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What We’re Reading: April 2012

Identity Theory Staff — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 20:57:39 +0000

What We’re Reading: April 2012

Matt Borondy, Publisher: A Moveable Feast by Hemingway, Just Before Dark: Collected Nonfiction by Jim Harrison, All I Did Was Ask by Terry Gross, Zazen by Vanessa Veselka, The Mindful Writer by Dinty W. Moore, Hobart #12: The Great Outdoors (May 2011).

Robert Birnbaum, Editor-at-Large: Canada by Richard Ford, Mission to Paris by Alan Furst, The Cove by Ron Rash, Prague Fatale by Phillip Kerr, The Life of a Fact by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal, In Search of Small Gods by Jim Harrison, Baffler #19, Grantland #2, The Wet Engine by Brian Doyle. I stumbled across Brian Doyle’s 1st novel (of 12 published books) last year and have been avidly interested in his writing since then. His story collection Bin Laden’s Bald Spot was also a fictional high point last year.

James Warner, Fiction Editor: Daughters of the Revolution by Carolyn Cooke, What I Didn’t See by Karen Joy Fowler, Fun With Problems by Robert Stone, Through the Valley of the Newt of Spiders by Samuel R. Delany

Hilarie Ashton, Assistant Editor: DFW’s Pale King, Carver’s Where I’m Calling From, James Wolcott’s Lucking Out, and Gary Lutz’ I Looked Alive. Just finished J. Franco’s Palo Alto. Stay far, far away from that one. His genius in Pineapple Express does not translate to readable prose.

Alexandra Tursi, Visuals Editor: Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn, The Sorrows of an American by Siri Hustvedt, The Vanishers by Heidi Julavits.

What are you reading?

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Identity Theory Staff Reading: March 2012

Identity Theory Staff — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 15:41:02 +0000

Identity Theory Staff Reading: March 2012

Matt Borondy, Publisher: I have finally triumphed over Franzen’s Freedom and am moving on to the new Dan Chaon and some other stuff TBD. (Edit: the TBD is now D’ed: These Days are Ours by Michelle Haimoff and Wild by Cheryl Strayed.)

James Warner, Fiction Editor: Heaven on Earth by Richard Landes. King of the Badgers by Philip Hensher. Bambi vs. Godzilla by David Mamet.

Robert Birnbaum, Editor-at-Large: The Snopes (the Snopes Trilogy in a new volume) by Wm Faulkner. The Might Have Been by Joseph Schuster. The Wrecking Crew by Kent Hartman. The Collective by Don Lee. The Street Sweeper by Eliot Perlman. The Reconstructionist (P.S.) by Nick Arvin. Poison Flower by Thomas Perry. Jack Holmes and his Friend by Edmund White. Capitol by John Lancaster. Enchantments by Kathyrn Harrison. Mudwoman by Joyce Carol Oates. Twilight by William Gay. Watergate by Thomas Mallon.

Hilarie Ashton, Assistant Editor: At long last, Sullivan’s Pulphead. I adore it. Also reading Baumbach’s The Life and Times of Major Fiction, and a couple other things that I was reading last month.

Matthew Tiffany, Books Editor: I’m reading Laird Hunt‘s forthcoming Kind One. I just finished Talking Back to Facebook about how to protect the children from Mark Zuckerberg.

Alexandra Tursi, Visuals Editor: River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh, Coming Home to Eat by Gary Paul Nabhan, Gourmet Rhapsody by Muriel Barbery, Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh

Anna-Lynne Williams, Music Editor: On one end of the spectrum, I’ve been reading Hunger Games while on tour in the Netherlands. Perfect for airplanes and trains. On the other end I’ve also brought the memoir Of Walking in Ice by Werner Herzog.

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January/February 2012 Reading List: Chronic City, Matterhorn, and The Obamas

Matt Borondy — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 16:02:47 +0000

January/February 2012 Reading List: Chronic City, Matterhorn, and The Obamas

Matthew Tiffany, Books Editor – Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain

Hilarie Ashton, Assistant Editor – I’m finishing up Lethem’s Chronic City and Hugh Barker/Yuval Taylor’s Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music. The first is fabulous; the second is good (the latter’s Cobain chapter is its best). I’ve also finally gotten around to Richard Hughes’ A High Wind in Jamaica, months after my book club read it. Next up: Elissa Schappel’s Blueprints for Building Better Girls, Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, and John Jeremiah Smith’s Pulphead.

James Warner, Fiction Editor – Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes, The Same River Twice by Ted Mooney, and In Dependence by Sarah Ladipo Manyika

Robert Birnbaum, Editor-at-Large – What it Was by George Pelecanos, Pity the Poor Billionaire by Thomas Frank, Country of the Bad Wolves by James Carlos Blake, Hope by Shalom Auslander, God’s Jury by Colin Murphy, and The Obamas by Jodi Kantor

Anna-Lynne Williams, Music Editor – i finally finished a book last night! 3 out of 4 Franzens complete. which means i’m going to dig into the new Murakami, and the poetry book Mean Free Path by Ben Lerner.

Matt Borondy, Publisher/Editor – I started Already Dead: A California Gothic by Denis Johnson, Freedom by Franzen, You Have to Say Something by Dainin Katagiri and One Hundred and One Nights by Ben Buchholz.

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December 2011 Reading List: Turtle Island, Michael Chabon, Percival Everett

Matt Borondy — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 15:59:00 +0000

December 2011 Reading List: Turtle Island, Michael Chabon, Percival Everett

Matt Borondy is reading two poetry books: Turtle Island by Gary Snyder and our music editor Anna-Lynne’s new one. Plus some techie e-books. And Gary Shteyngart. (That’s right, I spelled his name without looking.) And this new “graphic biography” called The Zen of Steve Jobs — if it gets here on time.

Matthew Tiffany is reading Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station.

Robert Birnbaum is reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon, The Drop by Michael Connelly, The Harbor by Ernest Poole, The Imperial Messenger by Belen Fernandez, Stolen Souls by Stuart Neville, Blueprints of the Afterlife by Ryan Boudinot, Blood Meridien by Cormac McCarthy, Bloodland by Alan Glynn, and Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward.

Hilarie Ashton is reading Bill Bryson’s At Home: A Short History of Private Life and
Percival Everett‘s Damned if I Do. Ready to start Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music.

James Warner is reading Peter Orner’s Love and Shame and Love, Olga Slavnikova’s 2017, John Diamond’s The CIA and the Culture of Failure.

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November 2011 Reading List: Peter Matthiessen, Roberto Bolano, Lauren Oliver, Jonathan Franzen

Matt Borondy — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 18:29:00 +0000

November 2011 Reading List: Peter Matthiessen, Roberto Bolano, Lauren Oliver, Jonathan Franzen

Matt Borondy is reading Peter Matthiessen’s The Snow Leopard, Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, Charles J. Shields’ biography of Kurt Vonnegut (And So It Goes), and Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story.

Robert Birnbaum is reading The Third Reich by Roberto Bolano, The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco, Stolen Souls by Stuart Neville, and The Wake of Forgiveness by Bruce Machart.

Sarah Presite is reading all things kid and illustrated this month: A Monster Calls by Ness, Steampunk: Poe, and Lauren Oliver’s Liesl and Po.

Anna-Lynne Williams is reading Strong Motion by Jonathan Franzen and This Is Your Brain On Music by Daniel Levitin.

Matthew Sorrento is reading Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace — simply, more proof that the man was a force of nature; Forry: The Life of Forrest J Ackerman by Deborah Painter, Foreword by Joe Moe — a fun, direct true story of a lovable eccentric; The Cult Film Reader, edited by Ernest Mathijs and Xavier Mendik — with standout essays by Umberto Eco and Barry Keith Grant; Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S. C. Gwynne — a dense, though readable, astonishing account of one of the most profound and troubling tales in US history…Crack it open and you won’t stop.

Hilarie Ashton is reading Geoff Dyer‘s Yoga for People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Do It and Bruce Chatwin‘s What Am I Doing Here? Just finished Evan Hughes’ (excellent) Literary Brooklyn: The Writers of Brooklyn and the Story of American City Life — and just started The Believers, by Zoe Heller.

James Warner is reading Jaron Lanier’s You Are Not A Gadget, Neal Stephenson’s REAMDE, and Aneesha Capur’s Stealing Karma.

Alexandra Tursi is reading Nanjing Requiem by Ha Jin, Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson, Switch by Chip and Dan Heath, and Holding Company by Major Jackson.

Matthew Tiffany just now finished THE FLAME ALPHABET, forthcoming from Ben Marcus.

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May 2011 Reading List: Micheal Crumney, John Sayles, Wilfred Santiago

Matt Borondy — Thu, 05 May 2011 07:22:00 +0000

May 2011 Reading List: Micheal Crumney, John Sayles, Wilfred Santiago

A sampling of books we are reading this May…

Robert Birnbaum, editor-at-large:

I have just read Canadian Micheal Crumney’s Galore set in Newfoundland and spanning the 19th century. There are shades of Garcia Marquez’s Macondo set in the hardscrabble North Atlantic isolation.

Also, I am in the middle of John Sayles’s ambitious War and Peace-like opus of nearly 1000 pages, A Moment in the Sun. Set in late 19th century, the novel follows four main characters through the Spanish Cuban American War, the dying embers of Reconstruction, the Alaskan Gold Rush and America’s Philippine adventure (which is also the setting for Sayles’s forthcoming film Amigo).

And finally, I am marveling over Wilfred Santiago’s 21, a graphic novelization of Roberto Clemente’s life.

James Warner, fiction editor:

Currently reading: Lush Life by Richard Price, Choir Boy by Charlie Anders, How to Buy a Love of Reading by Tanya Egan Gibson.

Alexandra Tursi, visuals editor:

Holding Company, a new collection of poems by Major Jackson.

Riley Dog, Twitter follower @roo370:

Red on Red, Edward Conlon

Matt Borondy, editor-in-chief:

This is the month I learn to make bread courtesy Edward Espe Brown’s The Tassajara Bread Book. I will not be deterred. Also feel like reading some old Alan Watts. Have you read the essay “Beat Zen, Square Zen, Zen” (pdf)? Also need to catch up on some of the recent New Yorkers, and by then there will be a book that comes out of nowhere (or lands in my mailbox) to captivate my attention. Could use a suggestion.

Anna-Lynne Williams, music editor:

I am reading The Corrections. I am way behind the times.

Matthew Tiffany, books editor:

I’m reading The Deal from Hell: How Moguls and Wall Street Plundered Great American Newspapers

What are you reading?

Comment below or join in on Facebook.

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What We’re Reading: August 2009

Matt Borondy — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 18:44:00 +0000

What We’re Reading: August 2009

I’m getting ready to get into The Amateur American by high school classmate J Saunders Elmore, Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, and hopefully I’ll get my hands on a copy of idt copyeditor Stephanie Johnson’s new story collection, One of These Things is Not Like the Others.

-Matt Borondy

I’ve got the latest issues of American Short Fiction and One Story next to me on my couch, alongside James Hannaham’s God Says No and the new Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor by Brad Gooch (the latter two by Little, Brown).

-Stacy Muszynski

* The Two Kinds of Decay, by Sarah Manguso. I can’t decide whether I love it or hate it, but I can’t stop reading it.
* Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler. An undamaged copy.
* Picking Bones from Ash by Marie Mutsuki Mockett. Multi-generational saga re Japanese women. Not my usual fare, but enjoying.
* The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris. Just a few pages in, but methinks it’s very ready-for-filming – intentionally or not, I don’t know. Also: one of those “I could have written that” books, even though I probably couldn’t have written it. (At least, the first few pages.)
* Booklife by Jeff VanderMeer. The sort of book that, 99% of the time, is outdated two months after it hits shelves. I think this may fall into that 1% category, though. Flipping through it, some interesting considerations of writing &/vs. maintaining an “online presence.”

-Matthew Tiffany

I’m continuing my binge-reading habits. The current binge comes in response to my best friend’s wedding a couple weeks ago. The wedding was on the Georgetown campus, and it had me missing both Jesuit education (we went to a Jesuit high school and I played/sang a classic Jesuit hymn for the wedding ceremony) and also everything Irish (among other Irish things, he and the groomsmen wore bright green bow ties). So I’m reading A Jesuit Education Reader to sate one fix, and for the other, I picked up a 600-page collection of Irish music called Songs of the People. It’s an amazing book, despite chapter 23, entitled “Cruel was my father”.

-Andrew Whitacre

I just finished Andre Dubus III’s The Garden of Last Days, and now I’m reading Steve Martin’s memoir Born Standing Up and a slew of geeky Batman comics. I know, I know…

-Matt Okie

I’m reading Wild Nights by Joyce Carol Oates, then Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk. Recently finished Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver and The View From Castle Rock by Alice Munro. Both great reads.

-Alexandra Tursi

More or less here is my recent reading…

The Tragedy of American Foreign Policy, William Appleton Williams
Four Freedoms, John Crowley
Laura Ryders Masterpiece, Jane Hamilton
Ravens, George Dawes Green
Rain Gods, Jame Lee Burke
You or Someone Like You, Chandler Burr
That Old Cape Magic, Richard Russo
Wanting, Richard Flanagan
Midnight Picnic, Nick Antosca
Home Game, Michael Lewis
Nobody Move, Denis Johnson
The Winter Vault, Anne Michaels
Road Dogs, Elmore Leonard
Mirrors, Eduardo Galeano
The Dangerous Life and Times of Warren Zevon, Crystal Zevon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHDdqubE7zQ

-Robert Birnbaum

Right now I’m reading What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist – the Facts of Daily Life in 19th-Century England – a garage sale find that’s actually a really fun read, providing context for Victorian literary allusions to things like money, medicine, or the peerage.

-Summer Block Kumar

I’m knee deep in graphic novels for the upcoming school year. Rereading Persepolis, Maus and newest Buffy comic season.

On a less graphic note Pride and Prejudice and Zombies as well.

-Sarah Presite

i am reading jesus’ son by denis johnson, because i seem to have a short attention span lately…

-Anna-Lynne Williams

Am currently rereading Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights and Alasdair Gray’s The Ends of Our Tethers, and am also reading Hugh Kenner’s Mazes and Virginia Woolf’s Flush. A somewhat random assortment of texts, maybe because I’m on vacation…

-James Warner

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The Invention of Everything Else

Michele Filgate — Fri, 08 May 2009 13:46:00 +0000

The Invention of Everything Else

Hi fellow bookworms

Things I’ve read lately: The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt, which is a terrific, imaginative story of the great inventor Tessla and a chambermaid at the Hotel New Yorker. It makes me have a new appreciation for the pigeons that hang out on the sidewalks of Manhattan. There’s also something Jonathan Safran Foerish about her writing.

The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry is the best mixture of entertaining and highly intelligent at the same time. Think Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy but more literary. It’s a ton of fun.

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And Then We Set His Hair on Fire

Matt Borondy — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 02:48:00 +0000

And Then We Set His Hair on Fire

I recently finished Enchantments, a charming Italian novella by Linda Ferri. I picked it up serendipitously at the Harvard Book Shop on trip to Boston last month and loved it. Ferri co-wrote the script to the Cannes-prize-winning film The Son’s Room.

In other news, I’ve made it to page 970 of War & Peace.

I’m currently enjoying And Then We Set His Hair On Fire: Insights and Accidents from a Hall-of-Fame Career in Advertising, a funny, delightful read by Phil Dusenberry, former chairman of BBDO North America. It’s not your typical business read–it’s actually quite fun, and, as the title suggests, insightful!

For a local book club of which I’m a member, I’m also reading Guns, Germs & Steel by Jared Diamond.

-Alexandra Tursi, visuals editor

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The Vagrants

Matt Borondy — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 17:51:00 +0000

The Vagrants

I enjoyed Yiyun Li’s The Vagrants, and am now tackling Benjamin Rosenbaum’s The Ant King & Other Stories. I also recently read Samuel Johnson: The Struggle by Jeffrey Meyers, and am now onto Duncan Wu’s William Hazlitt: The First Modern Man, since I personally can never read enough Johnson or Hazlitt biographies.

-James Warner, assistant fiction editor

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