This is what I’m reading these days:

Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon

I’m riveted by this novel’s fractured and deceptively simple structure. It’s both sensational—there’s a severed hand lying in ice within the first five pages—and totally earthy and quotidian.

The Master by Colm Toibin

Can you imagine Henry James sharing a bed with Oliver Wendell Holmes? (Toibin has.) This book is an amazing entry into the mind and life of Henry James and his process as a writer. I loved its unexpected familiarity and its historical accuracy. It’s so different in scope from books like Blackwater Lightship or Brooklyn.

The Philosophical Baby by Alison Gopnik

Alison Gopnik, a developmental psychologist, happens to be Adam Gopnik’s sister and she writes breezily too with a personal lens on the subject of infant consciousness. Babies know more than we think they do. This book shows us how, in some ways, they’re smarter than we are.

This is what I’m reading these days:


 

Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon

I’m riveted by this novel’s fractured and deceptively simple structure. It’s both sensational—there’s a severed hand lying in ice within the first five pages—and totally earthy and quotidian.

 

The Master by Colm Toibin

Can you imagine Henry James sharing a bed with Oliver Wendell Holmes? (Toibin has.) This book is an amazing entry into the mind and life of Henry James and his process as a writer. I loved its unexpected familiarity and its historical accuracy. It’s so different in scope from books like Blackwater Lightship or Brooklyn.

 

The Philosophical Baby by Alison Gopnik

Alison Gopnik, a developmental psychologist, happens to be Adam Gopnik’s sister and she writes breezily too with a personal lens on the subject of infant consciousness. Babies know more than we think they do. This book shows us how, in some ways, they’re smarter than we are.


This is what I’m reading these days:

Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon

I’m riveted by this novel’s fractured and deceptively simple structure. It’s both sensational—there’s a severed hand lying in ice within the first five pages—and totally earthy and quotidian.

The Master by Colm Toibin

Can you imagine Henry James sharing a bed with Oliver Wendell Holmes? (Toibin has.) This book is an amazing entry into the mind and life of Henry James and his process as a writer. I loved its unexpected familiarity and its historical accuracy. It’s so different in scope from books like Blackwater Lightship or Brooklyn.

The Philosophical Baby by Alison Gopnik

Alison Gopnik, a developmental psychologist, happens to be Adam Gopnik’s sister and she writes breezily too with a personal lens on the subject of infant consciousness. Babies know more than we think they do. This book shows us how, in some ways, they’re smarter than we are.