Where is your nonfiction section please.
The Age of Skin, by Dubrakva Ugrešić I was so excited for this book, because I don't think there's much Croatian-language nonfiction translated into English, and by a woman no less. Dubravka Ugrešić was born and raised in the former Yugoslavia and is now Amsterdam-based. She'd previously been a writer and journalist in her native... Continue Reading →
Happy first (second? what is time?) day of Nonfiction November! I'm even more excited than usual to celebrate nonfiction right now, mainly because 2020 hasn't been a spectacular reading year for me (in addition to every other reason it's been the worst, obviously). My attention has been spread unusually thin and my reading is basically... Continue Reading →
Reading Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek last year was one of those infrequent, world-altering reading experiences for me. Exciting, then, to realize what a back catalog of nonfiction Dillard has. I read Teaching a Stone to Talk, an essay collection, last year as well. I find her writing worlds apart from any other author I... Continue Reading →
Two new essay collections out this month, both with weird, different looks at aspects of Americana. First, Tom Zoellner's The National Road: Dispatches From a Changing America, which "attempts to paint a picture of 'American place' in this uncertain era of political toxin and economic rearrangement. These are observations collected from thirty years of traveling... Continue Reading →
She Come By It Natural collects author Sarah Smarsh's four long-form essays about Dolly Parton and the beloved singer's connections to feminism through her roots in rural poverty in Tennessee (it's better than I'm setting it up, but that's the basic premise). These essays were the result of a Freshgrass Foundation journalism fellowship Smarsh won,... Continue Reading →
Essay collections can be wildly mixed bags: there are usually some that sing and others that are duds. I've already had one life-changingly glorious essay collection this year, one that made me not hate pandemic writing, so what were the odds of two more outstanding ones in the trash dump that is this year? Yet... Continue Reading →
What the title says! I've been trying to think of themes or ways to combine reviews because I have such a backlog and I finally just gave up. These have nothing in common except they're being released this week or next. Let's talk about them! Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land, by Toni... Continue Reading →
Book review: Not a Novel, by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Kurt Beals If the language that you can speak isn't enough, that's a very good reason to start writing. As paradoxical as it may be: The impossibility of expressing what happens to us in words is what pushes us towards writing. Whenever I haven't been... Continue Reading →
Book review: Intimations, by Zadie Smith I'm not sure how I feel about the inevitable barrage of lockdown/pandemic essays. I've managed to successfully avoid them anywhere I've seen them in online reading, but one of the first books of personal essays written during and about the lockdown comes to us from Zadie Smith, which presented... Continue Reading →
It's August, which means: Women in Translation month! This is far and away my favorite literary event of the year. Meytal Radzinski of Bibliobio began this initiative in 2014, which serves to increase awareness of and engagement with translated works written by women. Female-authored books comprise only around 30% of those translated into English each... Continue Reading →
The Case of the Vanishing Blonde, by Mark Bowden (Amazon) Unspeakable Acts, edited by Sarah Weinman (Amazon) Two new books of long-form true crime nonfiction are out this month, and they're both pretty good. Let's get into it. First up is gifted narrative nonfiction author Mark Bowden's The Case of the Vanishing Blonde. My introduction... Continue Reading →
I haven't been on the ball with checking upcoming new titles this year, for, well, lots of reasons. But I think there have also been many shifting publication dates, and it seems lots of releases have been pushed to next year. Nevertheless, there's still some exciting upcoming new nonfiction to look forward to in the... Continue Reading →
