My summer reading has been a mixture of happenstance and preparation. I spent five weeks in Paris teaching at a program for NYU and I used to pass a little bookshop on the way to class. A woman in her eighties worked there and seemed to have picked out all the best books to display. Svetlana Alexievich. Herta Muller, Jacques Prevert. Chimamanda Adichie. Colm Toibin. Anyway, I picked up a copy of a tiny book of essays on writing by the Belgian writer Jean-Phillippe Toussaint which was a great way to ease into the language spoken around me. Each day I read one of the essays right after I woke up. He's a fantastic writer - if Gary Winograd photos could speak they might sound like him.
Later in the summer, I was in Sarajevo on stage at a literary festival with Rabih Alameddine, so I reread Koolaids, his extraordinary first novel, which bears a lot of resemblance to the one he is publishing this fall. It's one of the most discursive and brilliant novels I've ever read. I also reread novels by Kamila Shamsie, Aleksandar Hemon, and Rawi Hage, who I had sessions with in Sarajevo. Similarly, there have been some launch events for the new issue of Freeman's with Joanna Ravenna, Valeria Luiselli, and Edouard Louis, whose debut novel, Finishing Off Eddy Belleguelle is coming out in English later next year.
Finally, after reading Colson Whitehead's new novel, which is simply a masterpiece - the comparisons to Marquez are so apt -- I've been doing some reading to try to grapple with the way traditions within African-American writing are being yoked forward into the present by some writers - tilted and re-examined. Refreshed and renewed. I'll be on stage in Australia in about ten days with Tracy Smith, who has a poem in the new issue of Freeman's, and I'm curious about how to talk about a history of life-writing if you will which emerges out of - or touches - slave narratives. Another one of the writers in the new issue of Freeman's - Honoree Jeffers - is writing poems from a fictional character back and forth to Phillis Wheatley, one of the earliest American poets. Wheatley is proof that American literary tradition is inseparable from African-American literary art. That they are in some ways one and the same. I've been trying to figure out how to write a piece around this and I keep reading and rereading more because so much great work has already been done in this space.
Odes, by Sharon Olds
I Wonder as I Wander, by Langston Hughes
Ordinary Light, by Tracy Smith
The Grey Album, by Kevin Young
Hot Milk, by Deborah Levy
A Field Guide to Reality, by Joanna Kavenna
Burnt Shadows, by Kamila Shamsie
Koolaids, by Rabih Alameddine
DeNiro's Game, by Rawi Hage
The Making of Zombie Wars, by Aleksandar Hemon
Ninety-Nine Stories of God, by Joy Williams
Ema, by Cesar Aira
Walking on One Leg, by Herta Muller
Cristina and Her Double, by Herta Muller
Poems, by Adisa Basic
Jack, by Maxine Kumin
The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead
Citizen, by Claudia Rankine
Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, by James Weldon Johnson
The Sidewalks, by Valeria Luiselli
Voyage of the Sable Venus, by Robin Coste Lewis
The Fire This Time, edited by Jesymn Ward
The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stille, by Alice Oswald
Enfin de Eddy Belleguelle, by Edouard Louis
L'Urgence et la Patience, by Jean-Phillipe Toussaint
Post-conventions, mid-Olympics, pre-Labor Day, and plenty of time for summer reading. Board member Carmela Ciuraru has been surveying a set of smart readers, so check out the marvelous series-- or take your chances at at the beach.
Julia M. Klein reviews Gerri Hirshey's Not Pretty Enough for the Forward and she reviews Nathan Stoltzfus's Hitler's Compromises, also for the Forward.
For the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Lauren LeBlanc reviews Marrow Island by Alexis Smith, Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn and Swallowed by the Cold by Jensen Beach.
For the BBC, NBCC VP/Online Jane Ciabattari writes about 10 books to read in August and for LitHub, she writes about the 5 books making news this week and includes a shout out to Squaw Valley Community of Writers.
VP/Awards Michele Filgate reviews Riverine by Angela Palm for the Washington Post and for Lit Hub, she writes about book emergencies.
Joe Peschel writes about Odie Lindsey's We Come to Our Senses for the News & Observer.
Elizabeth Rosner reviews Known and Strange Things by Teju Cole for the San Francisco Chronicle.
Natalie Bakopoulos reviewed Jessica Winter's Break in Case of Emergency for the San Francisco Chronicle. In the Summer 2016 issue of the Michigan Quarterly Review, she has a long essay on Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan quartet, entitled: "We Are Always Us: The Boundaries of Elena Ferrante” which should be online shortly.
Steve Kellman reviewed Living with a Dead Language: My Romance with Latin by Ann Patty for the San Francisco Chronicle.
Michelle Lancaster reviewed The Hopefuls by Jennifer Close for Lone Star Literary Life.
Anne Morris reviews Monterey Bay by Lindsay Hatton for the Dallas Morning News.
Bill Williams reviews Incarceration Nations by Baz Dreisinger for the Palm Beach Artspaper.
In Lambda Literary, Julie R. Enszer wrote about the lives and legacies of writers Michelle Cliff, Beth Brant, and Stephania Byrd.
Karl Wolff reviews In the Café of Lost Youth by Nobel Laureate Patrick Modiano for the New York Journal of Books:
Gregory Wilkin reviews Julian Barnes' The Noise of Time for the New York Journal of Books.
Chuck Twardy reviews Love Wins: The Lovers and Lawyers Who Fought the Landmark Case for Marriage Equality by Debbie Cenziper and Jim Obergefell for Las Vegas Weekly.
Michelle Newby reviews The Season by Jonah Lisa Dyer and Stephen Dyer for Lone Star Literary Life.
For the Forward, Erika Dreifus explains the friendship between authors Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and Léon Werth embedded into the new film version of The Little Prince.
For the Washington Free Beacon, Frank Freeman reviewed Elaine Showalter’s The Civil Wars of Julia Ward Howe:
David Cooper reviews Leaving Lucy Pear by Anna Solomon in the New York Journal of Books.
Carla Main reviews The New Trail of Tears: How Washington is Destroying American Indians by Naomi Schaefer Riley for City Journal.
Ellen Akins reviewed Catherine Banner's The House at the Edge of Night for the Dallas Morning News.
For the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Michael Magras wrote a review of Ben Lerner's The Hatred of Poetry.
And speaking of poetry, congratulations to Connie Post, 2016 winner of the Crab Creek Review Poetry Prize, and to Helene Cardona, who has just published a new poetry collection, Life in Suspension (Salmon Poetry), and also the Hemingway Grant winner Beyond Elsewhere, her translation from the French of Ce que nous portons by Gabriel Arnou-Laujeac (White Pine Press).
Your reviews seed this roundup. Please send items, including news about recent publications and honors, to NBCCCritics@gmail.com. (Current members only.) Please only send links that do not require a subscription or a username and password.
