the last book i loved
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Ari Messer: The Last Book I Loved, The Changing Light at Sandover
I hate agreeing with Harold Bloom. But what can I say? I fall easily and oddly and often (if sceptically) into Bloom’s spells of (particular) historical illumination and (annoying) lucidity.
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The Last Book I Loved: The Glass Castle
The problem with reading a modern memoir is that often they suck. The influx of reality shows and confessional writing (ahem, Tori Spelling) has placed an emphasis on story and less on literary craft. This is why when I read…
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Joel Arquillos: The Last Book I Loved, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
I absolutely loved Junot Diaz’s The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I never thought a story about the childhood I lived would make an interesting novel, but I was completely wrong. Junot wrote the book I wish I…
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Kevin Sampsell: The Last Book I Loved, Another Bullshit Night In Suck City
I’d been hearing about Another Bullshit Night in Suck City since it came out a couple years ago, but late last year, after finishing my own memoir, I finally got around to reading it. I loved the shifting timelines, short…
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The Last Book I Loved: Runaway
I came late to the Alice Munro party but now that I’m here I’m planted and staying. This book floored me—the first story, yes, good, interesting, intriguing, but it was story #2, “Chance” that handled storytelling and character and mystery…
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The Last Book I Loved: Olive Kitteridge
I’m now reading Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout and I’m awe-struck. This is exquisite writing and masterful story-telling. She creates a community of characters, all revolving around Olive in odd ways, and each one gets his or her own story.…
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The Last Book I Loved: Alina Simone, Unlovable
Unlovable (Fantagraphics Books) is a graphic novel by Esther Pearl Watson that is based on a diary the author found in a gas station bathroom in the 1980’s belonging to one “Tammy Pierce.” True to the title, Tammy really is…
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Scott Hutchins: The Last Book I Loved, The Easter Parade
It seems that every once in a while living writers pick a dead writer to gather around and champion, and this was definitely the case with Richard Yates around the turn of the millenium. I attended a reading by Richard…
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The Last Book I Loved: The Road
This semester, I decided to teach The Road by Cormac McCarthy. After I got my desk copy, I was sitting on BART, on my way home, and I started rereading the ending to try to figure out how McCarthy made…
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The Last Book I Loved: Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle
Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle is a crass and hilarious slice of growing up “different,” as fun to read today as it was in 1973. Molly Bolt is an unashamed lesbian in a queer-hating world, an ambitious natural leader in…
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Damion Searls: The Last Book I Loved, Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Collected Stories
I could never tell him apart from the other ones, Asch and Abramovitsh and Aleichem and the rest. And those titles like “Gimpel the Fool,” straight from the old country? Well Singer, and the translator of “Gimpel the Fool,” some…
