Coast-to-coast commentary about books
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The Theme Is Oceania
Grappling with two volumes from widely-admired Australian writers, Richard Flanagan and Michelle de Kretser
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Hail, Darkness
Revisiting Milton’s revolutionary epic, “Paradise Lost,” and its long trail of influence, argument and agitation
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Più Italiani!
Digging into the work of two 20th Century Italian novelists, Natalia Ginzburg and Alberto Moravia
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More Ferrara, Less Satisfaction
Reading the fourth, fifth and sixth installments of Bassani’s “Novel of Ferrara,” plus three American novels
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The Genius of Ferrara
Luxuriating in Giorgio Bassani’s immense masterpiece, a tale of Jews in a small Italian city in the years between the wars
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Hungry Hearts
Reading the painful fiction, metafiction and memoir of Tony Tulathimutte, Ismet Prcic and Tove Ditlevsen
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Surely This Isn’t the Book You’re Looking For
Slogging through Jonathan Franzen’s “The Corrections” at last, plus my takes on newer fiction from Honor Levy and Yuri Herrera
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Nasty, Brutish, but not Always Short
Hacking my way through “A Brief History of Seven Killings” by Marlon James, “Hurricane Season” by Fernanda Melchor, and “We the Animals” by Justin Torres
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Back to My Old Habits
Notes on “The Known World” by Edward P. Jones, “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow,” by Gabrielle Zevin, “Detransition, Baby,” by Torrey Peters, “All Our Names,” by Dinaw Mengestu, and “The Divorce,” by Moa Herngren
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California Attention Deficit Disorder
Reading Andre Platonov’s Soviet social realism, Saul Bellow’s short stores, and much, much more in the Sunshine State
Far From Brooklyn 