggravating characters, this became a sparse, sad exploration of an immigrant family. What happened with that first 40 pages!? I do not recommend simply on the basis of that lopsided introductory section. From the publisher: In Silver Repetition, Lily Wang’s endless, perfect loops of memory and dream,…
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My Candlelight Novel by Joanne Horniman
I liked this follow-up to Secret Scribbled Notebooks quite a lot, though I do think it pales in comparison!! After 15 years of owning and reading Secret Scribbled Notebooks, I found it on Goodreads and read through a few reviews. One mentioned the “follow-up.” I was shocked. 15 years of being a fan and I…
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Farewell, Ghosts and Cold Nights of Childhood
Two REALLY good books back to back, set along the Mediterranean. I got lucky with these! Farewell, Ghosts by Nadia Terranova, translated by Ann Goldstein (Seven Stories Press) Farewell, Ghosts takes place along the Sicilian coast, as a daughter returns home to help her mom salvage their aging home. Once there, she finds herself caught…
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Biography of X by Catherine Lacey
While this book had a few failures of world-building, I was utterly captivated and obsessively read the entire book in long sittings. I look forward to reading more by Lacey. From the publisher: When X—an iconoclastic artist, writer, and polarizing shape-shifter—falls dead in her office, her widow, CM, wild with grief and refusing everyone’s good…
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Dissipatio H.G. By Guido Morselli
God, this was a fun one. Lackluster, suicidal Italian tries to commit suicide, fails, and emerges to find out he’s seemingly the only person left on the planet. In fits of fear and hope, philosophy and Freudian analysis, he travels back and forth between major cities whiling away his time as last “ex-human.” This one…
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American War by Omar El Akkad
I used to see the hardcover of this book on our New Releases table at the bookstore, and loved the cover. I was drawn in by the idea of an Arab-American take on American dystopia. I was obsessed with science fiction at the time, so this book has stayed in the back of my mind…
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In Progress: The Four Humors
The Four Humors, by Mina Seçkin A young woman goes back to Turkey the year after the Gezi Park protests to visit her father’s grave, care for her grandmother, and mourn her family. She brings her American boyfriend, with whom she hopes to study medicine over the summer. She has a weeks-long headache and is…
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Grievers by adrienne maree brown
Utterly sad and incredibly good. From the publisher (AK press’s Black Dawn series): Grievers is the story of a city so plagued by grief that it can no longer function.Dune’s mother is patient zero of a mysterious illness that stops people in their tracks—in mid-sentence, mid-action, mid-life—casting them into a nonresponsive state from which no…
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Sick Days Book Stack
I like to have reading options around when I’m sick, in case I feel like picking up a book but don’t have the energy to go wandering for something new. On my immediate TBR (not a phrase I really use much, but oh well): Paris is a Party, Paris is a Ghost by David Hoon…