Giving up the Ghost

Eric Nuzum

The story behind this book is a bit more interesting that its execution. In his adolescence, Eric Nuzum was haunted by a recurring dream of a girl in a blue dress screaming at him in gibberish, which lead him to numb himself with various substances and fear what may be lurking behind closed doors. Another girl, Laura, in his waking life was crucial in him managing to overcome this downward spiral. But she died tragically, leaving him with a slightly more tangible ghost to contend with.

The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis

Lydia Davis

I read the first two books in this collection not quite two years ago. Now maybe wasn’t the best time to revisit this, as I felt pretty distracted until the end when I was able to find some focus again. But then reading one of Davis’s books is more of an effort than you would expect, partially because her stories vary from the incredibly short to involved. The incredibly short ones seem like they would be the easiest, but sometimes the linguistic riffing takes some time to untangle.

Swimming Studies

Leanne Shapton

The best adjective I’ve seen so far to describe this book is “pointillistic.”¹ Invariably “quietly” will qualify other descriptors, which rightfully suggests it’s a tricky book to recommend to others, especially if you don’t know how it fits in with their usual reading choices. I recently found myself in conversation with someone who revealed her history of competitive swimming and I asked if she’d read this book, then obviously failed to capture its interest potential in one sentence.

Other People We Married

Emma Straub

Summer, with all its distractions, is generally an opportune time for reading short fiction that you can digest in small segments. This collection seems like a particularly good fit, as many of the stories have themes of travel. At some point I thought to myself that it was strange that two of them had a character with the same name; only after finishing and reading a few reviews did it come clear that this wasn’t a coincidence — I’d actually missed that the character recurred in three stories. Summer and its distractions?

Man Walks into a Room

Nicole Krauss

Not long after unpacking my books after moving, a friend asked for a book recommendation, and I pulled The History of Love off the shelf, which reminded me that I had put this one, Krauss's first novel, on my list a while back. The History of Love has stayed a favorite of mine for several years and Great House falls in pretty similar territory; so it was a surprise how different this book felt.

Blue Nights

Joan Didion

A few months ago I saw a reference to Didion's essay "Goodbye to All That" and read it again and remembered that I still hadn't read this semi-follow-up to The Year of Magical Thinking about her daughter Quintana's death. While the first book is primarily about grief, this one is focused more on mortality, and, more specifically, Didion facing hers without her daughter.

The Bathroom

Jean-Philippe Toussaint

Sometimes when you're stuck with a book you can't get into and can't let go of, the best thing that can happen is to stumble upon something else that will give you the route to move on to the next one.

Another Country

James Baldwin

I'd been reading this book off and on for about six months, having gone through a few periods of being too distracted to read, before I decided it was time to hunker down and finish it.

It's a bit tough in the beginning since the best character tragically exits the scene in the first section, and there is a bit of a grieving period. It takes a while to see what the other characters have to offer — through their raw, often ugly emotions — and then by the time you get behind them, there are layers of betrayals to contend with at the end.

A Death in the Family

James Agee

I was around the corner from my usual library branch when I finished The Stranger's Child and felt that I should get another book in my hands promptly. Since reading Let Us Now Praise Famous Men last year, I'd never officially added this to my reading list, but it was on the right shelf at the right time.