Books I'm Reading:

The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford (a phenomenally great work of fiction – thrilling to reread, for Ford’s artistry with voice and sustained irony)

Teaching Beauty in DeLillo, Woolf, and Merrill, Jennifer Green-Lewis (a deft, gorgeously written book about the importance of aesthetics in our response to literature and art)

Pip and Squeak, Kate Duke If you haven’t come across Kate Duke’s comical and lovely picture books for children, you must go out right now and find some. This is her latest, and it is as delightful and witty as her earlier ones. See Kate’s website at www.kateduke.com.

Laughing Without an Accent, Firoozeh Dumas (a delicious book of pieces about growing up Persian, in Iran and in America. Read this collection together with Funny in Farsi, for a personal and humorous take on Persian and American cultures, with a touch of French culture tossed in for good measure.)


Books I've Read:  

June
After Dark, Haruki Murakami
Franny and Zooey, J.D. Salinger

May
Laughing Without an Accent, Firoozeh Dumas
Domestic Violence: Poems, Eavan Boland
Iron and Silk, Mark Salzman
Lost in Place, Mark Salzman
The Soloist, Mark Salzman
Madapple, Christina Meldrum

April
Persuasion, by Jane Austen
The Private Lives of the Impressionists, by Sue Roe
Watermark, by Joseph Brodsky

March
The Master - Colm Toibin

February
Self-Help, and Birds of America - stories by Lorrie Moore
Native Guard - Poems by Natasha Trethewey

January, 2008
How to Breathe Underwater, beautiful, astonishing stories by Julie Orringer
The Emperor's Children, by Claire Messud
Isn't It Their Turn to Pick Up the Check? (Dealing with All of the Trickiest Money Problems Between Family and Friends), an informative and engaging book
by Jeanne Fleming & Leonard Schwarz
The Disagreement, a promising debut novel by Nick Taylor (coming out this spring!)
A year's worth of The New Yorker, whatever fiction and personal essays I've missed!