Last Book I Loved
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The Last Poem I Loved: “The Bells” by Adam Zagajewski
My maternal grandparents emigrated from Poland in 1924 after experiencing the horrors of World War I. They arrived here with pockets full of hopes and dreams and little else. I never met them; they died before I was born. I…
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Alex Gallo-Brown: The Last Book I Loved, Magic Hours
Magic Hours, Tom Bissell’s recent collection of non-fiction, surveys his magazine writing over the last decade or so. It is a genre, he informs us in the Author’s Note, he fell into more or less accidentally; it is also the…
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Michael Jauchen: The Last Book I Loved, Miss Lonelyhearts
I read a lot in the bathtub. This isn’t because I’m particularly drawn to cleanliness, but because I’m drawn to the readerly space that a hot tub of water can create. The stillness of a full bathtub—that sporadic spigot drip,…
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Mark Ellis: The Last Book I Loved, I Am Ozzy
As a lifelong Ozzy fan, I scarfed down his memoir like a stoner polishing off a bag of Doritos. I Am Ozzy turned out to be a pretty good read, at least that’s what I thought. A week after finishing…
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The Last Book I Loved: Birds of America: Stories
I am a voyeur to the core. Keep your house lit at night and I will peer in to see how you spend your time alone, or what colors you’ve painted your walls. Invite me in and I will pick…
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The Last Book I Loved: Storming the Gates of Paradise
Three years ago, I bought Rebecca Solnit’s essay collection, Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics, on a lark. At that time I was beginning to write, trying to find my voice. Three years before that, I had moved…
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The Last Book I Loved: Never Let Me Go
The problem with writing about Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go is that I can’t discuss the plot. A blend of science fiction and literary narrative, the novel hinges on a secret, a secret so all-encompassing and imposing, so carefully…
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The Last Book (Collection) I Loved: The Ken Kesey Collection
What would the man who said, “I’d rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph,” think about becoming a museum piece? The quote, by Ken Kesey, appears in the first chapter of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe’s chronicle…
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The Last Poem I Loved: “Love is not all” by Edna St. Vincent Millay
The last poem I loved also happens to be the first poem I loved enough to set to memory. Here’s why: it made me burst into tears in front of my classmates. Abject humiliation = required memorization. Simple. Me: College…
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Erik Evenson: The Last Book I Loved, Last Night
I am here to do two things: scream the praises of James Salter, and throw a few questions about his place in the larger scope of literature into the mix. How did I make it through a college lit class…
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Richard Santos: The Last Book I Loved, A Perfect Spy
I wanted a genre book. You know, just a quick zip through something exciting, and heavy on plot and action—maybe not so deep with all that poeticism and character development stuff. My first mistake was picking a book by one…
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David Peak: The Last Book I Loved, Birch Hills at World’s End
Every high school has a kid like Erik. He’s sharp, dark, and charming. Add in the fact that he has his own car and impeccable taste in Scandinavian metal, and who better to befriend during the darkest years of your life? Even if he…