Spurred by what one critic said of Dagoberto Gilb's
The Flowers (that its narrator Sonny Bravo could be Holden Caulfield), I read
The Flowers then reread Salinger's
Catcher in the Rye. The narrators do share the word "phony," it's true. Rather than interchange them, I'd like to see them meet.
Finished a novel that debuted in 2005,
The Professor's Daughter by Emily Raboteau. Lyrical and exacting, the author hits a lot of nerves, one that especially twangs: growing up gray in a black and white United States.
In the middle of Voltaire's
Candide. What took me so long? It's hilarious. No wonder it's been around since 1759.
On my to-do list:
Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow. And another by authors that hail from or otherwise beholden to the Motor City:
Detroit Noir, an anthology of edited by E.J. Olsen and John C. Hocking.
Following that will be Joshua Ferris'
Then We Came to the End, one of those books that hasn't stopped talking since it was released.
Next time, a slew of women and one man.
-Stacy Muszynski, copy editor
posted by Matt Borondy at 4/30/2008 10:16:00 PM
I'm rereading everything
Steinbeck for my 11th grade English class (
The Pearl,
Of Mice and Men, and
The Grapes of Wrath).
For fun I've got
Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs and
Veronica by Mary Gaitskill (I adore her).
-Sarah Presite, assistant fiction editor
posted by Matt Borondy at 4/30/2008 10:13:00 PM
I just finished reading, Michael Pollan's
The Omnivore's Dilemma, and Jeffrey Eugenides'
Middlesex. On deck is Carl Bernstein's
A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
-Jesslyn Roebuck, contributing editor
posted by Matt Borondy at 4/30/2008 10:10:00 PM
For this fiction editor, no fiction lately! I recently finished
How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative, am in the middle of
Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, the Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind, and have
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions waiting on my nightstand after reading a great review of it in the MIT Technology Review.
I do have one novel in the queue: Dennis Lehane's
Mystic River. My fiancee and I were visiting the mystery book store--well, a house more than a store--up the street from us, and I pulled
Mystic River off the shelf to find it was a whopping $35. Turns out the shop's owner, Kate, had Lehane autograph it.
-Andrew Whitacre, fiction editor
posted by Matt Borondy at 4/21/2008 03:14:00 PM
James Warner: I just read
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, and
Christine Falls by John Banville (writing under a mysterious pseudonym). I'm now engrossed in Mark Helprin's
Refiner's Fire--not very close to me politically, that guy, but I can forgive anything of someone who writes that kind of prose.
-James Warner, assistant fiction editor
posted by Matt Borondy at 4/09/2008 01:06:00 PM
I'm just finishing
The Magus, still, I've been on that one for a while. But as soon as I started reading it, it immediately fell into my Top 5 list. And I always take my time with those.
Remembrance of Things Past,
Of Human Bondage,
Lolita.
I'm going to be traveling most of this month, so I need to pick some smaller books. I'm going to bring
The Pigeon by Patrick Suskind, and
Notes From Underground because I've never read it.
-
Anna-Lynne Williams, music editor
posted by Matt Borondy at 4/08/2008 05:49:00 AM
I just finished rereading Murakami's
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which is pretty great but I don't think matches up to some of his subsequent books. Before that was
South of the Border, West of the Sun (also by Murakami), and before that was a cool little comic book called
Tales of Woodsman Pete, by Lilli Carre. This morning on the train I started rereading Calvino's
Invisible Cities, which is just too good to be true. I'm hoping after that to start the Yiddish Policeman book, but who knows.
-Sumanth Prabhaker, assistant fiction editor
posted by Matt Borondy at 4/07/2008 01:43:00 PM
Human Smoke by Nick Baker,
The Resurrectionist by Jack O'Connell, Alan Furst's
The Spy of Warsaw,
Havana Deco, Jim Kunstler's
The World Made by Hand,
Love Letters from a Fat Man by Naomi Benaron,
The Lazarus Project by Alexander Hemon, and I am trying to make space to get back to reading Marilynne Robinson's
Gilead, Bolano's
The Savage Detectives, and Denis Johnson's
Tree of Smoke.
-Robert Birnbaum, editor-at-large
posted by Matt Borondy at 3/31/2008 06:11:00 AM
I just finished
Veronica by Mary Gaitskill. I also went to my community library for the first time since I was fourteen the other night, and I picked up
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman (which I started reading last night and am already glued to),
The Control of Nature by John McPhee and
The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa. Also, I have the new translation of
War and Peace next to my night stand, which I imagine will take me through to June!
-
Alexandra Tursi, visuals editor
posted by Matt Borondy at 3/26/2008 02:26:00 PM 
