the last book i loved
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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…
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Adam Parker Cogbill: The Last Book I Loved, Abbott Awaits
I am as guilty as any other reader I know of opening or hijacking conversations with some derivation of, “You know what you should read?” I can’t help myself; I read something I loved, and I want to share. There…
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The Last Book I Loved: The Cat’s Table
For years when I was young I would crouch beneath the dinner table to watch my parents drink after-dinner coffee and wine with an ever-changing group of scientists—a tall man from Colombia whose mustache is even more impressive than my…
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The Last Book I Loved: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
There is a passage in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn where Francie Nolan, the book’s protagonist, is described as the sum of many parts. A genetic and experiential palimpsest, Francie:
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Sarah Simpson: The Last Book I Loved, The Subterraneans
Truman Capote famously said that what Jack Kerouac did wasn’t writing, but typing. I take just as much offense today to this slander as I did ten years ago as an undergraduate when first hearing it quoted by an English…
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Rimas Uzgiris: The Last Book of Poetry I Loved, The Living Fire
I had read the book months ago. And then, standing in front of Edward Hopper’s “The House by the Railroad” at the Museum of Modern Art, I found myself trying to explain to a tango-friend from South Africa why this…
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Molly O’Brien: The Last Book I Loved, White Teeth
I was ten years old when 1999 became 2000. My knowledge of the Y2K problem was vague; I could only glean a nebulous mood of panic from overheard newscasts and conversations between adults. My own parents did not seem worried.…
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The Last Book I Loved: Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague
Based on the true story of an English midland town in the year 1666 that quarantined itself to sweat out the bubonic plague, Geraldine Brooks’ Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague reminds me of the private school campus…
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The Last Book I Loved: The Last American Man
It’s easy to write off one author based on a best-seller. Call it jealousy, call it high-end literary disdain, call it whatever you want, but it’s easy to give in to the impulse to distrust something once it’s become popular.…
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The Last Book I Loved: White Noise
In the mid-1980s, I fled Ronald Reagan’s America for the jungles of Costa Rica. Before leaving–forever, I thought–I shipped two boxes of paperbacks to the tropics. I would soon read every book from those boxes plus anything else I could…
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Leanna Moxley: The Last Book (of Poetry) I Loved, The Cow
I’ve been told that it’s harder to make friends once you are an adult because in order to be close to someone you have to be vulnerable. I was told this as though it is impossible for mature adults to…
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Patrick Pineyro: The Last Book I Loved, Ulysses
The moment when a new book is begun it is a moment that vibrates, as potential energy (a writer’s wisdom distilled into a completed work, printed, bound, placed in your hands), converted slowly into kinetic energy (second by second, minute…