Thea's Notebook | TheaGoodman.com

The Mean$ by Amy Fusselman (Coming September 2022 !!)

1 min

The Mean$ by Amy Fusselman (Coming September 2022 !!)

My thirteen year-old son recently asked me if women are funny. (Yes, his feminist mother DIED.) Amy Fusselman's debut novel about a woman...

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Thea Goodman

1 min

American Sonnets For My Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes

Some titles are the signifier and some are the sign. This title is verse itself with its built- in juxtaposition of past and future; its...

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Thea Goodman

1 min

Oh, William! by Elizabeth Strout

Strout again, inhabits Lucy Barton, from her former book, I Am Lucy Barton, who in turn inhabits Strout: Barton is a writer who is...

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Thea Goodman

1 min

Beautiful World, Where Are You? By Sally Rooney

Rooney has a gift for making real the pleasures of sex and intimacy— a shower in the morning while a close friend you’ve just had great...

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Thea Goodman

1 min

A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver

Slim, bossy and erudite, this is one of the only practical books about poetry that I’ve read. Oliver demonstrates the techniques of...

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Thea Goodman

1 min

WRITERS AND LOVERS by Lily King.

What’s at stake in this novel is the simple happiness of our struggling writer protagonist. Love and work are what she seeks and there’s...

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Thea Goodman

1 min

THIS IS NOW THAT WAS THEN by Vijay Seshadri

Seshadri’s fifth book of poems is wildly idiosyncratic, funny, varied in style. I found his preoccupations similar to Rankine’s in some...

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Thea Goodman

1 min

DON'T LET ME BE LONELY TONIGHT by Claudia Rankine

This book—image, poem, essay— is part of a trilogy including Just Us and Citizen, is less about race and more about mental anguish. What...

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Thea Goodman

1 min

MONOGAMY by Sue Miller

Sue Miller’s novel is told not shown in the great tradition of Henry James, or George Eliot; the telling is psychological, fine tuned and...

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Thea Goodman

1 min

JUST US by Claudia Rankine

This book, one of a trilogy, an amalgam of poetry, essay, excerpt and found image transformed my way of seeing race in the US. I felt...

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1 min

GARTH GREENWELL

Published February 21, 2020 | By thea His prose reminds me of Ishiguro’s in the best way; lyrical, precise, and correct. That...

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Thea Goodman

5 min

MEMORY, PROCESS, STORY

Below is a project I did with artist, Diana Frid and musician, Mark Gallay in 2004 when I’d only loved in Chicago for 1 year.

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Thea Goodman

1 min

TEACHING GREAT COLLECTIONS OF SHORT STORIES:

Published April 19, 2019 | By thea The Dark Dark by Samantha Hunt Nine Stories by JD Salinger After The Quake by Haruki Murakami Her Body...

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Thea Goodman

1 min

SUMMER BOOKS I LOVED, 2017

Published October 24, 2017 | By thea This summer I read some startling poetry—Paschen, Kaschike, and Sinclair, 2 amazing debuts by...

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Thea Goodman

1 min

WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST BOOKSTORE IN CHICAGO

Published December 12, 2016 | By thea Panel discussion of best books of the year. Dec. 16, 2016 at 7:30pm

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Thea Goodman

2 min

SUMMER, 2016 EATING BOOKS

Published December 12, 2016 | By thea Little Red Chairs, Edna O’Brien I had never read her before. I love her style and her depiction of...

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Thea Goodman

2 min

SPRING BOOKS (MOTLEY)

Elena Ferrante’s 6 novels are painful, searing, addictive reading. Love. Can’t wait for the seventh novel (fourth after the Neopolitan...

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Thea Goodman

2 min

A Group from California Spring

All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr. Reminicsent of The English Patient. (Haven’t finished this one yet.) Sarah Manguso,...

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1 min

MY ODD LIST OF RECENT FAVORITES:

Published September 20, 2014 | By thea -Enormous Changes at The Last Minute by Grace Paley. She’s unique–vivid, brutal, syntactically...

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Thea Goodman

4 min

MORE BOOKS….

Published September 27, 2013 | By thea Wild, by Cheryl Strayed Cheryl Strayed changed her name to “Strayed” when she couldn’t stop...

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Thea Goodman

2 min

BEDSIDE TABLE:

Published January 21, 2013 | By thea A Thousand Mornings by Mary Oliver I read this book in one sitting, prone on the couch, drained by...

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Thea Goodman

1 min

ANGLE OF REPOSE by Wallace Stegner

Everyone kept telling me to read this book and now I understand the miracle of it. The crippled historian who narrates the book is...

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Thea Goodman

3 min

August Reading...

The Newlyweds by Nell Freudenberger In Amina, a Bangladeshi woman, new to this country, Nell Freudenberger has created a character with a...

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Thea Goodman

2 min

Some very short reviews of books I loved:

A Sense of An Ending by Julian Barnes The dialogue among childhood friends—British, bookish boys in the 60’s—provides a full sense of...

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Thea Goodman

2 min

Mr. Peanut by Adam Ross

Mr. Peanut by Adam Ross “I think you’re obsessed with him,” my oldest friend told me over lunch when I told her about the book for the...

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Thea Goodman

1 min

A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter

A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter There is a mole on a young, French girl’s neck and she works in a patisserie. It’s all conjecture...

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Thea Goodman

2 min

Sugar in My Bowl edited by Eric Jong

Sugar in My Bowl essays edited by Eric Jong OK so it’s a funny list of summer reading, I know, but I’m an aesthete and a feminist. And I...

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Thea Goodman

1 min

Open City by Teju Cole

Open City by Teju Cole Teju Cole is not pretentious. As a writer, art historian, photographer, novelist and an intellectual, he is the...

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Thea Goodman

1 min

Remainder by Tom McCarthy

Remainder by Tom McCarthy Remainder is a rare novel that is both seemingly simple and ultimately profound. In basic increments we hear...

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Thea Goodman

2 min

Desperate Characters by Paula Fox

Desperate Characters by Paula Fox Desperate Characters was published in 1970 yet amazes with it’s timely portrait of malaise and fear in...

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Thea Goodman

2 min

The Keep by Jennifer Egan

The Keep by Jennifer Egan All great novels are about time. No matter what their overt content-- friendship, castles, death, or love...

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Thea Goodman

1 min

Just Kids by Patty Smith

I admit, I never listened to her music, or saw any of her drawings, or ingested any of her art in any form, until I read Just Kids, her...

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Thea Goodman

1 min

Commuters by Emily Gray Tedrowe

Emily Gray Tedrowe is a superb writer gracefully weaving in minute detail while maintaining the pace of this fantastic, naturalistic...

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Thea Goodman

1 min

A Visit From The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Of course you know about the power point presentation within this text. (If you don't there is one and it's brilliant, funny and eerily...

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Thea Goodman

1 min

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

People are types and they are also much more than that (or less than that as the case may be.) Characters attest to be real but they...

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Thea Goodman

1 min

By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham

By turns lyrical and colloquial, Michael Cunningham's prose gracefully elucidates ways of thinking, specifically the ways of Peter and...

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Thea Goodman

1 min

Hotel Insomnia and Dime Store Alchemy

Hotel Insomnia by Charles Simic These poems juxtapose grand proclamations about eternity, the divine, and immortality with lines like,...

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Thea Goodman

1 min

The Dead and the Living

The Dead and the Living poems by Sharon Olds I'm reading poetry to reconnect to language (above story) and to emotion that fuels writing....

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Thea Goodman

1 min

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...

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Thea Goodman

1 min

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...

1 view0 comments