the last book i loved
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Sean Kim: The Last Book I Loved, Last Evenings on Earth
It used to be that exile was unique to small, tight knit immigrant communities, but now I know it’s just a condition of living in the world. Roberto Bolano proves it. For him, exile is a life lived in existential…
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Padma Viswanathan: The Last Book I Loved, Dancing With Cuba
The most recent book I have loved–a term I apply only to those few books that get a place in my personal canon–was Alma Guillermoprieto’s Dancing With Cuba. Guillermoprieto’s books are great but few, so I saved this most recent…
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The Last Book I Loved: The Fixer
A couple of years ago I went totally bananas over The Fixer by Bernard Malamud. The story: Yakov, a Jewish man living in Russia in the early 1900s, is falsely accused of killing a Christian child. The book centers on…
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The Last Book(s) I Loved: Juliet Linderman, Civilwarland in Bad Decline and Pastoralia
It’s impossible to read George Saunders books slowly. This might be cheating because I’d read them before, although not in a few years, but a couple of weeks ago I picked up Civilwarland in Bad Decline and Pastoralia, Saunders’ two…
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Alison Tyler: The Last Book I Loved, Born Standing Up
The album is from 1974, but we got our grubby little hands on a copy of a tape in the early 80s, which we played so often we had the words down pat in weeks. Would you believe we memorized…
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The Last Book I Loved: Microcosms
The book I’m reading now, Microcosms by Claudio Magris. I’m traveling in China while falling in love with a book about the tiny and strange borderlands between Croatia (Istria) and Italy. Microcosms may not be as good as Danube, Magris’…
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Benjamin Sarlin: The Last Book I Loved, I Have Fun Everywhere I Go
I don’t think I’ve had more fun with any recent read than last year’s I Have Fun Everywhere I Go: Savage Tales of Pot, Porn, Punk Rock, Pro Wrestling, Talking Apes, Evil Bosses, Dirty Blues, American Heroes, and the Most…
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The Last Book I Loved: Too Big to Miss
I used to read lots of mysteries, and for some reason I stopped. Then I heard about Sue Ann Jaffarian’s mysteries from Mystery Bookstore on Twitter, and got addicted. Her heroine is plus-size paralegal Odelia Gray, and she’s an amateur…
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The Last Book I Loved: Isaac Fitzgerald, the first half of The Night of the Gun
That’s not to say I didn’t like the second half of the book, where David Carr gets his life back on track and ends up working as a writer for the New York Times. But I’m a sucker for a…
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Jonathan Kiefer: The Last Book I Loved, What’s Not to Love?
Sometimes I like to make myself depressed by reading other writers named Jonathan who are better than me. Lately it’s been a lot of fun/shame, what with Lethem and Franzen on the scene, not to mention the immortal Swift. But…
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Ainsley Drew: The Last Book I Loved, Back to Basics
Barefoot Contessa: Back To Basics. My version of cooking usually involves a box, water, and a microwave, but Ina Garten breaks it down in a way that even culinary Tripp Palins like myself can grasp. I know what you’re thinking,…
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Ariane Conrad: The Last Book I Loved, The Emperor of Scent
The Emperor of Scent, by Chandler Burr. Luscious writing from Burr, and an outstanding lead in Luca Turin as he’s caught in the intrigues of the perfume industry and scientific community. A nonfiction thriller.