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37 Paddington's avatar

Oh my gosh, the writing here, yours and the Machado short story. I am reading Know My Name by Chanel Miller, and the writing there is pretty spectacular, too. Curiously, it reminds me in rhythm and style very much of the excerpt you've shared. Sentences building one on top of the other, the chosen details deceptively mundane, building to a devastating crescendo. Oh, literature! I'm so gratified to be able to immerse myself in it again. This is the gift of the world slowing down, I think. I'm very struck by the poetry of the titles of the books you mention here. So evocative, every one.

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Elizabeth Aquino's avatar

I loved the Chanel Miller book — such a brave story.

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Verna Wilder's avatar

That piece from a short story is beautiful, Elizabeth. Thanks. I just finished reading Hamlet--again. Reading Hamnet led me back to the play. Oh what a piece of work . . . ! On my Kindle I'm reading To the Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey. Just getting started on George Saunders--A Swim in the Pond in the Rain. Good time to stay away from the web. Let's just read and breathe and love each other.

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Elizabeth Aquino's avatar

Sounds perfect. And I think you’d really dig any of Carmen Maria Machado, Verna!

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Elizabeth Marro's avatar

If there is a book buyers anonymous group, I would definitely join. In the meantime, I'll do what you do...acquire, stack 'em up in lists and in online carts and by my bed. Loved your description of the online chatter...

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Antonia Malchik's avatar

"The Ten Thousand Doors of January," by Alix E. Harrow. YA fantasy, placed in early 1900s with the main character a girl being brought up by a white man who collects antiquities and who employs her father in scouring the world for rare items for him. But it turns out there are other worlds, accessible through Doors (thin places, maybe), all over the world, and her father is from one of them, looking for a way home, and her guardian is not who or what he seems.

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Elizabeth Aquino's avatar

I’m glad you keep popping in with the YA stuff —

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Verna Wilder's avatar

Antonia, I loved that book! And the cover is gorgeous. Have you read the second book she wrote, Once and Future Witches? Very different from January and equally wonderful. Her third book is coming out in October and I can hardly wait.

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Antonia Malchik's avatar

The cover is just scrumptious! I just finished it last night, so am looking forward to reading her other books :)

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Pixie's avatar

I wrote a comment and didn't hit post. Fuck!

I'm reading "Hillbilly Elegy" which is shedding some light on my father's background of poverty and Scots. Why people move and migrate. My father's family moved a lot, looking for work and a better life I'm guessing.

I read "Cutting For Stone" and enjoyed that very much.

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Elizabeth Aquino's avatar

I loved “Cutting for Stone” — fascinating.

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Amanda Wald Rachie's avatar

Thank you for asking. I've just read Sand Talk, by Tyson Yunkaporta, for the second time. After finishing it, I went back to the beginning and liked it even more on the second reading. So much that after I returned it to the library, I bought it in paperback. Now I'm reading The Crooked Mirror, by Louise Steinman, on interlibrary loan. Given that I have been binge-buying books on my severely limited income to relieve stress, I need Bookbuyers Anonymous to gently direct me back to the public library (-:

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Elizabeth Aquino's avatar

Louise Steinman rocks. She was the director for years of an extraordinary program at the Los Angeles Public Library that really shaped our city. I boycotted the program when she was forced out!

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Antonia Malchik's avatar

Sand Talk is definitely one I ended up buying and keeping, too. Just incredible, and a different book on every read.

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Verna Wilder's avatar

Dear am: I love it that your stress-release is binge-buying books--on a "severely limited income." I get it! My income is social security plus a bit, and I'm just grateful that my habit is books and not, say, guitars or expensive fountain pens or--as a friend put it about her husband's habit, shiny shit for a Harley. Hang in there!

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Mary Moon's avatar

I'm reading "Roughing It" by Mark Twain and indeed, he does rough it throughout the pages of the book, riding a stagecoach across the country, searching for gold and silver, being stranded by snow storms and floods. He has a great deal to say about Mormons and Brigham Young is still alive when he's in Utah. I have to admit that I can only read so much every night before I find myself drifting off into sleep. Sometimes I find his hyperbole hysterical, sometimes I find it sleep-inducing.

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Elizabeth Aquino's avatar

Mark Twain is so difficult to figure out, but I think you’ve nailed it.

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Frimet Roth's avatar

Well, I realize this isn't on a par with the other books being read here but I'll mention it all the same. I'm still stuck in the murder mystery groove so now it's Literary Murder by Batya Gur, translated from the original Hebrew. I find this genre - and especially this writer - a great escape from life's stresses and grief. And speaking of writing, I will do a bit of grandmotherly bragging: My nearly-7 year old granddaughter just sold her first short story (and I mean Very Short) to the children's podcast MoonHouse!!

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Elizabeth Aquino's avatar

How fantastic! I’d love to share with my students!

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Beth Coyote's avatar

Elizabeth! I didn't call you.My time with Eden was so brief. But-

Just finished A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews, so good and laugh out loud funny.

Also Marilyn Robinson's series after Gilead (surely one of the best books ever)-Home, Jack, Lila. She is a treasure. Still chipping away at A Promised Land by our dear Barack.

Love you, dear woman.

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Polly's avatar

Finished Hamnet and then read I am I am I am by O’ Farrell. Interesting how her personal life informed Hamnet. Also read Erasure by Percival Everett a novel about race and writing and bitingly funny.

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