Recently Mentioned Books
Showing 25 of 6797 mentions, ordered by most recent.
1. Incarnations: A History of India in Fifty Lives , by Sunil Khilnani. A highly readable introduction to Indian history, structured around the lives of some of its major figures. I passed along my copy to Alex.
Tim Harford, Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives .
Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras, and Ella Morton, Atlas Obscura: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Hidden Wonders . Short descriptions of places you ought to visit, such as ossuaries, micronations, museums of invisible microbes, the floating school of Lagos, the Mistake House of Elsah, Illinois , Bangkok’s Museum of Counterfeit Goods, and the world’s largest Tesla coil in Makarau , controlled by Alan Gibbs of New Zealand. The selection is conceptual, so I like it. I will keep this book.
Christopher Goscha, The Penguin History of Modern Vietnam . The best general history of Vietnam I know, and it does not obsess over “the Vietnam War.” Readable and instructive on pretty much every page.
Lyndal Roper, Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet . Due out in February , the UK edition is already out. Substantive and delightful on every page.
Peter Parker, Housman Country: Into the Heart of England . It’s already out in the UK, which is where I bought my copy.
Tom Bissell, Apostle: Travels Among the Tombs of the Twelve . Fun, engaging, and informative, worthy of the “best of the year non-fiction” list.
Ji Xianlin, The Cowshed: Memoirs of the Chinese Cultural Revolution . The classic account of its kind, in this edition brilliantly translated and presented.
Robert J. Gordon, Rise and Fall of American Growth , my review is here .
Buy Richard E. Feinberg, Open for Business: Building the New Cuban Economy . It also will make my best non-fiction books of the year list. See also his Miami Herald interview , and his long Brookings paper on FDI in Cuba .
A few I didn’t get to read yet, but have hopes for are Alan Moore’s Jerusalem , and Deborah Levy’s Hot Milk , caveat emptor in both cases, plus Invisible Planets , edited by Ken Liu, a collection of Chinese science fiction.
A few I didn’t get to read yet, but have hopes for are Alan Moore’s Jerusalem , and Deborah Levy’s Hot Milk , caveat emptor in both cases, plus Invisible Planets , edited by Ken Liu, a collection of Chinese science fiction.
A few I didn’t get to read yet, but have hopes for are Alan Moore’s Jerusalem , and Deborah Levy’s Hot Milk , caveat emptor in both cases, plus Invisible Planets , edited by Ken Liu, a collection of Chinese science fiction.
Michael Orthofer, The Complete Review Guide to Literary Fiction . An amazingly comprehensive and informative work, mostly about literature in translation, from the creator of the Literary Saloon blog about fiction. I liked it so much I decided to do a Conversation with Michael Orthofer . If you could own only ten works on literature, this should be one of them.
Jean-Michael Rabaté, Think Pig! Beckett at the Limit of the Human . This work of criticism is grounded in literary theory, but informative and smart nonetheless.
Elena Ferrante, Frantumaglia . A revealing mismash look into the mind of the author, giving you an integrated picture of her world view, with carefully calculated feints thrown in. I should note this one works only if you know and love her novels already. Ferrante’s “children’s” story The Beach at Night is also worthwhile, very dark, you can read it in a small number of minutes. Here is a good NYT review .
Elena Ferrante, Frantumaglia . A revealing mismash look into the mind of the author, giving you an integrated picture of her world view, with carefully calculated feints thrown in. I should note this one works only if you know and love her novels already. Ferrante’s “children’s” story The Beach at Night is also worthwhile, very dark, you can read it in a small number of minutes. Here is a good NYT review .
The Found and the Lost: The Collected Novellas of Ursula K. LeGuin , self-recommending.
Emily Dickinson’s Poems as She Preserved Them , edited by Cristanne Miller. The visual presentation of poetry matters too, plus she is one of the very best.
Helen DeWitt, The Last Samurai . Review here . Strictly speaking, this is a reissue of an earlier published but neglected work. Maniacal, intense, super-smart, about a mother bringing up a prodigy.
The Complete Works of Primo Levi , in three volumes, edited by Ann Goldstein. By no means is all of this fiction, but I will put these books in this category. A revelation, as Levi has more works of interest, and a broader range of intellect and understanding, than I had realized. There is plenty of linguistics, economics, history, and social science in these literary pages as well as consistently beautiful writing and superb translations. This is technically from 2015, but I missed it last ...
Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Reputations , a short Colombian novel on memory — personal, historical, sexual, and otherwise, this was my favorite short work of the year.
Javier Marias, Thus Bad Begins . I have only started this, but so far I like it very much. I have enough faith in Marias to put in on the list.
Claire Louise-Bennett, Pond , more from Ireland, short, nominally fiction but more like a circular sensory experience of reading overlapping short stories, with a cumulative effect akin to that of poetry. I found this one mesmerizing.
Eimear McBride, The Lesser Bohemians . A novel of an affair, with intoxicating Irish prose and a genuine energy on the page, though it is more a work of intensifying fervor than a traditional plot-based story.