At the start of this year I started reading
The Magus by John Fowles. For some reason, I never heard about him at college or anywhere else. I think that this book was recommended in a Jesse Ball interview I was reading. So I ordered it from the library. And now I'm going to read all of his novels, in the order they were written. I am really dumbfounded, every sentence is amazing. I'm reading most sentences twice or more because I don't want to waste them.
Also reading some of the case histories in
The Terror That Comes in the Night, which is about sleep paralysis, or the "old hag," which is a surprisingly common experience which is possibly a little bit supernatural or perhaps just about sleeping in the wrong position. I actually had this happen to me a few times, about 5 years ago. It's like something out of a horror film.
And, in line with Matt, I'm reading through
Eat, Drink, and Be Vegan, though I'm vegetarian and not vegan. The smoky avocado sauce and cumin lime tofu are looking good.
Anna-Lynne
Labels: fiction, John Fowles, vegetarian
posted by anna-lynne at 1/17/2008 11:29:00 PM
A quick rundown of what some Identity Theory staffers are digging into this month...
Drew McNaughton:
Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson,
The Brightening Glance: Children and Imagination by Ellen Handler Spitz,
The New Kings: Nonfiction edited by Ira Glass
Robert Birnbaum:
The Song Before it is Sung by Justin Cartwright,
Wrack and Ruin by
Don Lee,
The Guardians by Ana Castillo,
The Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier,
The Optimists by Andrew Miller,
Terminal by Andrew Vachss,
Yalo by Elias Khoury, and
Swimming in a Sea of Death by David Rieff. Also the
McSweeney's 25 and the newest
Open City.
Summer Block Kumar: I just came back from Christmas in the U.S. and brought back a big haul of new books. Right now I'm reading Denise Baker's
Inscribing the Hundred Years' War in French and English Cultures, and I just finished the Dale Peck collection
Hatchet Jobs. And plenty of health food cookbooks as part of New Year's Resolutions 2008.
Alexandra Tursi: I got my art fix with Joe Andoe's sugar-high insane autobiography
Jubilee City. I also recently enjoyed Laura Moriarty's
The Center of Everything and now I'm reading her latest,
The Rest of Her Life. Joyce Carol Oates'
The Gravedigger's Daughter, which I picked up at the Burlington Book Festival, is another that I'm slowly trudging through. On my night-table?
The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel.
Matt Borondy: Reading through the
Vegetarian Times Complete Cookbook as part of my resolution to cook more and to make sure I'm being a healthy vegetarian. (The more I read about it, the less I can believe that I ever voluntarily ate meat.) I recently started
Right Livelihoods: 3 Novellas by Rick Moody and
Boy by Japanese film director Takeshi Kitano.
Labels: Amy Hempel, art, fiction, Joyce Carol Oates, staff reading, vegetarian
posted by Matt Borondy at 1/09/2008 06:56:00 PM 
